Debunking myths of elite learning (3 Viewers)

[Generator]

For those who don't know, Ross Gittins isn't actually a researcher... rather he's a journalist, working as economics editor at SMH, as well as being some guy who occasionally writes editorials (such as this one).

Thanks, I didn't know.

 

[braindrainedAsh]

Journalists are researchers.....

 

[Farcanell]

Journalists are researchers.....

Well true, but not in this sense...

 

[Not-That-Bright]

Wait... i thought he was COMMENTING on some study...

Are you meaning to tell me i've been reading a journalists own research seriously?

 

[doe]

well at our school there's only like a few males who did english advanced... mainly because the males simply aren't as good at english.

http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/index.html begs to differ.

ive said it before i think ross gittins is an idiot. another muck raking piece by the sydney morning herald playing on peoples fears and trying to have a class war. i can just imagine the letters to the editor now.

newspapers in australia are woeful, seriously. treat them as light entertainment, as you would your favourite soap or tv show.

 

[doe]

since we're talking about it (kinda ) check out http://www.studentmagazines.com.au/

read the economist. its very conservative, but gee its good.

 

[Mambomeg]

i had a friend who went to an "elite" private school in Sydney, and she openly admits that they were spoon fed all the way through high school. Sure, individuals have to work hard to get good marks, but it sure makes it easier if teachers are extremely willing to help, and provide you with everything that you need. She is struggling at uni, because she doesnt understand that she cant do the tutes without the info, which you have to research from the library, and she always complains that it should just be given to us. Not saying this is true of all "elite" schools, but it was true for my friend.

I adapted quite well to uni because i was used to finding info for myself.

And in the current education system i dont see why a class full of "quiet" boys and well behaved girls should be neglected while the teacher attempts to entertain the boy (or girl...) with ADD. Maybe schools should have special classes for kids like that. In a class of 30 odd kids, its not fair that a teacher devote all their time to one student.

I kind of agree with the thing about people from single sex schools "discovering" the opposite sex at uni... was most true for me! But it didn't detract from my studies, maybe coz i had lots of guy friends outside of school. Would be weird coming from a school off all girls or all boys that you'd been at your whole life though.

 

[Not-That-Bright]

http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/index.html begs to differ.

ive said it before i think ross gittins is an idiot. another muck raking piece by the sydney morning herald playing on peoples fears and trying to have a class war. i can just imagine the letters to the editor now.

newspapers in australia are woeful, seriously. treat them as light entertainment, as you would your favourite soap or tv show.

maybe i said it wrong... in australia we have a more 'feminine' education structure...

 

[Phanatical]

One of the areas I'm currently writing about is the female-focused education system. Males are hardly advantaged when they come out of high school dumber than the women because the education system was focused on women - yet if we criticise it, we're "oppressing women", and "perpetuating the patriarchy"

 

[Mambomeg]

well the solution is to get more males into teaching, then they would teach in a "male" way. How do you do that? pay them more, offer more opportunities for moving up in their job. Not gona happen in a hurry. I only ever had male teachers for maths and woodwork, and i really hated maths, so its hard for me to comment on the differrent styles of teaching.

 

[Shuter]

well the solution is to get more males into teaching, then they would teach in a "male" way. How do you do that? pay them more, offer more opportunities for moving up in their job. Not gona happen in a hurry. I only ever had male teachers for maths and woodwork, and i really hated maths, so its hard for me to comment on the differrent styles of teaching.

THat's not the solution, it's the sylubus. My dad was a physics/science (and previously PE) teacher for many many years. He hated the new sylubus changes because it took the actual work out of the physics course and made it more woman friendly.

It's a joke that English is all about writing opinions and is heavily geared towards females yet is the only 2 units that have to count.

It is a bigger joke that I have completed the HSC english course and I still don't know what a verb/noun/adjetive ect are.

 

[Lexicographer]

Err...

a) The science syllabi don't make things any better for either gender, it's equally worse for both

b) I don't reeeally see the "heavily geared towards women" in English, except perhaps the number of female authors (but that's hardly important).

c) Your grammatical ineptitude can be safely blamed on the English Speaking Educational Institution of the mid-20th century - it was around that time that schools worldwide stopped teaching grammar because it was seen as "stuffy and irrelevant". I am aware of only English speakers worldwide receiving no formal instruction of even basic grammatical principles of their own language.

You can see the effects everywhere. Read the newspaper (not just the Telegraph, even the Herald).

 

[Phanatical]

well the solution is to get more males into teaching, then they would teach in a "male" way. How do you do that? pay them more, offer more opportunities for moving up in their job. Not gona happen in a hurry. I only ever had male teachers for maths and woodwork, and i really hated maths, so its hard for me to comment on the differrent styles of teaching.

This is a flawed statement. Certainly, it's something that needs to be looked at in the earlier years of schooling (K-6), but I found in high school that some of the best male-friendly teaching methods came from female teachers. In year 11, I learnt a lot better from my (female) Legal Studies teacher because she used methods like quizzes, and communicated on an equal level with her students. In year 12, my (male) Legal Studies teacher was quite frankly, a dirty old man trying to get into the pants of my female classmates, so his male students didn't benefit one bit.

Actually, in year 12 I had six teachers, and they were all male. The statistics show we're lacking male teachers, but I can't personally relate.

 

[Mambomeg]

but see if i had been in your legal studies class i would have done poorly because i suck at quizzes and exams, and do better in assignments. So therefore i could whinge that that class was unfairly biased towards the male students.

