What is primary/secondary education like in your country?
I was reading an NY Times article when I stumbled upon a slideshow of Nigeria. One of the pictures was of a school, and on the blackboard were the words "metamorphic, igneous, sedimentary, Earth's crust" and some other basic Earth science vocabulary. I thought to myself, "this is just like what we learn here in the states!"
So how is school in your country? How are classes conducted? What do your textbooks look like?
Posted Apr 16, 2012, 8:38 AM UTC
1723
Australia varies state by state - like in South Australia, high school starts in Year 8, but on the east coast, it starts in Year 7. Yeah, we find it weird too. We also don't have middle school, you go straight from primary (elementary) school to high school.
High school here is nothing like your movies, though I doubt they're an accurate representation of your high schools either. While there are cliques and social issues, school sports etc are much less of a big deal here, we don't have cheerleading at all (since school sports don't normally have an audience), which means that popularity can be based on lots of different things, depending on the school. When I was at a Special Music public school, for instance, the music kids were king. When I was at a crappy public school in the outer suburbs, the music kids were the bottom of the ladder.
Classes are pretty much the same as anywhere - teachers at the front, students at desks. I know my Indonesian friends were appalled by how we treat our teachers here - Australia is a really casual culture and a lot of us make friends with our teachers, it's not considered nerdy at all. Friendly insults directed at your teachers are considered perfectly acceptable, for instance.
As for textbooks, we barely had them. For science and maths, yeah. Though those textbooks, once again, vary a lot by state. In South Australia, textbooks are often pretty outdated since the school buys them and then you borrow them for the year. But in Victoria, each student is responsible for purchasing their own textbooks from a shop, so they always tend to have the latest editions. But they also have to fork out about $500/semester for books, so it sucks both ways =P
In the states schools are pretty much nothing like their movie counterparts, at least where I live. After going through my first semester of high school, I was asking myself, "Where are all the douchey jocks, and the mean girls?" Everyone seems to get along pretty well, and everyone has a group of friends they usually eat with. Teachers are pretty cool, and mostly everyone has a sort of laid back aura to them.
Plus, most of the kids are younger than twenty five.
ahahah
Trey is in his thirties and in high school as Teddy. Source: http://movieline.com/2009/09/15/who-are-the-oldest-actors-playing-high-schoolers-on-tv/
How were your tests structured?
Here, in a large public school, tests are mainly multiple choice in most classes. There are some classes where you need to give a free response to a question. There's no leaving exam that you are required to take after high school.
What did your textbooks look like? My math teacher keeps some old textbooks. I notice that as the publication date became closer to the present day, more and more pictures/white space/random junk (random information, "labs" in between chapters, review at the end of each section, labeling of standards). There was a textbook from the 80s that was all text, with some graphs. Then there was a book from the 90s that had a bit more extra stuff, but not unbearable. Our modern textbook is unbearable. It's huge (1100 pages) and filled with extra stuff (the content hasn't changed at all).
So what's the state of textbooks in Australia?
Depends very much on the subject, but one super important thing is that we don't have anything like the SATs here. Your entrance into university is dependent on your grades, and ONLY your grades, excepting performing arts courses and medicine. You don't have to do extra curriculurs, or take extra tests. Just get a high ranking at the end of Year 12. Anything above 50 will get you into an arts degree, but others (like medicine) require much higher (the highest is 99.75).
So yeah, no leaving exam, no SATs. Except for maths subjects, most Year 12 exams are based around 3 sections: multiple choice, short answer, and an essay section. So they tend to use this format all through high school, to get you used to it. Maths is usually the same idea, but instead it will be multiple choice, short problems, long problems.
As for textbooks, they're full of pictures and junk. But like I said, we barely use them.
HSC?
Is NSW specific, it's VCE in victoria, SACE in south australia. I tired to give details that were as close to nation-wide as I could get them, but there are huge differences between state systems, so correct anything that doesn't apply to your state =)