Comic Book Plus Forum
All And Everything => General Discussion => Topic started by: narfstar on July 28, 2009, 09:32:43 PM
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Never the parents fault...
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you got it! Never the kids or the parents!
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Since you are new here A you may not know that I am a high school algebra teacher
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Wow that's great! I hope I didn't say anything to offend! Yours is a noble profession and a thankless one. I always try to impress upon my daughters how important math is. Now that my oldest is in the Navy, she sees I'm right. Thanks for your service to our country and our kids!
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Every generation looks in shock at the newer one and screams 'kids today...'
I myself can't believe the music that is popular these days and certainly I'm not interested in destroying my ears at a concert anymore no matter how much I enjoy the tunes.
But one thing some younger members here might not realize in these days of comics as a pretty much forgotten medium is in the 40s and early 50s comics were the #1 best selling medium going! A million plus printing on Superman was not that unusual. Today they Marvel/DC can't even come close to those numbers unless they kill off Superman. I think parents in the 50s saw kids getting sometimes out of hand and when the 'experts' like Wirtham pointed the finger at comics they were happy to believe. Kids are just as complex as adults and it takes a lot more than a comic, movie, tv or video game to create a delinquent. Sadly all of them can reinforce any existing problem though and it certainly seems to me these days that the media loves to glorify the criminals in society. When it's now considered a sign of weakness to say 'excuse me' or 'thank-you' among kids it's a sad sad day.
-Yoc
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I am not so much upset by kids doing wrong as for generations. What upsets me is they do not think things are wrong. People have always lied and always will. When they lied they knew it was wrong and their conscience would bother them to keep them from doing it again. Same with stealing "little" things. The kids will say that it was only.... like that makes it OK. They do not feel that it is wrong anymore. The kids have to stay behind a line in the cafeteria because they were stealing so many drinks further up. Self called Christian kids do not believe premarital sex is wrong often because their youth directors are doing it. I put the blame first on parents, then the church which is afraid to stand strong on morals because they are more afraid of losing bodies and the money that comes with them than souls, then the media which promotes foul language and frequent sex. We were given a conscience to keep us in check. As our collective conscience becomes seared we go down as a society. Thank God we are still nothing as bad as ancient Rome.
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My kids are FANTASTIC!!!! And it's nobody's fault but mine.
;)
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Warning: If you think this is going to be a quick comment, then hi, I'm John. We must not have met before...
I think parents in the 50s saw kids getting sometimes out of hand and when the 'experts' like Wirtham pointed the finger at comics they were happy to believe.
As they say in the science biz, "correlation does not imply causation." That's something the social engineers always fail to take into account. Unfortunately, the average Joe also doesn't realize it, and falls for the story hook, line, and sinker. Which is a mixed metaphor, but that's between me and the MLA.
But I'm not as sure the parents are at fault as I used to be.
I mean, sure, some of them clearly are. When I go out to dinner, I get a kick out of listening for the parents of the unruly kids, because they invariably use that comical passive-aggressive hissing voice to tell the kid "that's not how we act." I mean, you could discipline the kid or treat him like an adult and discuss it with him, but it's waaay better to growl like an animal.
But I tend to set my sights higher. In the last thirty years, I've learned that:
- Lying, dealing drugs, and funding terrorists is cool, as long as an American company or agency turns a profit. (Ollie North)
- You should pretend you can't hear anybody who asks uncomfortable questions. (Ronald Reagan)
- Killing foreigners is awesome if you don't have to look anybody in the face. (George HW Bush and CNN)
- Oral sex isn't sex. (Bill Clinton)
- Sex is more interesting than perjury. (Clinton's Senate)
- Selling secrets to foreign powers is fine, as long as they contribute to your campaign. (Bubba again)
- The rules don't apply when they're inconvenient. (John Yoo, Dick Cheney)
- Dropping bombs on people wins their hearts and minds. (Donald Rumsfeld)
- You can do anything to people, as long as you call them "enemies" first. (George W. Bush)
- Supporting and continuing bad policies is fine as long as you spoke out agaiinst them, once. (Barack Obama)
That doesn't even scratch the surface of Gore's gross misrepresentation regarding Global Warming, Hillary Clinton's nutcase policies, any number of things both Bushes have done, unending Congressional idiocy, and so forth. And nobody ever calls them on it, at least not to the extent of trying to stop them. And if it's OK for the government to torture people (which, if you believe the confessions are valid, then you must also believe that Spain was once a hotbed of people getting supernatural powers from the Devil), then how bad can stealing a couple of dollars and lying about your whereabouts really be?
(Heck, look at the case in New Jersey: Almost fifty high-level politicians and religious leaders in an international money laundering and organ trafficking scheme! I mean...wow. I'm just speechless. And it's not ANYBODY's lead story!?)
