Education’s not a trivial pursuit
The word trivial, according to the dictionary, means of little importance; trifling; insignificant; inconsequential; not worth bothering about; not worth mentioning. It is ironic that such an insignificant word became all important to some senior students sitting an NZQA Level 3 History Causes and Consequences paper last week. In that paper, year 13 students became rudely acquainted with the word in a quote from Julius Caesar: ‘‘Events of importance are the result of trivial causes’’.
Ranging in age between 16 and 18, a not insignificant number of the students fretted about failing the paper because they said they didn’t know the meaning of the word trivial.
Hmmm . . . obviously they had never played Trivial Pursuits, or taken time out to do the trivia quiz. And why should they? The Trivial Pursuits game might have been entered into the Games Hall of Fame, but it was created in 1979 and its popularity peaked in 1984, when 20 million of the games were sold. And I’m presuming that students would be far too pressured and busy to have time to fritter away doing the quiz.
Students stumped by the T word argued that a definition of trivial should have been included in the exam. Some senior students mounted a petition demanding that the essay should be marked based on the students’ own definition of the unfamiliar word, with 1300 signing said petition.
Graeme Bell, chairman of the NZ History Teachers’ Association, agreed with the complaining students. He called the exam ‘‘a little bit of a snafu’’ (situation normal, all f...ed up), and mea culpa-ed that the language in an exam should be accessible to all. ‘‘The exam was not testing comprehension, so it was unfair to make that part of the assessment,’’ he said.
He also said one couldn’t make assumptions about what students should and shouldn’t know at that level. But I do. How can the word be unfamiliar when surely it is a word they would have heard, read and come across many times in the course of everyday living? It’s not necessary to have the definition of every word painstakingly explained. Little children learning how to read grasp the meanings of words through the context in which they are used. In this particular Caesar quote, given that the paper was about cause and consequence, it would have been pretty obvious what trivial meant.
What can also be deduced is that students have a limited vocabulary and have not been reading as widely and deeply as previous generations. A habit and appetite for reading has been taken away from them with crude text ruling over context, and their tongue is all the smaller for it.
As the psychologist, behaviourist, and philosopher B F Skinner said: ‘‘We shouldn’t teach great books, we should teach a love of reading. Knowing the contents of a few works of literature is a trivial achievement. Being inclined to go on reading is a great achievement.’’
Students shouldn’t be expected to be old-school wordniks, or wordists (a word fundamentalist who believes words have absolute meaning). However, being able to come up with the right word gives shape and meaning to the mess and confusion of life.
The dumbing down of the language has plumbed new depths if not only the chairman of the NZ Teachers’ Association, but also a spokesperson from NZQA, has acquiesced to student demands declaring they wouldn’t be penalised for misinterpreting the word.
The learnings (and I shudder as I use that hideous word) is that students can conclude that education standards are trivial, of little importance, and not worth bothering with.