{"id":464,"date":"2011-11-07T11:15:42","date_gmt":"2011-11-07T11:15:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/?p=464"},"modified":"2011-11-07T11:15:42","modified_gmt":"2011-11-07T11:15:42","slug":"trainee-teachers-cant-count","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/trainee-teachers-cant-count\/","title":{"rendered":"Trainee Teachers Can’t Count"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Daily Mail has a report today<\/a> saying that one fifth of trainee teachers can not spell or do sums. One apparently took 37 resits before passing a maths test.<\/p>\n

Presumably the point of the article is to create a sense of outrage that “Our Kids” are being taught by unqualified teachers.<\/p>\n

There is also the question of how people can be old enough to go to teacher training college and not have learned how to spell or do basic maths.<\/p>\n

I know, I know their teachers couldn’t spell or do basic maths either.<\/p>\n

These stories pop up regularly, in fact Channel4 Dispatches had 2 one hour programs in February 2010, Kids Don’t Count, which you may still be able to watch here<\/a>.\u00a0 Kids Don’t Count featured Richard Dunne, a maths teaching expert from Maths Makes Sense<\/a>. This program claimed that it is possible to start a teacher training course to become a primary school teacher with only a grade C at GCSE maths.<\/p>\n

Watching the program I was struck by the difference in the manner of Richard’s interaction with the school children compared to their normal teachers. Richard was lively, animated, enthusiastic and got the whole class involved in solving problems. This problem solving included physically moving objects about. As far as I could tell the normal teachers, where much more subdued and spent most of their time talking to their pupils. Except when it was time for SATs revision when they just played them a CD of questions.<\/p>\n

Maths Makes Sense<\/a> is being sold and people are commenting enthusiastically about it. Though, as far as I can tell, it is a system aimed at schools and teachers.<\/p>\n

But why should children be limited to only learn from schools and teachers?<\/p>\n

What about parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles?<\/p>\n

Children do learn many things from the parents and other people around them, but it happens so naturally that we tend to take it for granted. Walking and talking for example. Would anyone seriously consider leaving it to schools to teach their children how to walk and talk.<\/p>\n

It seems to me that we tend to drastically underestimate how much we, as parents, contribute to our children’s learning. Until it goes wrong. If you Google “Girl in the window”, or look here<\/a> you can read the horrific story of Danni. Briefly on 13 July 2005 in Florida USA, Danni was found in a unwashed and crawling with lice in a room with a 4 foot high pile used nappies. Danni could not speak and as far as I know still can not. She may never be able to.<\/p>\n

I urge to read this story and I hope you will never underestimate the huge effect you have on your children.<\/p>\n

There are many ways we can help our children learn, such as listening to them read and helping them to learn to write. Others are so simple we may not notice,<\/p>\n