"Gareth Magennis" wrote in message
...
English must be quite a difficult language to learn.
Seems most school kids can't even manage it at all these days.



Gareth.



UK school kids that is.

I was looking for an apprentice some years ago and got loads of job
applications from a few colleges, through the local employment agency.
You know, out of the 30 or so applications, not one candidate could write
any better than I could in primary school.
To say I found that shocking is a gross understatement.



Gareth.



A guy that comes into one of our food joints is an exam marker. The missus
got talking to him about the state of education, and a couple of days later,
he brought in a GCSE level maths paper for 15 year olds. They apparently had
90 minutes to complete this paper, and were allowed to use a calculator. I
was able to finish it, in my head, in about 20 minutes. I think that I would
have been able to do the same at age 10, back in the days when we were
taught properly 40 odd years ago. The maths papers that we took back then at
age 15, were way, way above the level of this Mickey Mouse paper. The
standard even appears to have taken a nose dive since my own kids were that
age 10 years or so ago.

Last week, we had the 9 year old daughter of one of our relations staying
with us. She asked if she could borrow my wife's laptop, to do her maths
homework. Intrigued, we let her. She basically logged onto a website that
presented her with questions, and spaces to fill in the answers. When she is
finished, the program marks it and sends the result to her teacher. With
this lack of interaction between teacher and pupil, its no wonder that
education in the UK has fallen to the level that it is now. I always
considered myself a fairly average student, but I kid you not, I am now the
equivalent of a university professor to the kids ...

Has it declined like this in the U.S. also ?

Arfa