Pilots need reading skills

TIMES COLONIST (VICTORIA)
Letters
05/10/2006

Re: "If we can't fail, we can't succeed," Paul MacRae column, May 8.

My wife and I are flying instructors. We own and operate a flying school on Vancouver Island. Our students are, for the most part, young high school graduates who want a career in aviation. They are intelligent, personable and highly motivated.

Fewer than 10 per cent are successful. The majority of these enthusiastic people have their hopes dashed, their dreams shattered and their self-esteem mauled by failure.

It is not that flight training is particularly difficult. It is not -- but it does require a good basic standard of education. Most students are devastated by the discovery that their reading, writing and mental arithmetic skills fall far short of the standards necessary to become a commercial pilot.

However, some, refusing to admit defeat, find their way through places that function in the manner to which they have become accustomed -- training organizations that will provide the paper certification (for a price) without the achievement of proper standards.

All educators who travel by air should pause and consider whether the pilot of their airliner is capable of reading (and understanding) his checklist. If an in-flight malfunction occurs, is his basic education up to analytical problem solving or is he going to leave the fate of his plane and passengers to a cockpit computer?

Don Brown,

Nanaimo.

WTF??

That was pretty much my reaction when I read it...

Well I'm at a loss for words to reply to that one...


But I know Don real well and will see if I can get inside his mind on that one, the news media can sometines get things tristed.

Cat

Cat Driver wrote:
the news media can sometines get things tristed.

Cat

Writing skills were included there, Cat...or were you being facetious??

CD wrote:.........

So, they own a flight school, they trick kids into giving them money for flying because of all those retirements and then they have the "balls" to bitch and complain how their students can't read????

ROFL...

SECONDLY, I assume they are talking about TC's exams, and possibly CARS, well lets see I'm not a Phud in Law to master CARS and I'm not a Phud in English to master the TC exams...

But I give them A for effort, trying to blame the students. Nice, wonder how many of those students they plainly tell, "oh you suck at english don't bother flying....."

Can someone please orate this thread and send me an mp3 of it? I don't understand all these crazy lines, squiggles and dots (I had my mom type this for me.)


Either Vancouver Island is full of dummies, this school manages to attract a disproportianately high ratio of dummies, or this story was written by a dummy. I suspect the latter.

this is actually true about high school kids in my region. i dont know if student pilots have the same difficulties with reading, writing etc. when i was in high school, most of the students couldnt read fast enough. I belive it is important for pilots to be able to read accurately, otherwise theres a problem in the flight deck.

p.s. i know that my grammer is incorrect, I just hate typing so i refuse to use shift/caps key.

Pilot can't spell, thats why we use so many Acronyms... Thats what I always say

djshan wrote:p.s. i know that my grammer is incorrect, I just hate typing so i refuse to use shift/caps key.

"Grammer" - That's my grandfather's wife right?

IMHO, literary skills have absolutely NO bearing on how good a pilot is.

Otherwise, I'd be a half-decent pilot!

-istp

Pilots are stupid.

See, the article doesn't take into account two crew ops.

One can read, one can write. Problem solved.

mellow_pilot wrote:See, the article doesn't take into account two crew ops.

One can read, one can write. Problem solved.

Nice one!

i remember being on a dual cross-country. we were 50 miles out at 100kts groundspeed. i asked the student how long to destination and he proceeded to get the calculator out. i asked him to do it in his head and he looked at me like i was nuts(the kid had just graduated high school and was very bright). he couldn't do it.... what are these kids being taught?

pianodude wrote:i remember being on a dual cross-country. we were 50 miles out at 100kts groundspeed. i asked the student how long to destination and he proceeded to get the calculator out. i asked him to do it in his head and he looked at me like i was nuts(the kid had just graduated high school and was very bright). he couldn't do it.... what are these kids being taught?

Really I think they should spend more time teaching mental math in ground school. Its funny, but sometimes I find performing simple math in the cockpit difficult depending on how busy I am flying the aircraft. They might be more difficult because the calculations really matter to your safety. Maybe this will become easier as I become more proficient.

