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American kids, dumber than dirt

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by poindexter, Oct 24, 2007.

  1. And they're right.
     
  2. EStreetJoe

    EStreetJoe Well-Known Member

    I agree that too much teaching is being geared towards the standardized tests, which are being used as benchmarks to determine state aid, how well a district is actually doing, whether a kid can graduate high school or middle school, etc.
    One trick they like to use to teach to the standardized test is to estimate the math answer. If you can't do it quickly enough to find the exact answer, estimate the answer and then choose the answer closest to your estimate and there's a good chance you'll be right.
    What schools need to do is put the focus back on teaching the basics and life skills instead of gearing everything toward the tests.
     
  3. Pete Incaviglia

    Pete Incaviglia Active Member

    I waded through some of the posts, but has it been mentioned that parents probably don't spend as much time with their kids as they once did. I'm not talking watching TV or playing catch, but one of my two parents would ALWAYS do dishes, clean the kitchen, make chit chat or simply read beside while I did my homework at the kitchen table. THAT made/makes a HUGE difference.
     
  4. zeke12

    zeke12 Guest

    Teaching kids to estimate math answers is a FANTASTIC idea.

    It requires that you understand how to solve the problem. So much math today is done with calculator/graphing calculator/computer that kids learn virtually nothing.

    Now, marking a kid off for doing to problem correctly might seem harsh, but it's one way to make sure kids don't just do everything on the computer or copy off the smart kids.
     
  5. BitterYoungMatador2

    BitterYoungMatador2 Well-Known Member

    And who raises these younger generations? Could it be...the older generations?
     
  6. MacDaddy

    MacDaddy Active Member

    I used to teach at the high school level, and feel very strongly that one of the factors that makes public education so difficult is that we try to educate everybody. The way the system works now is based around the idea of getting everyone through to a high school diploma, which is a disservice to both those who struggle and those who are brilliant -- you end up spending a lot of time trying to teach things to students who have absolutely no desire to be taught, while the smarter students are bored out of their mind.

    I'm not advocating that only the best of the best are allowed to stay in schools; that would be ridiculous. But I'd estimate that somewhere between 20 and 30 percent of the students I had were wasting their time in high school. So why should we try to keep them there when they'd be served better elsewhere, and the rest of the student population would be served better by having them gone?

    There are, of course, many other factors at play -- rubber-stamping students to the next grade instead of making sure they're ready for the next grade, parents who are either too involved or not involved enough, school boards not willing to back challenging academic standards, legislatures that pass unworkable regulations, etc.
     
  7. Idaho

    Idaho Active Member

    SportsJournalists.com in a nutshell.
     
  8. andyouare?

    andyouare? Guest

    As the husband of an elementary school teacher, it's all about the parents. Well, maybe 90 percent. She teaches at a low-income school, but that doesn't mean all the kids are bad. The parents that take time to dress their kids properly, answer notes from the teacher and make their kids do homework have the best kids. It's not rocket science.

    My wife's worst kids? Well, one of them lives with four of his siblings in a motel room. Another has a dad in jail and a mother who's a stripper. Another comes to school smelly and dirty and with clothes that don't really fit him (He obviously dresses himself), others are wearing t-shirts and shorts when it's 40 degrees outside.

    It's pretty simple: Economic background of the parents is the No. 1 indicator of student performance.

    Oh, and yes, standardized testing is stupid. There's a state test and a national test. Sometimes schools that get an A in the state test fails the national test, and vice versa.

    Of course, making sweeping generalizations about schools is tough. Every school district and every school in that district is unique.
     
  9. Pastor

    Pastor Active Member


    There are lots of good comments here. The most cogent was made by MacDaddy who said that there is a percentage of students that don’t and won’t be taught, yet they take up a seat. (This is one of the reasons why those pushing for privatization don’t understand why their grad rates are higher.)

    The reality is that the brightest students coming out now are vastly superior to those coming out decades prior. The dumbest students are brighter in certain areas but much dumber in others. This is partly due to the paucity of skilled labor jobs. Our economy has shifted and this means we need a higher education to achieve the better positions, the open positions.

    Yes, we will always need the electrician, plumber, garbage man. However, there are only so many of those jobs to go around and they aren’t going to provide the best pay.

    If you want your child to be smarter, you don’t need a stay-at-home parent. What you need are parents that play an active role. Both can work, but the parents need to recognize that they don’t need to watch the latest episode of 24 when they should be spending the time going over their child’s homework.

    I don’t buy that we are in some sort of great crisis. I just view it as a shift in where the educational level of each student must go.
     
