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According to this report from the BBC, NZ school students flummoxed by the word "trivial" in a quotation from Caesar have started a petition not to be marked down for not knowing it.

Is "trivial" that unusual a word in New Zealand? If you're studying Caesar, wouldn't you have studied this quotation and looked up the word if you didn't know it?

At any rate, it's yet more evidence, if any were needed, that modern young people these days all became rubbish after I stopped being one.

Is it me or is the BBC news site getting more - trashy. Or is that just the way of all news sites today online for the clicks?


As for the issue, considering only 2600 students voted for the question to be ignored its probably a trivial number compared to the total number of students who sat the exam. Plus you've got to consider how many of that number voted for it because they didn't understand that specific word and how many voted just because they already got a low score and getting one more question out of the mark improves their standing.

I'd wager they should know the meaning of the word (though I've no idea what age year 13 are) and in most cases the questions for the exam are primed into students by their teachers well before the exam (esp, in my experience, for English Lit style exams).

It likely goes to show how many people are not reading enough, but also how much language being used today in media is "dumbed down" to make it more "accessible". So its not just that people are not reading, but that much of the language used in newspapers, television, adverts and even many modern books and computer games; is all simplified to make it far more accessible. It's that old system whereby a simplistic marketing concept is taken into the extremes. In fact I'd wager many of the simplifications used are more the result of closed mind executive choices made in an office, where such viewpoints can get taken to extremes very easily with limited counterpoint.


Heck you can see it in company emails. I regularly get emails from companies in a professional capacity which start of "Hi!" It makes me laugh a little when they are super casual in the email and then attached onto the bottom is the serious, proper blurb about how the email contents are all private etc...

Students entering Year 13 are usually aged between 16.5 and 18.

 Overread wrote:
Is it me or is the BBC news site getting more - trashy. Or is that just the way of all news sites today online for the clicks?

They are a bit, like everyone. There is far worse, though.

I think the BBC has more of these flighty pieces but they still do lots of very good serious stuff.

How can you not know what "trivial" means? They should know that word, it is the best word. It makes it so easy just to dismiss any point. Just call it 'trivial' and be done.

Anyways, I am starting to suspect that I actually speak better English than native English speakers... Or at least that I know more words.
To be honest though, English just has so many words... Like way more than any other language I know. And most of those words are gratuitously sesquipedialian and could perfectly be conveyed with more concise or uncomplicated expressions. But not trivial. Trivial is one of the best words.

I distinctly remember one lesson in my top-set English class at high school, where the teacher had to drop the planned syllabus for a day to teach half the class what an 'adverb' was.

This was in Year 11 during the run-up to GCSEs, so half the kids were already 16, and there our teacher was, visibly exasperated with having to teach basic elements of English to the school's best hope for A-A* exam marks that year.

Personally, I think everyone did know what they were, but in that way where it had become second-nature to use something correctly while forgetting precisely why. I certainly can't recall any time after being taught what adverbs and things were back in primary school where we were expected to explicitly use them. So when it came to having to give an example of one, after so many years of unconsciously using them, people were rather stumped.

They'd not had to dissect their own use of the language for over half a decade. "Circle the adverb in this sentence" hadn't been a task set for them since they were half their age. It's a little akin to how you hear so many parents expressing shock at how little they can help with their kids' homework, even though they've been using the same lessons it's teaching for decades. I've little doubt that asking either of my parents to define a fair number of 'basic' English terms would result in a pained look of 'oh bugger...' and repeated groans of "I should know this, I should know this...".

...But I fear I've rather veered away from the anecdote, at this point.

More to the point of the thread, not knowing the definition of a word in a rather important quote you need to know is, in my opinion, your own damn fault. As Overread, my experience in school was that everything not explicitly on the syllabus and not likely to be on the exam was utterly unimportant, and great pains were taken to make sure you knew only what you had to know for the school to get its valuable A-A* results at the expense of every other student, and be able to wave its metaphorical dick around for each and every student to pass these very important exams.

Between that and the idea that, maybe, if you don't know what a word in an important quote means, you should probably check a dictionary, there's very little anyone but the students themselves could've done.

