We sometimes talk about the need for correct english, grammar, punctuation, and spelling on the forum. Some forum members don't seem to understand the need.

While not specifying verbal skills, here is an exerpt from a newspaper article from the Clarion Ledger, Tues, Nov 27, 07.

"Just 14 percent of sixth-graders in Jackson, MS. public schools passed their first-quarter math tests, and in all grades, a majority of students flunked 12 of 26 test categories."

I wonder how many students clapped when they heard the 'good news.'

Other news articles sometimes point out the need to lower educational standards.

Here's the handbasket. Get in. :alchi:

I think we do not expect enough of the parents.

I think we do not expect enough of the parents.

Sad to say that some parents do not operate any higher than the kids.

My wife teaches special ed in middle school. Most of her students do better than some who post on this forum. Those kids work hard and do their best to please her. It's very disappointing to see the priveledged blow off the chance for a good education. Not surprisingly, the Alaskan native families who live in the villiages don't take education seriously.

Well, its Mississippi. What did you expect?

Yeah, they're too busy out boinking their cousins to do any studying.

Incest > Success to Mississippi kids.

"Kids" will learn and emulate much of what they see as example set by parents and peers, and fortunately a few of those are self driven to learn and become better persons than their surroundings would indicate.

A young mind, properly prepared to accept knowledge, is as a sponge absorbing more than its weight in water: Knowledge is power.

We expect far, far too little of our offspring in the guise of making life "easier" for little Mary or Billy, thereby depriving them of early experience and training upon which to build a sense of values. One of the great lies of the late 20th and early 21st centuries is that "My kid will learn it all in school". Our school systems are cruel jokes which play off "rights" against "education". Prior to graduation from Grade 12/age 18, a student should have NO "rights" save the basic "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" in context of early U.S. interpretation. Our dysfunctional education system has fostered our past, current and future crop of business and political liars, charlatans, and fakirs. Time to hold people accountable once again................

Yeah, we're probably at least a couple generations from days when education was taken a bit more seriously. It's pretty darned rare nowadays to come across good, effective, well-reasoned written communications. But gosh, there's so many more important things for both parents & kids to be involved in these days.

Public primary & secondary education varies greatly from state to state - guess it always has, but jeez. I grew up in Iowa where public education was & still is pretty darned good - by US standards.

Our kids went to DOD schools (daughter had 3 years in Ames, Iowa while I was teaching at Iowa State) for the most part- some sucked, others were super. We were lucky. While our kids attended them, the DOD schools in Japan, Korea & England were superb & were recognized as providing among the best primary & secondary education offered at home or abroad.

Alabama schools are sad. Public & private. Not enough money invested in improving them. Private schools were set up to avoid integration, not to improve educational standards. Today they are integrated to a point (tuition weeds out the poor rather than blacks), but often are less effective than the public schools.

The only decent high school programming in the Montgomery area is LAMP - they take in only the best & are too small to take many who are deserving. The others are often housed in old, overcrowded schools & classrooms with overworked teachers who aren't paid nearly enough. Other than the football coaches that is. Our high school football coach makes $90K/yr plus per diem & car allowance. Perverted logic. Sad.

In case anybody is interested, literacy rates in the United States in the middle 1800's were well over 90%. If you want to be shocked, read some letters that troops wrote to family members during the Civil War. Very few people today are as skillful with words. I thought that I had been cheated on my education compared to what my mother and father were taught in the early 1900's in one room schoolhouses. They both could recite poetry by the hour and were very familiar with the classics. We don't expect much from the kids nowdays and we don't get much either. In the early days in Alaska every trappers cabin had a bible, Webster's Dictionary, and a copy of the Complete Works of Shakespeare. You were also likely to find Gray's Anatomy, Lang's Handbook of Physics and Chemistry, and Knight's Seamanship. Nowdays you find some DVD's and some funnybooks.

hooray in a nation where how more stupider you are the cooler you are!

yea, America as a whole is pretty pathetic, now im not the brightest crayon in the box but i do my best. I dont understand why people throw away such a good oppurtunity for education. I blame the media. They're at fault for alot of things

hooray in a nation where how more stupider you are the cooler you are!

yea, America as a whole is pretty pathetic, now im not the brightest crayon in the box but i do my best. I dont understand why people throw away such a good oppurtunity for education. I blame the media. They're at fault for alot of things

This post is unintentionally hilarious.