  10. rallen13

    rallen13 Member

    As a 32-year vet in the classroom, and now the Library, I read the original article and have read the postings on this thread carefully, and I have to honestly say that I have found none with which I totally agree or disagree, except for the religious comments, which are totally irrelevant to the issue. However, I must say that I do wholeheartedly agree with the notion that the educational system is screwed.
    Before I say any more, let me assert that this is not meant in any way, shape, or form, to be a political statement. State and federal politicos from both sides of the aisle have given in to idiots like H. Ross Perot who, politics aside, has done the biggest hurt to education in American history. They have also given in to parents and local leaders who, hearing the word "accountability" thought the sun had finally risen.
    The politicians, regardless of their level, were all, I truly believe, well-meaning and concerned. The problem is, they were trying to fix something that wasn't broken.
    When I entered the teaching field in 1975, my students were great. Regardless of race, religion, or economic level, they were gasping for a breath of knowledge. I could not give them information fast enough. And it stayed like that until they were told that a "test" would determine their success or failure. They pretty much ignored it at first, but as they began to get stung by the testing, as they began to be forced to guess at answers in order to pass, they began to shut down.
    Then, as they began to pass the tests, the various agencies began to demand even more rigorous tests. If they were passing, some said openly here in Texas, then the test isn't hard enough. So they began to change it, almost yearly. In a space of ten years, Texas went through the TEAMS, TABS, TASP, TAPS, TAS, TAAS, and TAKS, with all the related TEKS, EO's, IO's, and E-I-E-I-O's. They have even wobbled the type of test between fact-based and critical thinking-based (the estimation type referred to).
    At that point the teachers began shutting down because their jobs were now being tied to a test that was never consistent, always changing. It’s not that they didn’t want to teach. God knows they did want to. They just weren’t being allowed to. My wife, who was teaching fourth grade at the time, was told by her principal that if she (the principal) ever walked into a teacher’s room and they weren’t teaching the test, they would be written up! And that was widely practiced throughout the state.
    Today, the curriculum teachers must teach is no longer their option. There are lesson programs that districts are purchasing for teachers to use. And “No Child Left Behind” is costing teachers and administrators their jobs. It was a well intentioned and well meaning program, but without funding it was destined to be what it has become, a failure. Teachers are frustrated and leaving education in droves, being replaced by anyone with a degree in anything, as long as they have an alternative form of teacher certification.
    All this dilutes the kid’s opportunity to learn, and the kids in turn are frustrated and leaving school in droves.
    Yes, parents should take more responsibility. They simply are not doing enough. Yes there needs to be more funding in the right places. And yes, the students themselves need to take more responsibility.
    To say or imply that students are dumb or ignorant is perhaps true, ONLY if we are saying that they cannot read or write. In which case they have either not learned or been taught. To say they are stupid is wrong if applied to their education. Ignorance is lack of learning. Stupid is poor decision making which may or may not result from ignorance.
    Our kids are plenty smart. What they often lack is the opportunity to show how smart they really are and can be.
    The trouble, dear Brutus, lies not within ourselves, but within the system.
     
  11. bydesign77

    bydesign77 Active Member

    Estimation is a great tool to have, especially when shopping and you don't have the tools in front of you to calculate exact totals.

    Estimation is something that has been taught in math for generation. It goes to building a solid foundation for later skills.
     
  12. writing irish

    writing irish Active Member

    Good stuff here, particularly rallen's, MacD's and andyouare's posts.

    I suck at math and I'm medicore at science, so I don't have strong opinions about how to reform those curricula. I'm stronger in the humanities and social sciences and have plenty of thoughts there.

    For one thing, how about continuing to teach grammar/usage and composition to kids all the way through high school? I don't think I had any grammar instruction after 9th grade. Ridiculous. 10th-12th grade, all we did in English was literature. I love literature, majored in it in college, but damn, all us kids would have benefitted from some more instruction in that regard. If a student lacks a basic command of comprehending and producing the language, their ability to learn won't ever reach a desirable level.

    I think that a lot of the post-WWII curriculum reforms really threw the baby out with the bath-water when they quit teaching old-fashioned subjects like rhetoric, logic and philosophy to teenagers. If a student doesn't know how to reason and analyze, then teaching them something like history is a waste of everyone's time. It becomes a bunch of random facts to be memorized and forgotten, names and dates, meaningless. The cause-and-effect dynamics are what need to be learned in a history class, not rote regurgitation of names and dates. A kid who can't reason and identify macro-level processes won't ever get anything out of a class like history...or social studies or economics, for that matter.

    Junior-high-aged students should be taught rhetoric and logic...in a curriculum simplified for their age and abilities, of course, but I think if they don't start learning how really to think as they enter adolescence then it's very difficult to make thinkers out of them once they reach high school.
     
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