Should students be allowed to exit from college and scarcely know how to read and write? It's pretty clear that people much younger than me and my peers can't spell, and that has to be because they were not taught. Remedial (it's now euphemistically called "developmental") reading is being taught in colleges, at least two-year colleges. I know because I myself have taught it.
We're not only talking questions of the role of post-secondary education. One time, as part of my job (educational publishing), I visited an elementary school in a somewhat affluent suburban community. In one room I saw a student lying on the floor while a classmate was tracing his outline. In another room there was almost an appearance of anarchy: multiple small groups of students were working at their own pace (and maybe at their own projects) while the teacher visited them in rotation. When I was in elementary school, we sat still and listened to the teacher.
I had already had a good idea that teaching had changed. Because I worked in educational publishing—one of my first jobs—I knew that, in the hands of the "educationists" (those with Ed.D. or Doctor of Education degrees), the philosophy was that you can't teach anything if you can't make it into a game. Teaching has to be sugar-coated as fun. To not do so is to "turn the kids off." No idea whatsoever that some things have to be learned by rote memorization.
So kids today don't learn to spell. They can't do mental math and a cashier in a store would be helpless without his or her register to calculate the customer's change for her.
At least this was where education in America was several decades ago. I frankly don't know if it's much different now but I am pretty sure that kids are still not learning how to spell.
Copyright © 2013 by Richard Stein
Showing posts with label elementary school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label elementary school. Show all posts
Friday, February 1, 2013
Monday, October 5, 2009
The Dumbing (Down) of America
The TV news weather segment includes a "future cast"; what do the producers think the fore- in forecast means?
The TV weather also now speaks of "rain chance" instead of "precipitation probability"—which I guess is too big a word for people to deal with. Also, the heat index is now called "feels-like" temperature. Less brains are required to grasp that, I'm sure.
Another personage on TV, who hosts travel shows, usually does not say, for example, "eighteenth century" but "the seventeen hundreds." Again, I guess that they are assuming a pretty low level of public intelligence.
I just bought a new supply of mouthwash. The previous bottle was called "antiseptic oral rinse," but this one (same product, new label) is "antiseptic mouth rinse." Some marketing exec figures we are all too dumb to know the word oral. Jeez!
And objectively, we in America are getting dumber. Test scores keep falling. Students do not learn to read and write (and spell!) in grade school and are passed on to high school. They do not learn to read and write in high school and are passed on to college. Are they taught to read and write in college? Maybe the colleges try—I for one have taught "developmental" (what we used to call "remedial") reading to college students. But, of course these students should have learned much earlier, and it is a disgrace that it should fall to colleges to make a last-ditch effort to teach what are elementary-school skills.
And many colleges—scandalously—have very lax standards for admission and for graduation, and they will confer degrees on these students—who still can barely read and write!
We keep hearing that what is at risk is America's ability to "compete." I am sure that students in those countries which we fear as competitors—Japan, China, Taiwan, even India—can do a much better job of reading and writing their own languages, even though students in Japan—and even more so in China—have to learn a writing system with far more characters than English has.
I think I have given some of my ideas on what is wrong with American education in another blog posting. Here I will simply say that, when we have very low expectations for the intelligence and knowledge on the part of the public, as we seem to, those expectations become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Copyright © 2009 by Richard Stein
The TV weather also now speaks of "rain chance" instead of "precipitation probability"—which I guess is too big a word for people to deal with. Also, the heat index is now called "feels-like" temperature. Less brains are required to grasp that, I'm sure.
Another personage on TV, who hosts travel shows, usually does not say, for example, "eighteenth century" but "the seventeen hundreds." Again, I guess that they are assuming a pretty low level of public intelligence.
I just bought a new supply of mouthwash. The previous bottle was called "antiseptic oral rinse," but this one (same product, new label) is "antiseptic mouth rinse." Some marketing exec figures we are all too dumb to know the word oral. Jeez!
