I despair of the education system.

Nick_C

missbiggles1 wrote: »

He's used "and" and a comma when only "and" was needed.

The comma wasn't strictly necessary, but I don't think it's use was incorrect.

TheSaint_2

My daughter moved schools, the school she came from did not do any spelling work or times tables. The new school does both every day and tests too. So it depends on the school.

Interestingly both schools were rated outstanding by Ofsted. The reason we moved her is because we could see the standard of education was very low. We had been teaching her spelling and times tables at home to help make up for the lack at school.

I agree with the OP. You will always get the odd person that struggles, but the average person should be able to cope. The current education system does not focus on the same things. In my opinion based on the things my daughter is taught there are some problems with some aspects. That is not to say it was perfect for me either.

It may just be the media trying to cause a daily mail headline but a lot of the time when young people are shown on TV they are shown to be unable to do simple arithmetic. Take the apprentice for example..

shaun_from_Africa

Nick_C wrote: »

We need to start turning out people who can speak English properly,

I was on a train a couple of weeks ago and I was sitting behind a group of teenagers (looked to be about 14 or 15 years old).
I just wish I was given £1 for each "like" that I heard.

It was "like I was going drinking like and I was like so drunk and I was like falling all over the place." (And before I get picked up on it, there should probably be the odd comma in there somewhere!)

Language constantly changes and evolves but evolution often leads to an improvement, something that I don't think was the case here.

[Deleted User]

Nick_C wrote: »

We need to start turning out people who can speak English properly, and the BBC needs to employ them.

One of my pet hates, is news presenters who can't pronounce "quarter", but instead pronounce it "corter".

missbiggles1

Nick_C wrote: »

The comma wasn't strictly necessary, but I don't think it's use was incorrect.

It's only correct to use "and" with a comma if you're linking two independent clauses, which he wasn't.

http://www.getitwriteonline.com/archive/020204whencommabfand.htm

missbiggles1

Bedsit_Bob wrote: »

One of my pet hates, is news presenters who can't pronounce "quarter", but instead pronounce it "corter".

If we still had guerillas these days (which we don't because they're all terrorists) there'd be nobody who could pronounce it likeAngela Ripon. Everybody else had them swinging through the trees!

shaun_from_Africa

TheSaint wrote: »

but a lot of the time when young people are shown on TV they are shown to be unable to do simple arithmetic. Take the apprentice for example..

If the producers wanted to get a group of people on the apprentice who were all extremely literate with good numerical skills they could do it very easily but what would be the point?
They want people who split public opinion and who's antics ensure that they get plenty of media attention.

It's no different to the "I'm a celebrity" and "big brother" participants. Why pick normal (and I know that's a relative term), well spoken, well mannered contestants who would ensure that no one bothered watching the shows?

None of the prog's I mention above are my cup of tea but they constantly get very high viewing figures so the producers must be doing something right.

takman

Andy_L wrote: »

The fridge at work is stocked with 2 litre bottles. The 1pint bottle at home is dual labelled with metric. I can't think of a single circumstance where I'd need to convert them.

Anyone who wants to work in engineering doing machining would find this very useful. The older machines all have imperial scales and older drawings use imperial. A lot of measuring equipment also has an imperial scale.

macman

Programmes such as The Apprentice are heavily scripted, and then edited to produce the required results. Anyone who thinks that the dialogue is remotely spontaneous is very naive.

GwylimT

Castle wrote: »

I still have mine from 1978; as Calculators were banned for "O" Level maths the exam paper came with log sheets/books. Just to make it even more fun, the exam paper had 10 "true or false" questions; a wrong answer meant 1 mark deducted!

When my son started secondary school he needed a scientific calculator for some of his maths work, I had to spend hours learning how to use the bloody thing! I remember having to work out a pi calculation by hand to check his answer as I couldn't figure the calculator out.