Una de las cosas buenas que hacen algunas comunidades y deberíamos imitar en otras como en Murcia es publicar los exámenes o ejercicios prácticos, idealmente con la plantilla de corrección pero bueno algo es algo (imagino que publicar también la plantilla de corrección oficial abriría más el margen a futuras reclamaciones).
En el caso de Murcia por cierto, solamente tienes acceso ahora mismo a alguna convocatoria anterior (a partir del 2022) y si te has presentado, no está publicado en abierto como hace Madrid sino que tienes acceder desde la sede electrónica en Educarm.
Gracias por cierto a esta transparencia que llevan a cabo muchas comunidades pude acceder y seleccionar los exámenes que constituyeron la base de mi libro para preparar los ejercicios prácticos de la oposición abordando el mayor número posible de tipos de ejercicios y exámenes.
El examen de Madrid puedes descargarlo aquí (también está el enlace al archivo de audio que fue un extracto de la archiconocida charla de Ken Robinson sobre el talento en las escuelas). Como agradecimiento por visitar mi blog te incluyo al final de esta entrada la transcripción.
Respecto al resto del ejercicio práctico creo que ha sido bastante asequible o razonable (a diferencia de en otras comunidades como Murcia): 10 preguntas de "text analysis" y 2 fragmentos para traducir directa e inversamente (¿alguna sugerencia para traducir knick-knack aparte de cachivache?).
En este examen no se ha pedido como en Murcia identificar a pelo el autor y la obra del que procedía el texto (Moonstone de Wilkie Collins!!!) pero hay alguna pregunta mejorable como la de escribir a qué correspondían los acrónimos de LOL, JK y TBD (el artículo original del texto "Are you a hostile punctuator?" lo tienes aquí).
IMHO, no se trata de que la mayoría de hablantes nativos exceptuando ciertos rangos de edad e intereses, seguramente no sabrán qué significan sino que esta pregunta no se puede responder con información del texto, ni que esté explícita ni tampoco deducir, depende únicamente del conocimiento extralingüístico del opositor, lo cual no me parece adecuado (podríamos decir que la pregunta es una POS), Pero bueno, a cambio tenemos "rephrasings" muy asequibles o algunos "caramelicos" como las preguntas 9 y 10 (sinónimos warning/caveat; emarges/comes off; rage/wrath; y las pronunciaciones diferentes de so-sew-SAW y might-mite-MITT).
¿Hiciste el examen? ¿Qué te pareció?
I knew that Americans get irony when I came across that legislation, no child left behind. Because whoever thought of that title gets irony. Because it's leaving millions of children behind. Now I can see that's not a very attractive name for legislation.
Millions of children left behind. I can see that. What's the plan? Well, we propose to leave millions of children behind and here's how it's going to work. In some parts of the country, 60% of kids drop out of high school.
It actually costs an enormous amount to mop up the damage from the dropout crisis. But the dropout crisis is just the tip of an iceberg. What it doesn't count are all the kids who are in school but being disengaged from it, who don't enjoy it, who don't get any real benefit from it.
And the reason is, not that we're not spending enough money, America spends more money on education than most other countries, class sizes are smaller than in many countries, and there are hundreds of initiatives every year to try and improve education.
The trouble is, it's all going in the wrong direction. There are three principles on which human life flourishes and they are contradicted by the culture of education under which most teachers have to labour and most students have to endure.
The first is this, that human beings are naturally different and diverse. Education, under no child left behind, is based on not diversity, but conformity. What schools are encouraged to do is to find out what kids can do across a very narrow spectrum of achievement.
effects of No Child Left Behind has been to narrow the focus onto the so-called STEM disciplines. They're very important. I'm not here to argue in science and math. On the contrary, they're necessary, but they're not sufficient.
A real education has to give equal weight to the arts, the humanities, to physical education. One estimate in America currently is that something like 10% of kids getting on that way are being diagnosed with various conditions under the broad title of attention deficit disorder, ADHD.
I'm not saying there's no such thing. I just don't believe it's an epidemic like this. If you sit kids down hour after hour doing low-grade clerical work, don't be surprised if they start to fidget. are not, for the most part, suffering from a psychological condition.
They're suffering from childhood. The second principle that drives human life and flourishing is curiosity. If you can light the spark of curiosity in a child, they will learn without any further assistance very often.
Children are natural learners. It's a real achievement to put that particular ability out or to stifle it. Curiosity is the engine of achievement. Now, the reason I say this is because one of the effects of the current culture here, if I can say so, has been to deprofessonalize teachers.
There is no system in the world or any school in the country that's better than its teachers. Teachers are the lifeblood of the success of schools. But teaching is a creative profession. Teaching properly conceived is not a delivery system.
You're not there just to pass on received information. Great teachers do that. But what great teachers also do is mentor, stimulate, provoke, engage. You see, in the end, education is about learning.
If there's no learning going on, there's no education going on. And people can spend an awful lot of time discussing education without ever discussing learning. The whole point of education is to get people to learn.
The role of a teacher is to facilitate learning. That's it. And part of the problem is, I think, that the culture of the dominant culture of education has come to focus on not teaching and learning, but testing.
Now, testing is important. Standardized tests have a place. But they should not be the dominant culture of education. And the third principle is that human life is inherently creative. It's why we all have different resumes.
We create our lives, and we can recreate them as we go through them. It's the common currency of being a human being. A true human culture is so interesting and diverse and dynamic.
