"You are one of us." --- quote from The Net


It makes me happy to know members here are reading books.

I have been saddened with the fact that "young" people I know IRL are not reading and our literacy level in the United States keeps dropping. Learning to read (and speak) another language (not including C#, C++, C, Ada, CGI, Perl, Delphi, Visual Basic, ASP, Asm, and the other thousand Technical languages not listed here), really would give me hope that the trend of each generation education level can break the downward curve of decline. Rather than fixing the Education system in the United States, we lower the standards of our measuring instruments (ie. SAT).

I do not know the ages of the posters, however at any age if this forum helps to introduce or provide motivation to read a novel. GREAT!!

Thanks for making my day.

EOF

PS: Someone start a thread in Off-Topic please, I want to know of new books that I have missed at Borders and Barnes and Noble. :)

Quote from "young person" I know: I don't like computers; I hate reading. (He gave me back the computer I gave him, because he bought X-box). :(

Hmm thats interesting, my father recently retook his SAT, Seems somthing happend when my mom forged his birth certificate WAAAY back when and they didnt count him as being the same person (she only changed his birthdate so they could drink together back when), he said that the SAT was MUCH harder this time arround and he even scored lower than previous.


now tell me how that is lowering the standards? I myself took the SAT and dont even remember my score, does it matter?. not realy. I graduated at 16 years old and was teaching at my local college at 18.

I do agree our schooling system is messed up, most other industrialized nations (US/UK/China/Japan/ect) have a much better system than us. I beleve our problem lies too much in teaching stuff that isnt at the core (ebonics anyone?) . math and reading/language skills NEED to be our focus..also we have to contend with a MUCH MUCH MUCH higher rate of students comming from other countries that dont speak english.

And for the record im 23 years of age
my 2cp

I think your father would have done better if the material was fresh. It is common for "retakers" to score lower, due to atrophy of knowledge. (Old-timers joke quote: "I forgot more than you will ever know.") Knowledge: Use it or lose it.

http://www.ncpa.org/pi/edu/sept97b.html


The above is the information I was quoting. This issue is old, however still valid if not worse. Especially read the body, A-B students even with the easier rules of use of calculator and the like, are doing worse statistically. (The "easier- recentered" SAT is showing how bad the United States ED system is getting.)

Tidbit: Some college freshmen Math majors, can not multiply without a calculator. (They soon change majors however. :) )


Note: I was not allowed to use a Calculator with the SAT.

I am an old-fart, btw. I remember when CPM, Unix, and early DOS days were considered new technology. Math majors were the only students to actually touch a computer. I remember the sign-in, included a process of placing my name on a list to use a computer.

EOF

PS: Hackers may have a basis on "Cruel and unusual punishment, after a judge takes their computer away."
Freedom of Speech: (I can not use a pen and paper anymore, your honour.) Whose handwriting hasn't deteriated from wide-spread use the QWERY keyboard?


Disclaimer: Easier SAT mileage as always may vary. ;)

Yup, I think the only times I 'handwrite' anything these days are to sign my name on a cheque or something, or to write a Birthday/Christmas card :oops:

hahaha cp/m...i had that on my old Osbourne " portable pc " thing was heavyer than my 20" monitor...

anyway this realy has turned " off topic " how fitting lol

I did some programming on an Osborne 1 when I was 16 or so :shock:

http://oldcomputers.net/pics/osborne1.jpg

http://oldcomputers.net/osborne.html

hahah omg that was it!

*shivers*

LOL

Those were the days... <theme song from All in the Family playing>


EOF

I wrote a poignant complaint against the students, teachers, and parents involved with the United States public and private education systems. It got erased when it asked for my login. I guess I should write more quickly to avoid logouts.

I went to several school systems in several cities. I attended private school in Japan with princes of the world, from Indian rajahs to Saudi Arabian princes, to Austrian upper class. It sounds more interesting than it was when I was six. The Catholic and British school system was full of caring teachers, who were intelligent and good with students. We learned from up to 4 teachers every day. The system was rounded, and the students were all motivated and pushed to become as educated as possible.

In that system, my grades ranged from good to bad. The teachers never curved. 69% was an F, and an F was an F. At worst, I had gotten two D's, and I was the shame of the family. I had earned those D's, and I'm glad now that they didn't just give me a C and move me along the line.