:helpless:

It's hard to put all of the blame on kids:

(not sure if this is true or not but it's funny)
These are real notes written by parents in an ALABAMA school district.

Spellings have been left intact.

1. My son is under a doctor's care and should not take PE today. Please execute him.

2. Please exkuce lisa for being absent she was sick and i had her shot.

3. Dear school: please ecsc's john being absent on jan. 28, 29, 30, 31, 32 and also 33.

4. Please excuse gloria from jim today. She is administrating.

5. Please excuse roland from p.e. for a few days. Yesterday he fell out of a tree and misplaced his hip.

6. John has been absent because he had two teeth taken out of his face.

7. Carlos was absent yesterday because he was playing football. He was hurt in the growing part.

8. Megan could not come to school today because she has been bothered by very close veins.

9. Chris will not be in school cus he has an acre in his side.

10. Please excuse ray friday from school. He has very loose vowels.

11. Please excuse Lesli from being absent yesterday. She had diahre dyrea direathe the shits.

12. Please excuse tommy for being absent yesterday. He had diarrhea, and his boots leak.

13. Irving was absent yesterday because he missed his bust.

14. Please excuse jimmy for being. It was his father's fault.

15. I kept Billie home because she had to go Christmas shopping because i don't know what size she wear.

16. Please excuse jennifer for missing school yesterday. We forgot to get the sunday paper off the porch, and when we found it monday. We thought it was sunday.

17. Sally won't be in school a week from friday. We have to attend her funeral.

18. My daughter was absent yesterday because she was tired. She spent a weekend with the marines.

19. Please excuse Jason for being absent yesterday. He had a cold and could not breed well.

20. Please excuse mary for being absent yesterday. She was in bed with gramps.

21. Gloria was absent yesterday as she was having a gangover.

22. Please excuse brenda. She has been sick and under the doctor.

23. Maryann was absent december 11-16, because she had a fever, sorethroat, headache and upset stomach. Her sister was also sick, fever an sore throat, her brother had a low grade fever and ached all over. I wasn't the best either, sore throat and fever. There must be something going around, her father even got hot last night.

Throughout school, both high school and Sacramento State, I was always asked by people to proofread or tutor or help them along with various aspects of their school work. Usually by coaches who wanted the other players on the team to be able to pass so they wouldn't flunk out. I was, time and again, amazed at how poorly their papers were written. There were more than a few times I couldn't even figure out what they were attempted to say and the word usage and grammar were horrible. 22 and 23 year old guys that couldn't figure out how to form a sentence or add six numbers together and yet they were in college, being paid to play basketball. Myself, I was a walk on paying my own way, keeping a 3.0+ with 18 units, 30 hours a week of work and being an athlete. I never could figure out just WHY those guys couldn't do it. None of them had jobs, none of them had more than 12 units. None of them had ambition or curiosity drive.

I agree that a big part of the issue is parents. My sister and I, for as far back as I can remember, were always given one hour every night after bed time for reading. At the end of that hour was "lights out." I don't know how many times I got in "trouble" for reading under the covers by flashlight or candle or stuffing towels under the door so the parents wouldn't know I was still up. :)

Luck or not, the majority of my friends were at least partially the same. My whole group of friends was known as the "Brain Trust." None of us were undereducated, we all read, we all wrote and we were all curious about life and how it works.

This post is unintentionally hilarious.

Hahaha! +1

This isn't very shocking at all... We, as a society have largely become lazy and apathetic, no one cares anymore and it's downright sad. Granted, I'll be the first one admit that I come across as a tad pretentious with regard to the way I speak and write, as I've been told such on more than one occasion. However, I also find it disconcerting that some people feel that way simply because I try my best to use proper english. Yes I get lazy sometimes and subsequently find myself using improper grammar but I try my best to keep it under check.

The simple fact remains that we are verbal creatures... the biggest difference that separates us from the lesser animals is our ability to communicate with one another in a somewhat eloquent fashion. After one's appearance, the way in which one speaks is what provides their first impression to others. Using proper grammar doesn't necessarily elude to one's intelligence as much as it conveys the impression that they are simply a thoughtful person.

