Spencerian Handwriting for Rachel Jeantel
Posted on 07/31/2013 5:25:21 AM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
Test for eighth graders in Kentucky dated 1912 ignites debate over kids' intelligence today
A general examination to test eighth grade students in Kentucky's Bullitt County school system in 1912 has stumped some adults and ignited a debate over the intelligence of children today.
The arithmetic, geography, civil government, physiology, grammar and history questions range from 'What is a personal pronoun?' to 'Who first discovered Lawrence River?' and 'Define Cerebrum'.
Posted on Lew Rockwell, the type-written test has promoted some adults to try and answer the questions, and caused some parents to critique the U.S. school system.
'I performed poorly,' wrote Jezebel's Laura Beck. 'But to be fair/excuse my stupidity, some of the answers, especially history, are very different now that we know more of the truth.'
Some questions are specific to Bullitt County, such as 'name five county officers in your region,' while other aspects of the test are antique.
But many parents argue that the children in 1912 who took such tests were no smarter than the children of today.
One commenter noted: 'Most of these questions are memorization-based. They prompt memorized answers with specific words that would have been used in classes back then.
'There are very little critical thinking questions or any other questions that require more than rote memorization to complete.'
Another woman, under the name of Leah Jaclyn, agreed, writing: 'Often people who think our kids are dumb fail to realise that rote memorisation is a skill that is not often required anymore.'
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
And people wonder why Indians and Asians, in general, constitute the majority of computer programs both domestically and abroad.
For the record, I learned numbers on an abacus.
I returned to college to finish a biz degree after a 40 year absence, and I could not believe some of the people in my class who also could not read, or add. We all received the same “degree” at the end of the line, however. I got a special award for having the highest grade point in the class, but I did not qualilfy for “summa” or “magna” because most of my credits came from UC Berkeley so they didn’t count! LOL.
We had to do a lot of team projects, a very popular type of assignment these days. I think this is supposed to teach work place cooperation. To me it is just a device where the weaker members of the team ride on the coat tails of the stronger members. I always volunteered to prepare the final paper because that was the only way I could be confident that the paper would be formatted, footnoted, and prepared according to the prof’s specifications. No point in losing credit for margins that are the wrong width! Use a ruler, FGS.
One day I was typing up a paper for my group, and the work from one of my team members sounded awfully familiar. I looked up the topic in my text book and found that she had COPIED the entire first chapter! I called her up and pointed out that she was plagiarizing the author’s work. She said, “No, it’s a ‘block quote’.” I pointed out that block quotes could be 2 or 3 lines, not a whole chapter — that she had to turn it around and put it in her own words. She just said, “Do whatever you want” with it.
I re-wrote her whole section, and we got an A.
BTW, her uncle had formerly been Superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools and was an adjunct prof at Marquette U at the time. Oh, and her promise to help me with my statistics course in exchange? All a fake. The course where I saved her (and myself) from a plagiarism charge was her last. She graduated, never to be seen again.
She was attending this private college on a full scholarship and even got extra money for a typist because she was suffering from “carpel tunnel syndrome”. Did I mention that she was one of “Holder’s people”?
Good point.
Spencerian Handwriting for Rachel Jeantel
Those Sower biographies look really interesting.
WE had a group project in a college class. I was outnumbered by some morons, especially one guy that thought that all he had to do in this world to succeed was throw around fifty dollar words and he became the leader of the group. Ironically the project was to explain some technology and we were taught to always write at 8th to 10th grade level.
I had a high grade point average, so when the professor called me into her office to tell me that our project had earned a D (said she couldn’t even understand what the paper was talking about), I just laughed, told her that since the project wouldn’t affect my grade that much I just let those people make fools of themselves, and told her that in the real world I would have just fired them. She changed my grade.
Unfortunately, and my University, they believed so strongly in the group project that all members of the group received the same grade, no matter what. I resented that, but I just had to go along.
