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"Wisdom is no one's mother tongue. It has to be worked for."
- Samuel McCord
AMERICAN SCHOOLS ARE TRAINING CHILDREN FOR A WORLD THAT DOESN'T EXIST.
Browse FB, skim Twitter, listen to the talking heads on TV.
Americans are getting dumber in crucial ways.
Our math skills are being stunted by strange ways of getting to simple solutions.
(But it does prepare kids for the nonsense of our political response to practical problems.)
“A man who has both feet planted firmly in the air can be safely called a
liberal
as opposed to the conservative, who has both feet firmly planted in his mouth.”
- Mark Twain
Our reading skills are withering.
(Yet, no subject of study is more important than reading, for all other intellectual powers depend upon it.)
Our kids learn within a system of education devised for a world that increasingly does not exist.
Over the next 20 years, our planet with sag under the weight of an additional two billion people.
OUR PLANET CAN LONGER FEED ITS PEOPLE.
The climate will continue to change. Our coastlines and its populations are doomed unless we start thinking outside the box or make an entirely new one.
Microbiological threats will increase as our traditional techniques of anti-microbial defense lead to greater and greater resistances,
and to fight these we must discover new approaches to medical treatment.
AMERICANS NEED TO LEARN HOW TO DISCOVER.
Being dumb in the existing educational system is bad enough.
Failing to create a new way of learning adapted to contemporary circumstances MAY PROVE TO BE FATAL.
DISCOVERY has always prompted interest. It is fun to see the curtain lift before your eyes.
CAN YOU REMEMBER SCHOOL EVER BEING FUN?
It is worse in today's classrooms with combat-fatigued teachers and bored, unruly students.
But the good news is that Nature has a way of
wiping the slate clean and starting over.
What our leaders choose to do with education
in the next few years
may well determine
if we are around
after the slate cleaning.
What do you think?
Hmmmm. The schools in Florida that are determined to be failing have extra time added to their days. I think it's about forty minutes. It's more time for the kids to hate school, and the school to hate kids.
ReplyDeleteLove,
Janie
Hmmmm. The schools in Florida that are determined to be failing have extra time added to their days. I think it's about forty minutes. It's more time for the kids to hate school, and the school to hate kids.
ReplyDeleteLove,
Janie
I don't know why my comment is here twice. It must have something to do with the new way of making math problems more complicated than they are.
ReplyDeleteLove,
Janie
Janie:
ReplyDeleteSometimes I think Blogger is joking with me!
And the new math is just a new way to hobble our children.
I hadn't known that about Florida. If they mishandle what time they have, how will giving them MORE time help, right?
Sometimes it was fun, but most of the time we just did it.
ReplyDeleteWhere I work, I think that is our disaster plan...
I don't understand some of these new math techniques. I know there are some things that must change with progress, i.e., those dark skinned people (you know, black like me) that were constitutionally bound to being recognized as 3/5 of a person can now be recognized as a whole person and, if born within the confines of the USA, afforded the same rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness as any other human being.
ReplyDeleteYeah, that was something that requried progress forward along with constitutional amendments. But I'm not getting the progress forward in making 34 times 34 into some lattice board of confusion lol!
Needless to say, I try to remind my child of how we did basic multiplacation and division, which she has done well with.
And apparently, there are those who believe that cutting all or most funding to the department of education (or tear the thing down altogether) is the best way to address our education woes. Still not clear on how that works.
There's plenty more I could say, but at some point, the uselessness makes it necessary to preserve lung capacity for when we have to implement Dilbert's emergency plan.
Alex:
ReplyDeleteIt was the rare teacher then and now who makes school fun.
Your workplace, mine, and Dilbert's share that Disaster Plan!
Angela:
My ancestors were constitutionally rated as one 1/4 a person. But the Lakota knew the White Man wanted 100% of the good land!
New Math is a Bad Joke played on the minds of our students.
Watching politicians tinker with the National Educational System is like watching Forrest Gump burn down his home to get rid of termites!