The students in question:
Posted on 07/11/2012 9:24:38 PM PDT by neverdem
Dateline America, 2012: College Students Complain “We’re Taken For Granite,” Face A “Doggy-Dog World.”
Those expressions were actually used in papers submitted to freshman comp professor James Courter. Other students wrote they found the college experience “homedrum” or had trouble getting into “the proper frame of mime.”
Courter quotes them in a Wall Street Journal column bemoaning the poor reading skills of incoming students.
Coincidentally (or something more?) that same issue of the WSJ also featured a piece entitled “America Has Too Many Teachers.” In it, Andrew Coulson of the Cato Institute points out that while the number of public school students has grown a mere 8.5 percent since 1970, “the public school work force has roughly doubled — to 6.4 million from 3.3 million — and two-thirds of those new hires are teachers or teachers’ aides.”
That helps explain part of the reason why since 1980 spending on public school education in the U.S. has doubled in inflation-adjusted dollars.
Twice as many teachers. Twice as much money. But does anybody believe that a high school graduate today is (as a college student might actually say) “twice as much smart?”
We know they’re not.
We test students all the time, tests like the National Assessment Of Educational Progress (NAEP). And since 1970, these results in math and reading have essentially been flat.
For example, the average 17-year-old’s NAEP score in reading back in 1971 was 285. In 2008 it was 286.
That’s what we got for doubling our education spending.
When you compare the U.S. to countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the results are even worse. Education reform activist Bill Costello points out that our annual “per-pupil spending in 2006 was 41 percent higher than the OECD average of $7,283, and yet American students still placed in the bottom quarter in math and in the bottom third in science among OECD countries.”
Or as they say down at offices of the teachers union, “money well spent!”
And that’s the problem. Despite the deluge of tax dollars, despite having a ridiculously high number of teachers vs. students, and despite the dismal results, the teachers unions and their allies always demand more.
And, unfortunately they often get it because the public has such a skewed view of what’s really happening in our schools.
Ask the average American and they’ll tell you our teachers are woefully underpaid, our schools are crumbling death traps and our nation is neglecting its children.
When I tell people that, just as an example, the average Boston teacher’s salary is around $82,000, they refuse to believe me.
When I tell them that the teacher-student ratio is lower than it’s ever been in the modern era, they can’t accept it.
The average person believes the “poor me” propaganda in part because the unions spend so much promoting it. Since 2005, the MTA has spent $4 million on lobbying and political activism in Massachusetts alone. People fall for it, politicians react and the cost of mediocre education continues to rise.
You want to know who does know the truth? The students.
USA Today reports that “millions of kids simply don’t find school very challenging,” based on analysis of federal data. More than half of eighth-graders say their history homework is too easy and 40 percent of seniors say they almost never write about what they read in class.
Students who care know how crummy many of our schools are. They’re just trying to find someone else who cares, too.
Until then, just expect more “poultry excuses” (as one college freshman wrote) for our school systems’ poor performance.
Michael Graham hosts an afternoon drive time talk show on 96.9 WTKK.
“A mime is a terrible thing to waste.”
Ping for later.
Ewe shouldn’t make fun. This is souper cereal.
Don’t bother asking them to compose a business letter. There is no App for that unfortunately. And forget spellcheck. It’s written by those same “uneduca-mated” kids as well. (had to hyphenate it to get past Apple’s speller).
Garbage in garbage out. If you just look at what goes in the door of most High Schools, it is no surprise that the product is defective. If the families don’t value education..the kids don’t either. No reflection on any race or creed. You can have two parents with no education, but know that their kids must learn and study..and look presentable when they go out the door..and their kids will learn and achieve, but when parents don’t give a rats ass..neither do the kids. We got lots that don’t care.
Garbage in garbage out. If you just look at what goes in the door of most High Schools, it is no surprise that the product is defective. If the families don’t value education..the kids don’t either. No reflection on any race or creed. You can have two parents with no education, but know that their kids must learn and study..and look presentable when they go out the door..and their kids will learn and achieve, but when parents don’t give a rats ass..neither do the kids. We got lots that don’t care.
The students in question:
fie on the speller! can’t you make it take whatever you want, if you insist?
The focus shifted to teaching to the lowest common denominator. This was one of the primary reasons my dad retired a few years early. He couldn’t take being told by the HS principal that his classes were too hard (Advanced World History, US Government) and well that he couldn’t in good faith continue to teach about the US government as it no longer resembled anything like the Founding Fathers designed.
I read the other day that if you add a letter at the end of a word and then delete it , it will let it go by the spellchecker.
Student-teacher ratio in the typical classroom is probably different than in the aggregate due to the nearly one-on-one teaching that goes on in special ed classrooms. I don’t know where those kids were 50 years ago, but they weren’t in school. These are not kids who just need a little remedial instruction, but kids with severe handicaps that will probably prevent them from ever being employed. Many will need to be in custodial care for their entire lives. I feel sorry for these kids and their families, but I also question the amount of education dollars that are allocated to them.
|
|
I saw some product advertised months ago on TV (some kind of “dragon” in the name), by which a person could speak to a gadget and their words would print out on a screen in a document. While the commercial showed a handicapped person using it, I believe the true target was people who say “wiff” and “breaffest”; the gadget would translate their gibberish into intelligible English. Basically, rather than fix the problem, they will just adjust to it (while keeping lowered expectations for companies to hire them).
In a local convenience store I ordered a sandwich via a touchscreen app; it prompted you to be very specific with what you wanted, including quantities of condiments and such. I was speaking to the “replacement American” making the sandwich in Spanish (he spoke NO English); the buttons I was pressing were probably showing up simply as pictures to him on the other side of the counter (I don’t think most people realize how many of our Hispanic “replacement Americans” are illiterate - in Spanish).
I save emails from some staffers in case their qualifications are brought up in the event I promote someone else; it will stop the discussion in its tracks.
I have a friend that taught second grade in an inner-city school; he had “students” who would refer to a book as “that” or “that thing”. They literally had never seen, or used the word for, books; the fact is that a growing number of households simply don’t “have books” in them.
Teachers are filled with a million excuses as to why their students are impossible to educate (that bear no reflection on the teachers themselves); rather than debate the point with them, I tell them they should simply draw a daycare worker’s salary (with no education requirements at all for the job) and stop wasting money that could be better spent on children born to loving, caring parents that actually care about their education.
“When I tell people that, just as an example, the average Boston teacher’s salary is around $82,000, they refuse to believe me.”
One factor that I believe was critical in Governor Christie’s win here in NJ was the fact that the Asbury Park Press released the salaries of all of the public school teachers in NJ; it ended the whole debate as to whether or not teachers were paid enough, and made it clear that the building were crumbling because so much of the money went right to teachers’ salaries.
Check out what the teachers are making: http://php.app.com/edstaff/search.php
This comes not only from "mainstreaming" but also multiculturalism. It's been going on for years. Now the products of this ed philosophy are teaching in schools and colleges. Go figure.
(Not deliberately putting a values wrench on this, just stating a difference between now and the days of, say, schools in late 19th to mid-20th century, and now.)
>>I don’t think most people realize how many of our Hispanic “replacement Americans” are illiterate - in Spanish
On a related note, I know a guy who designed the graphic elements that show a Taco Bell line worker how to make their menu items out of their various raw materials. No text, all graphics, in those instructions.
“A mime is a terrible thing to waste.”
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Ore waist ether, your vary write abut awl at. Wee muster knot waisted hour mimes inn hour daze. Their mite bee sum weigh too write hour sheep a gain butte eye mite jest bee stoooped ore eve in jest plane dome.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.