Does Illiteracy = Indoctrination

Accuracy in Academia ^ | August 14, 2006 | Malcolm A. Kline

[grey_whiskers]

I think part of this problem results from our obsession with sending everyone to "college". College has become a state supported industry and little else. A great number of current college students would be much better off in trade oriented career paths. Our once great University system has been dumbed down to allow more people to graduate in soft studies(sociology, communications) or the merely ridiculous(black studies,etc). The schools just scoop up the cash and complain they need more. Good work if you can get it.

Huzzah! I am in full agreement.

[wintertime]

They need to go to a community college

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The community college is what high school once was.

In my office, I will not hire anyone who has not had some community college, even for the lowliest job. Why? It's the only way I can not waste my time interviewing illiterates.

[grey_whiskers]

I can remember him telling me back in the mid 80s that AT&T was having trouble finding entry level people who could read and write at a ninth grade level. AT&T's solution? They, at their own expense (which means you and I paid :), set up remedial schools to fix the problem. Sad. Really, really sad.

I tend to disagree...or maybe I agree.

The problem is they throw out a disproportionate share of those who *can* read, write, and think, in the name of "diversity."

Or "outsourcing." Or...[fill in the blank].

NO cheers, unfortunately.

[CottonBall]

In my office, I will not hire anyone who has not had some community college, even for the lowliest job. Why? It's the only way I can not waste my time interviewing illiterates.

That is really a sad reflection on our education system.

[grey_whiskers]

Education ping list

Please put me on the *PING* list.

[grey_whiskers]

We will fare much worse when someone of equal power and charisma comes to the forefront and starts preaching what people want to hear. People who have no depth of knowledge will easily be indoctrinated and fooled. It's coming; only a matter of time.

Already happened.

Between Bush 41 and Bush 43.

NO cheers, unfortunately.

[mcvey]

Education ping list
Let Republicanprofessor, JamesP81, eleni121 or McVey know if you wish to be placed on this ping list or taken off of it.

[metmom]

I wouldn't let my kids use calculators when we homeschooled until at least 7th grade, when they were doing Algebra. When I was SURE they knew how to do the basic math functions and UNDERSTOOD them, then I let them use them just to help speed up the calculations. No way I was going to let them get into the situation I found myself in in high school. While we didn't have calculators, my teachers were so bad that I graduated having barely passed Geometry.

But there is hope. I ended up needing and taking calculus in college and did well in it even without trig. It wasn't easy but it can be done.

[wintertime]

Pushy parents
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MimirsWell,

My husband has a Ph.D. in clinical chemistry and worked for Du Pont and with many Asian scientists. He told me that one woman ( an Asian scientists) would point out to her children all the hot and dirty jobs people did for a living. She would say to her children that if they didn't study and get and education, they would be stuck doing those jobs as adults. She was flat-out **serious**!

My husband thought this was a great idea and he too did this with our children.

It must have worked. Our homeschooling children were admitted to college at the ages of 13, 12, and 13. All finished all their general college requirements and Calculus III at the age of 15. The two younger graduated with B.S. degrees in mathematics at the ages of 18. The older of these two recently finished a masters in mathematics.

The oldest of the three is a nationally and internationally ranked athlete and chose accounting as a major. Since he could do this degree in the evening, it meshed well with his heavy training and travel schedule. At nineteen, he interrupted his athletic training and studies to work in Eastern Europe for 2 years with our church. He returned home fluent in Russian. He returned last year and will soon finish his degree at an age when his contemporaries are finishing theirs. He has resumed his athletics.

[MimirsWell]

We weren't allowed to use calculators in India till we got to our undergrads in Engineering. All the way it was either mental math or logarithmic tables. Most kids know their multiplication tables till 20 by heart before they turn 10.

[Tired of Taxes]

How are you going to homeschool college courses and hand out a university degree?

Education begins before college. A lot of students are entering college without having learned the fundamentals. Read "The Well-Trained Mind" for more on that topic.

[an amused spectator]

what planet are you from & how recently did you arrive ?

Here at the planet US Constitution, we start with the basics:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed

Notice that "the Creator" is mentioned prominently in this opening salvo of the Declaration.

scory:

Challenge the depth or scope of their education and they will not become defensive but will attack and pillory anyone so bold as to point out their almost total lack of knowledge and understanding of God, Man, the universe and the relationships that exist among these.

I've been cogitating on this for some years and I think it's pretty evident that if you can pry "the Creator" out from under the free peoples of the United States, then prying their "inalienable Rights" out from under them becomes a snap.