Well this is the opposite of trivial. How the hell can they not know what trivial means? Honestly knowing what trivial means should be a trivial affair!

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Anyways, I am starting to suspect that I actually speak better English than native English speakers...

I find non-native speakers (even bad ones) often have a much better grasp of the actual rules behind the language than native speakers. We learn it instinctively and speak it as such, but ask us to explain grammar and syntax and we'll probably feth it up most of the time because we don't actively think of our words that way.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Anyways, I am starting to suspect that I actually speak better English than native English speakers... Or at least that I know more words.

It's a well-known phenomenon that native speakers are typically "worse" at their own languages than non-native speakers. A combination of national slang, quirks of regional dialects, informal evolution of the language, and a general idea that most people tend to know what you mean if you feth up a little anyway all contribute to native speakers not necessarily needing to be 100% accurate with what they say and how they say it. I visited a friend in Germany not long ago, and their friend was over one of the days. They chatted in English around me, both very well and casual enough, but in German with each other, and they noted just how difficult it was to translate some of what they were saying due to various informal quirks and evolutions that nobody but a native speaker would really be able to grasp. When I was talking to them--one of them had studied British English in further education--I often had to try and talk around my own ingrained quirks of English, whereas another native English speaker wouldn't have had an issue.

There's always a certain formality maintained with any language you aren't using on a regular basis, especially if you're not conversing with anyone in it. In a way, I'm slowly helping my friend speak poorer-quality English.

720 I very much agree with your points and you raise a great point on the fact that once you're past learning the mechanics of your own language, the school structure eases off on the specifics.

Personally I think this is a mistake because not only does it mean that you end up getting into your advanced years without a proper reinforced understanding of the structure of your own language, but it also makes it a lot harder to learn other languages. Because many of the mechanics of another language are much harder to work out if you're not really overtly sure of the mechanics of your own language.


You can see this in many many things though, not just language. Hobbies are a fantastic example. I know many people who are really great photographers or painters, but who have no basic understanding of what they are doing. They can do it, but they cannot understand the structure of interactions, thoughts and mechanics that lead up to what they produce - at least not in a way that lets them understand the process themselves and then communicate it to another person.


In my view the basics of mechanics of language should be reinforced teaching each year at school. I agree that once you've learned what an adverb is you then forget it next year after the summer holidays and when it never again appears on the test paper. 5 years later when you're about ready to leave school I'd wager many except the top English class students, might not even recall adverbs exist! Oh they know adverbs themselves and can use them in sentences and essays, but they can't pick them out or really remember what they are.


I often think its a symptom of an ever increasingly "Tickbox" mentality teaching system whereby once its taught once its then dis-guarded and forgotten. A level of knowledge that teachers (of each subject) assume you recall because you did it once 5 years ago for 3 weeks worth of a few half hour lessons.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
How can you not know what "trivial" means? They should know that word, it is the best word. It makes it so easy just to dismiss any point. Just call it 'trivial' and be done.

Anyways, I am starting to suspect that I actually speak better English than native English speakers... Or at least that I know more words.
To be honest though, English just has so many words... Like way more than any other language I know. And most of those words are gratuitously sesquipedialian and could perfectly be conveyed with more concise or uncomplicated expressions. But not trivial. Trivial is one of the best words.

James D. Nicoll wrote:“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”

H. Beam Piper wrote:“English is the product of a Saxon warrior trying to make a date with an Angle bar-maid, and as such is no more legitimate than any of the other products of that conversation.”

“...you know what English is? The result of the efforts of Norman men-at-arms to make dates with Saxon barmaids.”

Ugh. Entitled students looking for an excuse.

Trivial is a commonly used word - the worst part is that the education system is letting them get away with it.

Still, soon these students will be in the real, post-school world and will discover that it doesn’t care if you think something is upsetting or unfair.

 Gordy2000 wrote:
Ugh. Entitled students looking for an excuse.

Trivial is a commonly used word - the worst part is that the education system is letting them get away with it.

Still, soon these students will be in the real, post-school world and will discover that it doesn’t care if you think something is upsetting or unfair.

You seem awfully upset over such a trivial matter.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Gordy2000 wrote:
Ugh. Entitled students looking for an excuse.

