To educate or not to educate, that is the question

/ masher

This Covid lockdown business is having a detrimental effect on our children’s education, as I’m sure everyone is aware.

My son is in his final year at high school – the year in which he was supposed to be taking his GCSEs, but who knows what’s going to happen there?  One thing for sure, is that he has missed a lot of proper schooling. Even when they went back to school – between the lockdowns – he was only there for a short period, as someone in his year (a teacher) tested positive and the whole year had to be sent home to self-isolate.  This happened twice in the same month!

The school – like others – started doing online lessons, but it was all very haphazard at first.  I think they have improved now though and seem to have a more rigid online curriculum in place. Even so, Son tells me that they have a lot of supply teachers and that they are mainly doing just revision.  Possibly, at the end of the year they will be assessed on what they have learnt so far.

Maths has always been a strong point for him, but when we got him to take a mock GCSE exam before Christmas, he failed.  We were told that on the stuff that he knew, he was actually very good, but that there were large gaps in his learning… obviously.  As such, we are now paying for him to see a private maths tutor once a week. Whether this will help in any exam he may or may not have at the end of the school year, I don’t know, but it can’t do any harm and – like any parent – I want to give him the best start for when he leaves school. I just wish I could afford to also get private tutors for English, Geography, Engineering and Science.

Definitely science.

Following his maths tutelage, I was discussing his other lessons with him last night and he told me how, for his science homework, he has to write up why a thick electrical  wire has greater resistance than a thin wire.

Of course, I told him that he had it the wrong way round, but he showed me in his book where he had written down verbatim what the teacher was saying in the lesson.
She had said “A thick wire has a greater resistance than a thin wire, because there are more particles to get in the way of the electric current”.

More particles to get in the way!! ??   WTF!

It beggars belief!

I have written to the school headmistress, asking her to have a word with said science teacher, but it does worry me, if that is the calibre of some of these supply teachers.

10 thoughts on “To educate or not to educate, that is the question”

  1. Read the statement correctly…It said ” A thick tutor is more resistive to doing things correctly.”
    Bloody ‘ell, even I knew what the correct statement was.

  2. It’s a sorry state of affairs, Masher. Apparently children are going to be set way back in their education. Why aren’t regular teachers doing Zoom lessons? Even if they just do 1 or 2 a day on the core subjects so that kids can stay on track? It sounds to me like you’d do a better job than the supply teacher. Good luck – it must be very trying.

    • I’d probably do OK on the science side of things, Jules, but his maths is already beyond me (hence the tutor) and I was never any good at Geography.

  3. I got 11% in my mock physics o’level. I would have probably known the answer but I would have baulked at the idea there were too many particles in the way.

    • How many is too many, I wonder?
      And what exactly are these particles?
      These are the questions I want answered.

  4. I watch ” The Chase” every day and I have noticed that anyone who claims to be a teacher is usually particularly uninformed and basically rather thick! I sometimes read what people are saying onTwitter and they are always appalled that people so dumb are teaching their kids.

    • The Chase rewards those with good general knowledge, so I wouldn’t say teachers are thick if they don’t do well on there. When it comes to general knowledge, you either know about something… or you don’t. Age and experience are the two main proponents in building general knowledge, I would imagine.

      But, if a teacher is meant to be teaching a specific subject and then demonstrates a lack of knowledge on that subject, then that’s not good at all.

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