to think that "literacy" and "numeracy" as school subjects sounds utterly naff, ignorant and illiterate?

[GreensleevesSusan]

talk about "committee thinking". WHOSE stupid idea was it to change "English" and "Maths" to "literacy" and "numeracy"? They aren't subjects or lesson titles fgs. It sounds crap.

AIBUIYO?

They ARE NOT expressive in the least. They are extemely vague and silly. Though mostly I don't think it matters all that much what they're called - greeny's sensitivities aside - it's all just the usual stuff at the end of the day.

Except now, obviously, it has a GOAL at the end of it. Infact Hatrick, your name is perfect!

mmmmm

my problem with dd coming home & telling me she did numeracy (I should prob be grateful for being told she did anything) is that the word means nothing to her. I unwisely said, "oh, maths" to be griped away at, changed it to "number work?" to be told numeracy had nothing to do with numbers (she is 7 & therefore knows more than me about everything).

I rememebr when 'cookery' became 'Home Economics' .

Anyway, for me it involed the most stomach turning cheese mornay which I never understood or had occasion the make again. Whatever subject it came under, I was still rubbish at it.

Hmmm..Maybe the second subject just showed you how to make the same things more economically

I don't question any new fangled stuff too much these days. I still call the one in charge the Head Mistress, which either sounds terribly old fashioned or like someone involve in bondage role-play. I keep being told it's Head Teacher.

almost as vomitworthy as "Domestic Science"

Not at all unreasonable - and I have no doubt the usage was dumped on schools from on high.

Saw in yesterday's paper that "Research undertaken during the second phase of the trial indicated that candidates with GCSEs at grade C or above did less well than might be expected in trial assessments for functional skills" but the QCA refused to release details.

Time to start counting the spoons, IMHO.

TinyGang, haven't they stopped 'cooking' in alot of schools. Isn't that what Pru Leith is campaigning for ?

I thought it was called Food Technology now.

GS my dsis was told at her intro-to-reception evening lately that they've changed the names because children didn't see the relevance of maths for everyday life, the aim is to make it seem relevant to what they do.

not saying that's a good idea but that was what she was told.

don't really care what there called tbh as long as the teachers inspire the children in what there doing

Ah this was way back when I was at school.

I hated cookery lessons. I like cooking now and I liked doing it at home with my mum...but at school it was awful.

Agree with OP

Literacy and numeracy are not 'subjects' surely?

The words don't desribe an activity or a lesson, as Greeny says. They are abstract terms. It's ironic that children are implicitly begin taught to mangle the English language IN SCHOOL

*being not begin

Cookery - HE - Domestic Science, now Food Technolgy. Good God.

Read an excellent (IMO) book about Domestic Science in schools which was called Wasting Girls' Time.

Now that was a book that didn't pussyfoot about.

talking of mangling the language, one of dd's spellings last week in a list of words with their past tenses, was "dove" as the past of dive. sweet teacher but she genuinely didn't know it was wrong.

I think 'dove' is the past tense of 'dive' though isn't it? (Prob'ly I'm wrong - I forgot to make the dc's packed lunches today so don't take too much notice of me)

choosyfloosy - do you think that it is a waste of time (girls' or boys') to teach nutrition and cooking skills in schools?

In France, hygiene was taught in schools until the 1960s, when the widespread use of antibiotics was thought to render the instruction of good practice in hygiene superfluous. A recent book (On s'en lave les mains) has raised the debate as to whether hygiene should not be reintroduced as a school subject.

Anna, the book had several main points:

1. Home Economics in itself was the creation of an artificial sphere - 'the home' - and placing everything that could take place in the home arbitrarily as part of this subject.

2. Domestic Science was the further creation of a subject that could be assessed in an academic form by exams - usually very badly and again arbitrarily, e.g. an example was given of a marking scheme where children were marked down for serving a Victoria Sponge as a pudding rather than a cake.

3. Many children who wanted to learn cooking skills were prevented from doing so by the syllabus and the demands made of teachers.

I would COMPLETELY agree that cookery, nutrition and hygiene are good subjects to learn at school. In my view and in my limited experience of being taught Home Economics 20 years ago, there was very little of any of these in the subject as it was taught then.

choosy - thanks for the synopsis

Surely the issue is that when subjects are given names that are not plain English, the contents end up getting distorted and away from the point also?

Personally, I would like my daughter to be taught:

• reading
• writing
• spelling
• grammar
• story writing
• nutrition
• cooking
• hygiene

and a hell of a lot of other things where the name of the subject has an application to real life. The more jargon-like the subject name the more wary I become about the contents

Yes... but what about a lesson where reading and writing were taught in a natural way, such as 'read this passage and then write a story in response to it...' to me, calling that literacy is perfectly reasonable. In my day that would have been called Comprehension and it would have been titanically, appallingly dull (but that's another issue).

I think "reading comprehension" (which is what it was called in my small, private prep school) is more descriptive than "literacy"

Try teaching Literacy and Numeracy to 5/6 year olds -it feels all wrong. Especially when children are told what the 'Learning Outcomes' for the sesson will be. I had to escape, it went against all my instincts. What happened to the fun and enjoyment of a story, rather than phonics and attainment levels???

Oh God, "learning outcomes" is truly horrendous jargon .