Problems in education right now! From the Front Page Sections, translated…
As summer is about to be over, the students are, about to, return back to the pressure cooker of schools, or perhaps, the pressures from the exams and the grades and the academia. In the meeting of all the school principals of Hsinbei City, the mayor, Hou hoped that the principals don’t send out the grade reports before the long holidays, to reduce the instances of domestic violence, this showed, how the society here, is still operating under the belief of grades make the man.
Grades had, long become, synonymous of what children are, and the main focus, the parents and instructors only see the grades the children are making on exams, and, criticized, and judged them based off of that. As children came home from school, the parents only cared about the grades they made in school, how they did on the exams, what their rankings are? Almost nobody ever cared about if the kids had learned anything interesting in school? Or if they got along with their peers? Anything that upsets or makes the kids glad? There would be, even less parents who’d, cared about how many shots the kids made in P.E. playing basketball, or inquire about the lessons in courtesy that the school is training the students on.
This semester is the start of the brand new education methods, and, I’m guessing that no more than one-percent of parents understand the nine core values, they only wanted to know how the new curricula will have an effect on the student’s climbing higher in their education, which courses will be graded on. Actually, most of the school instructors don’t know how to transfer the nine core values into their lesson plans either, nor do they know how to grade off of the nine core values.
In the meetings held for the parents in the Department of Education answering the questions of the new curriculum, they parents keep on inquiring of how the new curriculum will affect the advancing of the grade levels for their children? Will the nine core values be included in the entrance exams? If the core values can’t be, quantified, then, how will it be, graded on? What would the grade reports look like in the futures?
The grades, are not what the students are, made up of, nor is it, the whole of the students, we should, care more about the person, the students, behind those grades. I hope, that as the new curriculum gets, implemented, the Department of Education can really, enforce the core values, to put it into the coursework, so as the parents read through the grade reports, they don’t see just, the number or letter grades, but what the children had, learned in class!
And so, this is a war of what is being taught, vs. what is being learned, and what’s important in education, the grades, or the lessons, and, unfortunately, in these Asian countries, the parents cared more about the grades their children are making, than what their children are learning, and, even if, this new plan of education gets implemented, it’s going to, take a very long time, for these god DAMN parents, to SNAP out of the mindsets of “grades make the man”!
What needed reform is NOT education itself, it’s the MINDS of these parents, and school officials, as well as the people in the Board of Education…