Discussion Random Discussion

[VDS66]

Well la de da, someone lives in an estate. Live in an estate you deserve verminous horror themed children with sugar rage.

Nah not when the streets get clogged up with cars unloading hordes of kids.

Patents are shit IMO when all they do is take take take.

Let them pillage their own streets.

 

[Sab22]

I spoke to some of the year 12 students. They were really annoyed how they were taught to analysis two articles or article and a comment but in the exam got one article with some spelling errors in the imagery provided. The article, I read myself is like the most simplest thing. Basically how a writer criticizes a new cafe in his hometown, and the cafe in the article resembles a cafe in real life. I'm not one to support what these kids are doing but VCAA really f##ked up.

 

[st_trav_ofWA]

I just can’t understand Australia’s constant love affair with anything and everything American.

Edit: Well, except for Trump.

i used to think this but honestly last night was just a whole heap of fun for all the kids down my way ... all the kids getting dressed up and going for a walk with their parents it was actually really fun ... dont get me wrong some teenagers idea of a costume is a bit loose but for the little kids its a bit of fun

 

[SaintsSeptember]

My son got thrown out of Australia because a teacher at his Catholic school wrote to the department of Immigration and said he couldn’t speak English (backdrop I was struggling to pay for his school fees). I remember standing with my 11 year old son at the immigration desk just begging the case officer to interview him so they could be confronted by the lie. Nope. That was against policy/procedure. I had to borrow money to buy his airline ticket and spent the next 5 years living in poverty so I could send a portion of my wage back to Fiji to provide for him. Worst years of my life because people in the education system were using English as a weapon to wage war with battling immigrants.

Some of the most successful people I know in Australia are Italians who speak halting English, simply because they are prepared to work harder and save more through sacrifice than many true blue dinky di’s. I haven’t done too badly myself.

Bitter much? Just a tad.

Catholic Schools are overrated, you shouldn't have gone near them.
They bolster their VCE result by getting rid of the "substandard" kids at the end of year 11.

A long time ago when my mother worked for the Education department, there would be teachers who had gotten a bit too close to the students.
In many cases they didn't have evidence to prosecute but would dismiss them and put a mark next to their name.
Invariably these teachers got jobs with the more budget oriented private schools.

 

[st_trav_ofWA]

My son got thrown out of Australia because a teacher at his Catholic school wrote to the department of Immigration and said he couldn’t speak English (backdrop I was struggling to pay for his school fees). I remember standing with my 11 year old son at the immigration desk just begging the case officer to interview him so they could be confronted by the lie. Nope. That was against policy/procedure. I had to borrow money to buy his airline ticket and spent the next 5 years living in poverty so I could send a portion of my wage back to Fiji to provide for him. Worst years of my life because people in the education system were using English as a weapon to wage war with battling immigrants.

Some of the most successful people I know in Australia are Italians who speak halting English, simply because they are prepared to work harder and save more through sacrifice than many true blue dinky di’s. I haven’t done too badly myself.

Bitter much? Just a tad.

thats f*cking terrible !!
my wife used to work with a nepalese girl who went for a promotion at her work the state manager asked my wife about the girl and she gave her a glowing referance because she was a fantastic employee and very deserving of the promotion ... in the interview the state manager talked down to the poor girl treating her as if she was stupid based on the fact her english was a little muddled (she spoke english fine just things like "his and her" got muddled ) in the end she didnt get the job and the state manager told her it was a communication issue that sealed the deal ... quiet pissed off by it the girl said to the state manager "i can comunicate in 5 languages and get my point across , just because my accent you think im stupid lets do the interview in Telegu and see who is stupid"... she then reported it and resigned ... the head office called he back appologising and the state manager is now a retail assistant at another chain ...

 

[st_trav_ofWA]

Catholic Schools are overrated, you shouldn't have gone near them.
They bolster their VCE result by getting rid of the "substandard" kids at the end of year 11.