I moved to California when I was ten, and attended public school. The teachers assumed I was stupid because I would spell colour and honour and behaviour and capitalise with the proper British spelling. My math teachers used different techniques to teach and were about one year behind us at my other school. The teachers cared about their jobs, and cared very little about the students' educational benefit. My grades were always cushioned there, and my fellow students' grades were adjusted as well. A girl who had misspelled a word out of every three she wrote was getting B's in spelling and grammar.

I moved from the public school back to the private school again, and was still in California. I had only attended a year and a half in public schools, and was largely bored. In my new private school, I was probably half a year behind, and caught up quickly. The material was in the books, even if the teachers didn't cover it. My grades weren't inflated, but the material was less cumbersome. My grades improved. The teachers placed me in advanced courses, which was a surprise to me.

I moved after half a year in California private schools at the age of twelve, and I finished my private junior high school in Dayton, Ohio. The private school I attended in Ohio was very elitist, and as a "foreigner", I was rejected immediately. This came as a surprise, because the princes and rajahs in my Japanese school were less uppity than Ohio's upper middle class. In the Ohio private school system, I found that infrastructure stifled the learning abilities of the students. Many of the students were very motivated to become educated, but grade inflation and curving had placed many intelligent students at the dumber end of the education system.

I scored a perfect math SAT in my junior year, after two years of disappointing my parents with pSAT's of 129 (1290 equivalent SAT). My overall score was 1490, 800 math, 690 verbal. I didn't bring a calculator, and was amazed that they were even allowed to be used. What was the purpose of first through fifth grade math if one never needed it? The verbal test was challenging, but I knew that I had everything but one question right on the math test. I asked my dad about it in the car on the way home, and he verified that I had marked it wrong. Apparently, they had curved the test by eleven questions when I took it, but only for math. If they had curved it only for verbal, I would have had a 1590. Curving always seems to punish my grades to make a better bell curve. I never understood the grading policy on that damn test.

This is where infrastructure of school becomes a problem. This is where rules get in the way of education. I had dropped from advanced math courses to the regular courses. The teacher of several of the advanced courses hated me because a rumour went around that I had hacked all the school computers and planted two viruses. He was the school computer programming teacher as well as the advanced math teacher. He made my life hell one year, and I dropped to regular to avoid him.

I earned a B+ in my regular math class junior year, and tried to sign up for AP Calculus the next year. With an 800 math SAT without a calculator, I thought I was a shoe-in. The teacher wouldn't sign me off. The one working the sign-in was the programming teacher. He stonewalled my attempts to waiver in.

In between my experiences in Japan and California and Ohio, and my sisters' experiences in public schools in Ohio, I learned a few things.

1. Education takes more than just two people, a student and a teacher. Blanket statements blaming the other for every shortcoming will only show the immaturity of the parties involved. The community is important for shaping how the average student will come out of an education system.

2. Learning and education are very separate entities. I feel that I'm one of the most scholarly pupils from my high school. It had little to do with the education system there. I learned on my own time, while ignoring the teacher, or by reading the books at home or at lunch. Teachers were only necessary to tell me which books to read.

3. Grades have no indication of progress. I was a 2.0 student for quite some time. I could school any kid in 90% of my classes at the material we had covered. Getting lower than a 90% on a test usually indicated that the class average was below 50%. Grades are inflated and deflated to keep a teacher employed. Often, I would find my extra credit marked as 0/0, and my final grade a B+, shy of an A by only 2 points. Grade manipulation is why our education system is failing most of all.

Coursework grades and testing grades should be separated to show course progress and course effectiveness. If they had separated the two, one could easily see that I was bored, that my homework was 0% for the quarter, and that I still earned a low B or a high C, with test grades in the high A range. It would show that I was either lazy or bored, and that the material had been sufficiently covered to educate me. How can you tell the difference between a low testscore B and a high testscore B? Wouldn't you want to be able to know which workers are smart and lazy, and which are hardworking and dumb? Machiavelli (unsure of spelling) once separated his lieutenants into smart and lazy, and smart and hardworking; dumb and lazy, and dumb and hardworking. I would separate those under me similarly. Some work is best done by the clever and lazy; some is best done by the dumb and hardworking.

4. Education systems pander to the least common denominator. In Japan, we were all forced to pursue education because we were all very capable. Teachers were aware that it cost enough money to go there that most students were either given a scholarship, indicating potential, or that their parents were so wildly successful that the children would be forced to be as well. In California, the school system slowed down significantly. I read the textbooks to educate myself, because the teacher couldn't occupy me. While this is beneficial to the least common denominator, the intelligent students are forced to fend for themselves. They often become so separated that they become discipline problems.

