Petition - ATAR Should Not Affect University Options (1 Viewer)

[isildurrrr1]

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324000704578390340064578654

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zbvfizd3WlU[/youtube]

This story is pretty much spot on. There's so many factors in college apps that it's almost impossible to know whether or not you'll get into uni.

 

[D94]

But what about the students that are better in mathematics or science and are obliged to do english? If I have gathered anything about your arguments on this thread, it is that 1. you are ignorant to the aforementioned individuals and 2. you appear to have an inaccurate view of english in the senior years, or at least, exaggerate its general usefulness.

It is as if you have been trying to argue that english in the senior years explicitly focuses on fundamental skills like punctuation, grammar and how to write academic essays suitable to all fields. Except it doesn't. It focuses far more on how an individual personally interprets a text. It's got a lot to do with creative thinking, but can hardly compare in logical thinking when it comes to mathematics or science.

The question is this: how useful really is english to an individual who is simply not interested or whose career path has very little to do with english? I believe that instead of arguing solely from your point of view you need to start thinking about how other individuals might be feeling about english. A lot of individuals out there just regurgitate what content their english teacher has given them and memorise some generic essay that they hope can be applied to the question they're asked.

The reality is, their experiences would be similar to the experiences artsy students would have if they were obliged to do mathematics or science. What I can't understand is that you seem to be able to sympathise with the hypothetical situation of artsy students doing mathematics or science, yet you can't sympathise with the actual situation of mathematical or scientific students doing english.

tl;dr if you can understand why mandating mathematics or science isn't that great, then you should understand why the current mandating of english isn't that great either.

It is naive to categorise students into maths/science/logical thinking and English/creative thinking. There are students who are both, and there are students who lack both. But the point remains that we all speak and write English, and therefore it is far more appropriate to make English mandatory than make maths or science mandatory. The typical response to that is to make English non-mandatory, but in my experience and observations, English does provide skills that would otherwise not be obtained through the maths and sciences, based on the current syllabi. I see too often Engineering students lacking a certain sophistication in their report writing or even essays (yes, there are essays in engineering). Of course they would have done English, but I suspect they did not really care about it. There are also other factors such as scaling for the ATAR, for which HSC English is the control to scale all other subjects.

Now, sure there may be a lot of regurgitating but all that still needs to be written in a manner which supports an argument or expresses in a different format than standard everyday speech. Creative thinking has a lot to do with Science and Engineering. To communicate ideas in a way that people will listen and hopefully invest money in requires creativity and articulation which is something HSC English aims to provide, believe it or not. To be able to formulate arguments to support a thesis or point of view is not found in HSC Maths or HSC Science, but in my experience, it is found in the Humanities. Interpreting a text is only one aspect of HSC English. It is how you convey your interpretation which is far more important, and at the end of the day, that is what's being marked - your written response.

Having said that, I was indifferent to HSC English since I did a few humanities subjects as well. Appreciating HSC English and being a maths/science person are not mutually exclusive. I personally think the subject could incorporate a larger focus on arguments and debate, report writing, logic and philosophy, and rhetoric. HSC English has been brutally distorted by how it is approached, a sort of mechanical aspect whereby you are given a text and the output is an essay, then repeat. The subject itself needs to be more creative.

 

[nerdasdasd]

Here's an idea?

Mandating HSc subjects for degrees that are related to it!

Like... Engineering and 3U - engineering

3U - actuarial

Advanced English/extension English - arts

It will benefit people who know what degree they want to get in.

 

[isildurrrr1]

You still need general science and mathematics subjects for everyone though. I mean how hard is environmental science or health science at a high school level.

 

[Kiraken]

Here's an idea?

Mandating HSc subjects for degrees that are related to it!

Like... Engineering and 3U - engineering

3U - actuarial

Advanced English/extension English - arts

It will benefit people who know what degree they want to get in.

but what about people who only really decide the career path they want to do post year 10 but can no longer pursue this path because they didn't take the required subjects?

 

[nerdasdasd]

but what about people who only really decide the career path they want to do post year 10 but can no longer pursue this path because they didn't take the required subjects?

That's the part I'm thinking about atm

 

[Crobat]

Here's an idea?

Mandating HSc subjects for degrees that are related to it!

Like... Engineering and 3U - engineering

3U - actuarial

Advanced English/extension English - arts

It will benefit people who know what degree they want to get in.

That's neither necessary nor a good model of university entry. The reality is that not all students know what it is they want to do at university and so enrol in general degrees like Arts, Business/Commerce, and Science even or choose a degree that matches with their ATAR. It shouldn't be the case that you are prevented or restricted from entering into a degree just because you didn't figure out your life at 16. Of course they will likely institute bridging courses or equivalent to accommodate but that will only delay thousands of students a year or discourage their continuation of tertiary studies altogether. There is nothing wrong with having recommended studies and/or correlating bridging courses as the current model has. Perhaps for the degrees where actual pre-requisite knowledge and ability is required (e.g. engineering), pre-requisites may help, but overall, HSC subjects don't align well with university content so to have them as pre-requisites would be quite superfluous.

