Warning: The next generation might just be the biggest pile of idiots in U.S. history

[DaemonSeid]

Originally Posted by nikki1920

.

I do think that No Child Left Behind has completely screwed up education--there is WAY too much emphasis on testing and scores and not enough on long term retention.

.

not only that it lowers the bar for kids on said scores and in effect slides kids right on thru school without teachign them critical skills needed for them to survive....and they slide right on into colleges who will happily take thier money an dlet them flunk out because they couldn't pass muster.


Thank you Gee Dubya....

[DeltAlum]

Originally Posted by nikki1920

I do think that No Child Left Behind has completely screwed up education--there is WAY too much emphasis on testing and scores and not enough on long term retention.

Yes.

[epchick]

Originally Posted by nikki1920

I do think that No Child Left Behind has completely screwed up education--there is WAY too much emphasis on testing and scores and not enough on long term retention.

I am scared for this generation. How you leave high school without knowing how to write a term paper is beyond me, but I had to write a 20 page final in 11th grade. I took 3 AP classes my senior year. These kids don't know how to use an encyclopedia, how to look up books at the library, etc. It scares me. Yes, computers are EVERYWHERE, but you still need to know what to do when the computers go down.

Exactly!! I am astonished to see how much my mom struggles (she's an 8th grade language arts teacher) to teach her kids something that DOESN'T revolve around testing. She always telling me how her curriculum has to focus on the TAKS tests. In 8th grade they don't take the writing TAKS, they take the reading. So to make sure her kids pass the TAKS she has to focus her curriculum on making sure the kids know what to do on the reading, and so their writing skills suffer!

My mom says that the main worry in the schools is to just teach what the kids will be tested on...why? Because the teachers just want to be able to keep their jobs.

I was SHOCKED to see my 8th grade cousin (who is very bright) plagerize her science fair report. When I questioned her about it she said that:
1. she didn't plagerize b/c she changed a couple words around
2. her teacher never taught them how to make sure NOT to plagerize
3. her teacher doesn't even care.

I know that I got in major trouble in 4th grade for plagerizing, and to see that it isn't taken seriously at this stage is appalling. What is she going to do when she goes to HS and college?


I know that soemtimes testing can be good, but not everyone (like me) do well on standardized testing. I think we should just go back to the days when teachers were able to TEACH!

[AKA_Monet]

Originally Posted by epchick

Exactly!! I am astonished to see how much my mom struggles (she's an 8th grade language arts teacher) to teach her kids something that DOESN'T revolve around testing. She always telling me how her curriculum has to focus on the TAKS tests. In 8th grade they don't take the writing TAKS, they take the reading. So to make sure her kids pass the TAKS she has to focus her curriculum on making sure the kids know what to do on the reading, and so their writing skills suffer!

My mom says that the main worry in the schools is to just teach what the kids will be tested on...why? Because the teachers just want to be able to keep their jobs.

I was SHOCKED to see my 8th grade cousin (who is very bright) plagerize her science fair report. When I questioned her about it she said that:
1. she didn't plagerize b/c she changed a couple words around
2. her teacher never taught them how to make sure NOT to plagerize
3. her teacher doesn't even care.

I know that I got in major trouble in 4th grade for plagerizing, and to see that it isn't taken seriously at this stage is appalling. What is she going to do when she goes to HS and college?


I know that soemtimes testing can be good, but not everyone (like me) do well on standardized testing. I think we should just go back to the days when teachers were able to TEACH!

I agree with your comments, but we can all improve our grammar. Plagiarism is a serious offense and if one fails to learn it when they are young, he or she will fail to learn about when in college and they actually do test you on those subjects.

What we learn today is different from the teaching methods of yesteryear. It can be explained that 20 years ago, all we had to record our ideas were a PC on DOS, listen to music on a huge CD player and rented movies on VCRs--beta max. Now, we view movies on line, digimons and DVDs, iPODS if we have them. We record music on our iPhones, MP3 players and we program our directions to our destinations on our GPS's.

All this to say that when we ask our teachers to prepare our students for the technology world, then we need to be thinking in projects, with showing our work. There are other activities that we can do to give the "experiential method" versus the "Skinner, Piaget and partially Socratic" method of teaching.

I bet if you asked kids in a urban high school to organize a business model that will attract a defined number of people, using a safe production procedures, folks would be amazed...

