It should read...
BUMPER CROP OF NEW DEMOCRAT VOTERS!
Posted on 10/25/2007 11:08:04 AM PDT by pabianice
Warning: The next generation might just be the biggest pile of idiots in U.S. history
I have this ongoing discussion with a longtime reader who also just so happens to be a longtime Oakland high school teacher, a wonderful guy who's seen generations of teens come and generations go and who has a delightful poetic sensibility and quirky outlook on his life and his family and his beloved teaching career.
And he often writes to me in response to something I might've written about the youth of today, anything where I comment on the various nefarious factors shaping their minds and their perspectives and whether or not, say, EMFs and junk food and cell phones are melting their brains and what can be done and just how bad it might all be.
His response: It is not bad at all. It's absolutely horrifying.
My friend often summarizes for me what he sees, firsthand, every day and every month, year in and year out, in his classroom. He speaks not merely of the sad decline in overall intellectual acumen among students over the years, not merely of the astonishing spread of lazy slackerhood, or the fact that cell phones and iPods and excess TV exposure are, absolutely and without reservation, short-circuiting the minds of the upcoming generations. Of this, he says, there is zero doubt.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Yeah, like Missy Morford is a Rocket Scientist.
I stopped reading half way through because my cellphone rang.....
Dude, Ooooh look, a cool commercial on TV....
No kidding, just read the ‘rapture’ threads on this site.
M
Yeah, but, they will be great democrat voters, dutifully returning their masters to office without question. That is the real agenda of the 'rat educational machine......
Actually, reading Mark Morford is worse for your brain than watching TV.
He recognizes a problem, the decline of our culture resulting from liberal attacks on any and all standards. He just doesn’t recognize that he,himself,is a symptom of said decline.
I think this article is the classic example of the blind squirrel stumbling into an acorn.
We’ve known for at least 30 years that the NEA in conjunction with DC Liberal political hacks have been dumbing down America’s children via the government schools. They’ve infused Liberal/Marxist into curriculum and textbooks. If you doubt the dumbing down of American students, I would like to refer you to the report “A Nation At Risk” commissioned by President Reagan:
A NATION AT RISK
http://www.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/risk.html
As an example of what could happen via Liberals like Hillary: The Childrens’ Story by James Clavell
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/llefler/clavell.htm
It should read...
BUMPER CROP OF NEW DEMOCRAT VOTERS!
Media trying to sell fear and hysteria again. They said the same thing about GenX, and they said the same thing about the boomers, if you will recall.
This has to be taken at face value...the “teacher”...teaches in an Oakland Public school, right?
An area that is notoriously bad. How many people in California actually deny the existence of Oakland...lots...
If one takes into account kids at decent public schools with good parents, those in homeschool, and those in good private schools...it’s bad but not as apocalyptic as this editorial would have one believe.
Soon the public educational system will collapse on itself, and something better will be rebuilt...such is the cycle of things.
Maybe if Morford is writing about the problem, we might eventually find a solution.....
Boortz was reading this this morning.
He's got it right that a dumbed down population is easier to control, but there's that old adage about the broken clock being right twice a day of course.
if you think the hordes of easily terrified, mindless fundamentalist evangelical Christian lemmings have been bad for the soul of this country, just wait.
There you go, I see the problem. Personally I would rather have a teacher who has a no nonsense and straightforward outlook on life and family and his responsiblities related to his teaching career.
“His response: It is not bad at all. It’s absolutely horrifying.”
I teach science so I don’t expect students to arrive with a functional understanding of the subject. Even so, many of them are so ignorant in many ways they would be unable to apply the material I do manage to teach them.
I used to like to engage in free-ranging discussions with students, to give them a feel for where science fits in the overall scheme of things. I am less and less likely to do this now, because many of them don’t know enough to comprehend what is being discussed.
I am certainly glad I don’t teach history, for example. I have had students who couldn’t tell you within 100 years when the American Civil War happened. Some of them asked in all innocence if I could remember it. Many think that Martin Luther King freed the slaves.
The subject of our relationship with France came up one time. It turned out that only one of the 38 students present had ever heard of Charles DeGaulle, and she was a French major.
Many of them not only don’t know approximately how many countries there are in the world, they don’t believe that anyone can know. Is it 200? Or 2000? To present-day students, one answer is as likely as another. They think Peru and Tibet must be close together and that Mexico is part of the United States.
No wonder they are such easy prey for left-wing revisionists in the humanities.
“Media trying to sell fear and hysteria again. They said the same thing about GenX, and they said the same thing about the boomers, if you will recall.”
I think Plato mentioned it too. If it was a trend, we’d all be painting hand prints on cave walls again.
I’m amazed that I actually agree with Morford. Of course, the simple answer is that parents are ultimately responsible for their children’s education. Amazing how he avoids the biggest reason for educational decline, single mother families.
“Media trying to sell fear and hysteria again.”
Exactly. There were and are some very poorly performing schools and students in this country, but we also produce some extremely bright and well educated kids in our schools.
I’m tired of hearing from Bill Gates and his ilk that our educational system is so bad that we cannot turn out enough good engineers in this country so we have to import them.
We can, and have produced them, but the really bright kids don’t want to go that route because they can see the writing on the wall with regards to career potential.
I see this as more leftist America is bad, America is a failure rhetoric.
But we can fix it if you just give us more money for education!!!!!