Perhaps if universities and the Board of Studies took more of a role in explaining the relatedness of certain subjects to certain university degrees it may help students in deciding which subjects they choose, but unless the education system itself is entirely updated to become more difficult at an earlier stage in education (i.e. primary school) thus allowing the HSC subjects to incorporate information and knowledge more relevant to tertiary studies, mandating subject as pre-requisites for degrees would be a bad move all around.

 

[isildurrrr1]

That's neither necessary nor a good model of university entry. The reality is that not all students know what it is they want to do at university and so enrol in general degrees like Arts, Business/Commerce, and Science even or choose a degree that matches with their ATAR. It shouldn't be the case that you are prevented or restricted from entering into a degree just because you didn't figure out your life at 16. Of course they will likely institute bridging courses or equivalent to accommodate but that will only delay thousands of students a year or discourage their continuation of tertiary studies altogether. There is nothing wrong with having recommended studies and/or correlating bridging courses as the current model has. Perhaps for the degrees where actual pre-requisite knowledge and ability is required (e.g. engineering), pre-requisites may help, but overall, HSC subjects don't align well with university content so to have them as pre-requisites would be quite superfluous.

Ehhh in the US if you don't have a strong math/science background uni's would pretty much toss your application away. I know it's disheartning to tell people they can't do xyz course because they didn't take certain prerequesits. But the reality is most people are grossly unprepared for a lot of hard science courses if you don't have the background in it. If you didn't take adv math before stepping into engineering, you pretty much flunk out. the top engineering uni's in America not only require you take AP (uni level) calculus and physics, but also achieve a certain grade as well.

I'm sure there is a foundation type program that could be set up for people who don't have the pre-req subjects but would want to transfer into engineering/hard sciences. This is why a lot of people I know who didn't know exactly what field they wanted to get into, did as much upper level courses as possible so they have more open options.

 

[enoilgam]

Perhaps if universities and the Board of Studies took more of a role in explaining the relatedness of certain subjects to certain university degrees it may help students in deciding which subjects they choose, but unless the education system itself is entirely updated to become more difficult at an earlier stage in education (i.e. primary school) thus allowing the HSC subjects to incorporate information and knowledge more relevant to tertiary studies, mandating subject as pre-requisites for degrees would be a bad move all around.

I think BoS and schools would need to rethink how they teach certain subjects, because the standard at the moment is poor, especially in subjects like Maths.

 

[buriza]

Buriza: How the hell is not having a well spoken population not good for the general public? That's like saying "oh we shouldn't make people do these courses at high school coz they might not use it." It's just utter ignorance that sets back a society. Having strong communication skill is highly beneficial as language itself can help you communicate through multiple subjects.

When did I say having a well-spoken population is not good for the public? I said this is not something that english in years 11 and 12 particularly focuses on, because being well-spoken is something that more relates to verbal expression rather than written expression. You cannot expect all benefits learnt in written expression to translate into verbal expression.

It is naive to categorise students into maths/science/logical thinking and English/creative thinking. There are students who are both, and there are students who lack both. But the point remains that we all speak and write English, and therefore it is far more appropriate to make English mandatory than make maths or science mandatory. The typical response to that is to make English non-mandatory, but in my experience and observations, English does provide skills that would otherwise not be obtained through the maths and sciences, based on the current syllabi. I see too often Engineering students lacking a certain sophistication in their report writing or even essays (yes, there are essays in engineering). Of course they would have done English, but I suspect they did not really care about it. There are also other factors such as scaling for the ATAR, for which HSC English is the control to scale all other subjects.

Now, sure there may be a lot of regurgitating but all that still needs to be written in a manner which supports an argument or expresses in a different format than standard everyday speech. Creative thinking has a lot to do with Science and Engineering. To communicate ideas in a way that people will listen and hopefully invest money in requires creativity and articulation which is something HSC English aims to provide, believe it or not. To be able to formulate arguments to support a thesis or point of view is not found in HSC Maths or HSC Science, but in my experience, it is found in the Humanities. Interpreting a text is only one aspect of HSC English. It is how you convey your interpretation which is far more important, and at the end of the day, that is what's being marked - your written response.

Having said that, I was indifferent to HSC English since I did a few humanities subjects as well. Appreciating HSC English and being a maths/science person are not mutually exclusive. I personally think the subject could incorporate a larger focus on arguments and debate, report writing, logic and philosophy, and rhetoric. HSC English has been brutally distorted by how it is approached, a sort of mechanical aspect whereby you are given a text and the output is an essay, then repeat. The subject itself needs to be more creative.