When I get my students, I find their weak points, then I built them up from there.

[DSTCHAOS]

I agree that there's too much emphasis on standardized tests. These tests have biases and are generally unimportant considering that they don't measure what they claim to be measuring.

Not to mention there will always be children left behind if we don't address inequalities in education. We try to track kids into "smart" and "not smart" tracks early on without considering that there are a lot of social factors that go into being smart and intelligent. Family background is a key factor and the "separate and unequal" in our nation's school systems is another big factor. You also have kids with behavioral, mental, and physical disabilities who are tracked into "special care" tracks where people ASSUME they have no intellectual capacity and just need to be drugged up or monitored. However, some of them are very smart and intelligent so it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Plus, it's hard to get "special care" teachers who actually have the expertise to also challenge some of these kids academically.

If kids don't know how to look stuff up in books, or look up journal articles on JSTOR and sit down and read them extensively, that's the parents' and teachers' faults. I have noticed that when young adults get to college, they think that "research" means to print off random info from a Google search and pass it off as scholarly and referee journal research. Part of it is students being lazy and the other part is that this society isn't training the future for more than intellectually unstimulating and unrigorous tasks/jobs. It begins with the family and THEN becomes the teachers' responsibilities.

[Taualumna]

Should jursidictions be extending middle school until Grade 10, and then streaming kids into various types of senior high schools for Grades 11 and 12? For example, if you want to go into the trades, you will attend trades training for your last two years. If you're interested in academics, you go to a traditional academic high school. They used to do this in Toronto (though the kids would start in Grade 9 rather than Grade 11)...many of the most academic/traditional high schools are Such and Such Collegiate Institute while the non-historically academic schools are Such and Such Technical School or Such and Such School of Commerce. Would that improve anything, you think?

[33girl]

Originally Posted by Taualumna

Should jursidictions be extending middle school until Grade 10

NO.

The last thing we need is to put 6th or 7th graders with 10th graders.

[Taualumna]

Originally Posted by 33girl

NO.

The last thing we need is to put 6th or 7th graders with 10th graders.

1. High school/secondary school in many parts of the world are for kids ages 11/12 to 15/16 and the kids who live there are no better or worse than kids here.
   
2. Even in this part of the world, plenty of private schools go from kindergarten to high school graduation. In these schools, middle and high school grades share at least some facilities. Again, the kids are no better or worse off.

I should add that high school in Quebec, Canada is Grades 7-11 (ages 12 to 16). The kids then go off to CEGEP especially if they want to go to university.

[DSTCHAOS]

Originally Posted by Taualumna

1. High school/secondary school in many parts of the world are for kids ages 11/12 to 15/16 and the kids who live there are no better or worse than kids here.
   
2. Even in this part of the world, plenty of private schools go from kindergarten to high school graduation. In these schools, middle and high school grades share at least some facilities. Again, the kids are no better or worse off.

I should add that high school in Quebec, Canada is Grades 7-11 (ages 12 to 16). The kids then go off to CEGEP especially if they want to go to university.

What does what other parts of the world do with their education system have to do with what America should do? I'm looking for something that could be the common denominator so that we can make these comparisons and then use other countries as examples for change.

[DSTCHAOS]

Originally Posted by Taualumna

Should jursidictions be extending middle school until Grade 10, and then streaming kids into various types of senior high schools for Grades 11 and 12? For example, if you want to go into the trades, you will attend trades training for your last two years. If you're interested in academics, you go to a traditional academic high school. They used to do this in Toronto (though the kids would start in Grade 9 rather than Grade 11)...many of the most academic/traditional high schools are Such and Such Collegiate Institute while the non-historically academic schools are Such and Such Technical School or Such and Such School of Commerce. Would that improve anything, you think?

No.

There shouldn't be trade and academic tracks. Having honors courses and trade classes in high school are close enough to that. In my high school, there were kids bused to a trade school after lunch.

High schoolers can't predict their future. They may notice that they do well in trades versus honors courses, and they may even like that option. But how they perceive their future has a lot more to do with what they're presented with as options. Poor kids, kids with learning disabilities, kids who are bored in school, etc. will think this means that college and academic careers aren't options for them. Parents and teachers need to let kids know that their futures aren't set in stone at birth. And their futures may very well defy what they, and everyone around them, assumed to be their futures.

