The Shalampax School Board has unanimously passed a motion put forward by Religco to teach Created Evolution, the Church of Infinitiaty’s doctrine concerning the origin of species, in science classes in all grades of the Shalampax School.
Starting in the next school year, the curriculum will include the truth of Created Evolution alongside the theories of creationism, intelligent design and uncreated evolution.
Today is Nashonall Teetchars Dae, the day set aside for everyone in the tiny nation of Shalampax to commemorate the fine work done by the dedicated teachers employed by our school. Every year on this day we show all due appreciation of the superb job that our teachers have done in educating our students.
In answer to your questions:
The traditional teaching style, wherein a teacher stands in front of a class and presents lessons day-in and day-out, is teacher-paced, rather than learner-paced. Until now, this has been the pedagogical approach at the Shalampax School.
The problem with teacher-paced teaching is that it frustrates students who are incapable of keeping up, while boring those who could learn at a faster clip. Both of these groups of children end up learning considerably less than they could if the lessons were geared to their learning speeds and styles. As a result, the teacher may teach at a speed and in a style that is appropriate for just one, or even none of the students in the class,
After moving to a learner-paced teaching style, students will be assigned learning objectives to achieve, which they will work at in the way that is most accommodating to their personal learning styles. And students will, hopefully, achieve those objectives at a pace appropriate for them. Because this is Shalampax, it is recognized that, for some students and some objectives, this will mean that the objectives will never be met, but that too is a lesson in life.
It is no secret that Shalampaxian students usually perform poorly on any of the tests they take in school. Some people, including most members of the school board, believe that these results are not indicative of a lack of intelligence or knowledge. Instead, these people contend that the poor scores are solely a result of poor test-taking skills.
To compensate for this deficiency, the school board has announced that it will make the following changes to all tests and exams administered in the Shalampax school:
It is no secret that students in Shalampax’s school would have scored much worse on standardized math, science, language, history and just about any other tests than students in other countries, assuming, of course, that we had ever allowed our students to be tested. We haven’t. At least, not so far.
Hell, let’s be honest. Our students would have scored poorly relative to tree stumps, even if the tree stumps got much tougher tests and a lot less time to complete them.
Shalampaxians have never put a lot of stock in formal education, or informal education either for that matter. Yet, a transformation is underway that is expected to give Shalampaxians a much greater appreciation of the tremendous worth of education.
A couple of members of the Shalampax school board recently read an article in the popular press about the value that education can contribute to society—any society. Having no opinions of their own on the matter, the school board members decided it would be easiest if they just bought into the concept rather than debating it.
