Doesn't anyone use the Blue Book anymore?
Posted on 05/28/2008 7:01:23 PM PDT by tj21807
The NEA and the government education systems are like the UN: The more money we pour into them the less effective they get.
You don’t suppose all that money encourages corruption, do you?
And another: those garbage truck drivers are usually Teamsters making a damn good living.
Although I work at a college, I do not spend much time in the classroom. Once taking classes, I can offer a few observations:
1) The majority of students seem disengaged and disinterested. No, I don't think that has changed much in twenty or thirty years. But with the proliferation of electronic gadgetry, several of my teachers have banned iPods, texting, etc in class - students can become even more distracted in class. I even had a class last semester where a student took a call *in class*. It was not an emergency and the student just kept on yacking.
2) More students can't read and write at a college level. This has become worse over time. The college where I work has more sections of remedial reading and writing than ever before - and the total college headcount is steady and stable. One of my classes had required oral presentations. I cringed and indeed felt sorry for some students, as they could barely read their presentation notes. Papers that students write don't just have minor grammatical and syntactical errors, they are at times incoherent, halting, poorly organized, etc. And the sad thing is that once a student reaches the college level, it takes some pretty intense services and some self-initiative for them to become proficient readers and writers.
3) More students do not have well developed research skills. Query ten students on how often they have used JSTOR versus Wikipedia and the majority will say Wikipedia over JSTOR. With all the research tools available, students seem to think they can just google a topic, cut and paste some phrases and off they go. I do not use Wikipedia for anything more than getting to external sources on a topic - it certainly is not something that should be used as a primary source in most scholarly writing. Add to this a general inability to properly cite sources using, for example the Chicago Manual of Style and it is really pot luck what a professor might get from a student.
4) More students will confront teachers over grades. I worked my butt off the Spring semester, but there are large numbers of students that don't do that and still expect a good grade - and will confront the teacher on that. This is very different from twenty years ago and more higher-ed institutions are having classroom management training for faculty to deal with unruly students.
Oh, he’s not a loser, far from it. This family of ours has quirks, like needing 10 hours of sleep a night in order to be functional the next day. And all of us were slow to mature.
For example, I couldn’t learn algebra until after I was 26 years old. Don’t know why, but suspect it has to do with ADD; the brain continues to grow and create neural networks far longer for those with ADD than with normal brain growth patterns. Though my nephew has difficulty puzzling out trigonometry and proofs, he can write reports on a college level, is a science enthusiast and a computer geek.
Education cannot be a one-size-fits-all.
-PJ
Do you not also "have custody" of the "OFF" switch on the "boob tube"?
I started my college career almost ten years ago at community college as a homeschool high school student taking some classes on the side. Did two years’ worth of classes in three years there, two years in three at the school I chose to complete my degree (while working full time) then two years at grad school and finally finishing off my last two classes for my master’s this year, having taken a short break to get married.
So I have been every kind of nontraditional student except for the “returning to school after ten years” sort. I’ve been a normal student too. And it is pretty horrifying. I got used pretty quickly to a high grade in any class with writing, just because most of my classmates couldn’t write. I’ll tell you, it really annoyed humanities students that a computer science major was kicking their butts at history, philosphy, and English.
My experience was that some people were too stupid for college. But most were intelligent. They had merely not been taught and challenged. Some had the skills, but no ambition to use them. More simply had no idea how to do what was asked of them.
Writing classes were just the place where the deficiency was most obvious. In other classes, they were just as unprepared, but it’s harder to tell stupid from lazy from unprepared in biology or math. I blame the government education system. It’s producing thousands and thousands of people every year who are suited for nothing more than holding stop signs in construction zones.
Yes, I do have custody of the “off switch” on the television and exercise my finger frequently in pushing it. When I catch him at the TV when he should be in bed, he doesn’t stay there long, nevertheless I give him the liberty to demonstrate he is responsible enough to be trusted. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.
However he is now 16 years old, 5’-11” and 175 lbs. I am not that big and he tries, unsucessfully, to intimidate. But at some point you have to let a child suffer the consequences of their actions as long as it doesn’t kill them. He thinks he is getting away with something but I know better, and really, he knows it too. We are slowly reaching the point where he will have to take ownership of his day-to-day schedule as my father, his grandfather, irrevocably slides deeper into an Alzheirmer-driven senility.
Since I do not have advanced degrees and haven’t been teaching for 40 years I am NOT doing better than the ‘average’ Montanan.
BTW, What’s someone from Maine doing telling me about what things are like for teachers in Montana?
You may have misunderestimated the man.
Why I was simply reading the Helena paper and there was the refutation of what you were saying. Are you forbidding me from reading anything but my own local papers? Because if you are, you should know that this is not a teachable moment.
Learning is what little kids do when they start to walk and speak and tie their own shoes. School OTOH is a carefully planned out sequence of absurd drills that take place within a totalitarian model of society-at-large.
We do let not them have TV in their rooms. and have a rigid schdule as to when they must retire -- and a fixed "reading time" before mandatory lights out.
Of course, teenage is fast approaching, and I'm not sure I am ready for a second round of that! '-}
My father, a brilliant man, also succumbed to Alzheimer's. I have described the experience as, "watching the bright lights of a great city gradually wink out -- one by one -- until darkness erases the scene".
You, indeed, have my heartfelt sympathy and prayers!
Thank you for your kind words. They are greatly appreciated.
If you think the Helena paper describes the whole state of Montana you’re out of your mind. Check out the Montana OPI website if you want to get an idea of salaries.
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