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22594. judithathome - 9/11/2007 8:16:42 PM I don't even know what a PlayStation is...I thought you meant you were on a laptop at topless bar or in a sandbox at a playground. 22595. Ms. No - 9/11/2007 9:54:37 PM A sign of the modern age: surfing porn on a laptop while sitting in a topless bar. 22596. judithathome - 9/12/2007 1:00:43 AM Yeah...and taking part in "grief porn" by sending blanket emails to people asking them to turn on their headlights on 9/11 to "memorialize" the date.
Why not give X-amount of dollars to the survivor's fund or support a fire station with donations or contribute hours to the Red Cross or anything except the totally empty gesture of turning on your car lights for a day...when the newer model cars have automatic lights turned on whenever the car is in motion, anyway?
Why immortalize the date with an empty gesture instead of using your brain to vote for candidates who will make a difference instead of those who seem destined to win because they have more money? Why not work for change within your own community and see to it that candidates who don't support what you believe in get defeated?
Why not make 9/11 mean something more than an empty gesture you can make once a year to make you feel you are really showing what a great American you are? 22597. Ms. No - 9/12/2007 6:43:35 AM Because we Americans far prefer maudlin sentimentality and treacly pap to substance.
Don't mind me I'm feeling curmudgeonly after a conversation in my Euro-history class pointing out that in 1930 a 4th grade education still produced a more literate and better spoken person than fully 80% of the students in California State Universities.
The dumbing down of America is damn depressing. 22598. judithathome - 9/12/2007 7:06:06 AM No effin' shit!
I can't believe the number of people I've met who aren't aware of nine tenths the authors I recognize...AND have read...and I'm talking about people who have been to college. Which I have not, by the way...
I'm not an educated person by any means but I know who Descartes is and what he said...in Latin...and I know that the "s" is silent in his name.
It's astonishing to me that high school graduates can hardly carry on a conversation these days. It's demoralizing. 22599. judithathome - 9/12/2007 7:08:22 AM No effin' shit!
And how is THIS for a perfect example...HA! 22600. prolph - 9/12/2007 9:06:14 AM cheer up my grandaughter has just started macgill she is taking
chemestry. however montreal is not her start; right here in sunny
california she had enough honor credits that macgill has given
her two senesters credi t ( we are deligted because thats a lot of
mony) canada is now no longer less than usa $ 22601. Ms. No - 9/12/2007 4:57:03 PM Big congrats to your grandaughter, Patsy! That's quite an achievement. 22602. Ms. No - 9/12/2007 5:17:11 PM Jude,
What I can't figure out is why we ever made such a change. One of my professors says it started in the 60's when they slacked off on a focus on grammar and structure. I don't know how much of that I accept since I was certainly diagraming sentences in the 70's.....but I now don't recall if that was for my English class or my Latin class and right there you can see that I didn't have a standard education.
22603. prolph - 9/12/2007 9:08:35 PM thanks msno but my point was there were many teens
who can read and write and cary on a conversation
22604. concerned - 9/12/2007 9:14:34 PM It's astonishing to me that high school graduates can hardly carry on a conversation these days. It's demoralizing.
You're just not speaking their language:)
22605. arkymalarky - 9/13/2007 3:10:03 AM in 1930 a 4th grade education still produced a more literate and better spoken person than fully 80% of the students in California State Universities.
I don't disagree (don't know enough to), but it started with mandatory education through high school. As late as when I started teaching kids could drop out in 8th grade. The brainiacs generally weren't the ones taking that option. In addition, no attention was paid to the abysmal condition of black schools during segregation, and when integration in high school and colleges began, mostly in the early '70s, a huge gap that had been easy to ignore previously suddenly became impossible.
The top students in most any school perform at more advanced levels--and a higher percentage of them do so--than at any point in the past.
And a lot of people who lament the situation wrt literacy are weak in other areas like math and sciences, and many math and science people feel like those whose focus is in the liberal arts are below par, all as things become more compartamentalized and specialized in college. There's also a focus on different literature, and everyone has gaps in their reading or focus on different types of material. For the past five years, I did virtually no reading that wasn't non-fiction research or legal material. Education is now so broad and scatter-shot it's very hard to generalize about it any more. What we're neglecting most, imo, especially compared to other countries, is preparing students for skilled work. 22606. arkymalarky - 9/13/2007 3:12:38 AM Patsy's granddaughter is an excellent example of what kids are doing. And I'm particularly proud of AR, because we pay for students to take the AP test, and I read the other day that our pass rate has increased faster than any other state in the country. And it's not a cheap test, but more kids are interested in the courses, and even if they don't pass (most don't) they are SO much more prepared for college. 22607. Ms. No - 9/13/2007 5:24:38 AM Arx,
I'm with you 100% on our failure to train students for skilled trades. I like what I understand of the UK system --- you take a test at the end of whatever educational milestone and that determines whether you go for more academic education or to a trade school.
Nobody needs a BA to sell real estate or beome an insurance adjuster. It doesn't take a four year degree or even a two year AA to perform standard clerical work or even most office administration.