I found that all of the smarter students resented that form of grading. Our defense was to try to manipulate the system so that we could get assigned with the other smarter students. It didn’t always work. Some of the teachers would assign groups according to where you sat in class, some would allow the groups to “self form”, some would make assignments alphabetically.
As recently as 45 years ago a small, Christian based, liberal arts college in Florida had an education program based on subject material expertise. If you were going to teach, lets say history, your major was history and you minored in education.
A decade later the priorities were changed - you majored in education and minored, if at all, in the subject you were going to teach.
The fallacy behind this theory was brought home in the mid-1990s when my children were in middle school and high school. I got into a minor contest with one of the teachers who claimed, because she had a degree in education, she could teach anything. Things got ugly when I asked her to teach me thermal dynamics inside a breeder reactor. It wasn’t much better when I asked to be taught Mandarin Chinese.
When she tried to hide behind I didn’t know what it meant to be a teacher I showed her my Florida State Teacher’s License to teach high school history.
Bottom - line: We, the tax payers, have bought into a false theory of education supported by college professors that have no outside, of the classroom, experience. And the ones that are paying for this worship of the false god “PhD” are our children.
So, wow, that happens at college, too? In secondary school, group activities are almost required - and making sure you have the correct mix of low/middle/high achievers in each group. In this way, it is thought, the low-enders will be brought along by the high-achievers.
What a sham! The result is to slow the on-grade-level students down to the level of the languishing ones—the dumbing down of education. And you say this happens at college, too...hmmmmm....
Me and two other people made an A on a finance test and were ostracized by the rest of the class for messing the grading curve for them as they collectively decided that if everyone failed (to learn anything)they could still pass.
My nickname was “Curve Killer”.
No they weren’t smarter, they learned different stuff. I’d like to see any of those 8th grader reinstall an OS or even program a DVR.
My daughter just started college over the summer, she noted the same thing, she was paired up with four others and she is taking the lead because she doesn’t want to get anything less than an A. She had to change some of their answers because they were wrong.
LOL, I was once accused of sleeping with the professor to get a good grade.
Yes kids are a lot less educated now, but they “feel” they are much smarter. That is all that is necessary for Communists to take over, so, that is what they did to the kids.
Kids are kids, feed them pride and they will be proud and stupid. Teach them to read and think and they will be humble and wise. Proud and stupid makes great slaves. Humble and wise makes great leaders.
Government has a lot of stupid leaders, they want slaves not competition.
This “working in groups” in college is so bogus. I don’t ever remember doing that when I was in college (therefore it MUST be bogus (;>} Sounds more like socialism and less like the opportunity for individual pursuit of happiness to me.
I believe this is trending now due to the high number of not-ready-for-prime-time college students that are arriving on campuses. The top-flight students are being used to rescue as many of those not up to the task so that college graduation rates don’t tank (the way they are doing in secondary schools.)
I think it also is because of lazy professors. If you have a class of 20 students, and you divide them into groups of four, you only have to grade 5 papers, rather than 20 papers.
Your argument is fallacious. I’d like to see ANYBODY program a DVR, or reinstall an OS who had never heard of one.
No doubt...
It’s not fallacious, these are things kids have learned that weren’t available to learn before, but the amount of time they have FOR learning has remained constant. It takes time and effort to learn to navigate in our modern technical world, and a lot of that learning is necessary, and in an age where we all have calculators and google and wiki basically at our finger tip every waking minute a lot of the stuff on that test maybe isn’t so necessary. What states, and their capitals, touch the Ohio River isn’t really an aspect of my life, but if it became necessary to me for some reason I know how to find it out. I can probably do most of that math in my head (I’ve got that mutant gene) but the stuff I can’t do I know how to stick in google and get the answer (yeah, google does math).
So which is more important for an 8th grader to know now? Stuff they can have the computer do? Or how to make the computer do stuff? There’s only so many hours, choose wisely.
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