Posted on 03/12/2008 10:11:00 AM PDT by tang0r
4) The amount of busy work given to our students is shocking
Over the years, I've tutored several dozen high school students. Nearly all of these students struggled with effectively dealing with the amount of work they were expected to complete every night.
This tremendous amount of scholastic vapidness dumped upon America's youth every night is destroying their reasoning abilities. After all, how can they learn to properly access what's important in their own lives, if their teachers are willingly blurring the line between trite and terrific? It's plainly clear in my experience that the current public school curriculum is not teaching our students to be free thinkers. Rather, it is simply preparing them for a life of monotonous rote memorization, devoid of wonder or excitement.
There was a time not so long ago when knowledge was considered superfluous and thus only a pastime of the rich. The meaning of the term 'a scholar and a gentleman' is that a person who is retired or relies on a private income (aka 'a gentleman') can thus have the leisure time necessary to acquire frivolous book knowledge ('scholar'). But at some point in the history of the US, the opposite conclusion was reached. Now book knowledge is deemed extremely important, so much that it comes even at the expense of applicable knowledge. I think a happy medium lies in between these two opposing viewpoints, but it's clear (at least to all my high school students!) that the American educational system has gone overboard in one direction.
(Excerpt) Read more at theprometheusinstitute.org ...
I have noticed that papers don’t come home anymore.
Way back in the day, if you wrote an essay, it was graded and returned to you.
If it wasn’t written well, the paper would come back looking like someone bled on it and you would write the paper, make the corrections and hopefully construct a better one next time.
I have yet to see this phenomenon at my son’s school.
You, living in the Bay area, I shudder at the thought of what your kids may be bringing home from their school.
>This is a sticky situation- the student needs to memorize the minutiae in order to pass his classes, yet at the same time the skills he needs for life are not being addressed at all (e.g. writing, basic math, working with others).<
When I went to school and turned in a poorly written essay, the teacher would send it home looking like someone bled all over it. The idea was for me to rewrite the paper, learn from my mistakes and hopefully do better next time.
I have yet to see anything like this at my son’s school and find it alarming. I have to “bleed all over it” with my red pen before he turns in the first one and I’m not good at it!
More time should be spent on reading, writing, math, organizational skills and life skills, such as basic computer usage, home economics and career/work experience programs.
I’m sure enough cutbacks could be applied to the many useless indoctrinational studies that are in place to ensure virtually no financial burden.
Especially in math where kids are nit made to memorize the basic math tables so they can solve more complex problems.
The have some lame arsed method of starting with the lower number and counting up or some nonsense. I showed my 5th grade a times table matrix the other day and you’d thought I was showing her a book of Klingon.
They all get calculators in junior high.
the bad news: the education he received is the one he's complaining about.
the good news: admission is the first step to change.
What my son brings home everyday is a new tale of a stabbing, vicious fight or some other kind of assault.
His school makes me think of a minimum security prison.
The kids milling around outside are out of control.
I thought they were going to turn the car over one day!
Okay the car comment is an exaggeration, but it’s almost that bad!
School districts are self governing to some extent. They would rather hide a multitude of sins and risk the safety of the students than admit all of the problems they have. Police seem to be in agreement with this largely, at least in our town.
Threats and assaults are often referred back to the school.
Our daughter was threatened on one occasion by someone who whacked her over the head with an umbrella earlier.
This girl followed her home from school, continuing to make threats. Our daughter called 911 and gave the police a perfect description. This errant youth would have been very easy to locate. All the responding officer would have had to do is drive a block or two down the street and there the culprit would be.
But he told us it was “a school matter” and we were referred back to the school officer, who grudgingly took a report a week or two later as he was quite difficult to reach.
If I remember correctly, hubby had to call the watch commander a couple of times before this guy would respond.
Our daughter went on independent study later because the school could not guarantee a safe environment conducive to learning. She had to jump through a lot of hoops, such as counseling and antidepressants in order to do this.
She is doing quite well now, in spite of it all.
School, until I was at least two years into college, was an utter waste of my time. Most of my education was the result of my parents making our home environment conducive to learning, and my own initiative and curiosity.
The Commonwealth of Virginia has instituted the “Standards of Learning” tests. So what do your kids learn? THE TEST. School is geared to passing THE TEST. If a school has a low percentage of students who pass THE TEST they can lose their accreditation. It seems that in the grades where THE TEST is given, everything is about THE TEST.
Which is another reason why my child is in a Christian school.
i’m amazed at how many people ask to borrow a calculator to figure out the tip at the bar.
worse is, its not to figure out the 15%, but to figure out how much tip makes it an even dollar amount on their credit card.
also i see plenty that come thru that don’t add up, or have the math written out on the receipt.
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