25 May 2009

Flame of the Week - Defending Gold Creek Old Skool

| johnboy
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Big ups to my man Drummett who came out of nowhere to claim this week’s coveted FOTW with this stellar effort:

    #14 posted by Dummett
    (Newbie)
    22:53, 24 May 2009

    hey everybody,

    i would just like to start off by saying i am an ex student of gold creek school (1998-2008)and although you could say i have never experinced any other skool frankly i wouldnt want to.

    i had some of the best times of my life at gold creek which i will remember forever, i have made friends that would do anything for me, gained tutors that have influenced my life and made me into the person i am today.

    to be honest i only opened this forum to have a go at who ever had the nerve to bad mouth my skool so please tread lightly because that skool is my life.

Inability to capitalise, veiled threats of violence, and after 10 years at the school can’t spell “school”. Congratulations, you’re our Flame Of The Week!

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Roadrage77 said :

Fair enough Granny, but something I’ve pondered on many a sleepless night is: would the youth of today know how to grammatacise properly if their lives depended on it? Or are they really closet spelling-bee champtions who simply choose to spell like imbeciles? Maybe a skool teacher out there could enlighten us?

grammatacise? (that’s not even close to a proper word, maybe you are looking for punctuate?)
champtions?

u sem lik a reel speelin be chamption.

bd84 said :

I think you can get arrested for hanging around schools and it being “your life” if you don’t actually attend there anymore.. as this person claims.

Maybe, Gold Creek was a big part of his life and always will be. I know that you were attempting to be humorous and get a cheep laugh out of your comment but it’s ineffective. Also keep in mind that he is 16 years old and that he went to that school for 10 years. That’s a pretty big fraction, I am sure he can get away with saying that Gold Creek was and still is important to him.

I know Dummett, we finished high school together and have been friends since grade 7. I know him well enough that if he wants to spell the word ‘school’ he is more than capable. Other things you may want to know about Dummett is that he is accomplished in car audio installation which he more or less figured out himself, he is a great musician and gets within the top 5 marks of any Outdoor Ed Unit, he has a quick wit and is funny and nice. He is good at maths and does particularly well in Science.

Several things i have noticed about the school system in the south side.
Lake G is a loved school by a large percentage of students that attend there. Unfortunately, their reputation is down due to their problems several years ago. Hawker on the other hand is a school with a great reputation but a large amount of my friends that go to that school dislike it. (I know that Hawker and Lake G are irrelevant but that was a focus on reputation)

Private schools have their fair share of issues as well. Several people i know/know of constantly take drugs, drink, have sex, fight and are quite stupid. Just because their parents are paying for their education doesn’t necessarily mean they will use it well.

Just because Gold Creek has a horrid reputation doesn’t mean that it is necessarily true and that you will avoid all trouble that gold creek as at different schools.

A lot of Gold Creek students succeed. Some of the smartest people i have ever met attended that school, many were smarter than a lot of adults i know. And as far as i know of, none were illiterate especially by year 10. Those who struggled knew that academics weren’t for them and now they live how they want to.

4 of my friends won a competition for creating a flash game. This competition was for all of Australia, public schools and private schools.

One of my friends recently got Young Canberran of The Year. He had attended Gold Creek since kindergarten.

The list goes on.

As Dummett said, the school is not without it’s problems. But these problems are individually based and definitely not the schools fault.

Love Addison
xoxo

johnboy said :

Pretty poor correlation between “life outlook” and literacy.

You’re hard pushed to find a decent writer anywhere without substance use issues.

JK Rowling?! I know, I know.. you’ll argue the toss regarding whether or not she’s decent. I say ‘yes’, but even if I’m wrong, she’s done quite well for herself.

Hey Rioters, just for the record I’m not illiterate, not a pervert, not being payed to say anything good about the school and wasn’t trying to say Gold creek is the best school in the world and nothing ever goes wrong. Yes there are drugs and there are fights but the school has done everything in its power and continues to do everything in it power to keep kids away from these things. At the end of the day if your kids want to learn they will, if they don’t them won’t simple as that no matter what school you send them to so they may as well have fun?

I think you can get arrested for hanging around schools and it being “your life” if you don’t actually attend there anymore.. as this person claims.

