Adventure Ausrama Blog

Nothing is being done to make national standardized examinations fair. To say an IQ test measures intelligence is a misnomer. A high score indicates that a person has mastered cultural values. The questions are based on what city people should know. Those in rural areas learn different norms of behavior.  ⎳ naplan a biased a against a With a rural a students a test australian metropolitan ⎳ School exams have the same bias. Standardization has gone against country students. A problem is obvious because outback children are a year behind the lucky ones living in metropolitan regions.  No wonder, travel to school takes much longer.   ⦿3 naplan b biased b against b With b rural b students b test ⦿3 Such questions as "Describe a day at the beach" are meaningless to students on a farm. Other irrelevancies are - "Write what you know about a train timetable". Young Aboriginals were far better in memorizing articles removed from a table than white Aussies. This sho...

Genetics: genetic predisposition makes girls or nboys good at maths. The money poured into education to encourage girls and more boys to study maths and science could be a waste.  Research on twins shows that numerical aptitude is 75 per cent genetic.  Either both twin children are good at dealing with numbers or both are not.  There is also a 50 per cent genetic predilection for writing skills. Despite parents helping their children with homework and the like, it had little influence on academic achievement.  Furthermore, teachers and the schools attended whether private or public had no impact.  Children took to maths or English according to their genetic makeup. It is not clear if teachers are evenly well trained so students are benefiting evenly across the nation.  However, this is clutching at straws.  We all remember the lazy, bad teachers who threw a chapter of a book at use to scribble the lesson away while he/she played around at th...

 Working Class Englishman. Oh hum. An Australian travelled the streets of London and asked people what they thought Australians were really like. It was amazing how many English people had visited the big dusty land. They all, of course, told bad stories about their trips. This is the thing you do when you get back home apparently. There is this mistaken belief that all ex-pat Australians live in Earl's Court. They used to, but not anymore. They think we all work in bars - even in Australia. The interviewees kept looking around for a backpack, which I didn't have. English people are obsessed about the Australian accent saying it is funny, even though it is more London than London. After all that is where most of the convicts came from. Furthermore, the English have some of the strangest accents in the world. They think that Kylie Minogue is the sole representative of Australia. All their beliefs are based on her. This is despite the fact that Kylie h...

After more than a century of independence, we still have to put up with being stigmatized by the English as filthy colonials. This dates back to the time when England faced its first loss in the game of cricket to the ex-convict upstarts. An obviously "honorable" English woman actually burned the bails from the stumps in heartbreak at the humiliation. Aussies can always put on a posh accent at a barbecue for a laugh at the poms. You see, an Aussie who adopts this accent, and some do particularly on the ABC, loses a few mates and wonders why. As Ian Chappell the famous Aussie cricketer said to many English opposition players, "Have you had your monthly bath yet?" Though we sweat a lot because of the hot climate Australians do not smell. A shower every morning is part of the culture. The highfalutin Royal Geographical Society is treating Australians like dirt because a deal they had went bad. It holds a set of paintings by Thomas Baines done on his v...

'Shush!  I'm studying Spanish." Funny Animal Photos by Ty Buchanan http://www.adventure--australia.blogspot.com/ http://www.tysaustralia.blogspot.com/ http://adventure--australia.blogspot.com/atom.xml . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Vista Computer Solutions Blog        Australian Blog ★                          ALL BLOG ARTICLES · ──► ( BLOG HOME PAGE) Share Article

Many university students cannot do simple arithmetic or write a complete sentence. Without using spelling checkers, spelling is atrocious. This is because the school leaving test is overwhelmed by "choice" subjects. Oddly, English literature is preferred by many over plain English. Many history teachers cannot spell or understand correct grammar. They say they teach history not English. A large proportion of students have been accepted into university science and health when they have not done maths, i.e., applied arithmetic, in high school. The usual solution at university is to send you to the remedial teacher who throws up his hands and says you do not know the basics. Students usually go to or pay other students to correct their assignments before handing them in. The problem here is that examinations have to be passed though they have been brought down to the ridiculously low level of 10 per cent of the total subject mark. It has been made too easy to ge...

Google won a court case in Australia stopping others from using words similar to their trade name, for examples, boogle and doogle, etc. It seems Google is still intent on ruling the world over use of language. It is interfering with Sweden's intention to put a word in dictionaries. The Swedish version of the word "ungoogleable" is "ogooglebar" and is widely used. Google says it should not be in a dictionary as it is because part of the word "google" is a registered trade name. This is silly consider the word "hoovering"is in the Pocket Oxford dictionary. How much more power does Google want? It already has too much influence on societies. Google is not complaining about the word's inclusion. It wants a reference to Google being a trade name added to the definition. Sweden decided to leave the word out altogether. Google wants the word "Google" with a capital "G" shown , apparently to gain free adverti...

In a country where swearing in public is an accepted part of normal life it seems odd for Australian authorities to threaten tennis players with fines for doing it on court. At least it remains only a slim possibility at the moment. The problem is that professional tennis is televised in general viewing hours when children could be watching. Andy Murray, at the center of debate for swearing in his match with Denis Istomin, says he will not tone down his behavior. He could have been a little more diplomatic and announced that he would sincerely mend his ways. In a challenge with tennis authorities he would definitely lose. Sarcasm about moving the microphones further away from the court must surely be a joke. Spectators want to experience as much of the action as possible. Blaming other players for swearing more than himself is unsportsmanlike. Saying that swearing in languages other than English goes unnoticed is a bit "iffy" as well. http://www.adventure--...

Language proficiency in English speaking countries is falling. It is only recently that eBooks have taken off and people have gone back to reading pages of words in grammatically correct sentences. Even the new wave of e-reading is under threat as computer users transform the written word into the spoken word with software. A classic book can now be listened to on the way to and from work. Though texting is decreasing in popularity it is partially responsible for the failure of young people to learn correct spelling and grammar. Even dictionaries have a problem is choosing whether to cover words that are phonetically clear but are not accepted generally by the majority of writers. If such words become very popular, dictionary creators will have no choice but to include them. The problem with language is highlighted by the strange and funny errors seen in newspapers because proofreaders are no longer employed. One sees words such "betterest' and phrases like "Thats...

The truth is out - Aboriginals studied the stars thousands of years before ancient Europeans. Stonehenge is not the oldest stone construction that marked the summer and winter solstice. The Wadda Wurrung Aboriginals Built an egg-shaped structure of standing basalt stones that marks the solstices and the equinox (when the day has equal hours of night and day). The design of the Aboriginal "stonehenge" is completely different from the stonehenge in England. tops of stones mark the sun's movement in Australia whereas gaps in stones mark the solstices in England. This indicates that Aboriginals who were the first people to leave Africa were much more advanced and knowledgeable than other groups in the world. This knowledge was passed on to the next generation verbally. Europeans when they first arrived branded the Aboriginals as stupid people who could only count up to six - how wrong they were! Though the traditions of the Wadda Wurrung Aboriginals has been lost, songs...