The Olympics are only ever about winning?

[alexandral]

Gmm, this put a spanner in my wheels of Olympic joy : The Olympics have never expressed an ethical imperative, only ever a selfish one. War without the guns. Some of the points are really hitting home: the death of Nodar Kumaritashvili, infamous Own the Podium programme, bad weather conditions. But ?

Tangentially, I dislike (or more correctly: find difficult) one of the things about educational system in the UK: it seems that a big amount of effort is spent on obscuring your child's results. How well is he/she doing? Where are they in comparison with everyone in the class? If you take your child's yearly report , most likely you will not find an answer to any of those questions, all you will find is 6 sheets full of common phrases. Personally I had to go and almost drag the answers out of the teachers (I bet they labeled me "that pushy Russian mother" in my daughter's school) and still ,the answers given are never precise, but always fuzzy and almost incomprehensible unless you spend hours and hours researching. Why am I ranting about that? I think that the attempts to cover the results are part of attempting to make education "ethical, not selfish".

Comments

[alexandral.livejournal.com]

You see, the strangest thing is that here it also is all abput grades. Teachers know exactly where your child is in the grades, they are just reluctant to disclose this information for some reason.

Tests are always very limited, I think. It is hard to devise a perfect test.

[arathesane.livejournal.com]

That is so strange. I don't understand that at all.

Yeah, I agree. Some standardized testing is necessary, of course, but to put all value on them and getting high scores is a detriment to a child's education I think.

[alexandral.livejournal.com]

I think from the teachers' point of view they try to encourage everyone and "celebrate their own successes". BUT! My other bee in the bonnet about the educational system is that already now 10 year olds are divided into two streams, one "higher achievers" and another "need encouragement". The devision frustrates me too - how someone from the bottom group can be expected to move upwards? And to add to this the foggy situation with the grades = I am very confused.