Former teacher says PISA reading warnings must be taken seriously

Kringvarp Føroya reported that poor reading results in the latest PISA survey came as no surprise to Lydia Didriksen, a former primary school teacher who also taught Faroese for many years at the University of the Faroe Islands.

Speaking on the radio programme Breddin, Didriksen said young people should not be assessed solely on their ability to read, calculate and perform in other areas that can be measured and quantified.

However, she said this did not mean the warnings should be ignored.

Breddin also interviewed three school students who acknowledged that the PISA results were alarming and that English had become too dominant among young people.

Didriksen agreed that English was a major culprit, saying this had also been demonstrated by numerous studies.

She said school was not the first thing that came to students’ minds when considering how to learn good Faroese language use. In the past, people were more likely to talk to one another about everything happening in everyday life, she said.

But she rejected the idea that everything was worse in schools in the past. Among other things, greater emphasis had been placed on teaching children to listen and then repeat what they had heard.