Pianodude, I will answer your question as to what they are being taught, in high school and even in many cases in the post secondary system.
Theory and high level math. I graduated in 2001 and at that time it was a requirement for my school in Gr 12 math to have a 3D graphing calculator; simply because the type and quantity of questions being asked could not be done without silicone aid. There seems to be a push to move peoples level of knowledge into the next realm which in many cases leaves all the simple stuff to evaporate from the mind irregardless of how pertinent it is in the REAL world… Now maybe Cat or one of our elders on here can tell us what sort of math they were taught in school back in the day, but id bet matrices, calculus, determinants, vector spaces, and Markov chains were left to the students at Uni. The education system IMHO has lost site of its purpose in many respects. It is producing straight academics with little to no real world skills. The number of vocational fields where math like this is germane is VERY small; I suppose one could make the argument that you are simply teaching people HOW to learn; but honestly am I THAT far off in suggesting perhaps we need a social reexamination of the system…

Walker wrote:Pianodude, I will answer your question as to what they are being taught, in high school and even in many cases in the post secondary system.
Theory and high level math. I graduated in 2001 and at that time it was a requirement for my school in Gr 12 math to have a 3D graphing calculator; simply because the type and quantity of questions being asked could not be done without silicone aid. There seems to be a push to move peoples level of knowledge into the next realm which in many cases leaves all the simple stuff to evaporate from the mind irregardless of how pertinent it is in the REAL world… Now maybe Cat or one of our elders on here can tell us what sort of math they were taught in school back in the day, but id bet matrices, calculus, determinants, vector spaces, and Markov chains were left to the students at Uni. The education system IMHO has lost site of its purpose in many respects. It is producing straight academics with little to no real world skills. The number of vocational fields where math like this is germane is VERY small; I suppose one could make the argument that you are simply teaching people HOW to learn; but honestly am I THAT far off in suggesting perhaps we need a social reexamination of the system…

I agree 100%

I took grade 12 math in high school and the stuff taught is probably the most useless crap ever. The entire year was graphing functions, manually figuring out logs, and other complicated stuff that everyone forgets how to do upon graduation, unless they are going into math to become an engineer or math teacher or something..

I find that grade 11 and 12 walk the fine line of real world skill and push hard concepts upon students with the result of little or any real learning taking place.. I feel I learned more about the world and life in the first year of uni then all the years in highschool, highschool only lays the basics (which are definetly important), but the entire system needs to be revamped

Maybe its all the downtime people have in aviation. I mean to come up with something so lame and negative to say? You must have been having a bad day or drunk to post that. Try and recall why you got into flying in the first place and enjoy what you can from it. GSK

gongshowking wrote:Maybe its all the downtime people have in aviation. I mean to come up with something so lame and negative to say? You must have been having a bad day or drunk to post that. Try and recall why you got into flying in the first place and enjoy what you can from it. GSK

So I could learn to read.??

Could you guys use simpler words? I'm getting pretty tired, trying to read all the way through this thread ....

There are many basic skills that some of us older generation had to learn because there was no other way. There were no calculators when I started, so I had to learn to do it in my head. But now, why learn a skill that a machine can do better, faster. But some people take this a bit too far. I remember going into a 7-11 to buy 2 items that were worth $2:00 a piece with tax and the young person behind the counter had to use a calculator to figure it out. And I am not talking about punching the numbers into the cash reqister, because it was broken, I am talking about calculating the cost and punching the total into the old mechanical cash register. I see this a lot with younger pilots on a checkride. Ask them if they have enough gas to get to the alternate and they are totally at a loss not only for the answer but how to calculate the answer. I don't know why.
Geography is another stumper. Miss out of Regina ans decide to go to Saskatoon which is the filed alternate and some just do not have a clue even what direction to look on the chart.

Older types are always going on about their great "head math", then a second later they are asking you how to open a file in windows or how to turn on a computer. Younger people have other skills that are a part of their up bringing and schooling. Perhaps the next gen can better use a EFIS.

upyour-ego-psshhh wrote:Older types are always going on about their great "head math", then a second later they are asking you how to open a file in windows or how to turn on a computer. Younger people have other skills that are a part of their up bringing and schooling. Perhaps the next gen can better use a EFIS.

Maybe when they're not using an EFIS they can open up a file in windows that corrects their grammar.

And the REALLY funny thing about that is I type most of my posts in Word first to clean up the spelling Then copy past into Firefox…