RE: “He teaches 7th grade. He told me the other day that over 60% of his students have no concept whatsoever of how to use a ruler to measure something.”
Thanks for this wonderful comment. Says everything.
You simply cannot have this low level of education unless the people in charge are deliberately, carefully, methodically aiming for dumb and dumber.
Well, I didn’t think it was such a wonderful comment as much as it was appalling. I mean, he tells me stories (he’s on the other side of the US) and I just go bananas. He must have the patience of a dozen saints, because the stuff he tells me just blows my mind.
I am not sure the bureaucracies involved are aiming for dumber and dumber per se; they could, if you think about it, be very well meaning in terms of the children but part of a very “extractive” triumverate of teachers, textbook vendors, and administrators who are obsessively concerned about keeping themselves employed and changing curricula every 2 years so that the booksellers get huge orders for new books and methods. I am sure teachers work pretty hard, in general, and if they get the type of students my cousin gets, they must go absolutely batty now and again. I couldn’t retain my sanity in that environment.
He claims he failed 40% of his students last year, and I asked him if he thought that this would place his hard-won job in jeopardy. He really did work to become a teacher and I wouldn’t want him to get booted. But he said he checked with his administrators if such a failure rate was “OK” and they said “so be it”. He offers to tutor the kids after school, they make appointments and don’t show up. They get 2-3 chances to turn in HW assignments, promise to do so, then fail to turn them in. I don’t think there is a design or grand conspiracy to make them dumb, yet I definitely acknowledge that the entire system has precisely that
effect on most of them.
60+% can’t use a ruler? He could tell you 150 more stories.