I happened to drive past Bentley Park College in Cairns today and noticed their sign at the entrance.
Bentley Park College is a State School catering to preschool through to grade 12.
I have kindly selected a couple of suggestions for their “Farther"s Day Gift Stall”.
If the persons running the school cannot choose the correct words or punctuation marks, what chance do the students have?
I’d hope they do know better!
In advertising anything goes, including deliberate errors to help lock in the memory the core message of the add.
Can we be so sure they don’t also have a Marketing 101 class for the senior students?
How much extra exposure do they now have with their notice hitting Choice?
P.S.
I did note the suggestion of “English Grammar for Dummies” is the 2nd Australian Edition!
How caring that the ‘For Dummies’ people wrote a book solely for Australia. Until now I didn’t appreciate we do grammar differently down under?
It’s all marketing.
It could be right. It could be a celebrating a day which is a long way off.
As I will be driving past it again today, I will note if anything has changed.
I have to go to our local Supa IGA at Edmonton to buy some Pauls Physical milk for my wife as neither Coles or Woollies stock it anymore, and I will also buy some Dairy Farmers Heart Active milk for myself as Coles have jacked their price up to $3.05/L whilst our Supa IGA has dropped their price down to $2.70/L.
Yes. The sign has changed. Please excuse the finger in the photo but I could hardly see the sign due to the sunlight.
However they must have not had a comma symbol to correct the apostrophe error.
It appears that either someone does read the Choice Community or that someone in the group of students and supervisors who were playing basketball nearby under a covered court wondered why I was taking photos of the sign.
It reminded of a cartoon in a newsletter from a supplier back in the 1980’s.
It featured a person who had just bought a PC and typed “Say hello”…
The PC responded “Where’s the please?”
The next frame stated “If you make a mistake, just hit enter. That will take care of it”.
The PC then says “Hey Doap. Karn’t U Spel”.
The person returns with an axe and the PC says “Hey wait on. Let’s be friends”.
The final frame shows the smashed PC with the axe sticking out of the top and the person in a straight jacket being carried on a stretcher to the white cart waiting outside.
They may have been doing distance education??
Also, Is it Father’s Day or Fathers’ Day? As I think it applies to all fathers, therefore " fathers’ " (the multiple version) is correct.
I guess either would be correct ie It’s your father’s day or it could be a reflection as you note of all fathers. But if you do look it up most are spelt with Father’s rather than Fathers’. From the Wiki article on the day:
" In the United States, Dodd used the “Fathers’ Day” spelling on her original petition for the holiday,[12] but the spelling “Father’s Day” was already used in 1913 when a bill was introduced to the U.S. Congress as the first attempt to establish the holiday,[23] and it was still spelled the same way when its creator was commended in 2008 by the U.S. Congress."
But regardless a double quote mark (") rather than a single quote mark (’) probably should not have been used.
Whatever about the spelling, thanks for the history that goes some way towards backing my take on all these days that I call “Shopkeepers’ Day”.
“Father’s” would of course be the spelling to expect if an Australian shop were selling fathers, “Buy you father’s here!”
An article regarding classroom sizes in Australia.
Way back when I was at school, every class I was ever in after Grade 1 & 2 in Herberton was over 30 kids, and in Grade 7, there were 73 kids.
Now that was something to complain about.
In Grade 1 & 2, there were only 3 of us and I was always top of the class.
An article regarding teaching in Australia.
A not very flattering article regarding education in Australia.
Another fail.
A very unflattering article regarding education standards in Australia.
The challenge I face with the education system is that teachers/school administrators don’t or don’t want to tell parents exactly the way it is with their children. I get the impression that if they provide negative responses/comments, that they may be liable for the poor performance of their students.
Report cards (parent teacher interviews) are now generic waffle where teacher selected from a vetted and approve list of comments…trying to find one that best suits a child. Negative comments don’t exist anymore and other working such as ‘makes good effort’ or ‘has basic understanding’ have crept in.
If a parent got a comment that their child was clearly struggling with something, it might give the parents a opportunity to intervene and gain support to assist their child.
I can keep going on, but the system has changed enormously since I was at school and it now seems that no-one wants to offend or be negative about anything which is a major failing. The other major failing is the current curriculum is full or ‘fluff’ which possibly reduces time spent on the basics.
Also a very unhelpful one of you are looking for a proper assessment and linked recommendations for solutions.
Remarkably the situation seems to be a real version of ‘ground hog day’?
Well, March 2017 
And the Commonwealth Minister has been quick on the draw, to point the finger at the states.
Political distraction or preemptive of future Federal policy?
P.S.
For the long suffering parents of school age children will education ever not be a political football?
It’s also worth a note that no two of us learn in quite the same way. I’ll keep my head down on suggesting the most appropriate teaching strategies and effective environments for leaning.
Individualism vs conformance, might be the two extremes in approach.
And yet another aspect where there is no uniformity across state lines. Each must have it perfect and it is the other states and territories screwing up.
On the other hand, there is near universal arm waving that replaces education in the USA, and as usual we follow along as if the USA is the end all of everything. If not the US then the UK. Why not emulate Finland or another place that can demonstrate a successful educational program?
One day when my wife was helping out at our son’s pre-school almost 40 years ago, she was checking the things the kids had written and was corecting spelling mistakes.
The teacher said to her not to do corrections as she claimed that it discouraged the children.
Of course, the teachers today may not even be able to detect mistakes.
An article with suggestions as to what Australia can do to improve education standards.
An article regarding teaching in Australia.
