School Days
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Approach:  One to one
ACCESS
Level: Year 4 and year 8
Focus: Differences between present and past  
Resources:
Video recording on laptop computer
180Kb
Questions/instructions:  

This activity uses the computer.
In this activity you are going to watch a video of an elderly person talking about their school days. Listen carefully and think about how school today is different.
Click the School Days button.

 voice-over:
I’m happy to be here to talk to you about when I was at school. I was at this one primary school from primer one to standard six, at one school.
You probably want to know how we got to school. Well everybody in the school walked. And some people had a long way to walk.
We did not have a uniform at school. But at my school none of us had a uniform we just wore what was appropriate for the weather.
School started at nine o’clock and we finished at three o’clock. But when you were in the infant classes of course you got out at two o’clock. Everybody used to play happily togethetr and some of the games we played were rounders, which I think is baseball today. Boys had their own separate playground and the girls had their separate playground.
Never had such a thing as a ballpoint pen. It wasn’t invented. But when I was at school we wrote on the blackboard when you were in the younger classes. And then we wrote in books. And then what a “red letter day” when we were... after doing writing exams and we went on to ink. But that really wasn’t so good because ink, you know, with an ink well and you had to dip your pen in this ink and ohh sometimes your pen didn’t work very well and it was awfully messy.
And the school rules were strict. Of course there was caning when I was at school. When I was in standard four I got the cane because I had made four mistakes in spelling. And I don’t know what was wrong with my hand but it must have been a bit soft because I got a big blister.
Our classes were big. They really were big, about up to 40 children. But we seemed to ummm... The headmaster used to come around. There were no headmistresses in my day at primary school. And the headmasters used to come around at times and fire questions to us like a general knowledge or arithmetic and you know that was good really because we got to know him. I don’t know whether they do that today or not.
 
 
   
 
% responses
2009 ('05)
y4
y8
1. What is different about school in the past compared to today?    
Mentioned:
 differences in writing implements
(ink and blackboard vs. pencils and pens)
 51 (49) 62 (58)
separate playgrounds (games) for boys and girls
56 (51) 51 (52)
walking vs. going in cars to school
28 (39) 53 (55)
large class sizes, shortage of teachers
39 (39) 41 (30)
mentions discipline issues 53 (58) 86 (87)
2. Do you think schooling is better today than in the past?    
3. What are your reasons for saying that?    
Reasoning: good, clear reasoning for opinion with lots of examples/reasons 11 (12) 22 (22)
reasonable explanation with a couple of examples/reasons 31 (41) 42 (50)
some explanation, but quite weak 42 (33) 32 (24)
4. Why is it good to listen to stories like this one about the past?    
to appreciate how things have improved/changed 18 (16) 44 (51)
tells you how things were (history) 67 (71) 82 (78)

Total score:
 8–10
6 (7) 21 (21)
6–7
23 (32) 41 (46)
4–5
41 (34) 31 (25)
2–3
22 (22) 7 (8)
0–1 8 (5)
0 (1)
Subgroup Analysis [Click on charts to enlarge] :
Year 4
Year 8
Commentary:
Differences in discipline issues were what most year 8 students commented on when comparing schooling in the past with schooling today. Performance was similar in 2005 and 2009. Pasifika students scored markedly lower than Pakeha students, and, at year 8 level, markedly lower also than Mäori students.