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New Zealand has sunk to a new low in modern education. A number of high school students have started a petition to not be failed on a national history exam as they did not understand the meaning of the word 'trivial'. For those not in the know, trivial means "of little value or importance" which aptly describes this petition given that it is being made by grade 13 high school students who by all rights should know the meaning of this word. More than 2400 people have signed the petition 'expressing their frustration with the exam question'. Student Logan Stadnyk claimed that he was "lucky" to have known what the word meant, as half his class didn't. "New Zealand History Teachers' Association chairman Graeme Ball has sided with the students calling the exam a 'little bit of a snafu'" but not providing an adequate answer as to why students in grade 13 would not understand a common English word.
Have the three Rs lost all meaning in schools? Are we failing our students? Or is this just another case of today's teens being snowflakes?
(Score: 2) by Username on Sunday November 18 2018, @08:04AM (4 children)
Did not rtfa, but I can't really think of any use of the word trivial without it being subjective. Was the holocaust of the jews trivial to the enslavement of blacks? Seems like that requires an opinion, and being graded on an opinion seem odd for a history test. Unless they're using it in a way I've never seen before. Special kiwi language? Also, I agree, this isn't a vocabulary test, just a history test. Should be dates, names and such. When was this, who did this.
(Score: 4, Informative) by KritonK on Sunday November 18 2018, @10:12AM
Dates are not what history is about. It's more about how things in the past shaped our present. Dates may be part of history, but only in the sense of ordering events: A happened before B, so A may have influenced B, but not the other way round.
To quote [tufts.edu] Herodotus, the purpose of history is
Substitute Hellenes and barbarians for whomever is appropriate for the era and region you are studying.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 18 2018, @11:46AM
So you pick the most *trivial* part of history. Bravo, you've identified the reason history tests are banal and trivial.
History is about what happened and why, not to be an exercise in masturbating to dates and names. Computers and books were invented for the reason of storing all types of useful and useless facts, which means dates and names. But if all you get from history is names and dates, WTFing waste of time.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 18 2018, @12:11PM
That's public record recitation, not history.
(Score: 2) by Demena on Sunday November 18 2018, @10:52PM
I do not think that word means what you think it means. Trivial does not mean irrelevant - the word you might of used. History is dates, names etc.? Only a really ignorant person could believe that. As for a non-trivial, non-subjective use for the word trivial try "Trivial Pursuit". I bet every one to the signatories to the petition have actually played it.