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Originally Posted by UGAalum94
But I need to ask: before you speculate too much about what are teachers doing to change to appeal to the kids, don't you kind of need to stop and ask if the world is really any more visual than it used to be?
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I think that the world is much more multimedia, yes - compare styles of acquiring information today with even 10 years ago, not to mention 20 or 30 (when many curricula were developed) . . . it's instant feedback, using video, animation or audio, Internet surfing, television sound bites, educational programming, etc.
Quote:
Originally Posted by UGAalum94
There maybe more ways of displaying text or images, but are there really more ways to make a living if you can't read and understand basic text or can't perform systematic problem solving in a traditional form like math equations?
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This is completely irrelevant - my point was not to remove the ability to "read and understand basic text or ... perform systematic problem solving" at all. That would seem silly, wouldn't it?
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Originally Posted by UGAalum94
Changing educational method to appeal to kids' interests or already acquired strengths may actually do some harm if it doesn't match what skills they need for their eventual employment.
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These things should not be mutually exclusive - instead, you can build "traditional" skills by using methods that play to Gen Y learning styles. It's not like you either learn via multimedia or can do math problems - and, in fact, this false dichotomy seems to be one of the major stumbling blocks for many teachers. I know it's hard, especially because, as multiple studies have indicated, Gen Y learns differently than Gen X and the Baby Boomers - this means the teachers have to do it differently than they learned it. It's hard. It's not impossible, nor inconsistent with traditional educational values.
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Originally Posted by UGAalum94
As far as the downward trend, I do have one somewhat objective thing anyone could do if you knew someone who had been teaching in a district any length of time: review the textbooks that have been used for any particular high school course over the last ten to fifteen years. I think the dumbing down will pretty much be immediately apparent.
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I have honestly no idea here, and it may be true - however, the average person reads at about a 5th to 8th grade level (see your local newspaper for evidence - that's why it is written at its given diction level), so perhaps that's part of it? It seems like a chicken-and-egg problem at that point.