The trend now, of course, is that you can't even get some of the most rudimentary jobs without a BA. I have a problem with that for a couple of reasons not least of which is that it devalues a college education. Also, it shows a complete lack of understanding and evaluative process for most of the entry-level jobs being offered.
You don't need a degree in accounting to start as an AP/AR clerk. You don't need a degree in accounting to be a Full Charge Bookkeeper. What can't be learned on the job --- and I've yet to see what about any of that can't be since I did it --- can easily be taught in a couple of weekend seminars or in a single semester class at the local JC.
It has depressing effects on salary, as well. Employers are requiring degrees that they don't need, but they haven't adjusted starting salaries to reflect that they're now requiring a more highly trained work force. So the pool of applicants is working harder and paying more to achieve placement in positions that are not offering any compensation for their efforts.
Additionally, state universities are becoming degree factories. You have to have a degree to GET a job but most folks know you don't have to have a degree to DO the job and so it's of less and less importance to ensure that the hoardes of people now coming into the colleges are really getting the education that their diplomas say they are.
Or maybe I have an inflated idea of what university degrees used to really mean about the academic achievements of graduates.
I'm starting (starting??) to ramble as 9 o'clock hits and the last of the caffeine in my bloodstream gives up the ghost.
I guess I should've posted all this in the Slow Thread?
22608. Magoseph - 9/13/2007 8:49:12 AM I guess I should've posted all this in the Slow Thread?
No, Ms. No--please let's continue this conversation in this thread.
22609. thoughtful - 9/13/2007 2:52:47 PM My 2 cents.
The education you get in high school today is a shadow of what was available when my parents went to school. Mother was only a high schooler and managed to work in bookkeeping/accounting on and off her entire life. They taught it in high school.
When I was in high school, I took typing, shorthand, office machines, business english, etc. so I was very prepared to work in an office environment before I left high school. Today my high school doesn't even teach business courses at all. Just the other day I was lamenting about how my nephew, among others, lives with debt and no savings because he doesn't understand the power of compounding. He was never taught something so fundamental. No wonder people debt themselves into oblivion. Those issues were taught regularly when my folks went to school. They understood that not everyone would be heading to college, but even if they became a small business owner, they needed to understand interest payments.
I also think that businesses require college degrees for jobs that don't technically require them as a way of sorting the labor force in a couple of ways...college degree means the person was willing/able to commit the time and responsibility and effort to get the degree so it signals a higher level of commitment to work. Also, considering that high schoolers are graduating with an 8th grade reading level, you need to get someone with a college degree just to get someone who can read at the 12th grade level. (don't hold me to the exact grade levels...i'm just using this as a talking point).
See this for example.
Dolores Perin, a reading expert at Columbia University Teachers College, said that her work has indicated that the issue may start at the high school level. "There is a tremendous literacy problem among high school graduates that is not talked about," said Perin, who has been sitting in on high school classes as part of a teaching project. "It's a little bit depressing. The colleges are left holding the bag, trying to teach students who have challenges."
Literacy issues among high school graduates!!
And then what happens when the teachers can't teach. The cycle deteriorates. I remember an article many years back that said that the only people Baltimore schools could hire to teach were so ill prepared themselves that they required them to take remedial education classes in the evenings to bring them up to speed.
And employers struggle to offer training classes to get a work force up to the quality it needs to operate in a global environment because the education system isn't doing it for them.
22610. arkymalarky - 9/13/2007 10:39:11 PM The literacy problem has changed significantly, especially since the 1980s. Read an AP test and student responses, or even the NCLB-required essays. I never saw anything near that level of difficulty nor did I see that quality of writing in high school or college, nor when I first began teaching. If you expect students who wouldn't even have been students 20 years ago because of dropout laws to be at grade level, you will be disappointed, but top students are doing better than ever before. This is not to say they should go back to letting them drop out at age 14, but it's important to keep that fact in mind when considering the state of public education.
Much in the way of clerical training and other skills is lacking, but in our small district students learn MS Office and take desktop publishing as electives. Required courses have squeezed out options and fewer students take those electives, but those who do learn a lot.
When Dad started as a professor in 1971 he had a student who wrote a paper, part of which said "the champus kops the ar kool. al the do is drive aron an givee tickee." That guy got a college diploma, in the early '70s, even though he failed Dad's class. He would not have gotten out of high school today unless he was an identified special education student. 22611. Magoseph - 9/14/2007 4:50:10 PM ...but top students are doing better than ever before.
True and I think these students should go directly to university rather than to college like many around here do because they want to be with their friends who would be failing at university. 22612. Magoseph - 9/14/2007 5:20:33 PM I'm trying to wean myself cold-turkey from coffee, so I didn't buy any yesterday. Well, I'm on my way to town now, a raving maniac. How pathetic can one gets! 22613. judithathome - 9/14/2007 9:42:18 PM The same way I am giving up cigarettes...I am so furious that "the two of us giving up cigarettes" entails ME not smoking at home so Keoni won't smoke at home but him still smoking at work!
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