Quote:
Originally Posted by meeera
I'm pretty supremely unconcerned about any of that. He can already do arithmetic just fine, thanks, being the end of Australian primary school with some quality teaching and learning having taken place. His last lot of formal testing they were allowed to use calculators for one portion, and he didn't bother, just for a challenge.
Any teacher with a clue is aware of things like How Calculators Work. The tests at the moment tend to have one portion with calculators allowed, and one not, so that kids both learn head/paper calculations and learn to use appropriate tools. The tech isn't a problem; some teaching methods may be. There have always been illiterate and innumerate kids out there. It's also possible that these days, they're expected to function in environments they would not have been expected to function in in the past.
Back in my day, most high school students graduated without even knowing how to touch-type. They were completely unprepared for the modern world!!1!
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Just a comment: You are in Australia and I was referring to the American (USA) school system. So chill out please. Two separate systems, two separate cultures. In USA we now have what we call "helicopter moms" because they hover over their children and do everything for them and complain if they get a 98 instead of a 100 and sue the schools for any reason if their precious little brat isn't treated like a prince or princess. The helicopter moms do their brats's homework for them, try to go on job interviews with them, etc. etc. As a result we now have a generation of Millennial college grads who cannot perform the jobs they were hired for. Even new nurse graduates are so poorly prepared that hospitals have to retrain them themselves. I'm glad Australia, and most of the rest of the world, does education much better than we do here. The American education system is a big mess, as are the helicopter moms.