Subject: Indus International School - Bangalore, India

Posted by Niall Palfreyman on 2/22/2010
In Reply To:Indus International School - Bangalore, India Posted by Sharon Villines on 2/16/2010

Message:

Sharon Villines schrieb:
> Is there any objective measure of this? Teachers have been complaining
> of declining student ability since there were teachers. I wonder if
> this is only that a teacher becomes more able as the years go by
> making the students seem less able.
Hi Sharon,
Thanks for your comments - I really need a fresh perspective on this issue. The straightforward answer is no: I have no objective measure of this. I do however have what is in my opinion reasonable evidence. I have been responsible for the maths content of our degree programme for 10 years now, and am also dean of academic studies for our university, which means that I am constantly aware of the grade averages across various faculties. Overall it seems clear that students are performing less well now than 10 years ago in terms of their marks in the exam questions which have been set over those ten years. By and large these exam questions have not changed over that time.

So it certainly seems that something has changed in the students taking the exams. This might be because they come to us with different skills from 10 years ago, or it might be that I am teaching differently, or it might be that they come to us with needs that are different from those which I address in my teaching. I have always vigorously defended the students against the opinion amongst my colleagues that these students are stupider or lazier than 10 years ago. However 2 years ago I organised a podium discussion on this issue at which the national president of the teachers' union stated clearly that he (a school
teacher) cannot now set pupils maths questions which they successfully answered 10 years ago.

This is why I (tried to) expressed myself carefully in my mail: "I see less and less ability on their part to think their way consistently through a problem from start to finish." I am very much aware that these students have social communication abilities way above what I had in my undergraduate days, but that doesn't change the fact that they lack some skill which my students ten years ago possessed. I don't know exactly what that is, but it is something like this:

I think they lack the ability to draw together threads into a coherent story.

In these last exams they seemed to know all the facts required of them, however in order to solve a maths problem they need to recognise the factual components relevant to the problem, and then draw these together into a coherent argument which leads to the solution. I notice that they increasingly rely on last-minute learning before an exam and have a very distorted idea (compare to my idea) of how well prepared they are for the exam. My overall feeling is that story-making is a skill, and that they see learning as less to do with skills, and more to do with factual knowledge, than the students 10 years ago.

Help me: Does this ring any bells with anyone?

Niall.

Follow Ups:

Indus International School - Bangalore, India - Sarah Boyar 3/4/2010 
Indus International School - Bangalore, India - Michael Skelly 3/4/2010