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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: 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.