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Caffosaurus☕?:mayo: (fullycaffeinated@spinster.xyz)'s status on Friday, 04-Jul-2025 17:23:38 JST
Caffosaurus☕?:mayo:
@FeartnTired Some can, others can't. Reading comprehension is way down with a lot of them. They want you to explain things to them. They can't infer information, they need everything spelled out explicitly. They lose interest/concentration after a few paragraphs. If given questions about a text they will skim it for the answers instead of reading the whole thing. There are some in that lot that have different reading/learning difficulties that are not being properly addressed, some others just don't have the attention span. On the other hand, there are others who are voracious readers and will get completely immersed in a story or research topic. - KeepTakingTheSoma likes this.
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HebrideanHecate (hebrideanhecate@spinster.xyz)'s status on Friday, 04-Jul-2025 17:23:37 JST
HebrideanHecate
@Fullycaffeinated @FeartnTired Partner of teacher. He has far fewer readers than when he started, then he had quite a few who did and some stand outs for whom literature was their passion, now not many of the former and none of the latter. Last year he was driven mad by two girls who wanted to do Advanced Higher English, this is not a doss, nor does he have to offer it, more like a first year uni type course, or getting them used to working like that. In other words yes, you will get tutoring and discussion but it is up to you and off you go and research and read and we will discuss etc. Oh hell no! They moaned and groaned and loafed and whined and blankly stared and the classic of why do we have to do that, I mean they wanted to, in the end he said right, that's it class terminated, you are not co operating and he has not run it since because none of them are capable. The cry of it's boring, wanting it all done as quickly as possible, and expecting it all on a plate at top grade for no personal input, lots of entitlement and from some parents too. Very poor attention spans. Some parents saying child was a reader in primary school then just stopped and wouldn't continue. He thinks lack of reading and too much time fucking about with trash on phones and consuming the kind of media which is extremely short, their attention spans are abysmal, they don't like "long" things. Some of the words he's told me someone didn't know have made my eyes pop, and this was from 17/18 heading out the door age.
They have limited vocabulary, shockingly so, even the ones who are meant to be more academically able and doing Highers and wanting to go to uni. They don't show any intellectual curiosity and it doesn't seem to bother them that they don't know things. He sometimes shows them a film, if they seen a black and white it is instant groaning, but when they get into it they actually like it, but it would never have occurred to them to watch it off their own bat. Some are quicker on the uptake re discussions following seeing it and able to make an effort but others don't try. Not counting those less able, but I don't think he has the class that is, and others are down in the SEN dept anyway.
He was 30 when he started training, he's 56 come the end of January, and yes, he has seen a steep decline since the beginning. This is also considered a good school. More and more for some years has seen kids coming up from primary with enormous behavioural issues too, one year one school had a host of boys, and one poor girl, come up, the boys were feral. The primary schools seem to be failing in many places, but this is also due to shit Govt policy, silly arse teachers of the kind who, I kid you not, followed this appalling girl around, actually maybe they were TAs rather than T, on induction day saying "Oh please behave, don't do that, please" etc, I mean WTF. A lot of spoiling them and excusing them and pleading. A couple of the current new intake for after the summer are apparently incredibly violent and nasty, both girls, that will be fun. Police been called to their primary school on numerous occasions.
When he started or not long after anyway, there was a family here who had extremely academic girls, the boys were not, they did apprenticeships, but the younger girl he found out had been used in primary as a sit with the bad boys to keep them behaving kind of thing! I was you fucking better kick some arse right now! He did, he was pretty angry about it, so she was then able to thrive, because she was not being held back by the bad behaviour of others and also the disgraceful using her to oh you help so and so. The head of that primary school though is one horrible silly arse twat, can't stomach her, and she raised her own kids to be very entitled, but both as thick as a plank.
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KeepTakingTheSoma (keeptakingthesoma@spinster.xyz)'s status on Friday, 04-Jul-2025 17:36:41 JST
KeepTakingTheSoma
@HebrideanHecate @Fullycaffeinated @FeartnTired Where did it all go wrong? Answers on a postage stamp.
I was at Teacher Training college in the 80s with prospective teachers who didn't want to read or learn anything that wasn't on the syllabus. I worked with people who used the poor behaviour of children to bully staff ("He's ok when he's in MY class.").
The system rewarded lack of resilience and adopted ideologies that reinforced it. It's not their fault they can't read; it's (insert -ism/-phobia here) and the managers who played ball got promotion.
The people who suffer are the teachers that find themselves outside the nonsense and the pupils who can do less than nothing after years of "education" that isn't fit for purpose.
And people wonder why I won't go back. -
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HebrideanHecate (hebrideanhecate@spinster.xyz)'s status on Friday, 04-Jul-2025 17:43:00 JST
HebrideanHecate
@KeepTakingTheSoma @Fullycaffeinated @FeartnTired Absolutely.
He was genuinely shocked when he was in training re so many completely unsuitable people on the course, he was on a placement with one bloke and discovered he was snorting coke off the cistern. There were a gaggle of Irish embryo primary teachers who had failed to get into Coleraine or whatever it was, who were, he said, genuinely thick and incapable. They seemed very lax as to whom they would accept on the course, God knows what it is like now.
At least when I was in school they weren't actually allowed to give their personal views etc etc, although I do know there was at least one with Trot tendencies but he wasn't there long. Mind you, himself's horrible mother was like that, they called her Red Barbara, she was a history teacher and had a permanent feud going on with the geography chap, dreadful, dreadful woman.
KeepTakingTheSoma likes this.