Education reform...

[fleetfootmike]

http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,1722932,00.html - via rickbooth, who will no doubt blog on the subject in his usual erudite and correctly punctuated way later in rfbooth.

'Under the plans, no pupil would be able to get a C-grade in GCSE English without being able to "punctuate accurately using commas, apostrophes and inverted commas".'

What? You mean they CAN, currently?

Comments

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

What? You mean they CAN, currently?

In an age when business emails come replate with "can u plz send the file 2 me???" I am...unsurprised.

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

One problem is that exams sometimes make assumptions about the basics. You get a list of things which get marks, and it can be assumed that some things just have to be known to be able to understand and answer the questions. A GCSE exam, at about age-16, follows a decade of schooling, and assorted literacy and numeracy testing.

So, reading the article, and discovering that this might be part of a system of literacy and numeracy testing, which just might be added to the GCSE exam, or might be something quite distinct -- nobody knows yet -- it sounds like a combination of journalistic headline creation, political grandstanding, and maybe exasperation at a long-running failure pattern in teaching.

This has certainly been going on a long time. Maybe the problem is the teachers?

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Note "being able to", that isn't the same as doing it consistently in a first draft, which is basically all that can be done in an exam. I'm not convinced that they will actually be testing the knowledge of punctuation rathre than the ability to get it right in a short time under pressure. In first drafts I can make loads of mistakes (and "thinkos", I know perfectly well the correct homograph of 'their' to use but what comes out is often an incorrect one until I correct it later -- and under time limits that often means a lot later when I reread it).

The other thing of which I would be worried is the use of certain punctuation, because there are many opinions about it. Some, for instance, think that colons and semicolons should be used very rarely, others that they should be used for all lists and nowhere else, etc. And then there's the "Oxford comma", about which there is violent disagreement. (And in the last sentences I have both started sentences with conjunctions and placed a comma outside quotation marks -- and for good measure I've used double quotes whereas the UK convention is now to use single ones.)

Yes, the standards need tightening, and children need to learn that certain things are there for a reason and change the meaning if they are wrong, but the time to do that is when they are learning not in an essential exam by which time the habits have been formed.

(Personally, I'd keelhaul people for putting prepositions on the end of phrases...)

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

(Personally, I'd keelhaul people for putting prepositions on the end of phrases...)

Two English professors were in a dreadful car crash. As they lay there in the wreckage, one muttered to the other, "This is it, I'm done for."

The other begged, "For God's sake, don't say that! Don't end your sentence with a preposition!"

[stevieannie.livejournal.com]

I'm consistently shocked by it myself. I'm of the opinion that children should be taught to think in punctuation - it is how I learned. Punctuation is present in speech, and by simply taking the time to say the incorrect sentences out loud, Jared can get his punctuation right in 95% of cases. It's the time that is missing today...

I am not so worried about the smaller details of grammar and punctuation, but being able to put a full stop in the right place and figure out the use of the correct use of an apostrophe shouldn't be beyond the pale for most kids.

It also goes without saying that one picks up punctuation instinctively from reading, as well. Kids should be given books worth reading at school - Jared's given up with curriculum books. He takes his own in for reading, and constantly amazes the TA's that he is reading such interesting books. He was given something by an author called Deb Gliori to read the other day - apologies if anyone knows her (she's a 'fantasy' author - inverted commas used on purpose) but it was the biggest pile of *tosh* I've ever seen. Appalling writing, non-existant characterisation and dialogue which was more stilted than me at my Passive-Aggressive worst. He gave up in disgust and took in "Sabriel" by Garth Nix. That'll teach them to give my son rubbish books!

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

"Welcome to StregaSchloss, the ancestral castle of the Scottish clan Strega-Borgia."

Looking at the amazon.com reviews, there might be something lurking under that, but since the outward appearance seems to be that of a rip-off of "The Addams Family" combined with a total inability to recognise the differences between Italy, Scotland, and Germany, I wouldn't bet on it.

This isn't a tin ear for language, it's trans-Uranic.

[dan-ad-nauseam.livejournal.com]

There are some books that seem to exist only to be read in schools. Did anyone (outside of Canada), for example, read Benedict and Nancy Freedman's "Mrs. Mike" on their own. We had to deal with it in seventh grade. Bleah.

[agentrayevyn.livejournal.com]

Be relieved in the fact that kids on this side of the pond can't do it either. Hell, I'm an education major and I don't know what an inverted comma is.

[rickbooth.livejournal.com]

I don't know about erudite, but I don't often mangle sentences too badly, I suppose. I'm not particularly planning to blog on it - I just thought it might interest a couple of people, particularly Pod since he's also in the education game.

If this does go ahead, very soon you'll find that most kids can and do punctuate correctly. They don't do it now because their teachers don't make them, because schools under the current system are grade factories. Examiners don't currently penalise this particular flavour of illiteracy, so teachers don't make kids redo it until they get it right; one saves one's battles for the issues that will get them marks. Adequate punctuation is not difficult, so when it becomes a mark-gaining area it will be carefully taught and enforced.

As to the differences of usage one poster worried about, they're not going to be examining controversial details. They'll just be looking for correct apostrophe usage (which is not arguable other then the CDs/CD's issue) and commas that aren't obviously and undeniably wrongly placed. GCSE examiners are not in the business of denying marks to good candidates, quite the opposite.

[ci5rod.livejournal.com]

If this does go ahead, very soon you'll find that most kids can and do punctuate correctly. They don't do it now because their teachers don't make them, because schools under the current system are grade factories.

I'd actually be happier if all subjects took this approach, not just English. As far as I'm aware, teachers in subjects other than English are actively discouraged from pulling pupils up over spelling, grammar, punctuation and general inability to communicate. Since I got taught in a very cross-disciplinary manner -- I learned grammar from my Latin teachers, essay writing from Chemistry, and punctuation from a particularly sarcastic music master -- this doesn't seem like a good idea.

[rickbooth.livejournal.com]

This somewhat sarcastic mathematics master does pull his pupils up on their writing to some extent (in their everyday written work I mention it; in their coursework, I tend not to, because then they lose sight of the wood and because coursework is even more than most things an exercise in hoop-jumping), and I agree with you entirely. Certainly they're not going to be assessed on these things in their exams, but I talk to them about many such things.

Of course I have the luxury of being in a very good school, but I am in any case a talkative and opinionated man, so it would probably happen anywhere.