A Rant-Worthy World

9) The education system

Today's rant is about the current English education system. Honestly, it is so bad now that I just want to kill Michael Gove (the education minister) and shoot the rest of the government who actually approve of some of the bat guaco laws Gove comes up with.

One of the laws that Gove proposed was to make 5 year olds do fractions! 5 year olds! When I was 5, I was learning how to add numbers together, not doing bloody fractions!

How can you expect a five year old to do fractions? 5 year olds are meant to learn through play, not sit down and add fractions together. Let the 5 year olds play and leave all that stupid stuff until they're older. At least let them enjoy school for a few years and then, when they start to hate school, that's when you know you can tell them to deal with fractions.

Now, some people are utterly bamboozled by why so many teenagers in the country hate school.

I'm not.

The answer is simple.

Teenagers don't do any learning that will be useful for real life.

That's why kids enjoy school, because what they learn is actually useful. Kids learn how to do basic operations in maths and learn grammar in English.

Teenagers hate school because they don't learn anything useful. Teenagers learn how to solve simultaneous equations in maths and analyse poems in English.

When I was in primary school, I loved English. We did creative writing which I obviously enjoyed.

Then it became about exams. It was no longer about being able to describe for the sake of being able to describe. It was no longer about persuading, arguing, informing for the sake of it. It became about persuading, describing and entertaining for the sole purpose of gaining marks in the exams.

They taught us through the mark scheme. A mark scheme that couldn't be more irrelevant to real life.

Whenever we learn something in school, it is only ever for the sole purpose of that particular topic coming in the exam. The exam board has instructed us to learn about why Armitage used a full stop in his poem.

I'm actually not kidding, the teacher once told the class to analyse the full stop in Nettles. Do you know what I said?

"Miss, it's just a dot....."

The teacher laughed and said "Okay, but, Isabella, what is the effect of that full stop?"

According to the teacher, the full stop showed an abrupt halt to the poet's childhood, a forced end.

I don't care about why a full stop was used in a poem! After I leave school, I am never analysing a poem or story ever again.

School is the reason why I have grown to loathe To Kill a Mockingbird. When I first read it 4 years ago, I loved it. Then the school gave us the exact same book which we have to analyse for our controlled assessment and exam.

Frankly, I don't care why Atticus isn't prejudiced like Maycomb County. I don't care what Boo Radley looks like in Scout's mind. I don't care how Calpurnia makes a difference to the fact that Scout and Jem aren't prejudiced towards blacks.

Hear that, Miss? I don't care.

I don't care if it doesn't interest me or if its useless in real life.

School has come to the point where it is solely about exams.

Gove also proposed to make 11 year olds do a grammar test before they leave primary school. Now, I can understand this but on the website, was the test that Gove was planning on giving the 11 year olds.

I took the test.

Guess what? I got 3/10.

I was 14 at the time and a 14 year old got 3/10 on a test meant for 11 year olds.

Does this mean I don't know my grammar?

Not at all.

The test included idiotic stuff like "do you put a verb at the beginning or the end of a dangling principle?"

What the hell is a dangling principle?! I've never heard of it in my life and if that test tells me I don't know my grammar and I'm set up for failure because of it, it is sorely mistaken. Because, look here, Mr Gove, I'm in set 1 for English. I've always been in set 1 for English and if your stupid test tells me I'm not good at grammar, well, damn you and your test and your laws!

That's the main problem with exams nowadays. We are taught that if you want to succeed in life, you must, without a shadow of a doubt, succeed in those exams. If you want to have even a flicker of hope of owning a house and a car one day, you have to get As and A*s in your exams.

You get below a C? You're screwed. You failed that exam, you failed life. You will never have a happy life, you will never have your dream job if you don't know the scale factor of triangle B.

This is what is drilled into our heads, day in and day out.

This government is constantly changing these laws, not for the betterment of the British youngsters but to boost its place in the international table. Because let me tell you, Britain is nowhere near the top in those tables.

This, to me, is just plain idiocy becuase how on earth do you expect to come near the top in those league tables if you're making the whole country fail?!

This government needs to straighten their education system out before its too late. Oh wait, it already is.

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Comment below about your opinions

Later, folks

~Izzy