[Jabberwalker]

I'll bet that students will score better on geography questions ... and have more of a clue generally, if their parents do, as well. Clueless people have clueless children and the condition is spreading like wildfire in North America. You cannot learn anything useful about the world or the human condition in 140 byte snacks.

[BartSimpson]

Public_Domain Public_Domain:

My teachers were generally good. The students were generally purely wasted effort.

For once I won't argue with you!

[bootlegga]

Freakinoldguy Freakinoldguy:

Public_Domain Public_Domain:

Also, the whip will never be coming back. It just won't. You can lament the olden days I suppose, but the strap can never return. If education/interest (or rather, compliance/silent apathy) can't be made without smacking children around, there's problems with far more than just teachers, students, and parents.

Then what do you suggest since the current approach isn't working? Although it may just be me but, IMO kids need discipline and structure two things most of them aren't getting at home or at school.

So what do we do. Let them skate through school, get a high school diploma and then get turned down for a University because they can't read or write at a level above grade 6? Doing it the way it's being done now we're gonna eventually end up with an extremely small generation of overachievers and a huge generation of "do you want fries with that's"

Or, do we smarten up and start putting discipline, respect and pride back in the education system and no it doesn't have to be a beating every morning to keep in line but, how about respect for your teachers, and maybe a little bit of fear thrown in for good measure.

Of course for that to work parents would have to become a lot more involved in their children's lives and actually back the teachers with discipline at home. Things which I don't see happening for a majority of families.

You may make light of the "olden days" but let me tell you if you screwed up in school that was the least of your problems. When you got home you'd get it even worse. So keeping your piehole closed and learning was the lesser of two evils for my generation.

But you're right about the system being pooched. Most parents out here if they can afford it send their kids to private schools so they get a much better quality education and learn about those things I mentioned above.

This is happening even more so since the public school system has become a battleground between the union and the Provincial Gov't with the kids as bargaining chips.

I don't know about where you went to school, but here in Edmonton, the strap was never used on dumb kids, it was used on violent and rebellious ones.

Typically, enforcing discipline in the classroom usually fell to the teacher and it was enforced through detention, extra works (writing lines, essays, etc) or downright intimidation. For example, one math teacher used to carry a metre stick around and slam it on your desk if he caught you talking while he was teaching - it sounded like a gunshot and scared the piss out of you!

It was only after the teacher had exhausted those avenues that she 'sent you to the office' to be dealt with. Even then, it was a stern talking to from the principal/vice-principal, not the strap. Sometimes extra duties, like lunchroom clean-up was given, but the strap was the last resort when I went to school 30 years ago - and it required parental consent to be given to you.

[bambu]

No more straps/canes in my schools...all gone...as it was 'assault'.
We had a big muscleman teacher who used to cane boys in fits of anger [they used to tease him].
He used to belt their hands as hard as he could...no parental consent.
It was a wonder he didn't 'kill' them.

Replaced by suspensions.
We live in more enlightened times.

[Jabberwalker]

bambu bambu:

No more straps/canes in my schools...all gone...as it was 'assault'.
We had a big muscleman teacher who used to cane boys in fits of anger [they used to tease him].
He used to belt their hands as hard as he could...no parental consent.
It was a wonder he didn't 'kill' them.

Replaced by suspensions.
We live in more enlightened times.

You sound like a Briton. Generations of Britons were educated by sadistic maniacs. They sure learned their school lessons ... and other ones as well, unfortunately.

[BartSimpson]

bambu bambu:

We live in more enlightened times.

No, we don't. We're just better on some things and worse on new things.

[bambu]

Jabberwalker Jabberwalker:

I'll bet that students will score better on geography questions ... and have more of a clue generally, if their parents do, as well. Clueless people have clueless children and the condition is spreading like wildfire in North America. You cannot learn anything useful about the world or the human condition in 140 byte snacks.

Not that hard to teach students at least basic geography in 10 years of schooling...surely.

For example, as in the video I posted earlier in this thread about Americans interviewed in the steeet...that mainland Australia is not Nth Korea, and the island state of Tasmania just below it is not South Korea.

Nor is mainland Australia France.

[Jabberwalker]

bambu bambu:

Jabberwalker Jabberwalker:

I'll bet that students will score better on geography questions ... and have more of a clue generally, if their parents do, as well. Clueless people have clueless children and the condition is spreading like wildfire in North America. You cannot learn anything useful about the world or the human condition in 140 byte snacks.

Not that hard to teach students at least basic geography in 10 years of schooling...surely.

For example, as in the video I posted earlier in this thread about Americans interviewed in the steeet...that mainland Australia is not Nth Korea, and the island state of Tasmania just below it is not South Korea.

Nor is mainland Australia France.

... and that Canada is just a few hour's drive to the North ... not a quarter of a world away ringing the Pole.

A few years ago, I was at a big "doo" at a place called fort Niagara. This is a big stone castle fortification that the French built 300 years ago at the edge of their North American empire. It is now at the far northern edge of the United States. You can almost read the street signs across the Niagara River on the Canadian side. When you look out across Lake Ontario, you see a continuous line of really tall buildings, all along the horizon. This is Toronto, now the fourth largest urban area in North America (after Mexico City, L.A. and New York). Anyway, I overheard a gaggle of American tourists asking "What's that place over there", pointing to the skyline all along the water. "Canada" said one of the guides. "Canada? Canada looks like THAT?" There was widespread disbelief and uncertainty about what they had just been told. At first, you would think that they would see that big conurbation on their road maps as they drove up to the Fort but then, I thought, "We're not even on that map. This is the end of the earth for these people."