Children/teenagers today may not be less intelligent per se, but they are lazier and they are much less thoughtful than prior generations. It's as much the parent's fault as it is our education system. It also comes back to a point I made a while ago - that is, we live in this "me too," instant gratification centered society. What we are seeing is the first generation of parents that were given just about everything they asked for, raising their own children now - the results are exponential. If one is brought up in a spoiled manner along with a dearth of substantial consequence then what incentive do these kids have to better themselves?

It's also these same parents that allow their children to sit in front of the television for hours on end watching mindless programming and/or playing video games. Why do they allow it? Because they either do it themselves or they would rather let the television watch their children rather than themselves. When I was a child, during the school-week we were allowed to watch television for one (1) hour in the evening, which was fine since that's all we really had time to do. We came home from school around three, did our chores or if they were finished we were sent OUTSIDE until dinner time - which we all ate TOGETHER at the TABLE. After dinner we would do our homework (which my parents would actually sit down and help us with), after homework we would take our baths/showers and by that point it would be 8-9 o'clock. It was only then that we could watch TV for an hour, then we went to bed.

I'm not saying that all parents today are bad... but it does seem that a lot of them simply aren't all that interested/invested in their children's upbringing. As I said, my parents would actually sit down with us after dinner and help us with our homework and I feel that was important for three reasons: 1.) It helped us to better learn the subject at hand, 2.) It provided quality, "together" time for all of us, and 3.)I honestly think that they wanted to do it so they too could either get a refresh on a subject or possibly even learn something new themselves. We also had our own little family book "club," we were each in turn allowed to pick a book that we all would read and then we would actually sit down and talk about it every week. Some of my best memories come from that... not only did it get us to read on a regular basis, but it also brought us closer as a family and allowed us to explore each other's interests.

My parent's didn't go to college, however they constantly worked on bettering themselves and they did their best to instill that same spirit in all of us. I feel the reason they raised us the way in which they did was because they felt that their primary responsibility as parents was to do everything they could to ensure our success in life. They knew that they couldn't just put a roof over our heads, clothes on our backs, and food in our stomachs, but had to feed our minds as well.

So to answer the original question of this thread - yes and no. If anything, we expect far too little from our kids, however we are doing them a disservice by not providing them the adequate means to meet our expectations. Education MUST be our top priority if we expect this nation to hold true to it's cornerstones of liberty and prosperity, if not we are dooming ourselves to social and economic failure.

To do a twist on Dkoz' post, it's more common to see a school age person entertaining themselves with a diddy-dit electronic game box than reading a book. We're in an age that frighteningly expects the young to accept what they see in a movie or electronic game rather than read and form their own opinion from their experience. Cadillac Forums itself is full of people who actually believe advertising claims and "measurements" unsupported by testing or research fact.

.......and, like the Japanese purging WW II from their history, we are busily rewriting our history and editing our literature in order not to offend anyone, but the process creates a big lie which historians in the next century or so will try to unravel and correct. No continent, no country, no nation, no society is without its own "dark side" of history. Sometimes unpleasant in modern context or interpretation, but to purge the less than stellar aspects of a nation's development is to deny facts which have improved (or worsened) that nation.

To do a twist on Dkoz' post, it's more common to see a school age person entertaining themselves with a diddy-dit electronic game box than reading a book. We're in an age that frighteningly expects the young to accept what they see in a movie or electronic game rather than read and form their own opinion from their experience. Cadillac Forums itself is full of people who actually believe advertising claims and "measurements" unsupported by testing or research fact.

.......and, like the Japanese purging WW II from their history, we are busily rewriting our history and editing our literature in order not to offend anyone, but the process creates a big lie which historians in the next century or so will try to unravel and correct. No continent, no country, no nation, no society is without its own "dark side" of history. Sometimes unpleasant in modern context or interpretation, but to purge the less than stellar aspects of a nation's development is to deny facts which have improved (or worsened) that nation.
The most horrendous episodes of the Japanese behavior in WWII were withheld from the American people because the federal government feared that the American people would call for their total annihilation. To this day there are still many details that have never been released. In that regard we are accomplices.

Is it bad that I skipped 2/3 of these post b/c there was too much reading involved...



It seems as though we expect 33% of child rearing to come from school, 33% to come from television, and with 33% being life lessons from failure or success, the parenting is a thing of the past in many house holds.

Yeah, they're too busy out boinking their cousins to do any studying.