Jazz said :

neanderthalsis said :

Remember folks, 46% of Australian adults are functionally illiterate ; with the 19 – 30 age group scoring the lowest.

wow, thats a really ordinary reflection of our education systems. Does anyone know if that is improving or not?

Of course it makes a good story but doesn’t tell us much. Anyone who bothers to look at the information on the link can see that on international comparisons Australia was ranked in the middle and when it comes to the ACT

Examining the proportion of those who attained literacy scores of Level 3 or above, the
Australian Capital Territory (ACT) ranked highest on all scales followed by Western
Australia (WA) and South Australia (SA). For the prose and document scales, 68% of
those in ACT attained literacy scores of Level 3 or above, compared to 56% in WA and
55% for prose and 54% for document literacy in SA. On the numeracy scale, 63% of those
in the ACT attained literacy scores of Level 3 or above, compared to 49% for SA and WA.
While the ACT was ranked highest on the problem solving scale, with 46% attaining Level
3 or above, the results were similar across all other states and territories, ranging from
27% to 31% (table 3).

And the steady rise with age might have more to do with practice and experience than teaching standards.

neanderthalsis4:46 pm 25 May 09

QBN Gal, when talking about the percentage of functionally illiterate Australians, a decrease is actually an improvement. It was 47%, it is now 46%, hence an improvement by 1%.

I might add that 53% of Australian adults are also functionally innumerate.

Sorry, that was directed at Neanderthalsis

“In the ten years between 1996 and 2006 it improved from 47% to 46%. So with that rate of improvement, in 500 years we should be at 100%.”

Given that your example has it DECREASE in the ten years from 1996 to 2006, it will be 0% in about 450 years

Granny said :

I actually believe it’s a combination.

+1

Some people respond better to phonics, others respond better to WOL.

I actually believe it’s a combination.

neanderthalsis1:03 pm 25 May 09

Jazz said :

neanderthalsis said :

Remember folks, 46% of Australian adults are functionally illiterate ; with the 19 – 30 age group scoring the lowest.

wow, thats a really ordinary reflection of our education systems. Does anyone know if that is improving or not?

In the ten years between 1996 and 2006 it improved from 47% to 46%. So with that rate of improvement, in 500 years we should be at 100%.

Literacy development is an ideological battle zone between proponents of differing pedagogical methodologies. In the blue corner we have phonics, and in the red corner, “whole of language”.

The contemporary approach (since the early 1980’s) is using the “whole of language” approach, but we phonic purists argue that this doesn’t teach the rules of sound formation and word synthesis.

Some recent work out of Macquarie University (MULTILIT – Making up for lost time in Literacy)has used phonics to teach students who were reading at 5 or more years below their age levels and saw most of them catch up or in some cases, surpass age level reading in less than 6 months.

In the 80s they took out tables and grammar and spelling. I was really upset about it at the time.

By the time the kids got to high school the maths teachers were like, well, they’ll just have to use calculators. Tear their hair as they might, they couldn’t compensate for a missing primary education in basic arithmetic.

It was all very touchy and feely and arty farty but it couldn’t have been evidence based. At the time this educational philosophy was so politically correct that parents who questioned it were treated like ignorant nut-jobs. It was so frustrating.

Being on the pension, I couldn’t just up and take my business elsewhere; which is why to this day I believe that a strong, quality public education system is so important, and that even if you can’t afford to vote with your feet the parents who can do send some kind of message to the government of the day which they must eventually confront.

My older kids make do with calculators and spelling and grammar checkers. They’re not perfect but it’s the tools they’ve been left with. They are intelligent people and have had some incentive to improve the professional appearance of their written work to further their careers.

I still cringe at some of the spellings on their Facebook posts, though.

jessieduck said :

johnboy said :

Pretty poor correlation between “life outlook” and literacy.

You’re hard pushed to find a decent writer anywhere without substance use issues.

I think Jane Austin was pretty clean living JB

Yeah, but Jane Austen is boring as hell … unless there are vampires involved: http://www.amazon.com/Pride-Prejudice-Zombies-Classic-Ultraviolent/dp/1594743347

johnboy said :

Pretty poor correlation between “life outlook” and literacy.