A long time ago when my mother worked for the Education department, there would be teachers who had gotten a bit too close to the students.
In many cases they didn't have evidence to prosecute but would dismiss them and put a mark next to their name.
Invariably these teachers got jobs with the more budget oriented private schools.

my sister has recently pulled the pin on her teaching career because she couldnt take the way the education department treat education in Australia ... this obsession on Naplan and the way kids are taught to remember things not to understand things was demoralising for someone who got into education to educate especially on the younger kids who at the age of 7 and 8 are dealing with stress and pressure to perform in tests..
she has now started up her own business Connected Learning where the focus is on teaching like skills such as sharing, empathy, conflict resolution and problem solving and working on kids actually learning about the things they will need in life not just regurgitating text books ... simple things like 5x5=25 kids know this cause its drummed into them to know this but actually understand the process of how 5x5=25 actually calculates ...
so far she has been running workshops here in WA and its going fantastic with workshops in QLD and NSW now on the cards...

 

[SaintsSeptember]

my sister has recently pulled the pin on her teaching career because she couldnt take the way the education department treat education in Australia ... this obsession on Naplan and the way kids are taught to remember things not to understand things was demoralising for someone who got into education to educate especially on the younger kids who at the age of 7 and 8 are dealing with stress and pressure to perform in tests..
she has now started up her own business Connected Learning where the focus is on teaching like skills such as sharing, empathy, conflict resolution and problem solving and working on kids actually learning about the things they will need in life not just regurgitating text books ... simple things like 5x5=25 kids know this cause its drummed into them to know this but actually understand the process of how 5x5=25 actually calculates ...
so far she has been running workshops here in WA and its going fantastic with workshops in QLD and NSW now on the cards...

NAPLAN was an idea to measure how well the Students are educated , then they associated it with the Schools.
Surprise they found that the students in poor socioeconomic areas were worse than others.
Now the problem with measuring something in this manner is that once those becoming measured ( the schools ) become aware of the measurement they can influence the result without changing the actual education of the students.

No student should EVER have studied for NAPLAN. Because NAPLAN was meant to be a measurement of the actual effectiveness of the teaching. There should never have been pressure on students to perform in NAPLAN.
We've cottoned on to how the teachers do their reports as well , "why has little johnny gone backwards on what his report said last year "? "Oh Johnny is doing fine , he's just um...mumble...stuff. um...He'll be fine " End of year: Yes Johnny has done fine , what a good job teacher has done getting him back on track.
Teachers deliberately mark down the mid year report so they can demonstrate improvement by end of year.
After my wife and i noticed the trend, we've spoken to other concerned parents who'd noticed poor mid year results, and lo and behold they also came good at the end of the year.

This sort of thing happens in industry as well. Do you ever wonder why some idiot is renting a piece of equipment that he could have purchased with a year worth of lease payments. He has a return on capital as one of his KPI's. The KPI is designed to measure how productive the use of equipment is , but the manager is fudging it by getting equipment that isn't capital.

But lol i don't mind the old times tables. It doesn't make you smarter , but it makes learning the more complex stuff later quicker and easier.
Same way , i don't care how the letter A was derived, i memorised what it is and what it sounds like. I memorised the order of the bloody alphabet, I have no idea why its in that order.

 

[gringo2011]

Nah not when the streets get clogged up with cars unloading hordes of kids.

Patents are shit IMO when all they do is take take take.

Let them pillage their own streets.

We have a big American Jewish population in our area that dress up and do the rounds so we always buy plenty and end up with heaps left over. I'll be eating mini chocolate bars for weeks.

 

[gringo2011]

Catholic Schools are overrated, you shouldn't have gone near them.
They bolster their VCE result by getting rid of the "substandard" kids at the end of year 11.

A long time ago when my mother worked for the Education department, there would be teachers who had gotten a bit too close to the students.
In many cases they didn't have evidence to prosecute but would dismiss them and put a mark next to their name.
Invariably these teachers got jobs with the more budget oriented private schools.

All private schools do that. We pulled my kids from Catholic high school and have them in with the cattle. I hope they don't end up junkies who steal cars for living but so far so good. The education is no worse but they don't hothouse the students in public schools.

 

[SaintsSeptember]

All private schools do that. We pulled my kids from Catholic high school and have them in with the cattle. I hope they don't end up junkies who steal cars for living but so far so good. The education is no worse but they don't hothouse the students in private schools.