Add in a few generations of incompetant social engineering experiments in the schools and a generation of "helicopter parents" (whose actions would have completely mortified all of my peers growing up, by the way), and it's no real surprise that they don't take any responsibility. We've taught them NOT to take responsibility if they want to get ahead.
My favorite bit on the school side is when students ask how the teacher/professor could possibly have covered the material if it's not in the student's notes. Apparently, "maybe you weren't paying attention" isn't the answer. I blame the Anti-Monitor, personally. Damn him for causing history to rewrite itself.
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Kids learn from what they see. It bothers me how blase' TV and movies are about teenagers being parents. It makes it okay in their eyes. With both my kids, my wife and I never spoke "baby talk" to them and people would be amazed at how clearly they spoke. My 9 year old saw previews for that TV show with the pregnant teen and she was shocked. "She's just a kid! She's not even married!"
I can remember when I was younger an excuse parents used for their bully sons was "boys will be boys".
Nothing will change in the movies or TV because it sells.
I'm a big believer in personal responsibility and also believe it lies with the parents to teach that personal responsibility.
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Nothing will change in the movies or TV because it sells.
I'm a big believer in personal responsibility and also believe it lies with the parents to teach that personal responsibility.
Amen to personal responsibility. Lawyers make a living out of making excuses why it should not be so. As John said there is a correlation if not cause with what goes on in the media. Just watch (or not) show like "According to Jim" or "Still Standing" where lieing and drinking are celebrated. You can not tell me that does not affect kids whose parents have not grounded them well. My son was always grounded and knew where we stood on such issues. We also never talked baby talk to him and when he was a kid he would correct our grammer.
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Amen to that narf!
When my daughter hears someone say "Valentimes Day" or "liberry" instead of Library, she cringes and looks at me like "What's wrong with them?"
I very rarely drink and when I do, my daughter looks at me funny. That's the way it should be. She's never seen me drunk nor will she ever. I'm tired of that whole drunk, high, let's get a stripper, frat boy mentality that's so prevalent.
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Always makes me laugh when I hear todays kids using the excuse that they "are bored" ( especialy during long school holidays) as the reason for their anti-social activities.
I'm SURE kids have more to do now ( DVD's, CD's Ipods, PC's, Gameboys, Playstations, ect, ect) then I did 45 years ago but I alway managed to steer clear of trouble. ::)
-Nigel
P.S. I began upsetting the forces of law and order in 1975 when I bought my first car, but thats ANOTHER story ;) !
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I've been thinking about this topic for hours since I read the first postings. Ya know, I don't know if kids read less now than when I was a kid. I remember back in the late 60's and early 70's when I wa in high school. Even the kids in the honors sections weren't all avid readers. Sure, plenty were, but a lot weren't
I teach high school now. I see a lot of kids carrying around books, reading in class before the lesson starts, or even at the end of class if we have a few flex minutes. Again, it's a minority, but there are quite a few who are always sticking there nose in a novel.
Compare the diversions and distractions these kids have now versus those available to us 40 years ago, and I don't believe the number of avid young readers is that bad. There are a lot of problems with education, personal responsibilty, the lack of parental oversight, and a host of other issues pertaining to kids. But on this one thing - reading for pleasure - I think there's a respectable number.
I've got to tell you though: You would not believe the number of parents who are pulled in for conferences on their slacker children who claim that they can't control their kids. I swear it's "Don't look at me, it's not my fault I can't control him."
Many have pondered this point; The folks I work with seem to agree that we stay teachers for that 1/3 of all our students who actually give a s**t.
I think two things need to happen: Public education needs to collapse and be completely restructured (no more band-aid reforms) and Parents need to be held responsible for what their kids do and don't do. If a kid doesn't pass a state exam it's probably because the parents haven't checked homework and the like in, well, forever.
I'll stop now before I drive myself nuts (again.)
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I've always loved to read and thankfully have passed that along to my girls. While I believe it's a parents job to get the kids in line, at some point the kids need to be held accountable for their own actions. Believe me, you can do everything right - encouragement & praise, checking the homework laying down moral guidelines, etc. and sometimes the kids are still going to be hellraisers or not try hard in school. Another thing that's hamstringing parents is society. If parents teach their child for example that sex before marriage is wrong and the child then sees many movies, television shows, and any number of public relationships where not being married and having kids is okay, it's hard to counter.
Another thing is how society removes all fault from children. Yes, they will follow what they see but at times it's like the parents have to undo what everyone else is teaching them. For instance, when I played little league, I had to TRY OUT. If I (or anyone) wasn't good enough, you weren't on the team. My niece was in dance class and for the recital, she had to prove she was good enough. Now if you want to be on a team, it doesn't matter if you can play or not. If there's a recital, you had better let everyone be involved. I think this actually began with whining parents that couldn't accept that their child wasn't good enough and everyone just gave in. Sometimes you HAVE to say NO!