Incest > Success to Mississippi kids.

Don't knock it 'til you try it...

I have one son. He is 5.
Ever since before he was born we have read to him every day. He LOVES books and has quite a collection on his headboard. One of his "punishments" is not reading any books before bedtime and nothing upsets him more than not getting to read a book... he'd rather go without the use of his computer (yes he has is own and has since before he could crawl) or pretty much anything we can take away from him.
His mom is a PhD in Engineering, and as some of you know, even though I never went to college (long story) I am no dummy.
He is ahead of his peers at school and except for "difficulty in redirection" :D he does really well at behaving himself.
I suppose it is my job to brag about him since I am his dad.

I planned to have a kid and did so when we were ready. (no disrespect intended here but...)
We didn't have a kid because we were careless, or drunk and trying to have a good time with a resulting "accident".
It really isn't that hard to not have kids and there are far too many people having them that aren't ready.
Kids raising kids, stupid people raising kids, drugees raising kids, tv sets raising kids because the parents are too lazy to do it... the list goes on and on.
Some people think that it is the schools responsibility to teach their kids everything, I think it is mine to make sure that I know my kid is learning what he needs to and if the school curriculum is not complete it is up to me to fill the gaps.
Granted not everyone has the opportunities to offer their children what my wife and I can offer ours.

I am not sure what the real failing is in societey that is destroying our offspring, I think it has become too easy to be lazy.
We used to have to work the fields, chop our wood for heat, and travel for a month or two to get from one place to another.
Now we flip switches and sit on planes for a few hours stuffing our faces all day long.
Personally I think that all this infernal technology may be the undoing of man. It is nice to have conveniences but the expense is an obese nation of morons.

I am sure I could rant for weeks on this one, but I have to get my son ready for school. ;)

Great thread.......

There are constantly headlines about how poor the public school systems have become and it seems that many private schools are on the same disturbing path, but what actions are being taken by our society as a whole to correct these things? Growing up in a single parent household where my provider was working more than she was at home in a commendable (but seemingly futile) attempt to make ends meet, there was not a lot of attention directed towards my schooling. Luckily, I have always had a thirst for knowledge and was very open to learning. I took it upon myself to study and get good grades (except for spelling! I always hated spelling, which is probably very apparent from some of my posts), and when it became "uncool" to get good grades and know all the answers, I paid no attention to the sneers and snickers of the C average students because I knew that if anything was going to get me out of small town Iowa, it was going to be my intelligence. Now as a young(er) father with a son just under 3, I'm very concerned about his education. I attended a small school (54 people in my graduating class) and was able to receive most of the attention I desired. It seems today that the population is steadily growing but there are no significant increases in the number of adequate schooling facilities, both public and private, so therefore there aren't enough teachers to give attention to all that may want or require it. And why are so many schools that are available steadily becoming sub-par? The finger could be pointed in so many directions that no one wants to be the one that is ultimately responsible. Should we blame the state or federal government? The teachers? The parents? I feel that ultimately it is the responsibility of the parents to insure their children are receiving a proper education, but I also feel that there aren’t enough schools, there aren’t enough good teachers, and the standards are being lowered more and more in an apparent attempt to make all the children feel better in that they can achieve some level of success even though the level that which they are being held to is barely above failure and the children that are capable of achieving much greater things are in no way being challenged to show their full potential, but instead are given very little attention while the ones that struggle get more focus so the school districts can post positive numbers at the end of the year that are truly nothing more than a mockery of what our school system should be accomplishing. There are too few attempts to correct these issues and it saddens me that our society will stand for this. I often times think to myself that hopefully late in this generation or possibly in the next, people will be tired of watching their country and it’s children spiral downward on this pitiful route it is currently on and that they will all stand up together and demand a change But what scares me is that if this pattern continues uninterrupted for much longer will these lower standards become the accepted norm, and if so will there be anyone left that knows any better or for that matter enough left with the intelligence to actually make a difference?

I think that children are far more capable of learning and retaining information than what we give them credit for, therefore we don't expect as much out of them as we should. It seems that the best bet for my son’s education to be successful is for me to try and instill in him the same thirst for knowledge that I had. That, along with feeding him what knowledge I have to offer, will hopefully be enough to keep his head safely above the water in a society where today so many seem destined to drown.

wow. those notes written to the school were hilarious. i was laughing so hard. Regarding my last post, it was actually completely intentional...