One problem is the way they measure the VCE scores.
There's a system where they rate all the kids in the school from best to worse.
So if little Miss Copycat does really well all year and fluffs her exam, its ok, she gets little Albert Einstein's result. ( Partially ).
Then they equalise all the schools, which means the kids who turn up in the public school and sit there pulling faces without even trying down grade the result for everyone.
They need to simplify the crap out of it. Sit the exam and pass. If you crack under pressure, than that will happen to you at University too.

 

[Yawkey way]

All private schools do that. We pulled my kids from Catholic high school and have them in with the cattle. I hope they don't end up junkies who steal cars for living but so far so good. The education is no worse but they don't hothouse the students in private schools.

It’s not just private schools it’s state high schools as well, it really relates back to schools being effectively scored and results published.

Schools game NAPLAN and study scores by coaching and making sure select kids don’t sit the tests, others actively encourage high school kids to go unscored or leave the school.

I won’t say it doesn’t matter what school you go to, or that private schools don’t give some students a better education and a leg up because that’s not true they do. IMO for the average kid there are far more important things than what school you attend. If your kid is out and about doing as they please, sitting in front of a computer game all day and night or a school refuser for example then school can’t do much about that. It’s down to their parents or guardians to deal with that, too many people abrogate their responsibilities and just want to blame the school or where they live.

My youngest is just finishing VCE now and I have seen a bit over the years in the private, catholic and state system. I know it sounds a bit simplistic but imo it is, if kids are encouraged to learn, given the right resources, make good decisions in regard to friends etc and work hard they will do well anywhere. That doesn’t mean they will end up with a high ATAR I just mean they will do well relative to their potential.

Once a student is accepted into a university ATAR means nothing, students often change courses if they do well and many swap universities as well.

On the subject of being fluent in English, it matters a lot. There’s a reason you’re granted extra points according to your proficiency on visa applications. This is an English speaking country and it’s essential to a child’s learning outcomes or an adults job prospects, ability to socialise etc that they do their best to become fluent if they aren’t. Missing out on jobs because of poor language skills is depending on the job perfectly legal and quite reasonable, it’s not a reflection on a persons intelligence.

 

[Yawkey way]

One problem is the way they measure the VCE scores.
There's a system where they rate all the kids in the school from best to worse.
So if little Miss Copycat does really well all year and fluffs her exam, its ok, she gets little Albert Einstein's result. ( Partially ).
Then they equalise all the schools, which means the kids who turn up in the public school and sit there pulling faces without even trying down grade the result for everyone.
They need to simplify the crap out of it. Sit the exam and pass. If you crack under pressure, than that will happen to you at University too.

Hello the old HSC that we used to sit.

 

[gringo2011]

My son got thrown out of Australia because a teacher at his Catholic school wrote to the department of Immigration and said he couldn’t speak English (backdrop I was struggling to pay for his school fees). I remember standing with my 11 year old son at the immigration desk just begging the case officer to interview him so they could be confronted by the lie. Nope. That was against policy/procedure. I had to borrow money to buy his airline ticket and spent the next 5 years living in poverty so I could send a portion of my wage back to Fiji to provide for him. Worst years of my life because people in the education system were using English as a weapon to wage war with battling immigrants.

Some of the most successful people I know in Australia are Italians who speak halting English, simply because they are prepared to work harder and save more through sacrifice than many true blue dinky di’s. I haven’t done too badly myself.

Bitter much? Just a tad.

Yeah, my father in law was one of those guys that worked three jobs and slept three hours a night to make it here. He's still pretty heavily accented and didn't seem to hold him back. Seems to have no problem communicating with anyone. That's just ridiculously outrageous deporting a kid, I'd have lost my shit and gone somewhere else.

I know a Chinese guy who came in as a student and got guaranteed citizenship in some scam, he can't speak more than the most rudimentary English but his parents paid a fortune and the immigration standards obviously aren't as high then. Another family we know got given one of the John Howard era "tests" that had questions about Don Bradman and irrelevant things that even I didn't know. They had to memorise a whole lot of crap that I would struggle to even care about.

