Can you pass the NAPLAN test?

[78xcgxl]

I got 1 wrong haha. I only just finished year 12 VCE last year and still remember doing the Naplan tests, they were first called the AIM test but can't remember whether it was in year 5 or 7 it changed for me. They were the biggest waste of time, was considered a budge secession with all my mates due to it them being so pointless. Even the teachers thought so as well hahaha

[Work Horse]

Originally Posted by Trek

Pretty sure I have the right end of the stick - your comment was deceiving. To write such a pessimistic comment alludes to you either condemning teachers or the teaching profession. The assumption that there will be some sort of falling to further government oppression makes little sense due to the nature of the job and how it exists.

Good to know that we can see eye to eye on one aspect of the equation though.

My first comment was "tongue in cheek", do you get it now? I'm sorry you found it deceiving.

Originally Posted by Trek

The assumption that there will be some sort of falling to further government oppression makes little sense due to the nature of the job and how it exists.

I don't understand this sentence.

Governments have already tried to introduce performance based pay for teachers; it is just a matter of time before it happens. What teachers have to do is insure it is an equitable system. Clearly basing teacher pay on Naplan results is not equitable.

[Trump]

Originally Posted by 2011G6E

Kids need a healthy dose of realism from a young age, especially in academic areas. Life isn't going to let them cruise through with little or no real qualifications, employers won't look at "life experiences" in place of actual test results, and testing and learning never end if you are in a real productive and fulfilling line of employment. Parents whine, saying school should be "fun" and not a place to try and "expose kids to the harshness of life" but be all about the "learning experience" rather than hard solid book learning and commemoration of facts and figures. Really?

Boy, are they in for a surprise.

Welcome to the real world, kids...

This is where I think what passes as an education system fails them so much. Instead of being taught how to think, they are taught what to think (if anything). Instead of being taught that they can and should try change the world for the better (and ultimately consign the make-work enterprise to the history books), they are taught "that's just how it is" and to conform accordingly and not rock the status quo.

There are teachers that defy the authorities and actively choose not to partake in the indoctrination process, but they are so few and far between, they make five eights of eff all difference.

[Syndrome]

Originally Posted by Rapid_Axe

That's the one I screwed up. Seriously if you aren't going to be an arborist or historian why the hell do you need to know the inequality of tree rings to work out height and age?

It is just an example. The purpose of the question is to determine if the child has the ability to comprehend the question and the ability to resolve simple maths equations.

It wasn't until I became a middle aged adult that I realised why I was taught to do calculus or derive from first principles etc. It teaches children to think and problem solve. An important skill which is required in later life even if a person never does calculus or needs to derive from first principles for a living.

[Itsme]

Originally Posted by Loud_Noises

This is where I think what passes as an education system fails them so much. Instead of being taught how to think, they are taught what to think (if anything). Instead of being taught that they can and should try change the world for the better (and ultimately consign the make-work enterprise to the history books), they are taught "that's just how it is" and to conform accordingly and not rock the status quo.

There are teachers that defy the authorities and actively choose not to partake in the indoctrination process, but they are so few and far between, they make five eights of eff all difference.

Truest words ever spoken, interfering politics & idealism should be kept out of education.

[jpblue1000]

Originally Posted by trublu

Truest words ever spoken, interfering politics & idealism should be kept out of education.

Look at the history of mass public funded education. It has always been about producing workers for business/commerce and the state, education has been modelled on the interests of industrialisation. Schools have been machines for production of effective, efficient yet cheap labour forever but the shifting philosophies are reconsidering this, which is breeding students who are different to you and your expectations. They are not stupid, or lazy, they are different, are educated to think rather than do, to prepare them for a very different future to what you and I experienced in the past. the creative economies are coming?

Have a look here, ken Robinson explains it well in an animated TED talk
http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinso...tion_paradigms

JP

[Work Horse]

Originally Posted by jpblue1000

Look at the history of mass public funded education. It has always been about producing workers for business/commerce and the state, education has been modelled on the interests of industrialisation. Schools have been machines for production of effective, efficient yet cheap labour forever but the shifting philosophies are reconsidering this, which is breeding students who are different to you and your expectations. They are not stupid, or lazy, they are different, are educated to think rather than do, to prepare them for a very different future to what you and I experienced in the past. the creative economies are coming?

Have a look here, ken Robinson explains it well in an animated TED talk
http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinso...tion_paradigms

JP

YES! As a parent I am being told that many of the jobs current students will apply for in the future have not been invented yet.

How on earth can you educate a student with skills that will assist them in such an environment?

You teach them how to think for themselves, seek out information themselves as well as the "3R's".

This is happening at schools right now, education is changing.

Not sure where Naplan fits in to this, "it doesn't matter how many times you weigh the pig".