Look at all those horrible people trying out on American Idol. They're told that they stink and they can't believe it because no one ever told them no.
Kids have to be prepared for a future where they just might not get everything they want.
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Here we have the mutual agreement society. I did write several pages on what I hoped to be a book called "You Can Drag Kids to School but You Can't Make Them Think." I do not know that it will ever be a book. I look at how much I have done and how much more I have said than most books and figure that I just can not BS enough to fill out a whole book. My graduate thesis was actually accepted with fewer than the minimum pages. Fortunately the advisers realized that my succinct style said what it needed to say. Even following the crazy guidelines of say what you are going to say, say it, then say what you said, I could not get enough pages. I am considering making a blog instead. I so wanted to have a best seller, make money and reform education. My book is a TOTAL revamp of US education. I throw the baby out with the bath because we are just drowning them.
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Sounds good narf! Our educational system has need it for a long time! Keep us posted on your writings, I for one would love to read it.
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Some thoughts that, alas, don't have any way of stuffing them into a narrative.
- I tend to suffer from the same problem in writing, and the advice I've been given is to be specific. Cite studies, show visuals (graphs), conduct interviews, and so forth. It seems like filler to you or I, but it also helps people understand the points you're trying to make.
- As a lifelong A student with several friends who weren't, my impression is that homework only really serves to prevent kids from interacting with their parents, so I'm not surprised that the parents don't get involved. It depends on the specifics, of course--you can't really learn arithmetic without having to go through the motions hundreds of times--but in most subjects, assignments are busywork, social studies usually being the worst with fill-in-the-blank answers.
- On the homework topic, in my classes (I teach graduate computer science, which is obviously a different animal than the rest of you), one of the principles I try to keep to is that every part of the class should teach something, from my lectures (usually theory) to the homework assiignments (usually key details) to the exams (usually applications of the rest). Even after a decade at it, I'm not sure it's optimal, but I at least don't feel like any part of the class can be removed.
- My sister and I were both reading complete books by the time we were two or three, and speaking well long before that. To this day, I cringe when I hear baby talk and it infuriated me when I was little. In fact, I excused myself from a date a few years back with an otherwise charming woman because she spent a long time babbling and screeching at some poor boy. I figure it's like "the waiter test" (as in, if someone nice to you and not the waiter, then she's not a nice person), but less subjective.
- The "everyone's a winner" garbage is definitely not helping anybody. I recently spoke with an author who was telling me that a recent college graduate approached her cold, asking for help finding a high-paying job. Every time she asked about experience and background, the kid talked about courses he took and vacations he had taken to different parts of the world.
- What's worse than everybody being a "winner" is that kids also seem increasingly insulated from decision-making. High school is just to prepare you for another few years of school, and I've noticed an upswing in kids going for graduate degrees "just to compete" (and to put off paying their student loans). They keep expanding child labor laws and basically preventing kids from accomplishing anything until they're well into their twenties...at which point, the best job they can get is answering phones, anyway.
So yeah, I do impatiently await the demise of the educational system (and probably the economic system, too, since that's also too far gone to fix...and maybe health care, as well), and hope there are some intelligent adults left in the room when it's time to put things back together.
If it helps anybody, in my dwindling spare time, I've been trying to investigate the idea of running a school as...sort of a series of "micro-apprenticeships," where students learn English by staging plays at community theaters, math and science by working on real projects with engineers, and so on. It's an idea that requires an entirely different kind of administration (not to mention creating an insurance nightmare), but I've noticed that kids (and adults) respond best to responsibilities and relationships, not rules and accolades.
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I agree. A practical application of education is what's needed. When a kids asks "Why do I need to know this?" Don't just give the same old "because you do!" answer.
When I was in school, I was TERRIBLE at math. I always thought that I wouldn't need it. Wrong! They should show kids WHY they need it. Something like "okay, your assignment is to balance a checkbook" or "your iPod is 30gb. Figure out the average size of these songs and figure out how many it can hold."
I've never responded well to the "do it because" mentality. If I'm shown why something needs to be done a certain way, I work much better.
English was the only subject in high school I ever got an A in and I'm somewhat of a grammar Nazi. I cannot stand it when I hear things like "well, anyways.." or "alls I know is..."
Since the dictionary is adding or has added things like "Staycation" "Frenemy", etc. I guess all you need to do is constantly mangle the English language and sooner or later you will be vindicated.
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I do not believe in "graded" homework because you never know who did it. I did not need to do my Alg homework so I copied Calvin's. We both got the same credit. What about the student who felt it wrong to copy. He gets punished for being honest. Not to mention the students who have no help or have to work after school. Kids with smart helping parents get good homework grades, think science projects, those who get the shaft in home life get it again at school. Math is by application but Algebra is useless and an unfair punishment for most students. Students should not be punished because they are right brained instead of left brained any more than punished for being left brained. You can learn all the math/algebra you need for auto mechanics in auto mechanics, cosmatology in cosmatology, etc class just makes it hated. Everyone can be a winner if willing to work at and not required to take subjects for which they are not prepared.
