Originaly posted on 11/3/10
Curriculum for Excellence, and the increasing decline in the way the future of our country is being handled. Oddly, the SNP come in for some flak too.
Are you Scottish and Currently in 3rd year at secondary school? Congratulations! You are among the last people to be educated properly. If however you are younger and if you are, well done for being intellectual enough to want to read this, your future will be governed by horrible education reforms which will serve purely to provide you with the most basic of human functions, with wonderfully unspecified education until you get to 4th year. You will learn to be a Responsible Citizen (listen to the song of the same name by The Automatic, live by it, you'll be fine), a Confident Individual (with no way to be confident about the choices you make in your life), a Successful Learner (despite never having learned anything) and an Effective Contributor (despite having nothing worthwhile to contribute).
Remember 5-14, where you were assessed as A through F for stuff like language, maths and various things? All gone. Replaced with a pile of gibberish that can be read here: http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/curriculumforexcellence/index.asp
Basically, from Primary 1 to the end of 3rd year of secondary, ie 10 years, you will not be assessed. Instead, you will be bombarded with outcomes that you probably wont even know you're getting assessed on, in ridiculous things as being able to work together and be a good team player (basically, the old four outcomes). What a pile of shite. As if the country wasn't screwed enough with the amount of people schools are churning out leaving in 4th year with no qualifications, nothing to offer society other than a name on a dole sheet or filling a cell. At least with CfE, you can have skills to go with your no qualifications, making you more likely to become a binman when you've been forced out of school because by the time you get to 4th year there's nothing there to help you. Remember sitting your standard grades? Nothing. All gone. To be replaced by absolutely heehaw. While foundation SG's weren't exactly the most promising of award, it could be the only thing some people could get. What now, you have people who are too, for whatever reason, unable to learn, and so get forced to stay in school until 18? My year had plenty of such delinquents, and i'm happy they're gone, as i'm sure they are too. Keeping the people whose future does not lie in academics in school will not benefit anyone. Teachers will suffer because they have to spend time with people who are less likely to benefit. The pupils who can benefit will have less time and so benefit less, and the poor screw-ups who would rather be out either stabbing folk or doing drugs will feel as if their time is being wasted, become restless and unruly, and cause more undue fuss than they do now.
If you haven't seen them, may I suggest the following "Downfall" parodies:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43OFjvTiNDg (Latest Developments)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfBgImjQDhw (Assessment)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcaFHcvUG68 (The SQA)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGPmZXC3wYY (Glow)
and of course, the CfE song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfKKJ1Btmpg (I think my English teacher is in that video)
While side-splittingly funny, these videos are a worrying glimpse of the future, as they're all completely accurate. Teachers will be unable to teach, which is all they want to do. I've yet to talk to a teacher who thinks the CfE will be a success, and as you can see from the comments on those videos, there are a number of reasons. Aside from the horrible teacher problem now in that there are far too many teachers out of work because there were too many training spots open, and subsequently they got reduced drastically, prospective teachers (myself included) will be put off by this. If you want to teach, do you want to do it because you have a passion for whatever field it is you would teach, you have wisdom you wish to pass on or because you want to work in moulding the future of our nation? If it's any of those or more, then forget it. You wont be able to, you'll be too busy making sure people don't fall off their unicycles whilst writing an essay on Burns, because as it's Scotland as run by the SNP, Burns, Burns and Burns will be the only thing approved by them.
Speaking of the SNP, it's all their fault. I can't wait until the election so I can get that fat wank Alex Salmond the hell out of running my country. While they may have good intentions of doing everything their own way to show that Scotland is different from the rest of the world, it's not done very well. Think Tony Mowbray in charge of Celtic. Going in with good intentions about how something should be done, but ultimately failing catastrophically because he doesn't cover the basics. Mark my words, the SNP and the CfE, like dear Mogga, will fail, and the country will take years to recover.
And all the while, i'll be teaching Gatsby to every year I get....
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