You’re hard pushed to find a decent writer anywhere without substance use issues.

I think Jane Austin was pretty clean living JB

slow flame week obviously

neanderthalsis said :

Remember folks, 46% of Australian adults are functionally illiterate ; with the 19 – 30 age group scoring the lowest.

wow, thats a really ordinary reflection of our education systems. Does anyone know if that is improving or not?

Is it true that that the three r’s stands for readin, ritin, and rifmetic ?

neanderthalsis11:59 am 25 May 09

Granny said :

I think modern education, particularly in the ACT, does very well in the area of critical thinking particularly, which does stand the students in good stead for university.

Critical thought is all well and good. But unless you are able to translate it into the written form in a coherant and cohesive manner it is of little use.

Remember folks, 46% of Australian adults are functionally illiterate ; with the 19 – 30 age group scoring the lowest.

Pretty poor correlation between “life outlook” and literacy.

You’re hard pushed to find a decent writer anywhere without substance use issues.

who’d have thunked? granny was a girly swat! ; )

…mind you, i am still chuffed today at having received five whole dollars from folks for being the first boy in year 4 (after the superiority of women was rightfully played out and i came fourth overall…)

i agree, home values are not the same as they were and i can’t but wonder what that means. does it imply some dimunition in our society or just different? while there are many instances of parallel with this flamer, i also know many young’uns with the granny (and astro) life outlook. has the developments in media just given us more exposure to a broader cross section of the community?

Who knows, Roadrage77?

I think the primary prerequisite to learning something is having a desire to learn it.

In my case I wanted to see that ‘A’ on the report card. I wanted to be ranked 1 or 2 out of 33 in the class. I wanted to read comments from my teacher about how I was a pleasure to teach. I wanted to see my parents’ pride in me when I brought the report card home. I wanted to see if I could equal or beat my very smart friends. I wanted to see if I could get that perfect score.

I can’t say I specifically wanted to learn arithmetic or parts of speech. I did actively want to learn to read by myself, so my dad taught me with flashcards and the Dr Seuss books.

I can tell you that I can do a sheet of maths faster, at my age, than any of my children in their twenties and teens. I can also beat them hands down on spelling and grammar.

This was typical of my Canberra public school education in the 70s. My friends could all achieve the same result, I would think.

I have six children and have tried various learning options including home schooling, and I can still do better than all of them in the 3Rs.

It just was never important to any of them like it was to me. I don’t know why.

I think modern education, particularly in the ACT, does very well in the area of critical thinking particularly, which does stand the students in good stead for university.

I remember someone ripped off the G and the C from one of the signs so it said “Old Reek”. That was pretty clever I thought 😉

Fair enough Granny, but something I’ve pondered on many a sleepless night is: would the youth of today know how to grammatacise properly if their lives depended on it? Or are they really closet spelling-bee champtions who simply choose to spell like imbeciles? Maybe a skool teacher out there could enlighten us?

Holden Caulfield10:32 am 25 May 09

gold creek rulez

Die Lefty Scum10:24 am 25 May 09

skool suxs

I think we might have to get used to the fact that this generation choose to spell differently from us. They seem to know how to spell their own variations correctly -otherwise they would look pretty stupid in front of their peers – which is the natural thing for kids to worry about. Far from caring what we think, I would guess that the last thing they want to do is conform with our mores.

As a flame it is disappointing.

don’t go dissing inability to capitalise… could be purposeful (though with the repetition of ‘skool’, unlikley – ok then, go ahead and diss away…)

and actually, johnboy, in the first line s/he/it does manage to spell skool correkly.

Is that what the sign out the front says? Gold Creek High Skool? This guy seems happy in his little multi acre World of Gold Creek (WoGC), it is a lot like the World of Warcraft (WoW) but the rate of literacy is lower.

Joe Canberran8:17 am 25 May 09

Not sure I’d even class it as a flame. No real heat behind it. More low level troll bait. Which, after big fish JB, seems to have hooked us as well 🙁

There’s something fishy about this flame…

Joe Canberran8:10 am 25 May 09

very true p1.

Has gold creek been open for 10 years?

after four years….

Actually, he,she or it mentions a ten year period (98-08)

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