 

[StCicatriz]

NAPLAN was an idea to measure how well the Students are educated , then they associated it with the Schools.
Surprise they found that the students in poor socioeconomic areas were worse than others.
Now the problem with measuring something in this manner is that once those becoming measured ( the schools ) become aware of the measurement they can influence the result without changing the actual education of the students.

No student should EVER have studied for NAPLAN. Because NAPLAN was meant to be a measurement of the actual effectiveness of the teaching. There should never have been pressure on students to perform in NAPLAN.
We've cottoned on to how the teachers do their reports as well , "why has little johnny gone backwards on what his report said last year "? "Oh Johnny is doing fine , he's just um...mumble...stuff. um...He'll be fine " End of year: Yes Johnny has done fine , what a good job teacher has done getting him back on track.
Teachers deliberately mark down the mid year report so they can demonstrate improvement by end of year.
After my wife and i noticed the trend, we've spoken to other concerned parents who'd noticed poor mid year results, and lo and behold they also came good at the end of the year.

This sort of thing happens in industry as well. Do you ever wonder why some idiot is renting a piece of equipment that he could have purchased with a year worth of lease payments. He has a return on capital as one of his KPI's. The KPI is designed to measure how productive the use of equipment is , but the manager is fudging it by getting equipment that isn't capital.

But lol i don't mind the old times tables. It doesn't make you smarter , but it makes learning the more complex stuff later quicker and easier.
Same way , i don't care how the letter A was derived, i memorised what it is and what it sounds like. I memorised the order of the bloody alphabet, I have no idea why its in that order.

correct me if i am wrong but your last NAPLAN result actually decides if you can enroll in the ATAR subjects that you need get entry into university

i could go on a long winded spiel on the state of education and what we are going through with kids in primary school but i think trav and your self nailed it perfectly

its been turned into something it wasn't intended for and it was always going to end up that way!

 

[Yawkey way]

We have a big American Jewish population in our area that dress up and do the rounds so we always buy plenty and end up with heaps left over. I'll be eating mini chocolate bars for weeks.

Haha yeah it was busy around here, my wife locked the gate because my son had an exam at 9.00 this morning.

Normally I get into the spirit and hand out lots of candy, the kids love it and I don’t really see any harm in it. My girls love it and went to the pictures with their friends to see halloween, I saw quite a few decorated fences when I was out this morning.

 

[gringo2011]

It’s not just private schools it’s state high schools as well, it really relates back to schools being effectively scored and results published.

Schools game NAPLAN and study scores by coaching and making sure select kids don’t sit the tests, others actively encourage high school kids to go unscored or leave the school.

I won’t say it doesn’t matter what school you go to, or that private schools don’t give some students a better education and a leg up because that’s not true they do. IMO for the average kid there are far more important things than what school you attend. If your kid is out and about doing as they please, sitting in front of a computer game all day and night or a school refuser for example then school can’t do much about that. It’s down to their parents or guardians to deal with that, too many people abrogate their responsibilities and just want to blame the school or where they live.

My youngest is just finishing VCE now and I have seen a bit over the years in the private, catholic and state system. I know it sounds a bit simplistic but imo it is, if kids are encouraged to learn, given the right resources, make good decisions in regard to friends etc and work hard they will do well anywhere. That doesn’t mean they will end up with a high ATAR I just mean they will do well relative to their potential.

Once a student is accepted into a university ATAR means nothing, students often change courses if they do well and many swap universities as well.

On the subject of being fluent in English, it matters a lot. There’s a reason you’re granted extra points according to your proficiency on visa applications. This is an English speaking country and it’s essential to a child’s learning outcomes or an adults job prospects, ability to socialise etc that they do their best to become fluent if they aren’t. Missing out on jobs because of poor language skills is depending on the job perfectly legal and quite reasonable, it’s not a reflection on a persons intelligence.

I agree on most of that. I know a guy who is a teacher who has done quite a bit of academic research on high-school education and he said most of the positive results are more to do with parental attitude than schools. I think the private school network is more advantageous as a networking tool than a great boost to how they will turn out. I have several friends that went to Melbourne high, were high achieving students but have been low achieving in real life. I know others that went to Scotch and Wesley that are absolutely hopeless at life. Some of my friends that went to public schools blame their education for stopping them getting ahead and others blame their private school education for psychologically damaging them. If you make the most of your opportunities you go a long way to succeeding at what ever you want to do.