I believe it is a bit of an extremity to take what I said in my post as thinking that there are only english students out there and mathematics/science students out there. I did that for the point of making the post far easier to understand, because otherwise I would have to create some extensive label like "students that are most competent in mathematics/science and may also have creative thinking but still do not like doing/do not do well in english." I believe it is rather obvious that creativity and logic are not mutually exclusive and I am not trying to say that they are.

I also am not trying to assert that english should be not mandatory; the point of my whole post was to emphasise that there should be some sympathy for the students who are obliged to do english if there would be sympathy for artsy students doing mathematics/science. And of course interpreting a text is not the only aspect of english in years 11 and 12, but it is the foundation you build upon to write good arguments. If you do not have an interpretation of the text you have read, you are not really going to have confident arguments. Hence my point that if students are not interested in english in years 11 and 12, they will not even bother thinking creatively or constructing competent arguments in the first place, because they would not have invested themselves in interpreting the text.

This is why I am stating that the syllabus is lacking. Like you have pointed out, if there are students that come out of year 11 and 12 having done english and do not know how to compose essays, then english is not quite successful in its proposed benefits. It is easy to say it is a result of them not caring, but frankly I am sure there could be more of a focus on the general fundamental skills I have spoken about before. Even if the student does not care about it as much, if there was more focus on these general fundamental skills, they would be bound to pick up more on it and maybe not even be as disinterested in the first place.

Edit: with further thought on this I suppose what I am trying to articulate is that english in years 11 and 12 should not just focus on fictional literary texts, which for the most part it does. I understand that in other degrees such as engineering that there are essays you have to write, but they are not essays in the sense of essays in english, in that you orchestrate literary language. Correct me if I am wrong, but how many times in engineering do you write essays like that? I would have thought it has more focus on scholarly articles and critical thinking (e.g. analysing the usefulness/reliability of those sources). I do not deny consolidating structure and enhancing your ability to express yourself is vital, however in english it is limited in that it is only applicable to the analysis of literature.

With that said, it is evident I agree with your last paragraph.

 

[Myrdred]

soz brah atar is life

 

[isildurrrr1]

Edit: with further thought on this I suppose what I am trying to articulate is that english in years 11 and 12 should not just focus on fictional literary texts, which for the most part it does. I understand that in other degrees such as engineering that there are essays you have to write, but they are not essays in the sense of essays in english, in that you orchestrate literary language. Correct me if I am wrong, but how many times in engineering do you write essays like that? I would have thought it has more focus on scholarly articles and critical thinking (e.g. analysing the usefulness/reliability of those sources). I do not deny consolidating structure and enhancing your ability to express yourself is vital, however in english it is limited in that it is only applicable to the analysis of literature.

With that said, it is evident I agree with your last paragraph.

Research reports still require a decent level of english language composition. I'm not talking using "literary" terms but knowing when to apply the appropriate terms or not. A good writer doesn't write in flowery language just to have a jerk off session, a good writer knows his audience and how to compose in a way that is succinct and effective in getting his argument across.

http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/george-orwells-5-rules-for-effective-writing/

Orwell is a goddamn genius when it comes to this.

 

[buriza]

Research reports still require a decent level of english language composition. I'm not talking using "literary" terms but knowing when to apply the appropriate terms or not. A good writer doesn't write in flowery language just to have a jerk off session, a good writer knows his audience and how to compose in a way that is succinct and effective in getting his argument across.

http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/george-orwells-5-rules-for-effective-writing/

Orwell is a goddamn genius when it comes to this.

But the question is then whether english in years 11 and 12 focuses on general language composition. In my opinion, it focuses more on the use of literary language, which most of the time cannot be applied to research essays in university. I think we have all agreed that being able to utilise language appropriately is important. However, my point has been all along that being able to interpret a text, develop a personal understanding of that text and argue it with literary language ≠ being able to use language effectively in all fields, including research essays. As a result, it would make much more sense to place more emphasis on the fundamental skills like structure and rhetoric instead of just enhancing literary language. Of course, being able to use language in terms of discussing literary texts helps somewhat, yet it can still be maintained that the current syllabus could be extended a little to cover more areas. This is all that I am trying to say.

 

[isildurrrr1]

But the question is then whether english in years 11 and 12 focuses on general language composition. In my opinion, it focuses more on the use of literary language, which most of the time cannot be applied to research essays in university. I think we have all agreed that being able to utilise language appropriately is important. However, my point has been all along that being able to interpret a text, develop a personal understanding of that text and argue it with literary language ≠ being able to use language effectively in all fields, including research essays. As a result, it would make much more sense to place more emphasis on the fundamental skills like structure and rhetoric instead of just enhancing literary language. Of course, being able to use language in terms of discussing literary texts helps somewhat, yet it can still be maintained that the current syllabus could be extended a little to cover more areas. This is all that I am trying to say.

