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Parents want teachers to do more when it comes to teaching their children about social and life skills inside the classroom, according to a new report.
The joint study between Monash University researchers and the Australian Scholarship Group (ASG) is the only one of its kind to investigate the state of education in Australia from parents' perspective.
Undertaken by Monash Faculty of Education associate professors Sivanes and Shane N. Phillipson, the report said Australian parents want their children to have access to a "holistic education".
According to the study, 69 per cent of parents believe schools should do more to teach their child about social skills. When ethnicity is factored in, the proportion increases substantially to 94 per cent among Indian and other Asian parents.
Furthermore, 49 per cent of parents agree they would like their child's school to do more about teaching them how to behave in public, which increases to 74 per cent among Indian and other Asian parents.
The mantra "The Corps is mother, the Corps is father" springs to mind.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Saturday October 14 2017, @01:51AM (12 children)
Learn to touchtype and to write well in cursive.
This one is wrong, on both counts. Cursive is obsolete, and downright stupid. It's hard as hell to read. People should be writing in plain print, even if it takes a bit longer to write. There's a reason you don't see engineering drawings in cursive, and typography is almost always in block letters (except for things like logos).
Touch typing is stupid too. They tried to teach us that when I was young, and it was garbage. The problem is the QWERTY keyboard. Keeping your fingers on the home row and moving them as necessary will just end up causing you pain because almost none of the letters you want to type are on the home row, and a bunch of them are below it, where it's hard to reach if you're using this rigid system. Don't touch-type; just teach yourself to type on your own in whatever way works best for you. And better yet, ditch the QWERTY keyboard and switch to something else, either Dvorak, Colemak, or Workman. With those you really can do something closer to the touch-typing ideal. But touch typing is dumb as long as everyone refuses to abandon their QWERTY keyboards.
Your list is pretty good otherwise, but you forgot to mention that kids need to be taught to use Linux as their primary OS. And how to change the oil in their car, and change the brake pads too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 14 2017, @02:15AM
Touch typing is useful as long as everyone refuses to abandon their QWERTY keyboards.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 14 2017, @02:48AM (2 children)
I was careful not to merely have "write in cursive". It was "write well in cursive". The point is that most cursive is in fact hard as hell to read. It needn't be that way. For those with skill, cursive is fast and readable.
I'm a programmer. I mostly write in C and assembly, plus I do email and soylentnews. I pretty much touch type, not 100% standard due to hand injury. The typing lessons I took in high school are a positive influence to this day. I'm fast. I can blow past typical coworkers.
Linux is not just a random life skill. It goes with programming, graphing, statistics, etc. Focus on bash, make, R, octave, oocalc, and the numerous simple commands. (dd, xxd, cut, ps, head...)
I have mixed feelings about the oil change. People tend to dump oil in the soil or down the sewer or even into a septic tank. Used oil is a cancer risk. Oil filters can be absurdly hard to remove, needing two people (one above and one below) or even disconnecting major components. You may need to lift out the engine or dashboard.
I have to say "NO" to the brake pads. Don't fuck with that.
(Score: 2) by t-3 on Saturday October 14 2017, @11:23AM (1 child)
What? Brake pads are the easiest things to replace. Asked if it takes two people to change your oil, you're doing it wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15 2017, @06:03AM
First, the brake pads: you fuck that one up, people die
Next, consider the Chevy Celebrity. From above, you can just barely see the oil filter. You could poke it with a stick, but not get a wrench in there. From below, there is room for a wrench, but you can't see the oil filter and you can't get the leverage you need to even put the wrench over the oil filter. So the solution involves two people. The person above guides the person below, then assists with a long stick and/or a cord.
(Score: 2) by lx on Saturday October 14 2017, @04:44AM (2 children)
No need to put these skills down as "stupid" merely because you can't master them.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Saturday October 14 2017, @04:53PM (1 child)
QWERTY keyboards *are* stupid, it's a fact. Any scientific comparison of keyboard types will quickly show you QWERTY is horribly inefficient and very mechanically bad for your fingers (they have to move and contort too much). There's a reason Dvorak invented his keyboard decades ago, and why other keyboards have also been invented since then like Colemak. QWERTY is garbarge.
I touch type just fine on my Dvorak keyboard though.
(Score: 1) by toddestan on Saturday October 14 2017, @06:09PM
Dvorak is the whole reason I can touch type. After using it long enough, my fingers finally learned where all the letters are, to the point where I can touch type on a standard QWERTY keyboard that's been remapped to Dvorak by the OS. Since the labels on the physical keys are still QWERTY and almost no one seems to even know what Dvorak is let alone the actual layout, it pretty much guarantees that no one can actually use my computer.
Those alternative layouts like Colemak are interesting. As a long term Dvorak user I can agree about many of the warts in the Dvorak layout they point out. But I've been typing on Dvorak for longer than Colemak has been around. Geez, I'm old.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday October 14 2017, @10:51AM (4 children)
Unless whatever way works best for you gets you 90wpm or more, stfu and learn touch typing.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Saturday October 14 2017, @04:50PM (2 children)
I can easily exceed 90wpm. I can't do that with strict touch typing; it's a stupid system, because of the stupid QWERTY keyboard, and a great way to get a horrible case of RSI.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday October 14 2017, @06:13PM
Thus the "unless" clause of my statement. If you can manage it, more power to you.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 14 2017, @07:05PM
> I can easily exceed 90wpm
me too, look
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filter won't be happy
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 14 2017, @05:21PM
I also smiled at GP's suggestion of switching to a different keyboard layout.
That's fine--until you encounter a kiosk.
Just for good measure, let's make it a well-used kiosk where the keyboard is QWERTY and the letters on the keys are worn away.
My county library runs Windoze (and Internet Exploder. Ugh!) and has their machines so locked down that even right-click is disabled.
Good luck telling that shit that you would like to use a different keyboard layout.
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