Education short on all counts
IT HAS been 32 years since I graduated from high school, so I have little idea what is taught in the modern classroom.
What I do know, however, is this: basic literacy and numeracy are dying in Australia. Too many young people can’t correctly use apostrophes, distinguish between “I” and “me” or perform simple arithmetical.
In our rush to embrace subjects like gender fluidity, we’re forgetting how to talk and write properly and perform sums using just pen and paper.
Recently, the Program for International Student Assessment concluded Australian students were falling well behind their international counterparts in science, reading and mathematics.
Singapore, for example, ranks first among all developed nations in each of those study fields; Australia, however, has slid to rankings of 14th, 16th and 25th respectively, well below where we were from 2000-2006.
PISA’s findings shouldn’t come as a surprise. Evidence of our educational decline is everywhere. Take apostrophes. The rules about their use – to denote possession and/or abbreviation – are simple. But rarely do we see apostrophes used correctly in public life.
Like thousands of AFL fans, on Brownlow night, I kept a close eye on Dustin Martin’s expected victory. Yet on my television screen some dimwit kept inserting the following caption: “Your clubs Brownlow favourite”.
Each player belongs to a club. Where, then, was the apostrophe (which denotes this possession) between club and s?
Perhaps those apostrophes had gone to Mt Buller. During a recent trip there, I noticed an electronic noticeboard advertising kids’ ski lessons under the following categories: “Koala’s, Possum’s, Echidna’s, Cockie’s, Emu’s, Wombat’s and Kangaroo’s”. Seven apostrophes together on one screen; all unnecessary. Should we just give up on this humble squiggle rather than scatter it randomly, as now occurs?
We’ve pretty much given up on “I” versus “me” too. On a recent episode of Network Ten’s The Wrong Girl, Lily Woodward (played by Jessica Marais) announced her engagement with: “We’re here … to celebrate something very important to me and Jack … ah, to Jack and I, sorry.”
Well, sorry scriptwriter of The Wrong Girl. What Lily should have said is “We’re here … to celebrate something very important to Jack and me”.
The decision to use “less” rather than “fewer” is another trap for younger Australians. On grand final day last weekend I heard a 20-something wonder whether there might be “less” people at the MCG than when the Pies won in 2010.
What he should have said, of course, was “fewer” spectators. “Less” is used when you’re dealing with an amorphous whole, eg “There is less sand on the beach this year”.
Those who are detail-obsessed might conclude that “there are fewer grains of sand on the beach this year”. Therefore, there are never less people at the footy, only fewer, as we are all unique and special individuals.
Finally, could simple mathematics be headed down the same drain as correct English? Not long ago I asked two young colleagues to calculate a simple percentage, using any tools they liked – pen and paper, calculator or even a computer.
After several minutes of scribbling, tapping and muttering, one gave up. To his credit, the other at least presented an answer – but it was wildly incorrect. Percentages aren’t rocket science, a field the Federal Government hopes to re-enter in the near future. It seems we’ll be forced to employ well-educated foreigners to design our next-generation satellites.
You might think I’m just a pedant determined to prove the old days were better, but consider this. After this week’s horrific mass slaughter in Las Vegas, one of our major newspapers criticised online the “Republican’s hypocrisy on guns”. The singular possessive apostrophe implied that only one member of the Republican Party was opposed to gun control.
What this badly-written paper meant to denounce was the “Republicans’ hypocrisy on guns”, because not one but many members of that party defend the right to bear arms.
If we can’t get a major headline like that right, it’s no wonder Australian students are struggling to compete with their Singaporean counterparts.