What I can relate to is my kids and their friends. My oldest has a good job at an optical products company where she’s a supervisor (not bad for a 23 year old!), is living on her own and she visits Mom and Dad on a regular basis, a genuinely great kid! My oldest son is a full-time student at our local community college, plays guitar in a band that’s popular locally and he works 24 hours a week as a cook in a restaurant. My youngest is an honor roll student, an outstanding football player that’s being recruited by D-1 colleges. He just received a commendation from the school board for his contribution to the school community and the Hands of Christ award from the Bishop for his contributions to our faith community. As for my kids’ friends, I’ve known several who joined the service after high school. Quite a few went on to college and a handful are playing college football. Some are working now. Of course, you’re going to find a few that went bad and got in trouble with the law, but the majority of the kids that I personally know, turned out to be good kids who are giving back to their community in a positive way.
Our society will always have pockets of adults who being up productive, value-based children. What is sad is that the pockets keep getting smaller in relation to the whole. Oakland is a valid example.
That's exactly what I thought to myself when I saw the title. :(
An old fart and a ultra bleeding heart screaming about the younger generation. Probably upset that the youngin’s aren’t taking it to the streets and take them with a grain of salt.
Everything old is new again.
This attitude is a large part of the problem. Sure the system has its faults, especially in liberal, urban hellholes like San Fran and Oakland. But, the failure of the kids, and their parents, on putting in the out of class effort to succeed is a major part of the problem, especially in middle American school systems which really aren't all that bad. If a parent puts a strong premium on education and puts in the time and effort to work with their kids on it, you get educated kids.
Gertrude Stein did, once upon a time...
Ignoring the anti-republican, anti-Bush claptrap, there was a genuine, original (for a Dim) idea in there. Public schools, by and large, stink. And it's because of the parents and the lifestyle that they and their kids lead. This is not a surprise at all to 90% of the readership here at FR, but to the mind-numbed idiots that make up the rest of the population, it may be an utter revelation.
Now, I didn't particularly *like* all of the anti-republican, anti-Bush claptrap, but keep in mind the person, and more important, the audience that the person is writing to.
If Morford started out with "Geez, I think Pres. Bush isn't such a bad guy", the howls of outrage from his readership would have drowned out the desired message. When the message is properly couched, perhaps it *might* get through to a few new minds.
I teach science so I don’t expect students to arrive with a functional understanding of the subject. Even so, many of them are so ignorant in many ways they would be unable to apply the material I do manage to teach them.
Hmmmmm! It looks like you are one of the very few here who understnds what the articles author is saying. And that he is about 95% correct. I sure didn't expect that on FR.
FWIW...Oakland is far better than San Fran...
Let's see... A good friend of Morford's engaging students in "free-ranging discussions" about the "overall scheme of things".
I take this to mean that he was teaching them the mechanics of homosexual sex and he is now complaining that 99% of the students aren't interested.
True, but thats sort of like saying Kruschchev was less of an SOB than Brezhnev.
I’m not a teacher, but I’m pretty sure I could not cope with the task of having to teach some sort of standardized material to many of the kids I come across. Obviously it depends upon where you live, but my general impression is that as a teacher you can’t count on lots of kids knowing stuff they should have learned 3 years ago, and I just think that would drive me batty.
I did a search on the NEA website to see when it began and was stunned to find it was founded in 1857. Kinda hard to say that NEA ruined the education when they started it. I was going to bash the President who founded the NEA. It is not a President from 50 years ago obviously. James Buchanan was President at the time the NEA began. The Department of Education was founded in 1980...Is this the horrible Jimmy Carter?????
So, this entire article is based on one Oakland high school teacher’s observations? (I only read the excerpt).
I think the author is dumb as dirt.
This time, like the boy who cried wolf, the third time is the charm.
Parental guidance and oversight is a critically important component of a child’s education. Unfortunately, that is exactly what is missing in the growing number of single-parent households where the children go to urban, public schools. The gap, educationally and behaviorally, between private-school and government-school 8th graders in my area is astonishing.
Best Friend's wife is a "Public School Educator". Actually, she's a speech therapist that works for the school system (why we have therapists at school is a mystery to me, but a whole 'nother discussion...).
Anyhoo, I mentioned in passing that Mrs. WBill and I were thinking of homeschooling. SHRIEK!!! She said, and I quote, "Why would you want to do that! What a stupid idea!".
Being a wisealec, (and not really liking her anyway...) I asked "Why not?". She gave me the standard socialization mantra, and that the wife and I "are not qualified" to teach our kid.
So I replied..."In the immediate family, there are two engineering degrees, a half-dozen education degrees, and 70+ years of teaching experience. And you're saying that we're not qualified to teach reading and math to a six year old?"
No reply.
I take what she says with a grain of salt, anyway. She was the "Qualified Speech Therapist" that told us we'd need to let our kid watch lots of TV or else he would lack verbal skills. My retort was that "my parents didn't have TV, that must be why all they do is grunt and point". She doesn't like me very much. But she is an excellent argument in favor of homeschooling.
We’ve been getting dumber for a long time. See Rudolph Flesch’s 1955 book,
“Why Johnny Can’t Read.”
I am 17 and i must say that my current generation are mostly nothing but a bunch of socialists dont worry there are the select few of us that will change it if not me i met a little 9 year old she will be in the future dont worry the future is bright if the people i know and myself get our chance. which is why i am not voting for hillary clinton, if you read a book called “ATLAS SHRUGGED” you know what i mean.
watch Idiocracy.... quite scary
Okay, I forced myself to read the whole article. It was a painful experience but I suppose I can understand your point.
You're friend the "teacher" has got some gall.
Saturn is in Leo
Not real big on irony, are you?
Being a conservative ain't easy. It's even harder to be an informed one.
That would be the diff between us and, say, a lib bombthrower. We actually think about what's being said.
Welcome to FR, Duff. I have high hopes for you as a young person. BTW, punctuation is a beautiful thing, especially when the subject is education.
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