Apparently Tim Wright, headmaster of Sydney Church of England Grammar School, thinks senior English is too hard.
Grrr, stupid Tim Wright of course English is important, that's how we communicate here in Australia (and the rest of the English speaking world as well). The reason why they can't "just read the book" is because the purpose of studying English is learning to express yourself, reading things other people wrote is something you learn in primary school (or earlier if you're lucky). If you want to read a book, that's what your free time, you know, the time you normally spend watching Big Brother, is for. School is for learning things, like, for instance, how to communicate more effectively. In the majority of cases there is no good reason why, with a bit of hard work, you could not pass senior English, except if you where badly taught in earlier grades, which shouldn't be a problem for a P-12 school. I know students transferring from other schools may have a bit of trouble, but that is to be expected in any "elite" school worthy of the designation.
Also, his requirement that "Informed parents and community members need to be able to understand and recognise what learning will be required" would seem to result in the school not being allowed to educate the students to any higher level than their parents. For example how many "parents and community members" would know what the requirement "Learn basic HTML" actually entails? Well we obviously can't teach any course that has HTML as part of the requirements. This is patently ridiculous, we can't go defining education requirements based on what the kid's parents have achieved, we need to base the requirements on what the children themselves can achieve.
Posted by Timothy Pollard in Education on June 10, 2008
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