[Trump]

That TED talk misses the elephant in the room. Yes Ken Robinson is right, a lot of people are questioning the need for schooling these days. However instead of addressing the cause of such a mindset, he stumbles head long into a globalist agenda whilst presenting a veneer of social responsibility (referencing the cultural preservation) and subversive attitudes with respect to the status quo. The ideas he presents in the latter half of the talk are great, but they are at odds with the globalisation he seems to think is inevitable.

However, should institutional education actually teach kids how to think and seek out information and not hobble their innate sense of curiosity and wonder, the current economic, societal and environmental paradigm will collapse. The power structures of the world are dependant on this cheap, readily available labour. These same power structures are the ones manufacturing the future, not us the population.
A free thinking people, unburdened from the task of just surviving, are the biggest threat to the power structures of the world.

And as such, institutional education will keep pumping out the various classes of drones that supplant the power these structures wield. Education is presenting a veneer of positive change, when the opposite is happening. A chat to a teacher worth her weight will prove quite enlightening.

[jpblue1000]

Originally Posted by Loud_Noises

That TED talk misses the elephant in the room. Yes Ken Robinson is right, a lot of people are questioning the need for schooling these days.... A chat to a teacher worth her weight will prove quite enlightening.

Or His, teaching is not a gendered occupation.

However, I have been fortunate to sit, at length with many principals over recent years here and in the UK, as and architect, to help them in determining the building requirements for paradigm changes in education methods and philosophies. It is an enlightened and rare, but getting more common, head, school council, staff and parent groups who decide against the didactic approach to education and follow principles alluded or quoted in the TED Talk.
I doubt our economies will collapse any faster with a new paradigms in education, those who 'believe' agree the change is what's needed to save them. Culture has changed, societies, communities the economy and people have also changed, the old methods need to change with them.
The schools I speak of range from alternate small facilities to the top of the private school ladder, from state to private funded primary to tertiary education institutions.

[Trump]

Originally Posted by jpblue1000

I doubt our economies will collapse any faster with a new paradigms in education, those who 'believe' agree the change is what's needed to save them. Culture has changed, societies, communities the economy and people have also changed, the old methods need to change with them.
The schools I speak of range from alternate small facilities to the top of the private school ladder, from state to private funded primary to tertiary education institutions.

The current economic system is a make-work enterprise. It is dependant on a population of docile, easily manipulated, subservient, limited intellect human batteries that can be controlled for purposes unknown at a whim. These worker drones cover the entire employment spectrum. The cliche "work to live not live to work" is reversed for a great many of the population and applies to the entire employment spectrum.

The only way for the power structures to maintain the status quo (and keep the flow of fresh meat going) is to indoctrinate our kids from a very young age that they need to be good little tackers that listen to their teachers and the authorities and not rock the boat.

Changing the education paradigm from what it is to one which produces free thinking adults with a sense of curiosity undampened by twelve years of drudgery in their formative years is the single biggest threat to the current economic and power system in the world. A critical mass of such people will mean the powers-that-be lose their pool of aforementioned drones. They lose their control over the population and ultimately their power over it.

I may cop some flak for this, but I am of the opinion that the trash information overload (social networking and the various insta- whatevers being the most obvious culprits) currently subsuming the developed world (and the developing world at a rapidly escalating rate) is destructive to humanity's cultural legacy and ultimately its ability to evolve, adapt and grow. This I contend is a consequence of the vastly diminished attention spans of the youth of today and their obsession with celebrity and other superficial things.

[jpblue1000]

Originally Posted by Loud_Noises

This I contend is a consequence of the vastly diminished attention spans of the youth of today and their obsession with celebrity and other superficial things.

Your global power supposition is probably correct but don't be lulled into an superiority complex based on media and cultural stereotypes assigned to younger generations, like your generation and or mine there are those that do and those that follow, those who can or those who cant, did, didnt, will wont. The baby boomers despised the gen 'x' the gen 'x' despises the next and so on so forth. each are different, raised with different social constructs, economies and political ideologies predominating their formative years.
the so called inattentive generation is bored by what you may hold important, the education system, geared to your desire is failing them. They learn differently, experience differently and focus differently, doens't mean its wrong just different. Most of them will be doing jobs we've never thought of, the traditional education wont help them in that job. just because someone doesn't use algebra, calculus, geometry or biology doesn't mean someone else doesn't use it every day dont let this mindset blind you to education systems.

JP

PS: Naplan probably isn't useful for students and seems easily manipulated to bias what it is geared to determine

[Spudz27]

I got 1 wrong. My daughter was so stressed about year 3 naplan last year. The school had them focusing on it for weeks before the test. She scored in the 98% of the country, but I hate the amount of focus and effort children are made to put into preparing for this test. She is year 4 now and guess what they have been doing for the last 2 weeks.......Practicing the year 5 naplan. Is an absolute frigging joke. I have almost called the school regarding it, as I believe there is too much focus on Naplan testing and not enough focus on actual schooling. Sadly my son when he does his year 3 will be a long way behind. Chalk and cheese my kids academically.