Teacher quality, or maybe student quality?

THERE are numerous articles examining the decline in educational results around the world and the most common suggestion seems to be to improve the quality of the teachers. But should that be the quality of the students?

The long rows of compliant students sitting in silence, often enforced by a strap, as the teacher spoke disappeared last century, probably from the 1960s as did the teacher at the front desk approach.

Students and their attitudes have been a concern seemingly forever as Socrates commented almost 2,500 years ago, “The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders…”

The current problems include the preoccupation with social media and YouTube which subjectively seems to waste a lot of their time and decrease their attention span, which can affect their learning.

There are also changes in the length of time students stay at school, with fewer entry level jobs or apprenticeships that do not require a higher level of education that in past decades although not all students are successful at the higher levels.

Obviously, teachers should be of as high a standard as possible but low wages make this difficult to achieve.

The biggest changes may occur when students are able to concentrate in class without distractions from unmotivated and unsuccessful classmates, and they have the time at home to review work and complete their homework without the distractions that their social media feeds provide.

It’s time for a return to a learning environment where teachers are excellent, students are motivated and concentrate. and then educational standards will rise.

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It’s not logical
The US government is going to release some information about UFOs (unidentified flying objects). This might be either because there is nothing interesting to find or they are trying to hide something else that is much more interesting.

Most UFOs have sensible explanations although a few don’t and that is where the interest lies.

There might be other life forms out there. It’s statistically likely, but less likely is that they would visit us.

We are a long way from any other planet. Physics says we can’t travel all that fast so it’s a long journey and we aren’t probably that interesting.

The more puzzling thing is why do they seem to visit the drunk, the demented and nobody with a good camera?

Most of the world has a high-resolution camera in their pocket, capable of both photos and films and yet all we get is fuzzy images at a distance. There seems to have been no accidents except maybe Roswell in 1947 so they must be great flyers given the speeds they seem to be travelling at.

Perhaps we should stop looking to the sky and look around as we have enough to see here and enough problems to solve.

Maybe the UFOs are here to make sure we stay here, given how badly we are managing this planet.

As Mr. Spock might say, “It’s not logical.” (dfitzger@melbpc.org.au)/PN