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You're absolutely right. While I've appreciated all my math teachers (except the differential equations guy in college--he was a nice enough guy, but really shouldn't have been in front of a room), I've never understood the point of the class except as an end in itself.
I don't know about the rest of the world, but in New York, it's even weirder, because we have "Sequential Math" mandated statewide. Rather than the traditional algebra, geometry, trigonometry, calculus approach, each course surveys a little bit of each, plus propositional logic and a few other pieces. Oh, plus a healthy dose of (again) social engineering, as all the "word problems" involve a multicultural selection of names. As you might expect, this means spending a lot of class time rehashing things that you haven't seen in about a year.
Meanwhile, your chemistry and physics teachers have probably taught you some differential and integral calculus in passing because they were needed to explain what was going on. But they can't call it that, because then the Board gets on their cases for teaching math...
Thankfully, I have less worry in students copying off each other. I end up using those grades to account for the fact that some people (especially technical people) with an added time pressure. I don't give it enough weight that a student can succeed based on the strength of the homework alone, but it's enough to push an otherwise marginal student through.
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Believe it or not I use my training in differential equations all the time. Though I realize I'm probably 1 in a 1000 (who took it) or 1 in more than a million country wide.
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I think one of the reason that I am such a good math teacher is because I was not a math major. I was a science major who picked up math certification backward. Back in the olden days I needed 27 quarter hours in math. I had had nine freshman level then a class called Calculus and Analytical Geometry. C and A was a struggle for me so I took lower classes of Finite Math, Pre-Cal (yes after C and A), regular Calculus and Statistics. I would never be qualified to teach math if I was not grandfathered in. One method of achieving highly qualified status is three years with your students value added stores as average or above. Mine have been above. Proves that you really do not need all that overkill education required nowadays. Never had DE probably could not pass it.
Sequential/integrated math has usually been dropped after brief trials. Had a young lady at church who was at a different school than mine ask me some of her integrated math. I had no idea what she was even talking about. Even the terminology was different. There is a teacher at Lee Unversity here whose dad was instrumental in "new math." This teacher has another form of new math that is way out in left field. Look for another stupid trend to come your way :'(
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It sounds to me that instead of trying to teach the kids math in all it's forms, they're modifying it to make it easier to learn. Doesn't make sense to me. The sciences are an international language. If you were to speak to a German scientist about Algebra, it's the same in both cultures. If I was talking to a Polish astronomer about methane lakes on Titan, it would be the same "language". Now the schools are too lazy to teach the kids and people like you have to learn all new terminology. You can hear it in the slang kids use when they talk. If the schools and parents were teaching them correctly, you wouldn't hear "Anyways, alls I know is that 'aint Bob desk, it be mines." My English teacher and parents would have killed me if I spoke like that. I can still hear my Dad "There 'aint no such word as 'aint!" and "Nuttin! Nuttin?! Nuttin is when you go in the backyard and gather nuts!"
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Unfortunatly my grammar continues to deteriorate through over exposure to counter examples. Some grammatical rules should change. Remember language is not static. Unlike math the rules are made by who is in charge. We would not even understand someone talking olde English to us. Ast are you aware that it was a mathematician who wrote a book that changed grammer.
"We have 18th century mathematician and grammarian Robert Lowth to thank for the received wisdom that two negatives are ungrammatical. In his 1762 book A Short Introduction to English Grammar, Lowth, who was enamoured of Latin-derived logical models, decreed that two negatives cancel each other out and create a positive; until that time, two negatives were taken to reinforce each other. Lowth's rule, though arbitrary and invented, has become "truth", as has his insistence that sentences should not end in prepositions, that split infinitives are ungrammatical, and that "they" cannot be used as a gender-neutral pronoun. Not all languages consider a double negative to be not correct."
BTW when my students ask me when will I ever use this I am honest. I tell them you probably won't.
Except to pass this class and the test. All required of you by the morons from the state department who are clueless. Yes I refer to them as morons to the students because I have no respect for people in power who do not take the time to find out how much damage they do.
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Unfortunatly my grammar continues to deteriorate through over exposure to counter examples.
I am a stickler for spelling and grammar, narf. It simply grates on me when I encounter errors. This whole texting and tweeting stuff is an anathema to me. This is especially strange since I hated English, but somehow the teachers "won". I don't know how, since I thought I was especially stubborn in my resistance to them. The idea that I would ever end up WRITING professionally is totally mind-boggling.
One thing that I love is the spell-checking functions on Firefox so that every time I misspell a word it gets underlined in red. Makes me look good with a minimum of effort.
