Stupid is as stupid does

[spaceman]

Read this on the BBC and had to comment ...it's funny in a sad kind of way.


Nigerian houses swallowed by sand



By Senan Murray
BBC News website, Yobe State


Ciroma Mohammed is standing on the spot he says was once occupied by his house in north-east Nigeria. "We lose houses to the desert every year," he says from the village of Bulamadu in Yobe State ...blah blah blah ....

The villagers do not seem to see any link between their large appetite for firewood and the advancing sand dunes.

They keep cutting down trees in the vicinity and using sun-dried branches as wood fuel or even as an income earner.


Reminds me of a quote attributed to Einstein .

" Nothing is fool proof, because fools are invincible and will always overcome in the end"


Now some people will say "oh but wait this isn't funny those poor people it's not their fault"

Bollocks..... How about his for a solution ....For every tree you chop down, plant another one...or better yet plant two....it's not rocket science.

Cheers
Spaceman

[Dean@Massiveaction]

I suspect they are similar to Fijian culture. they do not make any connection between their actions and the consequences. They view the 2 in total isolation from each other

[tricky]

Is that the role of education - to show the link between actions and consequences?

[Dean@Massiveaction]

Absolutely. Education, amongst other things, enables one to take different actions and achieve different outcomes or consequences, don't you think?

[tricky]

So why is our education system focused on 'no losers - everyones a winner' and doing away with exam pass/fails?
Meanwhile our jails are filling up with people who don't realise the consequences of their actions.

[Dean@Massiveaction]

Because you are telling yourself a story that is not true. OUr education system doesn't provide education. It is a socialist training ground that breeds failure by telling losers that they are winners and telling winners to be average. Calling something a school doesn't mean anybody gets educated.

[Stevegoodey]

I can't agree more with Deans last comment.

I have a relative in the Exam checking team at a local school, they do a test run of say 20 exams and if the pass/fail ratio is not correct to national guidelines they change the question to make more of the incorrect answers into correct ones.

This blew me away.

What's wrong with these people?

Steve

[tricky]

Any of the academics want to comment on this - Monid, SuperDad?
Seems to be a general agreement that schools have been hijacked by the 'do gooders' and don't educate any more.

[Jumpin]

Exams are not about education, they never have been. They are an arbitrary way of restricting university entrants. The reason why the schools are poor educators is because of the focus on passing exams. As parents we demand this, but we also dont like to swallow the consequences.
Perhaps we all need to take more responsibility for education rather than handing it over to the state.

[Josko]

I can't agree more with Deans last comment.

I have a relative in the Exam checking team at a local school, they do a test run of say 20 exams and if the pass/fail ratio is not correct to national guidelines they change the question to make more of the incorrect answers into correct ones.

This blew me away.

What's wrong with these people?

Steve

I think your relative has been drinking too much of the juice...

How can you change a question to make more answers correct... tricky I think he is just being funny...

They did use to mark papers up and down based on the averages back in the old days but it was a different marking system, they stopped doing that with the new NCEA system.

[GJB68]

Ivi, I have heard of similar stories to what Steve is saying.

Check this link out about "grade boosting" - what a joke the system is!

"Overall, 29 per cent of marking checked last year was found to be incorrect. A further 10 per cent was found to be "invalid".

The paper said teachers could push up pass rates for favourite students or to enhance their school's reputation"

Validates what Dean was saying earlier!

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/search/story.cfm?storyid=0002C20B-CB25-14BA-BB2A83027AF1010F

[Dean@Massiveaction]

You are quite wrong Ivi. Exams are scaled up and down much more now than ever before to avoid anyone being labelled a failure. That's why NZ's education standards are getting lower and lower. Many people can't even spell or add coming out of school now, but at least they feel good about the fact that they don't have a decent education.
One month in the real world and the workforce....

I could go on but the way we are screwing up our kids education is reprehensible. Another good reason to make sure you are financially free enough to get your kids a decent education.

[Josko]

I may have it wrong on scaling but for a teacher to change a question to fit the answers of the students who got the answer wrong just seems too laughable to be true, if not impracticable to do.

[Dean@Massiveaction]

That's not what scaling is lad. What they do is look at all the marks for say a class. If the highest mark was 70% and the average was on 25% they scale the marks up so the people with 25% may suddenly gain a pass mark of 51%. They don't necessarily specifically scale the % but they move the bar down so more people pass.
After all the fact that 90% of the class should fail is just not PC with Helen. Why fix our appalling education when making the numbers look good is so much easier

[Rolf]

I can't comment on NZ education, but I know they do the same in Denmark too. They will usually scale the marks up/down to achieve the 'correct' statistical average for the whole exam. Not individual exams for one class, but the big ones where all are sitting it at the same time.