Rote learning is a favourite of Mauritians, even preached by teachers who profess high pass marks for their students.

This is the catch – all international education experts paid big money to come and evaluate/advise Mauritius on its education system ..deliver the same report. The curriculum is just too passive and rote learning is THE way to assess a ‘bright’ student who can recite a formula or a Shakespearean prose at the drop of the hat. And each time, the experts have asked the government to shake off the archaic system, it has shook the very foundation of political parties. Many politicians triggered ballistic effects as to trump the elections.

No, S Hawking did not do past papers. He is the outcome of the British Education system which has the record number of Nobel prize winners and gave the world its basket of inventors of the great industrial age.

Read Steven Pinker.

anyways:
http://blog.nbnakama.com/ketwaroo/2007/05/18/trackback-to-listen-to-cambridge%e2%80%a6-on-meetoos-blog/

I can’t not agree with that, because, if you dont practice something enough, you never get better at it (if not better, maybe quicker), with the amount of time provided for attempting all these questions, you need to have lots of work practice for all these questions.

Now, am not really a big fan of “doing home works”, but i never used to understand physics.. until 2 weeks before the exams i thought that i’ll work a few papers, atleast… in the exam i got saved from starting to derive everything from base then come to answer simple questions (like i did in my first pass at hsc).

Past papers are needed, but sure enough, i have seen ppl working past papers as if they are on drug, i never understood where they used to get the courage to work these out.. as ultimately.. in a perfect exams, previous questions asked must not be repeated after… but as you can see.. in many papers, old questions repeat over and over… the students have basically just found a flaw/open hole in cambridge papers and they have successfully exploited it to take advantage of it (they might be ultimately the one who will lose a lot, but cambridge reps is also scratched ..since if it becomes easier.. it lose its ‘magic’ for the mass)
Whether we like it or not..

Mrs Toorab
In 2007 religion interferring in government and education matters??

I have read that article some week ago, i thought it was funny that the government took such a step (though not surprised), what if the religious community of the new name that replaced “Mrs. Toorab” also didn’t like and wrote a letter? what if not religion accepted that? would there have been entries in the text book like:

“Last sunday the char *familly_name went to the seaside, Mrs char *mrs char *familly_name was wearing a nice blue char *cloth_type….”

Or maybe, we should have only this in that page:

A day at the seaside

Children,just imagine a day at the seaside with whoever and wherever you want and answer the following questions based form what you thought?

I almost forgot, i must write a letter to the ministry of education also, because i remember vaguely having read a primary student’s book where it was written “selven wore a flower pattern shirt”
I just hope that they’ll correct that :p, because selven doesn’t wear flower pattern shirt.

+$3|v3n

“As far as Mathematics is concerned, there are direct questions, which do not call upon the pupils’ capacity for reflection. As a result, the best way of making sure the pupils will pass their exams is to make them do the same type of exercise during the year.”

According to Bloom’s Taxonomy, here are the normal levels of abstraction that a student has to develop as he/she spends years in primary, secondary and tertiary level:

Knowledge => Comprehension => Application => Analysis => Synthesis => Evaluation

It seems that many students are trained up to level 3 (Application) only. More so, it seems that level 2 is mostly abstracted i.e. many students learn something by heart (level 1 – Knowledge) and apply that knowledge (level 3) without understanding it (level 2) first especially in secondary school.

Now, the teacher is saying that the culprit is Cambridge itself with exam papers that only ask for level 3 questions.

I’m not sure about this for two reasons:

• Mauritians generally work badly in General Paper where they are supposed to think (level 4, 5 and 6 of Bloom’s Taxonomy) therefore it is fair to say that the students are not being taught properly
• Cambridge did try to increase the level of the exams. I distinctly remember being given a box containing wires, water, wool, a clock, some tape, etc. and being asked during an practical Physics exam to prove one law. And, as you can guess, the results were pathetic (I managed to get 1 ) and the year after Cambridge reverted to a more “classical” paper with only questions with predictable answers.

My opinion is that Cambridge as a business entity does not care about giving us stupid exams to do. But some people there who are pedagogues by heart are trying to make things move in the right direction.

I suppose we need to help them somehow. I guess my students will agree that I’m trying to bring my little contribution to the whole process…

He seems to be saying that it is in fact Cambridge’s fault as the exam questions are badly set: “As far as Mathematics is concerned, there are direct questions, which do not call upon the pupils’ capacity for reflection”…

I’ll be waiting for the next post on AJAX….and if possible something on ASP.NET v/s Ruby on Rails on another day…

In retrospection i think that OS shud have been a bit of the same, understanding the concepts rather than learning definitions! I havent taken ur class this yr tho so maybe thats the case for the 2nd yrs this time around!

from experience i fink a possible solution would be having open book tests and exams! During my time in electrical engineering i had a couple of modules wiv Charlie and all his tests were open book. N tho we all brought books and loads of notes for the test, there wasnt even time to check anyfin! All the questions asked for some real finkin instead of just reacalling from memory. So if u didnot understand anyfin during the lectures, then the books were of no use during the test!!

Pascal grosset did the same fing for the VR module this yr. open book tests! and tho many students whined and moaned coz no question came out of the notes, i found it real cool coz it was about applying wat i learned. must say i got pretty gud marks as well

imho this is the way to go. we need to shift the focus from memorising to really understanding. as long as the system only tests the students ability to memorise loads of stuff to get good grades, then they r neva gonna put it the xtra effort to really understand thing. coz sadly rite now in most cases, u get a definition wrong u lose ur marks, understanding the concept aint really important!!

pity no 1 has thought of introducing open book exams at uom, now that wud be fun!!

well i’ve worked lots of past papers too when i was in HSC but i also think if the questions,for the exams tend to repeat themselves year after year.. maybe if questions weren’t so much alike students wonldn’t have bothered about working that much pastpapers and eventually concentrating on the actual cool stuff about the subjects..

Well having a module “about how to study” i don’t think that its at university level that we should teach that.. these stuffs should be taught in secondary itself..

we are already complaining about the course being bulky and now bringing another module to it :S