[bambu]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

bambu bambu:

We live in more enlightened times.

No, we don't. We're just better on some things and worse on new things.

Yes.
We do live in more enlightened times.

No more teen single moms forced to surrender their new-born babies for adoption.

No more 'bad girls' [teen unmarried pregnant girls from rural and city] sent to govt institutional city homes to have the babies.
As a teen boy I used to walk past such a home in my suburb.
Didn't look like 'bad girls' to me, most of them looked nice...so nice I thought I would like to take some home.

[BartSimpson]

bambu bambu:

We do live in more enlightened times.

No more teen single moms forced to surrender their new-born babies for adoption.

Now they murder them in the womb before they're born. Big improvement.

bambu bambu:

No more 'bad girls' [teen unmarried pregnant girls from rural and city] sent to govt institutional city homes to have the babies.

Really? Then what do you call foster homes?

bambu bambu:

As a teen boy I used to walk past such a home in my suburb.

And you can do the same thing today, just the homes don't have signs on them anymore.

bambu bambu:

Didn't look like 'bad girls' to me, most of them looked nice...so nice I thought I would like to take some home.

'Some'?

Your name isn't Cody Brown, is it?

[bambu]

Jabberwalker Jabberwalker:

bambu bambu:

Jabberwalker Jabberwalker:

I'll bet that students will score better on geography questions ... and have more of a clue generally, if their parents do, as well. Clueless people have clueless children and the condition is spreading like wildfire in North America. You cannot learn anything useful about the world or the human condition in 140 byte snacks.

Not that hard to teach students at least basic geography in 10 years of schooling...surely.

For example, as in the video I posted earlier in this thread about Americans interviewed in the steeet...that mainland Australia is not Nth Korea, and the island state of Tasmania just below it is not South Korea.

Nor is mainland Australia France.

... and that Canada is just a few hour's drive to the North ... not a quarter of a world away ringing the Pole.

A few years ago, I was at a big "doo" at a place called fort Niagara. This is a big stone castle fortification that the French built 300 years ago at the edge of their North American empire. It is now at the far northern edge of the United States. You can almost read the street signs across the Niagara River on the Canadian side. When you look out across Lake Ontario, you see a continuous line of really tall buildings, all along the horizon. This is Toronto, now the fourth largest urban area in North America (after Mexico City, L.A. and New York). Anyway, I overheard a gaggle of American tourists asking "What's that place over there", pointing to the skyline all along the water. "Canada" said one of the guides. "Canada? Canada looks like THAT?" There was widespread disbelief and uncertainty about what they had just been told. At first, you would think that they would see that big conurbation on their road maps as they drove up to the Fort but then, I thought, "We're not even on that map. This is the end of the earth for these people."

Now I'm not here to attack the US education system, but...makes me wonder just what exactly is taught in American schools for geography.
Australia, Europe, Asia are across the other side of the world...but the US borders Canada.
Canadians cross the US-Canadian border to go shopping.

[bambu]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

bambu bambu:

We do live in more enlightened times.

No more teen single moms forced to surrender their new-born babies for adoption.

Now they murder them in the womb before they're born. Big improvement.

bambu bambu:

No more 'bad girls' [teen unmarried pregnant girls from rural and city] sent to govt institutional city homes to have the babies.

Really? Then what do you call foster homes?

bambu bambu:

As a teen boy I used to walk past such a home in my suburb.

And you can do the same thing today, just the homes don't have signs on them anymore.

bambu bambu:

Didn't look like 'bad girls' to me, most of them looked nice...so nice I thought I would like to take some home.

'Some'?

Your name isn't Cody Brown, is it?

Couldn't take them all home, there were way too many of them.
_________

Complain about the number of abortions today?
Women will shout at you..."our bodies, our choice"!

No more 'foster homes'...not enough unwanted babies.

[Jabberwalker]

Now I'm not here to attack the US education system, but...makes me wonder just what exactly is taught in American schools for geography.
Australia, Europe, Asia are across the other side of the world...but the US borders Canada.
Canadians cross the US-Canadian border to go shopping.

They're taught American geography ... and American history and American civics and American sociology and American media studies, American literature, American Art ... The United States is a great big, inward looking civilization unto itself. They don't need to look beyond their borders as they are self-sufficient in most things. The only problem with that is that they want to operate as a global power and there is a dreadful mismatch between what Joe Public really needs to know about the outside world and what he is actually told. Every morning there is a (mostly excellent) morning news television show broadcast by CBS. They have a segment, though, titled "Your World in 90 Seconds". With very few exceptions ... maybe two or three little items a week, "their world" consists of stories from every little whistle stop in the U.S.A. ... all of it superimposed on an image of the globe. The message that I get is: "Here is your world. Here is what REALLY counts. There is nothing much out there beyond our borders that really matters because this is the center of it all."

[bambu]

stratos stratos:

wow we went from Geography to the need to wear school uniforms way to dumb down the topic.

No we didn't. It was just part of the conversation.

[Xort]

bambu bambu:

School uniform...pride in the school there just might be.

Why would you want to have pride in a school?

Have pride in yourself and your actions.