And I don't argue with your notion that language is a dynamic thing, but correct spelling is a positive step towards clear communication. For me, communication is a MUST these days and, also to me, a sign of respect to the person/persons you're talking to. Others, of course, disagree and figure that if they can get your message, that's all that matters.
Exposure to contrary approaches won't change my opinions or my dedication to doing it "the old fashioned way." C'est la vie.
Peace, Jim (|:{>
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I am a terrible speller and always have been. I get the red line and try other options that turn out red also. I know that I should make the effort to fix it but usually do not. The whole short cut thing is totally me. I am by nature a very impatient person. Getting to the point with a minimum of keystrokes makes sense to me. Please do not throw anything but I actually would have no problem with our language evolving into text message shortcuts. I find English to be so illogical now that it needs changed anyway. There is no logicalreason not to say: I am, he am, she am, we am, they am. Sounds weird because we have been taught otherwise and accustomed to hearing it otherwise. All the world's languages would be easier to learn without those unnecessary conjugations.
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I most programs that underline a misspelled word in red, if you right click it, you will get suggestions as to the proper word.
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I am a terrible speller and always have been. I get the red line and try other options that turn out red also. I know that I should make the effort to fix it but usually do not. The whole short cut thing is totally me. I am by nature a very impatient person. Getting to the point with a minimum of keystrokes makes sense to me. Please do not throw anything but I actually would have no problem with our language evolving into text message shortcuts. I find English to be so illogical now that it needs changed anyway. There is no logicalreason not to say: I am, he am, she am, we am, they am. Sounds weird because we have been taught otherwise and accustomed to hearing it otherwise. All the world's languages would be easier to learn without those unnecessary conjugations.
Here's a trick to try when you get a red underline:
I right click on the word and I get the proper spelling (or spellings, if it's not clear what word I was aiming for). I don't know it that is a function of some setting on my end or if it's a feature of Firefox, or what. But give it a whirl and see what you get.
If you think English is complex, wait until you try French and the is/are/am changes depending on the gender of the WORD - not just the gender of the person begin discussed, but the arbitrary (to me, anyway) gender of the noun (desk, pen, bed, coffee, passport, car, etc. - they all have genders in French.
Stick with English. I wish I could.
Peace, Jim (|:{>
ps. What Jon said.
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Thanks for the tip guys. I found that one time but had forgotten about it. Jim I did take two years of Spanish and noun gender is really stupid. Any idea why it was ever started?
BTW since this is about kids and kids need health care >some segue
On the back of my card that I gave the Senator's aides was a little message they may or may not ever notice. It said:
Do not socialize medicine socialize medical schools to provide more doctors without debt under special contract.
Do not socialize medical insurance, socialize malpractice insurance with caps.
Allow/require doctors to distribute the medicines they prescribe at their cost to avoid pharmacy mark-up.
Of course they have all kinds of "excuses" why it can not be done but the real reason they will not buck the AMA, Bar and pharmacies.
Mine is a real simple plan that provide more doctors to lower the cost of care. I also favor super specialization that does not require as much schooling.
$200K a year for malpractice is passed on in high costs. All medical procedures should be video taped to provide easy evidence to malpractice or not.
Drug companies have some justification (though much of research is paid for by grants and colleges so not as much as they claim_)for high initial prices. But drug stores mark up based on cost from the drug company without them having any risk. I believe the drug companies replace any drugs they may have overstocked and pull off the shelves. Is it any wonder their are two huge drugstores across the street from each other at every corner. It makes no sense to me that the Doc can prescribe it but not give it to you. RACKET
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Again, jumping around to random items...
Health care: I also see it as the AMA's fault. They're a private company that can have a doctor arrested for, basically, not paying them dues. They intentionally limit the number of doctors available to each area AND fix the prices. They set the malpractice requirements (thereby setting insurance costs) and are often the sole arbiter in a problem. But no, the clear solution is to force everybody to pay for medical insurance (and change the insurance business model so as to require an increase in cost), rather than just fix the supply/demand disparity. (Anybody who's interested in this sort of thing should take a look at the "barefoot doctor" movements in China and India. That would be my solution.)
Grammar and Spelling: As they say, language specifications are descriptive, not proscriptive (unless you're French, in which case, l'Academie Francaise has kidnapped your guinea pig). That said, the further you deviate from formal written language, the less you should be surprised that people aren't taking you seriously. Working within the rules shows respect for the audience. That was the trouble with California's "Ebonics" experiment. It's not that kids shouldn't speak how they wish among their peers, but rather that you're raising a bunch of inner city kids to be incapable of handling a job interview. You no gots getting it solid-like, but me can gots it assuming your ignorance extend'll beyond grammarz, y'know?
(That's at least doubly true on the Internet. Any modern writing course should seriously emphasize that, when there are no other social cues available, your treatment will be based directly on what CAN be seen--your e-mail address and your writing style.)
