Posted on 11/29/2003 3:58:27 AM PST by Dane
Edited on 04/13/2004 2:35:24 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Huh!
Yeah, I was pretty naive at that point, too. I spent nearly all of my spare time doing good deeds for elderly people.
Things seem to be different with this younger generation, though, Gary. A lot of them probably know what adult*** means.
Different strokes for different folks, I guess. :-)
Heh. Remember way back when an unmarried couple living together was called 'shacking up' and was discussed only in whispers because it was too shocking to say out loud? Now it's reaching the status of preferred arrangement.
And this was so scandalous, a play was written about it?
"Tommy Manville, heir to the Johns-Manville fortune, wed his way into notoriety. He married 8 different times. He is famous for his quote, "She cried, and the judge wiped her tears with my checkbook." The 1938 farce "Bluebeard's Eighth Wife" was based on his story."
What? Why???? We read it in high school and I had to read it again in college for a 20th century history class I was taking. I never found it to be terribly controversial.
I had heard about such things, but I don't think I actually knew anyone who was "shacking up."
Now it's reaching the status of preferred arrangement.
I know. I read the papers, too, Gary. There was something about that Generation X that seemed to send our culture into a nosedive. That's when I first noticed it, anyway.
"She cried, and the judge wiped her tears with my checkbook."
I do like that line. I really do. ;-)
Perhaps more importantly, there was no compulsory education. Combine government schools with coerced attendance and coerced taxation for those schools and you have our current situation.
I agree. I think it does children a disservice to shield them from the real world for too long. I think we're probably currently raising the most spoiled, self-centered children in American history. All they have to do is claim to be "offended" by something...ANYTHING...and it is automatically whisked away for fear of litigation.
WIMPS.
The irony is, for many students the "real world" is just as racy, if not more so, than these novels.
Yep. Plus, they probably see FAR worse on network television. It's not like they're making these kids read The Story of O or anything. I strongly object to banning any book. As a kid, I was allowed to read whatever the hell I wanted to read; mom never stood in the way. Our school didn't ban any books at all, even when some parents asked them to. They basically said, "If you don't like it, you're welcome to send your children to the private school down the street, but this is what's on the curriculum and that's what the kids are going to read."
I read no fewer than forty novels, plays, or short stories as a high school senior. Some were controversial: The Stranger by Camus, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Hurston, Invisible Man by Ellison...others were standard fare (Othello by Shakespeare, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by Joyce, etc). Parents did object from time to time, but the teacher basically told them where they could stick their objections. Most of the students in her AP English received college credit after taking the AP exam because she followed the recommended curriculum for the exam. I'm eternally grateful to her for that. She basically said, "I'm going to teach you what you need to know whether your parents like it or not." She had guts, I'll say that.
Many of them have parents who've been married several times, or "shacked up" with significant others. The kids watch cable TV, R-rated movies, and MTV. Some of the students are parents themselves, although these students generally aren't in the AP classes. I've taken up notes and "slam books" from students that would rival porn novels.
I'd say the average 6th grader is more worldly wise than I was as a senior.
As a kid, I was allowed to read whatever the hell I wanted to read; mom never stood in the way.
As was I. My mother figured that if it was too "mature" for me, I'd get bored and find something else to read.
She basically said, "I'm going to teach you what you need to know whether your parents like it or not."
For some reason, I don't remember parents fussing about anything we read in high school. I don't know if it was still long enough ago that parents trusted teachers, if I've forgotten about parents fussing, or if nothing we read was that controversial. I know that I learned enough to CLEP out college English, so it must have been adequate.
Real life has always had its racy side. There are even some stories in the Bible that some of these parents would object to if they were in literature books, I bet.
Let me ammend my statement to satisfy your inner pedant
Thanks! I cut my teeth on Usenet, dude. I'm all about pedantry. : )
Nevertheless, I stand by my original statement, since there were no public schools as we understand the term today, when the country was founded
Fair enough...but the notion of publicly funded schooling has been around since Day One, more or less. The idea that there ought to be education made publicly available to everyone has been around for about 150 years, so it's not as if it's a 20th-century movement or something. But the main point I wish to make is that as universal public education has become more prevalent, and as the amount of public money allocated to education, as a percentage of GDP, has increased, the average educational achievement and proficiency levels of the students have decreased.
What I really wanna know is - by what metric? Whose standards are being used, etc? Additionally, it seems to me that any decline could be put to a multiplicity of causes; particularly, actual numbers of kids attending and graduating public schools is much greater now than in previous years. In 1940, about 25% of Americans had high school diplomas. Today, it's about 83%. Seems to me a larger pool of students is gonna necessitate more money be spent, but that may not equal higher achievement, since a larger group of students is inevitably going to mean that more low-achieving types are in the student body. 60 years ago, if you didn't want to go to high school, not only didn't you have to, but you were encouraged not to. Now, a lot of those kids who are less educable or just not as smart stay in the system.
Please tell me your source for this statement isn't some email about a test from Kansas...you sound sharp enough to not bite that hook...Most college graduates could not pass the High School graduation tests of 100 years ago.
...I would be most interested, however, to read any source material you have for your assertions. Lots of "historical facts" that get passed around are either inaccurate or just plain wrong, and it drives me nuts.
Snidely
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