[DrCaleb]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Denying most Americans an education is what this is about. Ignorant people are far easier to control than are people who command a body of irrefutable facts.

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[ShepherdsDog]

hence the seeming dumbing down of our own curriculum....the powers that be don't want an educated middle and working class. Give them Doritos and an Xbox.

[Public_Domain]

[DrCaleb]

Public_Domain Public_Domain:

I wonder how long this tradition of teaching kids with 20+ year old textbooks is?

Very old. Sometimes, things don't change much in 20 years.

Math is one of them. History is another.

I do like the trend now of lending students a tablet computer with digital copies of textbooks on them. Too many kids who didn't take the books home to study because of back problems.

[Public_Domain]

[DrCaleb]

Public_Domain Public_Domain:

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

Public_Domain Public_Domain:

I wonder how long this tradition of teaching kids with 20+ year old textbooks is?

Very old. Sometimes, things don't change much in 20 years.

Math is one of them. History is another.

I do like the trend now of lending students a tablet computer with digital copies of textbooks on them. Too many kids who didn't take the books home to study because of back problems.

In college, i did my best to save myself money and other students as well by directing them to some interesting websites... One of my professors even flat out encouraged it, since the stupid book cost over $80...

I still have many University and Tech school textbooks, and most of them are horribly outdated. Computer Science has changed a bit, and there were no websites back then.

The trend back then was to sell your books for half cost to the students in the next semester, but the trend with books was to give a minor revision every year or so to sell new books. Which left one semesters' students SOL on recouping costs.

[Prof_Chomsky]

I must be missing something. We had to write tests just like this one, every other grade until grade 11 when I was in school. 90 minutes a piece. No one was expected to finish them, let alone pass. I was told (could be a rumour) scores above 30% were considered 98th percentile. Anyone scoring 50% had their test checked for cheating.
Any student over a certain score was then given a follow up test to see just how smart they were. I had to attend a few of these follow ups (and I KNOW at best I maybe got 20% of the math right on the original tests, it was comically difficult) and they were nothing short of something written to identify geniuses – like 4th year University math being tested with 7th grade students.

None of those tests damaged me, disheartened anyone, or ruined our academic careers. I’ll fully admit I don’t have all the facts about the USA version, but at first sight I feel like kids and students and parents need to suck it up and stop whining. Kids need to see some tasks are VERY difficult, and work toward that goal.

[Public_Domain]

[Prof_Chomsky]

Public_Domain Public_Domain:

I'd say my biggest agreement with the side against Common Core is how badly written many of the assignments are. At that point, it isn't about teaching kids that life is hard, it's punishing kids for misunderstanding uncorrectable systematic errors. I think it is fair to feel that blatantly confusing and grammatically incorrect questions are not going to do students any good.

I agree about grammatically incorrect questions. That's not ok in a school environment. But blatantly confusing? Nothing wrong there imho. Life is blatantly confusing

I used to be the final hiring step at a major support center, and holy Moses, were people ever dumb. Keep in mind these were all university grads or better, but the instant you asked any logical reasoning questions 95% of them just crumbled. They got used to information being spoon fed to them, so when you had to make them think for themselves they just fell apart. It was like watching a parent ask a 5 year old to explain the physics behind how the sun makes light.

[Zipperfish]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

I still have many University and Tech school textbooks, and most of them are horribly outdated. Computer Science has changed a bit, and there were no websites back then.

How did you live with no websites, grandpa?

[Jabberwalker]

We had something called "libraries".

[Public_Domain]

[Goober911]

Not sure if it was posted but AB was about to go down a similar road.
http://blogs.edmontonjournal.com/2014/0 ... m-rewrite/

http://blogs.edmontonjournal.com/2014/0 ... -terrible/

[BartSimpson]

sandorski sandorski:

How you come to a Conclusion is important. Sorry. Anyone can Memorize anything, but if they have no clue as to Why an answer is the answer, they have not learned anything useful.

I agree that how a person comes to a conclusion is important. And teaching kids how to logically approach a problem and come to a conclusion is something they need to know.

But then there's things like basic math.

Teaching a kid to memorize their multiplication tables is useful because regardless of what you think about it the basic multiplication table contains some undisputed and useful facts.



Spelling is another useful skill that can be memorized in first and second grades while saving the larger 'why' of the English language for a kids' first year in university English 1A.

All of this focus on theories and concepts is cheating kids of learning the basic and useful facts that are the foundation for learning in later life.

But, yeah, you folks go ahead and cheat your kids of an education and then wonder at why home schooled and private schooled kids are dominating in the Ivy League schools like they do. Oh, and be sure to complain about how it's 'unfair' because saying something is 'unfair' is a clear demonstration of the ability to logically approach a problem and come to a conclusion.

[Goober911]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

sandorski sandorski:

How you come to a Conclusion is important. Sorry. Anyone can Memorize anything, but if they have no clue as to Why an answer is the answer, they have not learned anything useful.

I agree that how a person comes to a conclusion is important. And teaching kids how to logically approach a problem and come to a conclusion is something they need to know.

But then there's things like basic math.

Teaching a kid to memorize their multiplication tables is useful because regardless of what you think about it the basic multiplication table contains some undisputed and useful facts.



Spelling is another useful skill that can be memorized in first and second grades while saving the larger 'why' of the English language for a kids' first year in university English 1A.

All of this focus on theories and concepts is cheating kids of learning the basic and useful facts that are the foundation for learning in later life.

But, yeah, you folks go ahead and cheat your kids of an education and then wonder at why home schooled and private schooled kids are dominating in the Ivy League schools like they do. Oh, and be sure to complain about how it's 'unfair' because saying something is 'unfair' is a clear demonstration of the ability to logically approach a problem and come to a conclusion.

On this Forum they do not have a positive rating for an intelligent post??
If they do i have missed it.