Just wanting ot rant, definitely OT

[Rolla Hessel]

I can just imagine the various spellings they come up with using todays grammar Dewey, or is it DUI, or is it DUWEE. You ought to try Rolla I just give my wifes name. About time for a good cigar my friend!!

[Dewey Burton]

You got that right Rolla...I just got some Gurka Copper lables..really hard to find, but really tasty....

[angie milton]

I am an educator. Why are kids graduating from high school and can't count change, or spell, or write? No Child Left Behind and state mandated testing! Anymore, the teacher is held accountable for the test scores that come from their classroom. Some states are even wanting to pay a teacher according to their test scores. So, what does the teacher teach? The test! Period. If counting change or balancing a checkbook is not on the test, it is not going to be taught. I have never taught "the test" and I don't plan on starting.

[Dwight Mellinger]

Before I start my rant, I am not ateacher nor am I related to a teacher. I do not think that it is the sole responcebility of the teacher to make sure that kids are prepared for life. It takes more than an egg and sperm doner to be a parent. I set many a night with my daughter counting change at the kitchen table. As well as many other life lessons while waiting for supper. Mom and Dad need to spend more Quality time with their kids. Rant over, Dwight

[Steve Stock]

Right on Dwight, you nailed it. Teachers can work their butts off and if education isn't reinforced in the home, their hard work is lost.

[Ron Pope]

I am an educator. Why are kids graduating from high school and can't count change, or spell, or write? No Child Left Behind and state mandated testing! Anymore, the teacher is held accountable for the test scores that come from their classroom. Some states are even wanting to pay a teacher according to their test scores. So, what does the teacher teach? The test! Period. If counting change or balancing a checkbook is not on the test, it is not going to be taught. I have never taught "the test" and I don't plan on starting.

You got that right, both of my daughters teach high school. By the time they get to high school a lot of the kids are just plain lost with their education. The teaching to the TEST happens here in elementary school and middle school.

While we are ranting! I don't think sports should be in school. No football, basketball, wrestling or any of that. If you want to play games, play after school. So, So, much time and money is wasted on athletic stuff in school. They are building a new high school here. They needed it for years. I was talking to one of the school board members several years ago when this was all in the planning. He said they were having a hard time finding a place big enough to build. I ask why. There is a lot of farm land here that can be had. The first words out of his mouth was " well it will have to be big enough to have a big enough for a modern football stadium". They had to have 50 acres of land to build on. Most of which will be for sports stuff.

[Mike Blanche]

Read a recent article that 70 % of the freshman class at Ohio State needed remedial Math and English!

My sense is that one of the key factors in this problem is the teacher unions fighting minimum standands / certification testing for teachers. We have some bad teachers out there and they are being protected!

I actually taught remedial English to students who had too low a test score. Most of them needed a simple review and someone to bring together the things they had learned. If you can successfully diagram a sentence, you should be able to pass any grammar test in the world.

I heard someone complaining that today, kids aren't learning the important things, like how to fill out a college loan application, how compute a mortgage, how to run a bank account, stuff like that. I took a required course in the Kiowa Consolidated High School (town population, 198; 55 students in the entire high school) called Practical Economics. We did all that. We learned how the stock market works, and ran an imaginary portfolio for a semester. We designed a house, costed it out, figured a mortgage, everything. We studied the Federal Reserve and learned how banks actually produce money. And yes, we studied making change. The most sophisticated tool we ever had was a slide rule, back in those days (and I still have it).

[Ron Pope]

[quote="Mike Blanche"]
If you can successfully diagram a sentence, you should be able to pass any grammar test in the world.

/quote]

I have never had to diagram a sentence since I got out of high school in 1968.

[Terry McAllister]

I like it when you try to explain to them they are giving you to much change back and they want to tell you that you dont know what you are talking about ...

[Mike Blanche]

I have never had to diagram a sentence since I got out of high school in 1968.

I graduated in 1970, and I did. And I taught it. And my students did well on grammar tests.

If you taught it today, you'd get telephone calls starting tomorrow about "useless knowledge."

And that brings me to the crux of the problem. There are really 2 factors hindering our education today.

1. An anti-education culture. No matter how hard you try to teach your best and interest the students, when they go home, many of them are dealing with parents who are barely literate and don't see any use for an education. They belittle the school and the teachers, don't provide their kids with the time and supplies to learn well, and conduct their lives in ways that ensure a continuous maelstrom of emotions around them. When the kids are with their friends, they tell them that studying hard and getting good grades is "being white" and trying to be better than everyone else.

2. An anti-knowledge culture. We're not raising any more Franklins, Jeffersons, or Adamses because we have the concept of "useless knowledge." If it doesn't help pass the test, and it doesn't help you in your prospective employment, it's a waste of time. What kid these days memorizes an entire poem, just because he likes the sound of it? What math whiz takes auto shop, just because it might come in handy? How many kids know where the nearest public library is? In that little town of Kiowa, my sister won a prize for having read EVERY BOOK in the children's section. Franklin didn't study electricity at school, but he was exposed to other researchers through reading and questioning. Adams was a farmer who went to Harvard when it was still a tiny college. He was just expecting to learn a lot and read a lot. Jefferson was a farmer in Virginia who learned everything he could his whole life. Today we give kids like these ritilin to "calm them down."