Trivial is a commonly used word - the worst part is that the education system is letting them get away with it.

Still, soon these students will be in the real, post-school world and will discover that it doesn’t care if you think something is upsetting or unfair.

You seem awfully upset over such a trivial matter.

Don't trivialize this glaring problem

I distinctly remember one lesson in my top-set English class at high school, where the teacher had to drop the planned syllabus for a day to teach half the class what an 'adverb' was.

I recall similar lessons on very rare occasion. I remember our English teacher getting really worked up because many in the class couldn’t explain what nouns, verbs and adjectives were, so decided to teach a lesson about that. But the thing was, she had been our teacher for something like 3 years at that point so whose fault was it exactly that people didn’t know? Who did she think was teaching it?

Being a teacher myself now I find it much easier to criticise my old teachers, I know exactly who showed good practice and who didn’t.

Heh heh heh. This is one reason why I like the 40k universe. If you get into it, by god you will become literate.

I could read at college level in 4th grade and sometimes I have to either look up a word on a 40k novel or reason it's meaning by context and inference.

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
Heh heh heh. This is one reason why I like the 40k universe. If you get into it, by god you will become literate.

I could read at college level in 4th grade and sometimes I have to either look up a word on a 40k novel or reason it's meaning by context and inference.

40K Novels are odd, I've noticed that they tend to throw a complicated word in here and there almost at random whilst the rest of their prose is what I'd consider quite modern style. It's very different to reading, say, a much earlier written book where the writing has a totally different feel to it through the entirety of the work.

 LordofHats wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Gordy2000 wrote:
Ugh. Entitled students looking for an excuse.

Trivial is a commonly used word - the worst part is that the education system is letting them get away with it.

Still, soon these students will be in the real, post-school world and will discover that it doesn’t care if you think something is upsetting or unfair.

You seem awfully upset over such a trivial matter.

Don't trivialize this glaring problem

But even your objection is trivial!

Don't trivialize my opinion!

Okay I'm out of ideas. This doesn't work as well as some of the other punny runs we've made around here XD

Literacy is essential, not merely a trivial persuit.

 Nostromodamus wrote:
Literacy is essential, not merely a trivial persuit.

But the importance of one word is trivial next to the whole language.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LordofHats wrote:
Don't trivialize my opinion!

Okay I'm out of ideas. This doesn't work as well as some of the other punny runs we've made around here XD

Yes, but without politics what are we supposed to do in OT? Talk about real issues? I would rather engage in trivial silliness sir!

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Yes, but without politics what are we supposed to do in OT? Talk about real issues? I would rather engage in trivial silliness sir!

I know I know... It just seems like such a trivial pursuit.

Is there a particular bias in New Zealand against this word?

Nah its just most kiwis have a very limited vocabulary that does a lot of work.
Choice, chur, bra, sweet, sweet as and mate. With different inflection these few words can make up entire conversations.

I just womdered if it might be a ... sensitive issue.

 Manchu wrote:
I just womdered if it might be a ... sensitive issue.

That depends.

What does "sensitive" mean?

Something non-trivial.

This story was so trivial it didn't even appear in this country or if it did it was so trivially that I didn't notice it. The All Blacks loosing however was not trivial, that was of the greatest import.

That seems a trivial tangent.

TBH I think this highlights quite a few actual genuine issues.

First, we still teach by rote and test recollection when that's increasingly not how people actually function(if it ever was, beyond the artificial environment of the education system). If I run into a word I don't recognise or am asked a question about some minutiae of grammar, I don't sit there wracking my brain trying to recall facts from twenty years ago in school, I open a fething web browser and google it.

Second, the converse of that is we're not teaching the kinds of skills and mentality that people actually need when operating in the modern way; finding information, how to find things that aren't commonplace, judging the veracity of a source etc.

Third, the news media is a self-important nontroversy-driven pit of garbage who will bleat endlessly about people not respecting them as gategeepers of knowledge any more while simultaneously rooting around for events like this and trying to turn them into something bigger than they actually are so they can gin up some moral outrage and generate those sweet, sweet clicks.

Trivial is out... its all about QUADvial or PENTvial... more vials for all!

[Stupid Dad Joke Executed]