American kids, dumber than dirt

It's crazy. They take the numbers in the equation and round each off to the nearest 10s and add those.

 

Our educational system is a horrifying synthesis of reactionary authoritarianism and liberal touchy-feelyism. Busting their little asses about stupid things like dress codes but letting them off the hook with important things, like coming up with an exact answer to a math problem or spelling correctly in classes outside of English.

Can't wholly blame the educational system for dumbed-down kids, though. It's up to parents to raise children.

EDIT: the "Evangelical Christian" bit in the lemmings sentence wasn't necessary. The highest-profile Christian progressive these days, Jim Wallis, is an evangelical, and the political-minded evangelical community is split between a reactionary majority and a progressive minority...and neither faction is particularly happy with Bush or the GOP. "xenophobic, warmongering" would have been a better way to depict the lemmings.

 

I blame it on soccer the New Meth.

 

I'll agree. In fact, I'll agree so much that I'll say one of the big problems is the never-ending quest to keep up with the Jones' and working two or three jobs when our kids would probably be much better off with one parent (dad or mom, I don't care) home when they get home and helping them with homework than having both parents working 50-60 hours per week so they can live in the $500,000 home instead of the $200,000 home.

 

He lost me with the slap at Christians. He was making a perfectly legitimate argument without it. There was no need for it.

 

"Fundamentalist" and "evangelical" are also not interchangeable terms. Sure there's plenty of crossover between those two takes on Christianity, but lots of people are very lazy with the way they throw those labels around. There are liberal evangelicals and fundamentalists who are not evangelical.

 

This dynamic also applies to a working-class couple who both work full-time to afford the rent on an apartment or rental home. This is why I seethe when people with fuck-the-poor economic policies spew rhetoric about "traditional family values." You want traditional family values? How about having an economy where families in the lower economic tiers can afford to have a stay-at-home parent?

 

I don't know.
I'm back covering some school stuff again and I got to be honest, the bright kids are still very smart. But the average kids and the dumb kids seem dumber on the basics.
They know how to make their facebook page do amazing things or how to IM 20 different people at the same time. But is is like the computers take care of their basics, so they don't bother learning the foundational stuff. The basic math, science and language skills that we all learned. Why learn something, that you can just google?
It reminds me a little of how superior you feel when you see someone use there/their/they're wrong. because writing and editing is what we do.
It is also like the doctor I know. Smart as a whip, but because he did all the advanced math in school, he doesn't know how to balance his checkbook or how to write a check.
Literally, he has office manager of wife do it for him.
I wouldn't say we are raising a generation of idiots, more like situational morons.

 

Same here. I stopped reading at that point.

 

"BRILLIANT!"

 

Even from a liberal point of view, I thought the Christians line felt out of place. Good points outside of that.

 

My older daughter did this estimating and they taught her that.

It sounds stupid, but when you see them teach this way, there is some logic to it. The point of this is to get the kids to think about number and math. For instance, you might not know what 12 percent of 487 is, but you probably could figure out 10 percent and get a pretty good idea that the answer is around 57. The point is to think and come up with a reasonable conclusion.

Why I think it makes sense is that you can buy a calculator in the dollar store and get the right answer. But if you can think, there is some logic to it. The point of it is to solve a problem, and getting a good estimate is a way to do that.

I questioned a math teacher and asked why they still taught long division on paper where you multiply and subtract. He said the who thing was the idea of solving problems.