Noun Gender: For the Romance languages, at least, blame Latin and be thankful Rome collapsed, with all its declensions and other forms. Gender (and it's only a coincidence that the system's also used for male and female people) is a simplified version of that system, I believe. I'm not sure where that originally arose, though it seems to be a common trait to all older languages (the northern European languages case nouns as well), so it might just be an artifact of pulling different groups together under a single banner--each has different rules and vocabularies, and those winning out as official are random.
You can see a similar effect in most European languages by conjugating the common verbs. For example, "to be" in French (etre, with a circumflex/caret over the first letter) has present tense forms suis, et, est, sommes, etes (circumflex), and sont. That irregularity probably tells some history about three or four tribes with different verbs; you can see relationships between etre/etes and maybe et/est, sommes/sont, with suis hanging out alone...and by the way, since et and est sound the same (/ay/), French requires every sentence to carry a noun, like English ("it's raining") and unlike Spanish, where "soy" is a valid and comprehensible thing to say ("I am").
Sequential Math: Yes, some books do use different terms, to top it off, though that's usually the "Integrated" curriculum, which is different...somehow. It's apparently a concession to the idea that kids aren't going to use it anyway, so scaring them with "real" words is silly. Because that doesn't hamstring them if they ARE going to use it. Naw. But don't worry, college kids aren't left out of this excitement, because they have the competing Harvard Calculus, which is a numerical approach based on graphical calculator use. To be fair, it has some really good ideas like focusing on visualization of function behavior, but the very thought that you can get most of the way through a calculus course and not know what a Limit is or how one might differentiate a function makes it seem counterproductive.
Differential Equations: I haven't had a professional use for them, personally, but then my career has involved programming trouble management, warehousing, and provisioning software, where the most complicated math is generally subtraction of integers. However, I have friends in fields like air conditioning design and nanotube applications, so it's typical "dinner conversation."
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Nothing will change in the movies or TV because it sells.
I'm a big believer in personal responsibility and also believe it lies with the parents to teach that personal responsibility.
Amen to personal responsibility. Lawyers make a living out of making excuses why it should not be so. As John said there is a correlation if not cause with what goes on in the media. Just watch (or not) show like "According to Jim" or "Still Standing" where lieing and drinking are celebrated. You can not tell me that does not affect kids whose parents have not grounded them well. My son was always grounded and knew where we stood on such issues. We also never talked baby talk to him and when he was a kid he would correct our grammer.
A nice thread Narf. ;D
B.
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As a little more fuel for the fire, I stopped off at an author's signing at my local book store, last night. Normally, I skip them, because I really couldn't care less what Pat Buchanan, Bill Clinton, Darryl Strawberry, or even Bruce Campbell (all signings in the last few years) have to say, but this one was a little nearer and dearer to my heart.
The book's David Marcus's "Accepted," for anybody who miight care to check it out, and it's about the college admissions process viewed as narratives centering around the kids' guidance counsellor...who just happens to have been the office director when I was in high school. I was their student aid for most of my time, there, so I couldn't pass up the trip, even in the pouring rain. (Also, he wasn't my counsellor, but still got me through the process after many paperwork problems and a last-minute decision that I wasn't going to the originally-planned school. And when I say "last minute," I mean the end of August.)
Frankly, the book sounds kind of like a dud, due to the author's mediocre writing (there's, like, fakey dialogue and stuff), so check a library before buying it. But Mr. Smith spoke for a bit, and he made a similar comment that something's gone terribly wrong with the system, where high school has become "about" SAT prep, basically, and with the end goal of not just with the kid going to college, but to a "name brand" college, with no consideration as to whether the school and kid make a good match.
And I do notice that my class was around when the Pre-SAT started showing up, and it did change a lot of things. And my sister, coming through about eight years later with many of the same people teaching the same classes, absolutely hated high school and most of the staff I loved.
But for what it's worth, Mr. Smith got me a good enough match that I've been teaching there since I graduated, so I'm predisposed to think he's on to something.
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Hi we haven't met before
Quite agree with you on this subject, what is also a contributing factor is too much political correctness thrown into the mix
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I agree with that also Mr X. It is not politically correct to admit that some kids can not do this or that. The fact that they can not do everything is less important. We throw a calculator in their hands in elementary school to hide the fact they never learned to add let alone multiply. But since they are able to pass the state test with a calculator they are OK. The kids who do not like to read avoid accelerated reader while those that liked to read learn to hate it by having to read too much.
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Thank you Narfstar,
Reading the comment's posted i assume that a lot of the discussion is relevant to the American Teaching system but forgive me if i am wrong, In the EU the political correctness affect's all member states and is governed by the EU commission, here it has become absurd.
A teacher now cannot make any corrections to a pupil's work in a red pen, why? Red is seen as the colour of aggresion.