Geez Phanatical, you really have something against women, take a reality check, in many parts of the world women still have it pretty badly, horribly in fact, and here you are whinging that women have too much? where do you get off?

 

[Estel]

pffft I think it's stupid to imply all boys/girls learn in the same way.

 

[Phanatical]

I have absolutely Nothing against women. Most of my best friends are women. Most of the people who voted for Diversity were women. Hell, next year's Diversity candidate for SRC President will probably be a woman.

I talk about disadvantages for men in this society, because the Feminist movement (not feminists, but the movement) believes that to encourage the achievements of women, they have to downplay those of men. I believe that women's rights = human rights, but so do men's rights, and by polarising women against men we aren't addressing the issue of equality in society.

Men face problems in this society as much as women do, and they start in my opinion in the school. If we want to reverse the trend of more male students dropping out earlier than women, (in my year 51% of candidates for the SC were male, 51% of candidates for HSC were female, and 40% of undergraduate students at USYD in 2003 were male), we must address the reasons why men are dropping out.

 

[Phanatical]

but see if i had been in your legal studies class i would have done poorly because i suck at quizzes and exams, and do better in assignments. So therefore i could whinge that that class was unfairly biased towards the male students.

Geez Phanatical, you really have something against women, take a reality check, in many parts of the world women still have it pretty badly, horribly in fact, and here you are whinging that women have too much? where do you get off?

In actuality, in my year 11 class both the male and female students performed better, since these quizzes were not assessment quizzes, but were used to test our knowledge of not only the subject matter, but more often just general knowledge and stuff. It addressed the need for competition for males (and the females got caught up in it just as much), and that we were competing as teams for prizes just made it even more fun.

Our assessments were exactly the same as the other teacher's classes (there were three classes, the male teacher taught two, the female taught one, and we all had to sit the same exams). The positive learning methods used by the female teacher saw average marks in her class considerably higher than those in the other two classes, both for male and female, and when a number of us were moved into those classes, our marks dropped accordingly. The significant issue was that for the male students who were moved, the disparity in marks was considerably greater than for the female students, and instead of performing equally or better, the male students were all of a sudden performing worse.

 

[Sarah]

Phanatical, perhaps the nature of the subject could also be influential. If we take the stereotype that girls are better at humanities and boys are better at the maths and sciences, then that could provide a reason for the differences in marks in legal studies (admittedly, this stereotype doesn’t always exists)

You’ve used legal studies as an example but have you considered the performance between genders in a maths or science subject? It would be interesting to see whether girls still outperformed guys in that area at your school. Isolating the case of legal studies is a bit restricting as it doesn’t look at the overall trend.

Alternatively, it could just be your school where you see the trend of guys having a disadvantage.

Also, you speak about equality in society and that the feminist movement seeks to:
“encourage the achievement of women’s rights and downplay those of men”

(apologise I rarely post so I don’t know how to properly quote in a text box what you said). I suggest that the reason why women’s rights are recognised is because for a long time those rights weren’t didn’t exist for women. Correct me if I’m wrong but wasn’t it just last century (1900s) that women were given the right the vote in Australia? For men, rights accorded to them have been taken for granted as they have always been present to them. I don’t consider that men’s rights are being downplayed. Instead, it’s recognition that women are being given the same right/s as men, and as a result, is recognising the achievement towards a more equal society where women are given the same equality to men.

With the percentage of men at uni, again, you’ve confined the argument to a particular sample, that of University of Sydney students. Whilst ratio of males to females at Usyd may favour females, have you considered that it’s due to the course offerings at Usyd? To my understanding, USYd is the place to go for Law, Arts & Social Sciences. I’ve heard UNSW is the place to go for Commerce and Engineering related studies. So perhaps the uneven proportion of male students at your uni can be explained by University specialiations. You'd need to look at a wider sample of universities to see whether the lower ration of males to females is present.

Another explanation may be the fact that there are more vocational courses which guys choose to undertake and which don’t require a degree e.g. Electricians, mechanics, plumbers. Perhaps those alternative career paths are more appealing for guys than going to university and may offer an explanation for the lower male ratio.

The above are a few things for you to consider. Sorry for the long posting!

 

[Shuter]

Err...

a) The science syllabi don't make things any better for either gender, it's equally worse for both

b) I don't reeeally see the "heavily geared towards women" in English, except perhaps the number of female authors (but that's hardly important).

The new syllabi, while worse for both, is geared towards women, infact that was probably it's purpose, to get more females into the course. It removed many of the caluclations and formula based things and replaced them with more rope learning extended writing things, it feels almost like english.

I know it's a stereotype men = math, women = english, but look at the numbers in the courses and they speak for themselves. My school, extension 1 maths, intially 17 boys, 4 girls. At the end of year 11, 16 boys, 2 girls.

Whereas Advanced English is about 60% women, 40% men (I don't know that's just an estimate).

The physics course has moved towards more writing based and remembering fact like the lives of scientists rather than real physics.

I can't tell you WHY women are more geared towards English, but it just seems to show that they are for some reason.

 

[Xayma]

I know it's a stereotype men = math, women = english, but look at the numbers in the courses and they speak for themselves. My school, extension 1 maths, intially 17 boys, 4 girls. At the end of year 11, 16 boys, 2 girls.

Which is actual quite weird considering that those who tend towards the "male" subjects, in academia, get more female hormones in the womb. While those towards the humanities get more male hormones.

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996564