Re: What's R4 4?
- From: Jon@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Jon O'Brien)
- Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2005 02:48 +0100 (BST)
In article <qohZJfG2piYDFwwh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
jf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (JF) wrote:
> My wife, a teacher, said that this new-fangled wheeze of not open
> testing of kids' reading and writing abilities saved huge amounts of
> money in Surrey because a high percentage of parents opted out of the
> state system by sending their sprogs to private schools.
It's no better over the border here in Hampshire.
About 17 years ago we were told that we shouldn't attempt to teach our two
to read and write before they started school. We'd already started to do
so, however, and carried on despite the instruction. And it did come
across as an instruction, not as advice. The implication was that, should
we do so, we would wreak havoc with the carefully planned regime that was
awaiting our children, cause all sorts of difficulties for their future
teachers and, effectively, disadvantage our children.
Both could read and write competently when they started school and, from
what we saw, their abilities remained well ahead of the vast majority of
their peers throughout their schooling. Our son was assessed as having a
reading age of 16 when he was about eight and our daughter's reading age
was similar (I forget the exact figure).
We were once asked if we had given our son any help with one story he
wrote at primary school. We replied that the only help he had been given
was with a few spellings. The teacher then told us that it was the most
remarkable piece of writing she had seen from a child of his age in her 20
or so years of teaching.
Both of our children are quite bright but we don't think there's anything
exceptional about them. We came to the conclusion that, on the contrary,
it was their peers that were reading and writing well below their
capabilities because the school had made such a complete and utter mess of
what is, essentially, a very straightforward task.
It's not surprising the teachers made such a hash of it, though. Both of
our children used to take great delight in pointing out spelling and
grammatical errors in letters they carried home from school. They took
even more delight when taking the corrected versions back the next day,
however.
Jon.
.
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