Education

'Experts' in education have many different ideas about what it actually is. Look at three definitions and decide which you most agree with and why:

1. Teaching the young the culture and traditions of society.
2. Introducing the young to sensible and productive ways of thinking and doing.
3. Helping the young to develop their natural personal talents.

Which school subject would you expect to find the following questions in? Do you know any of the answers?

1. When did the Second World War end?
2. What is the capital of Columbia?
3. Who wrote Bleak House?
4. How many kilobytes are there in a megabyte?
5. Who invented the theory of relativity?
6. What's 5 times 18 divided by 4?
7. How many legs does an insect have?
8. What is water made of?

This is a clip from a British TV show, in which students have to go to a 1950's boarding school. How well do you think they did at 1950's exams? How well do you think that you would do?

As much as students complain about their teachers, remember... things could always have been worse! Imagine being taught by this guy...

Education vocab:

behave                                 

cheat

do

fail

learn

leave

pass

revise

start

study

take

boarding school

graduate

head master

nursery school

primary school

private school

pupil

professor

religious school

secondary school

state school

student

As usual let's end with a song. This is Pink Floyd performing Another Brick in the Wall. It contains the famous line 'We don't need no education' (the double negative shows that obviously they do need some education!)

The song is not actually against education as the following line 'We don't need no thought control' clearly shows. The title of the song compares teachers to bricks in the wall of the establishment, whose job is to install the values of that society into their students.

Answers:

1. 1945 2. Bogota 3. Charles Dickens 4. 1,024 5. Albert Einstein 6. 22 1/2 7. six 8. hydrogen and oxygen