Mood: exhausted
Listening to:'Halo' by Beyonce
Hungry for: nothing! I'm FULL!!!
I'm BACK, everybody! Wow, this place has changed since I left. I mean, I get readers from really cool places like Bahrain and Lithuania now. I mean, a year ago, I would be jumping up and down if someone from my class (who I had begged consistently for about six months) went on my blog for about six seconds. Oh, and I have two new followers. Welcome aboard!
As you know, summer is my time to unleash my petty teenager. You know, the person who's buried inside all nerds, even the most diehard ones - the inner person who really does care if their nailpolish is chipped, and a shu uemura eyelash curler can really make their day. So I've been shopping, and indulging in my love of fashion and makeup and music - just being a kid, for once, unburdened by screaming teachers and tedious detentions and endless piles of homework. I only have a few days of this left.
I have no problem admitting that at heart, I'm just a normal teenager.
In other news, I've found my perfect swimsuit!
It's a black one piece (classic, much!) and can be worn with spaghetti straps or strapless. It's simple, tummy-tucking, and is, like, classic 40's pinup style. So sweet. I also bought a kaftan to go with it - white, with brown and pink detail. So cool.
At the moment, I'm trying to track down an eyelash curler. Why Australia cannot stock decent eyelash curlers are really beyond me.
But enough on makeup. I'm not being fair on my male readers.
I'm going to rant again.
The Australian government has recently launched a site called 'My School', which compares every school in the country, public, private, primary, secondary, with each other. I personally think it's a really good idea - because even though the information isn't 100% perfect, it gives you a good idea which school is good, and which school is not.
And of course, most people here aren't really down with that.
I mean, for all eight years that I went to my primary school, we were always playing with the idea of either changing schools or homeschooling me. Homeschooling wasn't really an option - although when I was in grade six and fed up with school I was adamant I would be homeschool - and my school convinced me over and over that the school I was going to was offering the most advanced and sophisticated academic programs available in my area. Now, according to this My School site, I know that that's a load of bull and you can't trust anything teachers say anymore.
The only thing worse than failure is trying to cover up a failure. If you're bad at something, admit it! If you're good at something, be proud of it! There is an increasingly alarming culture of hiding everything - good and bad - about yourself. I mean, why? Why is it so bad to accept that the school you work at is crap because you're an incompetent teacher who fails to produce satisfactory students? That's your fault - blame your laziness, not the website. Australian academic standards are so low and the teaching standards are even worse, and now something that actually might expose and solve this and people are saying it's 'unfair' and 'depressing' and whatever garbage their spewing to the media. As a student, growing up here in Australia, the teaching standards and work ethic here has certainly been disappointing - I mean, they go on rallies to demand better pay when they all drive BMW's and can't even teach children how to read and write properly. In Asia, only the most elite graduates can become teachers. Here, you don't even need to pass school to teach Australia's next generation.
So yeah, I'm kind of pissed.
And yet they try to push the brightest graduates into some of Australia's underperforming schools. This is in the Teach for Australia programme.
ReplyDeleteHave heard a lot about the My School website.
The year 7s, in particular, might get tested 3 months after they enter their new school. (Was this the case with you? How did you and your classmates cope?)
In Australia it is well known that private schools (or public schools, in England), offer scholarships to up their overall TEE score, to make their school seem more appealing. I think it's kind of cheating, but it's very effective - the scholarships they offer are near impossible to get, and by only accepting the very best, they get automatic publicity.
ReplyDeleteI didn't get a test after three months in my new school - I think that's a new thing. I know that my primary school really doesn't want anything to do with me, other than advertise that I got into an academic selective school - they consider people who don't go to the local high school to be like, traitors or something, it's ridiculous. They used to tolerate all the rich kids who lived by the river going to poshy private schools but they thought i was hitting below the belt when people started deserting in favour of other public schools, including the one I go to now. It's crazy.