Here's the handbasket. Get in. :alchi:
love the avitar, nice FMPs :thumbsup:

i get bored at work easily so i take it upon myself to surf the internet. Yesterday i stumbled across this website full of weird, funny, and kind of scary news. (scary for the human civilization that is...)

http://nuttynuttynews.blogspot.com/

Being a kid who went through private schools all my life I could agree that some of the schools I went to were like public schools, only we had a uniform. Grades from preschool 3 - 3rd grade in my school in Chicago were: Not Good, Fair, Good, and Very Good. I never knew if they changed to letter grades over the years but it just seems odd looking back at my old report cards. My mom would sit me down as soon as I got home from school and do my homework at the kitchen table. Mom would help me if I needed help on a math problem, she normally sat across from me sewing or cleaning the house. At 5 I would normally have some sport activity and be home by 6. I was contantly playing soccer, doing gymnastics, and dancing (ballet, tap, and jazz) since I was 3. Dinner was always ready at 6:30 and everyone had to eat at that time. My parents were always involved with my siblings and me. Mom was always at my games and my dad would normally schedule work to be later so he could come. The only television I watched was educational which has helped in the long run. My parents both love to read so reading books and buying ones of my own was always my favorite hobby to do. Honeslty, I could read history books until I die, I'm a history fan especially on US on European. In 3rd grade, I went to Kumon (aka a math facility for advanced kids). Personally, math never grew on me and they decided to take me out just before trigonometry. I despise math actually, I feel "intimidated" by it you could say.

Moving to PA for 4th grade sent me into a shock. That's where I was introduced to letter grades and horrible teachers. It was catholic grade school that barely got me prepared for high school. I actually had one of the 8th grade teachers come to my house in the summer and tutor me through 4th - 7th grade. Still the same thing with my family, dinner was served every night at 6:30 and everybody was there. My grades took major hits in 8th grade and that when my father became more furious. Stress became a huge problem for me and psor. came into the picture. My dad kept asking me what I wanted to be when I grow up and he would add "You can be whatever you want to be."

In high school that "You can be whatever you want to be" was thrown out the window. My catholic high school had only 250 students in the whole building and man I wish I would have went somewhere else. I know I could have gotten a better education. Everything was about money, you got a detention. Principal says "Oh well if you donate some money, this won't go on your record." It was a shame. I swear the only thing that kept me focused was soccer. I lost 30 lbs total all my 4 years there. Other than that, these I.B. classes (International Baccalaureate, its higher than AP) were just another sham to get kids to come to that school. "Oh you kid will be one of the top kids in his graduating college class." Psssh, I took 4 of those classes and 2 I eventually dropped because the teachers are not allowed to help you.

I think my parents were expecting/still are expecting too much of me. Dad wants me to be some high exec earning tons of money like he does. I mean that lifestyle sounds nice but I want to have fun doing my job. I think parents push their kids to become something, they want to have a better life than them. But in reality, it is really the teacher's job to get the kids motivated to become successful.

Kids learn at different speeds and in different ways. I'm a very visual kid, give me stills and movies... molecule building tinker toys... instuments like that. I don't think some teachers enjoy their job. I have met some excellent teachers in my life time who know how to make kids interested. The majority of them knew how to teach history, I was immediately drawn in. One teacher was for biology, she would make us watch X-Files and something about that episode pertained to what we were learning. I was kind of scared by X-Files but I learned to actually like it. An english teacher, (the only I.B. class I loved) who taught me how easy it is to write a paper. Plus the books we had to read were excellent choices.

Sorry about this huge post, probably only a little bit pertains to this thread haha.

I think my parents were expecting/still are expecting too much of me. Dad wants me to be some high exec earning tons of money like he does. I mean that lifestyle sounds nice but I want to have fun doing my job. I think parents push their kids to become something, they want to have a better life than them. But in reality, it is really the teacher's job to get the kids motivated to become successful.

They are merely expecting you to live up to your fullest potential... not because you have to, not because they want you to be some high-level executive, but because they hate any thought of you wasting the higher faculties the good Lord blessed you with. Nothing more, nothing less... if you feel they are expecting too much of you, then perhaps they see more in you then you see in yourself. When it comes down to it your parents ultimately want you to be happy... if you envision something different with your life than they do for you, then you need to address such with them - however, that also means accepting any consequences of such a decision.