[DaemonSeid]

Originally Posted by DSTCHAOS

No.

There shouldn't be trade and academic tracks. Having honors courses and trade classes in high school are close enough to that. In my high school, there were kids bused to a trade school after lunch.

High schoolers can't predict their future. They may notice that they do well in trades versus honors courses, and they may even like that option. But how they perceive their future has a lot more to do with what they're presented with as options. Poor kids, kids with learning disabilities, kids who are bored in school, etc. will think this means that college and academic careers aren't options for them. Parents and teachers need to let kids know that their futures aren't set in stone at birth. And their futures may very well defy what they, and everyone around them, assumed to be their futures.

My high school was similar.

First 2 years you took basic academic courses that were required and last two years along with that, we had specialized courses along our career track and then certain days of the week, work study.

Oddly enough back 2 comments ago...about extending middle school to 10 grade... not just 20 to 25 years ago, we took 9th grade out of middle school and put it in high school....so who knows...maybe we should move it back

[DSTCHAOS]

Originally Posted by DaemonSeid

Oddly enough back 2 comments ago...about extending middle school to 10 grade... not just 20 to 25 years ago, we took 9th grade out of middle school and put it in high school....so who knows...maybe we should move it back

8th and 9th were "junior high" in many districts. So people acknowledged that these grades were transitional in terms of maturity and learning processes.

I am thinking back to my older siblings' middle and high school years. I do believe that 9th gradere were high schoolers where I lived. Not sure.

[nikki1920]

High school in MD/VA: 9th to 12th
Middle school: 7th and 8th
Elementary: k thru 6 (I attended 1/2 year in 6th grade, then went to middle school in VA. Moved to MD at start of 9th)

I used to live in NY, and elementary was 1 -5
Middle was 6, 7 and 8
and High school was 9 thorugh 12.

[ShyViolet]

As someone who's currently teaching first year students in a well-known UK university, I can assure you that standards have fallen. I don't want to attack US students, as I came from the US system, but the difference between the preparedness for the level of work they expect and that which we expect is astonishing. British students tend to be more prepared for the work, as they've done their A-levels or Advanced Highers, and have gotten used to independent study. There is a similar debate here about A-levels getting easier (more people getting A grades and such), but it's not the same as what's going on in the States.

I've been teaching this course now for three years, and have noticed a significant decline in the basic abilities of students. Yes, there will always be some who are just lazy and don't listen, and on the other hand there will always be exceptionally good students. But the fact is that this year, I have been appalled by students who don't know how to footnote, can't write an 8-page paper (2,000 words), don't listen when I tell them they must have x number of sources in their bibliography, and then come back citing wikipedia, an exceedingly dodgy website with a busy background and tinny music, or the lecturer, instead of the reading list we provide for the paper topics. Overwhelmingly, these students have been American. I actually had one student ask to change the set topic for the paper because it hadn't been covered in-depth in lecture. Of course it's not going to be covered in-depth: that's why we're giving it to you to research on your own!

There's definitely a trend to spoon-feed information to students in high school, and then they come to us at a world-class university and expect the same. It's not my job to prepare you for the exam, it's my job to teach you the subject matter (which of course comprises the entirety of the exam), and it's up to you to revise it. I'll happily assist you in understanding the format of the exam, answer any questions you may have from lecture, tutorial, or your reading, and give you examples, but it ends there. The things they're having trouble with now are things that were addressed in my education when I was about 13 (so about 12 years ago). Because education is now geared more to testing, as opposed to actual learning and retention, students have lost a lot of the skills related to essay-writing, revising and presenting that many of us who went through the system before or during the 90s take for granted.

I must say that while the article is anecdotal and a bit too sensationalist, the underlying theme is correct. Students might not be getting dumber, but they aren't getting the same level of education they once did (because of budget cuts and all this no-child-left-behind rubbish) and this is leaving them ill-prepared for vocational training, university or the job market.

[MysticCat]

ShyViolet --

I can't tell from your post whether the students you are describing are American students or British students.

You seem to be describing American students (what with references to NCLB), and given the subject of this thread I would expect these to be descriptions of American students. But given that your experience, recently at least, is in the UK and that you say you've noticed a decline in the three years you've been teaching the course you currently teach, are you describing the students you teach in Scotland?