English in Public and Private schools
I brought my son to the office today, as the school is closed as the first day of the new year, "planning day" or whatever they call it.
I'm concerned, son is doing his English homework and asks for help every now and then, both to check and also to ask for correct words and such .. he's in fourth grade and should know lots of the stuff he's asking about. It's almost like they did not taught the kids anything in grades two and three -- this was at the public school, they private school has a bit higher requirements and demands for real knowledge.
Stuff he's struggling with:
- Name of months and their spelling
- Name of weekdays and their spelling
- Names and spellings of everyday objects
Note: We're not native English speakers.
How can this be? Either the public school system is very broken and doesn't check students actual knowledge .. my son is diagnosed with ADHD and have some difficulties learning stuff as focus and concentration is all over the place, but passing through two grades without learning the most basic things, I blame the school system, or particularly the public school he went to.
There might be a lazy-factor as well as the ADHD, son has been saying phrases in this "school yard English" since second grade, not quite English but more like sounds that could be described as bad-lip-reading or misheard lyrics. Son is into rap-music, he thinks, but what he quotes as rap is not English or at least not English words.
Every now and then son comes asking for words and phrases, in either "school yard English" or something he has read somewhere, which I have to interpret and give him the correct meaning in English and also explain in our native language.
Side note: Most of the English I know today, is self taught. The teachers I've had in primary school were worse than suck, grade 7 through 9 was absolutely terrible, the teacher got on sick leave on our lessons, only our class. I later worked with tech support and had daily calls with counterparts in California, to the point where new staff in CA asked where in CA I was as they could not place/locate my accent to either LA or SF. Neither, Europe. Nowadays, I switch between my native language and English without any trouble, fluent in English and often have easier to find words in English than in my native language. I speak 2 languages fluently but understand another 2-4 languages and learning yet another one.