2006 (the year I finished school) was the final year of the Geography curriculum that we all knew and loved; weather, soils, mapping, tourism, coasts... I don't even remember what else we did... probably something about the Dutch polders... anyway, they dumbed that subject down.
And now, instead of the five subjects that we had to struggle through, year 12 students have to do four subjects and a research project. What a freaking joke! I DID THREE RESEARCH PROJECTS IN YEAR TWELVE - two of which were practically mini-theses - and they have to do ONE?! I had to do one for German (though that was really fairly simple), one for Religion ('Does music, with accompanying lyrics, have the power to influence a person's belief in, and understanding of God?'), and one for Geography (it was about earthquakes and earthquake preparedness in South Australia (FYI: we do have a fault-line going right through Adelaide, and LOOK AT THAT, we've had TWO earthquakes since I did my report :O). In fact, for English (Comms ;)) we had to do some sort of major assignmenty things which took a whole lot of time, on top of all the regular work we had to do. With the amount that they've reduced the work-load on year 12 students, I doubt they have to do these any more - they certainly don't for Geography.
The Advertiser's article on it (results come out today) begins; 'a record 92 per cent of students who started Year 12 this year have earned their South Australian Certificate of Education'. Yeah, it's great that more people can get it. An increase to 85.9% got a TER (Tertiary Entrance Rank - though it seems they've changed the name of that as well, to 'ATAR' - Australian Tertiary Admission Rank), and 57.2% of Aboriginal students who completed SACE got a TER.
Yes, those figures are good (despite fewer perfect scores this year). Over-working students doesn't teach anything but resentment and how real life is, but dumbing down an education system to make sure that the lowest common denominator can get their high school certificate and/or get into university doesn't make society better.
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| I (occasionally) worked hard for this piece of paper! |
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| Awwww yeah; 19, 18, 18, 18, 17 |
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| This is one of those times I worked hard, because I know that that was only one lot of flash cards for German. |
3 comments:
Pretty much the same reason I get so annoyed about the grinding down of undergraduate education in Australia. I'm still not sure how I managed to get into a PhD and God knows I'm spending half my time teaching myself things I should've learned at an undergraduate level.
I really like your post. always been very informational. I hope you’ll keep up the good work and maintain the standard. Best of luck.
Ah, the education system...the South Australian Education System. When I was 10 years old I moved to Sydney. I was shocked to notice that me, the brightest person in my Adelaide classroom was the dumbest person in my new Sydney classroom. I did not know a thing! Everyone laughed at me because I was so bad at school. My dad made me catch up over the Christmas holidays and somehow it worked and when I returned to school in the next year, I was one of the smarter ones.
Then we moved back to Adelaide. I was some weird genius kid that everyone hated. My first day back in Adelaide, we learnt the 2 times tables! They do that in Sydney in grade 1! So now I was smart and had no friends...
I would like to see how the new SACE stacks up against the NSW year 12 system.
Also bear in mind that even the SACE we did was a dumbed down version of what was in place previously. My dad still has his year 12 chemistry books and I couldn't do any of the questions from there when I was doing year 12. They were too hard!
It would be interesting to see how many of those who now get into uni, quit before finishing their degree.
stop rambling Kim!
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