I have studied a lot and don't actually use anything I trained in any more. I run a business but have never studied any formal business subjects but don't really feel the need any more. I'd know more than what people taught me. I want my kids to do something creative, I reckon those kinds of abstract thinkers will be in high demand in the technology age. I try to make them think entrepreneurially about things so the don't end up wage slaves.

 

[Yawkey way]

Yeah, my father in law was one of those guys that worked three jobs and slept three hours a night to make it here. He's still pretty heavily accented and didn't seem to hold him back. Seems to have no problem communicating with anyone. That's just ridiculously outrageous deporting a kid, I'd have lost my shit and gone somewhere else.

I know a Chinese guy who came in as a student and got guaranteed citizenship in some scam, he can't speak more than the most rudimentary English but his parents paid a fortune and the immigration standards obviously aren't as high then. Another family we know got given one of the John Howard era "tests" that had questions about Don Bradman and irrelevant things that even I didn't know. They had to memorise a whole lot of crap that I would struggle to even care about.

Plenty of people have killed it and speak with quite an accent, it really depends on what you do.

If it doesn’t hinder your ability to do the job and make a living that’s great, I know some people who have worked really hard to improve their English and others who either couldn’t or didn’t bother. I had neighbours back when I was still at home who were from Hungary they could hardly speak a word. They were lovely people and we’d all do our best to talk I used to wonder how they got on.

Years latter I used to run into them at the doctors always with one of their daughters in tow to translate, now despite that they had done well enough to own a nice home in a good street in Elwood.

 

[gringo2011]

Haha yeah it was busy around here, my wife locked the gate because my son had an exam at 9.00 this morning.

Normally I get into the spirit and hand out lots of candy, the kids love it and I don’t really see any harm in it. My girls love it and went to the pictures with their friends to see halloween, I saw quite a few decorated fences when I was out this morning.

I took it all down by about 8.30, got my hoard of chocolate and turned the front lights off.

 

[SaintsSeptember]

One thing that you can get at private schools is peer group pressure to perform well.
When i went to School ( public ) it was almost the inverse. Dropouts were revered, and if you did well in a test you were a smartarse and probably got a group biffing.

 

[borderbarry]

When I was a kid and we were more Australian and less Yank than we are now, we used to have bonfires and celebrate Guy Fawkes day, by burning an effigy on the bonny, along with potatoes and marsh mellows, and of course dozens of firecrackers. A big community event. We knew of halloween as something that was celebrated somewhere else.

 

[Nutsngum]

When I was a kid and we were more Australian and less Yank than we are now, we used to have bonfires and celebrate Guy Fawkes day, by burning an effigy on the bonny, along with potatoes and marsh mellows, and of course dozens of firecrackers. A big community event. We knew of halloween as something that was celebrated somewhere else.

Celebrating Guy Fawkes day is like the most British thing you could possibly do. I wouldnt classify it as being at all Australian.

 

[borderbarry]

We celebrated Guy Fawkes because he tried to burn down the British parliament. We would supply matches for an attempt on the Australian one I suppose.

 

[Yawkey way]

When I was a kid and we were more Australian and less Yank than we are now, we used to have bonfires and celebrate Guy Fawkes day, by burning an effigy on the bonny, along with potatoes and marsh mellows, and of course dozens of firecrackers. A big community event. We knew of halloween as something that was celebrated somewhere else.

One of the great nights of the year when I was a kid.

We would all save up in the lead up and then order our boxes of firecrackers and skyrockets until like just about everything else they were banned.

 

[SaintsSeptember]

Celebrating Guy Fawkes day is like the most British thing you could possibly do. I wouldnt classify it as being at all Australian.

I know what he means though. It was a big community event.
The APEX club ( who had a street in Dandenong named after them, and subsequently a gang of thugs ) or Lions would organize a bonfire , adults would stand around and watch and kids would run riot.

 

[Drake Huggins]

Now tell the truth, Gringo. You bought those chocolate bars for yourself, didn't you? You didn't give a single one away, did you?