The maths one this morning was a pig of a paper. It was the worst any of us have ever seen.
I have spent an hour this morning watching children I've known since they were seven years old, children I've stayed after work to help coach, for whom I've given up lunchtimes for weeks running a drop-in: supposedly to provide help with maths if requested, but more in practice to reassure them that they've worked hard and there's no such thing as a "fail"...today I watched them slump ever more dispiritedly down in their chairs as they turned page after page of questions they just couldn't do.
Language was a big part of it. A huge imbalance towards word-based problems. We can read them the questions, but where English isn't fluent-and to be able to process a problem in another language is a big step up from conversational fluency-that doesn't help as much as people imagine. Nor does the eleven extra minutes the government thinks is enough to redress the balance between fluent and non-fluent English speakers. Frankly, for a floundering child-and there were a lot floundering today-it just prolongs the torture.
Did I mention I despise SATs?
As NBBooks wrote in the excellent summary of US the wind energy industry;-
By contrast, the management of U.S. auto makers were aggressively hostile toward their workers and suppliers, and scoffed at the notion that workers on the factory floor could offer any meaningful contribution other than their brute, raw, physical labor. One statistic tells it all: U.S. workers at Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors plants in the U.S. submit 0.4 suggestions per worker per year; U.S. workers at Japanese plants in the U.S. submit four times as many, or 1.6 suggestion per worker per year. But each Japanese worker in a Japanese car plant in Japan submits an astonishing 64 suggestions per year. In other words, the Toyota system of production is 160 times more efficient than U.S. mass production at mobilizing the creative powers of human ingenuity at the lowest level of production. Workers may suggest small, incremental changes, but over time and given a large enough number, they can make for impressive results: at the time of the MIT study, Toyota could produce over 50 cars per employee each year, compared to only the 10 or 15 cars produced per each employee per year by U.S. automakers, and Toyota's defect rate was one third that of the U.S. U.S. automakers have striven mightily to catch up to Japanese levels of efficiency, productivity, and quality, but some two decades later, still lag behind. For over 20 years, U.S. automakers and U.S. industry in general have tried implementing a number of facets of the Toyota "lean production" system, such as just-in-time inventory control and concurrent design and production, but they have stubbornly refused to do anything but give lip service to "valuing their human assets."
U.S. automakers have striven mightily to catch up to Japanese levels of efficiency, productivity, and quality, but some two decades later, still lag behind. For over 20 years, U.S. automakers and U.S. industry in general have tried implementing a number of facets of the Toyota "lean production" system, such as just-in-time inventory control and concurrent design and production, but they have stubbornly refused to do anything but give lip service to "valuing their human assets."
Our govt doesn't even do that. keep to the Fen Causeway
I'd mention 'abusive control-freakery allied to stratospheric levels of strategic idiocy' again as an explanation, although unfortunately it's not going to be any help at all here.
I am willing to believe that SATs are a bad thing. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes
It's just hard-and counterproductive-to see confidence draining from children for whom they're still a step too far.
I'm going to get an early night. By tomorrow lunchtime, it will all be over...