Also a teacher cannot make corrections to a pupils art by writing over it as it might shatter the pupil's confidence, in that the art work would to them be defaced if not debunked and this might be seen to make the pupil feel humiliated and to lack confidence.
I don't know about you, but when i was at school it was not unusual to have the column at the left hand side of the page full of comments and corrections made in red pen, personally i always found this helpfull as it helped to correct where i had gone wrong, how can kid's learn if they are not corrected?
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I do not know about Europe but it is still allowed in most schools in America. I am in the conservative south and we still do things the old (right) way on many things that liberals tried to change.
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Yeah, I'm told by friends that whereas it's simply frowned upon in the United States, across the EU, you can be fired (and arrested) for simply expressing a banned idea. They're working on it here (which is why Joe Wilson is "racist"), but so far, no go.
Where I teach (a graduate-only campus of an engineering college), we joke about the red pen thing, by the way. Every once in a while, the management professors come in with some goofy research paper that suggests that red is "too intimidating" and should at least be replaced by some friendlier color.
I admit that I'm not a fan of grading--I use it, because I need an objective-seeming way of telling the students whether I think they've learned the material, but I understand the motivation (liberal, if you prefer to brand it that way) to change the system to something less confrontational and artificial (y'know, "it's an A, but you should still be seven percent disappointed in yourself...").
Not that I've found a better solution, mind you, but I spend a lot of time experimenting with testing and homework/project styles to find what works for different courses.
For the record, I actually do tend to believe that any kid (or person) can do anything. The kid might have to work harder, and may never be an expert, but there's nobody out there who would never be able to sing, write poetry, hit a baseball, read Chinese, or solve differential equations.
It's another issue entirely, though, whether it's useful to make kids jump through those sorts of hoops. I tend to think it is, but only because you can't tell if you enjoy (or are good at) something until you've been exposed to something long enough to potentially fail at it. But that may just be my own bias at work.
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I don't care to get into the college bashing portion of this thread, beyond saying that I agree with more than has been written than I disagree. As for the elementary side, I worked for three years recruiting volunteers to work as tutors with children who were having some difficulty trying to learn to read, and noticed a few things (and yes, I did find that three and four panel comic strips can be an effective tool from kindergarten on up). I also worked as a substitute teacher on and off before and after those three years, and I had been around many children who read just fine. I always asked children who had good reading and spelling skills if people in their family read often (and assuming that every family has two parents is a leap of faith that isn't always born out). Not to my great amazment, I found most of the children who read well came from families where someone read newspapers most every day, and those same people were also likely to read a book now and then, and even take their kids to the public library now and again (even if it was just to check out new video tapes, which they had read in the newspaper had been added to the library's collection). A fundamental truth which many educators ignore is that families are the primary socializing agent in this country, and children who live in families where no one reads aren't likely to become readers, or even see any reason why they should learn to read. Fortunately, there will always be exceptions, and some children overcome being raised by social morons; higher intelligence also doesn't care where it manifests and rich children and poor children, children from traditional families and fractured families, and children from any background have a slim chance of having a high IQ and/or a high EQ. Unfortunately, strong native abilities can be as handy in illegal activities as in legal ones. Believe it or not, many kids will do much better, in school and out, if an adult or two will spend some time with them one on one.
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I don't care to get into the college bashing portion of this thread, beyond saying that I agree with more than has been written than I disagree.
To be clear, the only reason I focus on college is because it's near the center of my world: I'm in my fourteenth year teaching at my alma mater, a close friend is up at MIT, and I have other people scattered teaching throughout the country that I hear from once or twice a year. I'm sure if I had kids, I'd be just as vocal about public school.
I always asked children who had good reading and spelling skills if people in their family read often (and assuming that every family has two parents is a leap of faith that isn't always born out). Not to my great amazment, I found most of the children who read well came from families where someone read newspapers most every day, and those same people were also likely to read a book now and then, and even take their kids to the public library now and again (even if it was just to check out new video tapes, which they had read in the newspaper had been added to the library's collection).
Yes. My parents were, and still are, outright bizarre in their ways, and both are anti-intellectual beyond compare. But they both read constantly, usually with me in their laps, and I was reading history books by my fourth birthday. Less time was spent with my sister, for a variety of reasons, so she started slower, but was still easily at a "fourth-grade level" (whatever that may mean) by the time she hit kindergarten.
A fundamental truth which many educators ignore is that families are the primary socializing agent in this country,
Unfortunately, the trend in teaching (as an industry, I mean, from teacher certification to administrative oversight of ever-merging districts) is that this MUST be ignored intentionally. There's a belief, apparently originating in the high-ranking teaching schools (cough--Columbia), that parents are an impediment to education, because they don't teach using (and thus interfere with) the officially-sanctioned approaches.
