Posted on 09/16/2008 5:15:53 AM PDT by raybbr
Link only - AP
We’re not even going to bother with school.
It’s a waste of time, a babysitter that indoctrinates your kids into secular socialism.
No, I have to disagree. I saw this back in the 80's when I went back to college to finish up my degree.
The failure is in all the grades up until that high school history class. If a kid learned to write well in grade school and junior high, then the text messaging they do would not destroy that. It's lack of proper teaching kids to write, not that they're text messaging on the side.
>These kids speak in full sentences and paragraphs.
I guess you haven’t talked to one lately. I teach CCD to 8th graders. Their speech is almost as bad as their writing. Many are unable to articulate a coherent thought. Certainly teachers and parents need to expect more, but if the kids spend all their time writing things like “OMG. BFF.” instead of having to communicate like sensible people, that’s going to affect their writing.
This is nothing new. I remember the remedial math and English classes that were offered by my university and the local community college back in the early 80’s. The government schools were missing the mark then, and they’re missing it now. The only difference is that there is now a viable home education alternative to the government schools.
Your definitions of a sentence and a paragraph reminded me of some math ‘rules’ taught to students. My favorite: when working with decimals, everything to the right of the decimal works backwords. Never could figure that one out but an overwhelming number of students were taught that.
When she got to college in Texas she was glad she had that background because there were girls in her dorm who had no idea about the different requirements such as MLA or APA.
So some schools are getting the job done.
My primarily homeschooled son is taking Calculus I in no slouch school. At the beginning of the semester, the prof gave them some work to do. He said that only 2 or 3 kids in the whole class knew what to do with y=mx+b; something my kids learned in 9th grade at the latest (probably 8th but I don’t recall exactly)
Anyone in calculus should be able to do the slope of a line stuff in their sleep.
i’m a writing consultant at a fully-accredited private christian college, and recently a freshman approached me for help writing an essay. when i asked him what his thesis statement was he responded,
“What’s a thesis statement?”
public education is da bomb! s/c
ironically, his essay was about how unqualified Palin was to be VP..
It certainly isn't going to be the teacher. Or the guidance counselors. Or the principal. Or.....
If the teacher is teaching to the state approved standards and giving the kids A's and B's, then there's no way for anyone to automatically assume that the education is sub-par. Parents are happy to see all those A's and B's that little Johnny is bringing home and happy to think that their child is so bright.
40% of our AS degreed applicants failed an 8th grade math test.
Ignorance of the masses is a goal under socialism. Ignorant people are a lot easier to keep happy while they live in squalor.
It also feeds the idea of an upper ruling class and the peons who need to be cared for.
College students need not read, only to be properly indoctrinated to liberalism.
By the time they get close to college and have spent most of their life “text messaging”, using their made up abbreviations, they won’t know how to actually spell a whole word of any kind.
I am truly beginning to detest 90% of the up coming generations.
They are selfish.
They have an inflated idea of who. what they are and how much they know.
They have an inflated idea of their worth to an employer, or society in general.
All those years of cartoons that showed how “smart” and “special” they were, with no basic 3 R’s, will come home to roost.
There are also overindulged, unmotivated children with a sense of entitlement unparalleled in history. These children often have parents who are either missing in action, or on the other extreme, are helicopter parents who care more about their child's record than their child's character and skills. Don't you know their little prince/princess can do no wrong and its all the teacher's fault. The problems were too hard. The student just had to work on the homecoming float. The family just had to take that vacation and have the kid miss a week of class.
These students can and do frustrate excellent teachers, and can bog down entire classes with their antics. These students whine when homework is assigned. They know how to make snide comments/noises at the most inopportune times. They don't take any ownership of their education. It is almost impossible to remove these willful boat anchors from class rooms so that the motivated students can learn to their potential.
We really need to require performance from all parties in education - administration, teachers, parents and students. As a taxpayer, I want to see return on investment. If a teacher can't teach, remove them. If a student won't show respect for others in the classroom by behaving and at least try to do the work, I want them out. I'll pay for any who will work and treat others with respect. I have no compassion for those who won't and want them to receive the natural consequences of their actions.
I went to a community college, then a private liberal-arts oriented school, then grad school for computer science. In my community college writing courses, I was often the only student who turned in papers that met the requirements (for instance, being “research papers” rather than essays). At my four-year school, I had professors comment to me outside class that I was far and away the best writer in their courses and they were surprised I was a comp sci major (I always gave my mother credit for teaching me to write)
Now, in graduate school, those of us for whom English was a first language all seemed proficient at producing papers (usually, one research paper/project report per course). I’m not sure if that reflected the higher intellect required for grad school or what but my fellow CS students and I were certainly head and shoulders above my old undergraduate classmates for writing.
My mother, who has a high school education, taught me how to write a mean paper. She did it so well, I don’t have to think about it. Since I was homeschooled she knew it was part of her job but any parent could, with a few hours a week, teach writing skills to her child. If, that is, they know their kid needs help...
The colleges aren’t spending jack, parents are.”
It is my experience that the tuition that is paid is only about 55% of the cost of actually running the college. The taxpayers or the alumni fund and grants and inheritances pay for the rest.
The simple fact of the matter is, unless you took AP or CLEP courses in high school, you have had no exposure to the difficulty of college courses. This is nothing new.”
I don’t recognize the abphabet soup you are referring to. I graduated 51 years ago, and then, the ones which were most likely to actually qualify and go to college were steered into “College Prep” courses. Harder subjects, stricter teachers, more homework, and bulletin boards in the classromm where you could take sttempts at solving extra problems for extra credit. Specially in the math classes, where the teacher came from a military school.
We learned alot from him, and most of the rest of our teachers were no slouches.
On Sunday I passed a young woman merging onto the freeway while texting.
We had four high school cheer leaders die when the driver (on a probationary license) sent a text message within 30 sec of running head on into a semi. Sad. And about as foolish as one can get.
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