And objectively, we in America are getting dumber. Test scores keep falling. Students do not learn to read and write (and spell!) in grade school and are passed on to high school. They do not learn to read and write in high school and are passed on to college. Are they taught to read and write in college? Maybe the colleges try—I for one have taught "developmental" (what we used to call "remedial") reading to college students. But, of course these students should have learned much earlier, and it is a disgrace that it should fall to colleges to make a last-ditch effort to teach what are elementary-school skills.
And many colleges—scandalously—have very lax standards for admission and for graduation, and they will confer degrees on these students—who still can barely read and write!
We keep hearing that what is at risk is America's ability to "compete." I am sure that students in those countries which we fear as competitors—Japan, China, Taiwan, even India—can do a much better job of reading and writing their own languages, even though students in Japan—and even more so in China—have to learn a writing system with far more characters than English has.
I think I have given some of my ideas on what is wrong with American education in another blog posting. Here I will simply say that, when we have very low expectations for the intelligence and knowledge on the part of the public, as we seem to, those expectations become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Copyright © 2009 by Richard Stein
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
School Days, circa 1950
It seems like every kid in America these days rides a schoolbus to school. That wasn't always the case, of course. My grandfather used to tell us how he had to walk to school--with holes in his shoes, and uphill both ways. And I had to walk to school, too, at least when I missed the dinosaur.
Seriously, I did have to walk to school. We didn't have school buses. Back then only rural kids had school buses. So I walked, to elementary school and high school. During elementary school years, I walked to and fro, not only morning and afternoon, but to go home for lunch, too. There was no lunch served by the school, everyone had to go home for lunch. And my mother worked, so I was a latchkey kid before the term had been coined.
My elementary school was probably not much different from the ones my parents had attended. The classroom had a big, old-fashioned (even then) crank-up phonograph. I don't think it had one of those horns, though. When we learned to write, we used a pencil, until—I think it was in the third grade—we were grown up enough to make the big jump to INK!
In preparation for that big move, every kid had to make a pen wiper at home and bring it in to school. This was two small squares of cloth with a large button in the middle sewn through the two layers of cloth.
Once we made the move to ink, we were issued a long black wooden pen holder and a steel nib. Every student's desk had an inkwell in the top, and the teacher would mix up the ink in a tall glass bottle, and then come around to every desk and pour some ink into each kid's inkwell. Of course this came with all sorts of cautions to us kids, such as about not trying to take the inkwell out of the desk while it had ink in it. Supposedly the thing to do, as a prank, was to grab one of the long hair braids of the girl sitting in front of you and dip it into your inkwell; but I don't think anyone actually did that. Probably because girls weren't still wearing their hair in braids.
Copyright © 2009 by Richard Stein
Seriously, I did have to walk to school. We didn't have school buses. Back then only rural kids had school buses. So I walked, to elementary school and high school. During elementary school years, I walked to and fro, not only morning and afternoon, but to go home for lunch, too. There was no lunch served by the school, everyone had to go home for lunch. And my mother worked, so I was a latchkey kid before the term had been coined.
My elementary school was probably not much different from the ones my parents had attended. The classroom had a big, old-fashioned (even then) crank-up phonograph. I don't think it had one of those horns, though. When we learned to write, we used a pencil, until—I think it was in the third grade—we were grown up enough to make the big jump to INK!
In preparation for that big move, every kid had to make a pen wiper at home and bring it in to school. This was two small squares of cloth with a large button in the middle sewn through the two layers of cloth.
Once we made the move to ink, we were issued a long black wooden pen holder and a steel nib. Every student's desk had an inkwell in the top, and the teacher would mix up the ink in a tall glass bottle, and then come around to every desk and pour some ink into each kid's inkwell. Of course this came with all sorts of cautions to us kids, such as about not trying to take the inkwell out of the desk while it had ink in it. Supposedly the thing to do, as a prank, was to grab one of the long hair braids of the girl sitting in front of you and dip it into your inkwell; but I don't think anyone actually did that. Probably because girls weren't still wearing their hair in braids.
Copyright © 2009 by Richard Stein
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