So the parents are made as unwelcome at the school as possible, from an administrative standpoint, and the teachers are left asking why none of the parents seem to care. (Note: There's a strong parallel to the loss of child readers of comic books--the stores are set up to scare them away, so of COURSE they don't buy anything.)
Believe it or not, many kids will do much better, in school and out, if an adult or two will spend some time with them one on one.
And not even necessarily in an academic capacity.
Kids (actually, almost all people, in my experience, but that gets further afield) crave acceptance and status. If they can't get it from trustworthy individuals (teachers and parents), they'll look for it wherever they can find it. And you get substance (or spousal/child) abusers, gang members, political activists (kidding...mostly), and petty thieves.
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Where I teach (a graduate-only campus of an engineering college), we joke about the red pen thing, by the way. Every once in a while, the management professors come in with some goofy research paper that suggests that red is "too intimidating" and should at least be replaced by some friendlier color.
I often use green or purple or anything of different color than the student used. I am not married to red but whatever is handy. I will even use a yellow or orange or green highlighter if it is handy at the time I am grading.
I admit that I'm not a fan of grading--I use it, because I need an objective-seeming way of telling the students whether I think they've learned the material, but I understand the motivation (liberal, if you prefer to brand it that way) to change the system to something less confrontational and artificial (y'know, "it's an A, but you should still be seven percent disappointed in yourself...").
Not that I've found a better solution, mind you, but I spend a lot of time experimenting with testing and homework/project styles to find what works for different courses.
I think I have a much better solution. I think most things should be mastery. You master one skill you move on to the next and your report card will simply tell how far you have mastered. I believe in a learning based education system not a grade/credit based education. I believe that grades/ranking should only be applied in the area/s being particularly pursued for scholarships etc. I also believe that many classes should be pass/fail if they are out the students field of interest and this should especially apply to college.
For the record, I actually do tend to believe that any kid (or person) can do anything. The kid might have to work harder, and may never be an expert, but there's nobody out there who would never be able to sing, write poetry, hit a baseball, read Chinese, or solve differential equations.
Must say I strongly disagree with that. I think we have natural physical abilities and disabilities. Our brains also mature at different rates and the brain may not be mature enough for some.
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I admit that I'm not a fan of grading--I use it, because I need an objective-seeming way of telling the students whether I think they've learned the material, but I understand the motivation (liberal, if you prefer to brand it that way) to change the system to something less confrontational and artificial (y'know, "it's an A, but you should still be seven percent disappointed in yourself...").
Not that I've found a better solution, mind you, but I spend a lot of time experimenting with testing and homework/project styles to find what works for different courses.
I think I have a much better solution. I think most things should be mastery. You master one skill you move on to the next and your report card will simply tell how far you have mastered. I believe in a learning based education system not a grade/credit based education. I believe that grades/ranking should only be applied in the area/s being particularly pursued for scholarships etc. I also believe that many classes should be pass/fail if they are out the students field of interest and this should especially apply to college.
In principle, I agree, but I'm biased towards apprentice-style education. The problem, though, is throughput. It's hard, when you believe that the course needs to cover certain topics (either because those topics must be discussed or because the students aren't going to see the material anywhere else), there isn't a heck of a lot of time to put the students to work, especially when they have day jobs.
What I end up doing is giving "impossible" exam questions just to see how they approach the problem. If they're making traction or showing good ideas. So far, it hasn't felt like a terrible compromise, but does still need work.
What I would really prefer to see than any sort of grade (and yes, I know why this would fail miserably or devolve back into a letter-grade system immediately) is a recommendation-based system. To get into the next course, you need glowing (or merely acceptable) recommendations from whoever taught the "feeder" courses.
That's what I use grades for, at least--when a student gets an A from me, I'm saying that the student has shown me a good enough handle on the material that he or she can definitely apply it in future courses or at work.
For the record, I actually do tend to believe that any kid (or person) can do anything. The kid might have to work harder, and may never be an expert, but there's nobody out there who would never be able to sing, write poetry, hit a baseball, read Chinese, or solve differential equations.
Must say a strongly disagree with that. I think we have natural physical abilities and disabilities. Our brains also mature at different rates and the brain may not be mature enough for some.
Different experiences, I suppose. I'm discounting people with genuinely-related disabilities, of course, and I'm not saying everybody can hack it as a professional, but when I was going through school, we were all required (for example) to run for a mile, play football, basketball, and softball, and so forth. Everybody had some measure of success.
I know that, centuries past, multipart harmony singing was part of the curriculum, as were other fine arts. I doubt that these are skills that only rich kids (those in college) could ever achieve, and that those kids were unilaterally talented in the arts.
In every skill, there's an art and a craft to it. The craft is teachable to anybody, as far as I can tell, whereas the artistry is what defines the professionals. Well, that, and motivation. For example, I played the violin many years ago, and probably could have developed well, but it just didn't interest me.