That I completely agree with. I helped out a mate here doing his VTAC with AP Language terms like Ethos pathos and logos in referencing literary characters or essays, and he got a mark 5+ higher than he would have I think learning rhetoric and writing skills is so important it should be part of the whole english curriculum. Creative writing in HS is a bit BS, because how can you write creatively if you don't have the tools employed to you.

 

[buriza]

That I completely agree with. I helped out a mate here doing his VTAC with AP Language terms like Ethos pathos and logos in referencing literary characters or essays, and he got a mark 5+ higher than he would have I think learning rhetoric and writing skills is so important it should be part of the whole english curriculum. Creative writing in HS is a bit BS, because how can you write creatively if you don't have the tools employed to you.

Exactly! Maybe my experiences at high school for english were not the same as others, but it was actually assumed that everyone knew how to write an essay. There was very little focus on how to argue a thesis or appropriately use evidence to support a thesis. This is why I have been asserting that there needs to be more focus on structure and rhetoric, because they are significant in the foundation of knowing how to use language in the first place. It is fair enough to say that english in years 11 and 12 does benefit a student if they have already developed those fundamental skills, however what if they haven't? I also agree that creative writing in english is rather questionable to be honest. :/

If English doesn't entirely fulfill the requirement of fundamental skills like structure and rhetoric, then what other subjects would you say tick those boxes?

Personally, I believe the the history subjects that I did helped me a whole lot more. In those subjects there was far more importance in knowing how to approach a question and having the right structure. In fact for history extension, doing the research project in that subject particularly helped me in university, because that taught me how to think critically about scholarly sources and write an essay that reflected a more generic academic register.

 

[isildurrrr1]

Exactly! Maybe my experiences at high school for english were not the same as others, but it was actually assumed that everyone knew how to write an essay. There was very little focus on how to argue a thesis or appropriately use evidence to support a thesis. This is why I have been asserting that there needs to be more focus on structure and rhetoric, because they are significant in the foundation of knowing how to use language in the first place. It is fair enough to say that english in years 11 and 12 does benefit a student if they have already developed those fundamental skills, however what if they haven't? I also agree that creative writing in english is rather questionable to be honest. :/



Personally, I believe the the history subjects that I did helped me a whole lot more. In those subjects there was far more importance in knowing how to approach a question and having the right structure. In fact for history extension, doing the research project in that subject particularly helped me in university, because that taught me how to think critically about scholarly sources and write an essay that reflected a more generic academic register.

History and English always seem to be subjects that always intertwine. I found the biggest failing in university students here is the lack of knowledge when it comes to Harvard or APA referencing. Everyone who plans to go to uni in america has that shit on lock. They beat into you how to do proper academic referencing and although it was the bain of my high school, it helped me so much in uni. The biggest failure in Australian English education in my opinion, is that there has not been a great emphasis on teaching essay writing in general. It's pretty evident even at UNSW which is one of the best uni's in the world there are first year students who don't even know how to reference properly or argue properly... You would never ever find that anywhere else in that level of institution.

 

[strawberrye]

Whilst I agree that all people should pursue their passions, however for some high demand courses such as Law and Medicine-if intakes are not restricted based on some sort of grading system, then there will be an overflow of graduates with almost no chance of getting employed because of oversupply. Furthermore there are many other pathways you can achieve your dreams if you are determined enough-such as via transfer or via other alternate pathways.

 

[panda15]

Lol. Dude ATAR isn't the be all and end all. There are alternate ways into everything. ATAR doesn't restrict you from pursuing your goals. But you also need to be realistic. If someone can't be bothered to study in high school and gets an ATAR of 50, do you really think they are gonna have any chance in a med/law degree?

 

[panda15]

In saying that, I am not against overhauling some courses - for example, I think the sciences should cut out their society based content. Science courses should be focused on science, not stuff like "What impact did X development have on the world". Likewise, I think Legal Studies could benefit from the addition of a uni like law section just to prevent it from being a waste of time rote-fest (i.e. maybe statutory interpretation or a problem question for crime).

This. In attempting to make science courses appealing to everyone by cutting out a lot of the maths, all they are really doing is disadvantaging those who intend to pursue science based courses at uni. You go from doing a paper that involves 15-20% calculations at year 10 level maths in the HSC, to a paper that is 90% calculation at 2/3U level maths at uni, which is a far too big jump.

They really either need to restructure the course, or look at having two levels of science courses. One like the current "impact of science on society" course, and one focused more on university type science with a 2U maths requirement. All the current course does is gives kids a false impression of what science is really like.

 

[isildurrrr1]

How do you even physics or chemistry without math... that's just beyond any common sense.