Regardless... I'll have to disagree with you about the teachers. If anything, we expect far too much from our teachers than we do children. Motivation to learn cannot be learned... unless such a thirst for knowledge was instilled at a young age, it's damn near impossible to motivate a child/teenager who has no interest in learning. If parents drop the ball, especially in those early, formative years... then there's very little a teacher can do.

I give teachers all the credit in the world... First off, most get paid a pittance, most end up putting in far more time than they get paid for, they end up having to juggle the role of educator/psychologist/babysitter/warden, they get very little respect from those they teach and the parents of those they teach, and their power in the classroom is constantly challenged from all fronts. Sure there are some poor examples out there, but for the most part they are products of the very same failing system of which we are discussing.

I've got 2 girls. Aged 4 and 5 1/2. The oldest went to PRE-K at 4, is now enrolled in public Kindergarten. I am involved with the school (Newly built in 2005) as I am with her homework she brings home almost every day. I must say that I feel nowadays they teach Kindergartener's what they used to teach 1st and 2nd graders back in the 70's..... The bar has been raised MUCH higher than when I remember attending school. My girl's teacher is a great Kindergarten instructor that KNOWS how to teach 5-6 year olds. Georgia's Public education system is partly funded by the Georgia Lottery. This has resulted in the hiring of more/better Teachers and more schools being built. The average class in a North Georgia Elementary School is 20 pupils, with a certified Teacher and a Para-educator assisting. Not bad if you ask me. (A lot better than I had growing up). http://www.hallco.org/main/index.asp

I think the focus of education as shifted from a literacy curriculum to high tech / language studies. Much progress as also been made on how the human brain accesses, processes and retains information. This has lead to new ways of teaching pupils unheard of 10-20 years ago. We have also learned how to deal with children with ADD/ AD/HD, Autism, those who exhibit Significant Developmental Delay (SDD) in at least one of five developmental areas or who meet eligibility in any of the "categorical" eligibility areas, such as Speech Impaired, Visually Impaired, Hearing Impaired, and/or Orthopedically Impaired.

I guess it all depends on your location/Country you reside in.

Nicki, you need to talk to my wife.
She became an engineer and has 4 college degrees. She LOVES her job, it is exactly the right fit for her and she just loves, loves, loves it. Did I mention she loves her job? :D

Oh and we don't let my son watch commercial TV, only videos that we pick.
We keep the stuff pretty low key, he gets scared fairly easily and has trouble sleeping.
I figure in a year or so he'll be good for almost anything that most kid movie makers put out for parents but market to children because to me they are totally inappropriate for kids. That is another story though.

I did good in school but was kind of a runt, got picked on a lot but learned really fast. Was ahead of most of the kids but due to the retarded nature of my teachers they held me back with the kids who didn't get it. Okay for me I guess.
Went to 9 different schools thanks to the USAF shuffling my dad around.
Got to high school and with the invention of the PC I fell in love with computers. Did lots of computer stuff, got decent grades in high school but straight A's in computer and math classes. I think I ended up with a B average. (doesn't matter much now)
Not sure where I was going with that... lol, I guess I turned out to be okay but frankly most of what I learned, I learned on my own. I had really good math teachers in school but history and english? Forget it! (yeah, I got some D's baby!) Bad teachers, bad subjects for me.
I don't learn that stuff the way most people do. They learn the "rules", I just know how it works in my head.
My dad is quite literate, read every book on the shelf in his high school library cover to cover, after he retired from the USAF he took up a job writing and editing then finished his degree in social psychology.
My sister did the 5 year plan in high school, straightened out after my folks got her off the booze and her drinking buddies got killed in a car crash shortly afterward. She really snapped out of it on our move to Missouri and did awesome in school. She also looked out for her little brother. (yep... me!)

I guess the bottom line is I didn't go to college but I ended up where I want, I have a good life and a wonderful family.
I don't blame the school system for my problems but I don't credit them with my success either. My parents made some good calls and taught me how to make decisions on my own and were always there to support me.
If anyone gets credit for me being me... besides me... it is mom and dad, not the school board.
No substitute for good parenting, no sir.

Sorry for rambling, I am tired.