Fancy word education

What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.-George Bernard Shaw

A few days ago my youngest brother ask me to help him with his homework, filling in what type of animal the picture shows. I agreed guessing how hard can that be, I know herbivore animals eats herbs...well plant, carnivore eats meat and omnivore eats both. Back in my primary the book will show goat or cow as herbivore, tiger or lion as carnivore and we human and maybe cat as omnivore. It's pretty easy to understand so I didn't really get why my brother is sweating buckets over standard 5 science.

To my astonisment the book ask you what kind of animal is a guppy fish and a tadpole and other whole bunch of fish in a pond. I was like....what is this? Nemo science class. No wonder my brother is starting to hate the subject. Can't they give a simple example so the student understand what the meaning of herbivore, carnivore and omnivore instead of throwing them question about what fish eats the other fish, what fish eats plant and so on. What if the fish lives in an aquarium? They won't eat fish then, they eat all the palleted form fish food...does that means they qualified as omnivore instead?

Like I said before, education is supposed to make people understand a subject not confused them. There is nothing wrong with giving simple example to form a solid base of understanding. You throw in all this confusing example then the student will eventually lost their initial eagerness to understand. They are still trying to grasp what carnivore, herbivour and ominovore mean, how to spell it and you came up with this ridicilous example of fish in pond. What is wrong with tiger, goat and cat?

Thank god for internet... guppy fish turns out to be omnivore. But how about those kid in rural areas who don't have internet or revision source and their mom can't even form a basic English sentence? I've read my brother standard 5 science text book....no wonder they giving it for free, there is nothing worth reading in there. These authors need to get their priority right...do they want to educate or just show how they can come up with fancy words and fancy example. Nemo huh...?

I went to university and survived taking calculus and algebra yet I still frown to understand the standard 5 math text book today. I didn't know there are so many fancy words in math. I thought it was all about numbers...

It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot, irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.- J. Bronowski, The Ascent of Man