I'll bet if you stopped a hundred college graduates and asked them where their Rights came from, 95%+ wouldn't have a clue.

Easy picking for tyrants and socialists (but I repeat myself...).

PS & BTW - atheists don't have inalienable Rights. Think about it. ;-)

[Tired of Taxes]

Absolutely. It's a circle. Kids are taught that, to get anywhere in life, you have to go to college. As a result, more people go to college. So, now college has been dumbed down, and a BA is equivalent to what a high school diploma was years ago.

I have relatives on one side of the family who all went to college. They're doctors, lawyers, teachers, and CPAs. The other side of the family did not go to college. They're plumbers and mechanics and earning at least the same amount of money, if not a greater amount. All of those jobs require intelligence. Americans just don't want to get their hands dirty anymore.

[wintertime]

We weren't allowed to use calculators in India till we got to our undergrads in Engineering. All the way it was either mental math or logarithmic tables. Most kids know their multiplication tables till 20 by heart before they turn 10.

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In my homeschool my children did the same, except for multiplication tables. They knew them up to 12 x 12 and then 15s and 20s. I also required that they memorize the more common fraction to decimal conversions.

It doesn't take a multimillion dollar school with multiple playing fields, gyms, and stadiums to do this. A stack of common index cards will do. Hey!,,,My own parents used the lids from glass milk bottles when I was a kid.

[wintertime]

I'll bet if you stopped a hundred college graduates and asked them where their Rights came from, 95%+ wouldn't have a clue.

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They would immediately identify the government as the dispenser of rights.

[metmom]

Because of the emphasis on college these days, programs such as BOCES (occupational training in high school) are being cut. Sadly, not everybody is college material and some kids need this. Also, our auto mechanic said that there's such a shortage of mechanics that now a competent one could easily earn over $100,000. It's only going to get worse. The people who are going to be really well off in a few years are those good with their hands. Someone will always be needed to repair vehicles, plumbing, electric, fix furnaces, grow food, etc.

[MoochPooch]

For a long time I was aware of the discrepancy between "good grades" and actual literacy.

My aunt bragged about her grandson's high marks, and how he aced all the accelerated courses. When this boy, at the time 13, wrote me a thank-you card, I was appalled at the mistakes & level vocabulary. He wrote like a seven-year-old!

Likewise with my half-sister. Both of them, by the way, went to private schools, not public.

Grades nowadays are meaningless. They are so inflated that anyone with a pulse can pass himself off as a genius.

[MimirsWell]

You should be making policies at American schools then. You have the right ideas to make the system work for Americans. I hope someone listens to what you have to stay. Do consider working with Public schools in your area. It will do the US a world of good.

[Tired of Taxes]

I too read that plumbers, mechanics, construction workers, etc. will be in hot demand in the near future.

I myself went to college and did well in my classes there. But, in high school, I was more interested in art, and I took mostly shop classes like photography, graphic arts, fashion design, plastics, wood shop... It wasn't about not having the ability to do well in the academic classes - in college, I consistently maintained a GPA over 3.5 - it was about what I enjoyed doing... at the time. I'd say the same goes for most kids - it's about what they enjoy doing. (It's a shame those shop classes were dropped).

So, I see things differently than, say, my husband, for example, who wants all our kids to go to college and tends to view anything else as a failure. ;-) I can understand his thinking, though...

[wintertime]

Do consider working with Public schools in your area.

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My aim in life is to eliminate government schools.


At every opportunity I try to persuade parents to abandon government schools and homeschool. Even if the parent did nothing more than drive their child to their local public library every day, that child would be better off than in our government schools. They are infiltrated with poorly educated leftist teachers teetering on the lip of Marxism.
They are social and educational toxic waste dumbs. The term "school" is misapplied.

Government schools are completely beyond reform. There is only one rational action: Pull the life support plug on these brain dead institutions!

Vouchers and tax credits are desperately needed to ease the transition to a completely privatized system of universal K-12 education.

Not all American parents are blind to the success of those in India and the reasons for this success. Some know that Indian children are not given calculators. They know that Indian children memorize their math facts to 20x20, but getting our sclerotic government schools copy Indian success, and to change, is like yelling at the tides to change course.

I knew to insist that my children memorize math facts because this is what my parents and the nuns at my Catholic parochial school demanded of me. What distresses me most is that we now have a generation of young parents with small children who no longer know what is included in a classical education. They were taught "fuzzy math" and "whole language" ( That should be called: "How to be Illiterate"). In time, I, and those of my generation who remember the techniques of a successful education, will be dead.