5. Education systems are products of the community. The only reason the local high schools are acclaimed is because the teachers and children are motivated. We have two public high schools here, which are among the top rated in the country. The students come from affluent families, who usually earned the money and moved there. The homes have a low divorce rate, and the students are on average quite intelligent. Good teachers go there because good students go there. Bad teachers are usually identified by the students and the principal. Because there are no major stumbling blocks to ruin a child's motivation here, many of the children push each other to achieve.

In California, at the one "common" public school I went to, the students worried about their parents' jobs, or divorce. They weren't as concerned with school as they were with security. The tests in that school were beyond easy. The grades still fit the bell curve. Sometimes that makes me worry.

6. Society is full of the undereducated, and they don't care. We keep lowering our standards, and what we will accept. I know that correcting Mattmeck won't make him a better speller. He won't be able to use intuition to know which words are french, and how he should assume they are spelled. I can't teach him that by correcting him. What I can do, however, is make a stink from time to time, to indicate that I still think spelling is important. If it isn't, we should wipe it from our education. I don't think enough people make a stink. I don't think enough people are at that level of education where they feel comfortable making a stink. Society as a whole is undereducated, and we can blame students and teachers alike. At some point, we as a whole stopped caring. Throwing more money at the problem with education programs won't solve the problem. The problem is us.

7. Americans are stupid. Sorry. It's true. I've seen the rest of the world, and much of Asia has us by the balls. Africa may not have country infrastructure, but their pupils are very smart, and the education systems are more rigorous. On top of that, the kids WANT to learn! Among the U.S. upperclass and the princes and rajahs, I'd say we're probably tied. I would think that we would be as smart or smarter than the common citizen in much of Europe. Asia has us bad, though. You should see those Japanese and Chinese kids study. They make bugs look lazy. In between Kumon (math cram) and english and science, they work so crazy hard. They're no smarter than us, but I would say that many of the young kids make our young ones look very stupid.

8. The true failure of an education system to me can be represented by this example:

Every day, 25 students pass by a sign, written by the teacher, which includes 3 spelling errors in 3 words.

How can we expect more from our children than what we give them as examples?

I recently turned 22, for the record.

WOW, Thats about all i can say.

I have friends who are in the Army who keep extending there stay over in Japan to keep there children in the school system over there, Now i understand why.

I can't say much about that. I grew up on the Canadian education system, and while I know it's not perfect, there are far worse places to be educated. I'd say part of the blame for decline of education falls to the parents, but that's my response to everything. My parents pushed me through school, so I was always well ahead of the class. When they wanted to fail my sister back in the second grade, my parents sat down with her, and helped her understand what the teacher couldn't teach. She passed and was top of her class the following year.
Everybodies all rush rush, with less time for family. That's easy for me to say, since I don't have any extra mouths to feed.

Rush is from Canada... Neil Pert , Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee !

I blame the US education system for using curves that protect themselves too.

Failing kids would show how bad the teaching has gotten along with parenting. Parenting has probably gotten harder by the 10th power. :P Imagine keeping your 15 year old off of Everquest or the X-box, so they do their homework. (Parents' Epic Quest)

I would rather see the McDonald's cashier that can not count back change without their H.S. Diploma. I would like to see high school diplomas actually mean something again.

There was a time when farm families took their children out of school, and the education system fought this by enacting truancy laws. This started out as a good reason, because most did not finish 10th grade. Nowadays it seems that the taxes are paying for babysitting service for K-12.

This is unfair really to a young person that from K-12 they were told they were smart and they did not need to try that hard. They then take a much harder ego hit in college when they fail miserably. Some drop out, others change majors, and some just figure it out by hitting the books harder with determination to never quit.

Life is never an undefeated season. -- Quoting some wise individual I remember the quote but not the name.

EOF

Live as if your were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. -- Gandhi

If your army friends' kids are in the public school, I commend them for their ability to absorb Japanese. My sisters had to go to a Japanese kindergarten, where the locals didn't speak any english yet. They'd never seen such bright green or blue eyes either, and kept touching my sisters' faces. They got pinkeye often.

Japanese is surprisingly easy to learn. It doesn't have the descriptive use that english does. Everything is a general "you know what I mean" statement or question.

What's Japanese for "you know what I mean"?