Monday

I was reading in the press that kids are having a hard time with English, maths and science in this country even though science is being, as they say, really dumbed down. I believe there had been some improvement along the line but that things are getting worse again.

Thought about it. Surely the schools are teaching the same basics though .. and, I believe we're talking basics here. And, if it's just the basics and the schools are teaching the same that they always have, and, in one case, trying to make it easier.. then it's hard to turn round and say, at this point, that it's the school's fault as far as what they're trying to teach.

So you have to turn round at look at the kids, their families and what's influencing them and how the subject's are being presented to them.

Are the kids that interested or are they living in a fantasy world where there things aren't important in the adult world. Seems to me that they're being encouraged by the media to be more interested in the lives of people they don't know than they are in their own. Refer to people they don't know by their christian names if they appear in the press a lot and possibly know more about what the press choose to present as these peoples personal lives than they do about their friends.

It's always been a bit like that but it seems to ne much more so at the moment.

As for the kids not doing very well at the basics of education .. surely their parents should be checking where their kids are with things like that and if things aren't going well try and find out why and/or help themselves.

I know not everyone has a family who'd be interested enough which is one of the reasons I think there should be after school activities that are both social and educational all through education.

I'm talking to a young Danish woman, 22, who speaks excellent English and she tells me that in Denmark in the schools they have to learn English for 11 years, Swedish and Norwegian for 8 years and a choice of German or French for 6 years .. she chose to do both French and German for three years of each. She can also speak Danish sign language and has learnt a little of Slovenian, Croatian, and Italian.

I've heard that a lot of people are leaving this country if they have worked their way through the education system because it's being questioned if this country will be able to recover well from the recession/depression ... whichever it'll turn out to be, because of the attitude here towards education .. well, just because of the attitude here ... full stop.

Maybe that's just general waffling during the downturn, but who knows, it certainly has a grounding in attitude. It's interesting watching people acting like proverbial lemmings.