High school students are uneducated: Who knew that all these years of teaching to the basic skills test, and we’re still graduating idiots? Thanks, NEA! You’re doing just swell!
The report by The Education Trust found that 23 percent of recent high school graduates don’t get the minimum score needed on the enlistment test to join any branch of the military. Questions are often basic, such as: “If 2 plus x equals 4, what is the value of x?”
(And in a moment for kvelling, my nephew, the Marine recruit, scored highly enough to pretty much name his own ticket. Of course, as a Marine, he will go where they tell him to go, and do what they tell him to do. But he’s smart. He knows the answer to the above is “x=2.” And so do I. Smart.)
Wait for the outraged denials from the Kiwis: Another Wikileak, another scandal, this one on how New Zealand overreacted to the Mossad agents in its midst in the hopes of making their Arab masters trading partners happy. Color me unsurprised.
UN Resolutions are only for Israel: The Iranians are showing their puppets the way, by unilaterally declaring that they will utterly ignore any UN commission report that says Hezbollah was behind the Hariri assassination. I’m quite sure that all those anti-Israel pundits who cited the Goldstone Commission report as evidence that Israel needed to change its behavior will be screaming to the rooftops when the Hariri report comes out. (Okay, I couldn’t even type that with a straight face.) And now there’s a report that the Lebanese prime minister is going to kick the investigators out of Lebanon. Apparently, investigations are only for Israel, too.
But really, it’s “Islamophobia” that’s the problem: Hate crimes are down overall in Los Angelese County, but guess what’s up? That’s right, anti-Semitism. The number of crimes against Muslims? Apparently, not even high enough to mention, in spite of dozens of CAIR press releases to the contrary. Hey, just remember: It’s always Jew Season.
I wish people would stop blaming the NEA for all of America’s education troubles. First of all, teachers or our unions do not control the curriculum or standards. Those are set by politicians and bureaucrats.
Secondly, what did those kids do in school? I can’t make a student do homework. I can’t make them learn. I can teach, I can excite, I can encourage but in the end, they have to do it. Those kids who keep at it do fine. Those who don’t fail.
I have a few students whom we’ve gotten tutors for, have an after school program for, I work one on one with, I fuss at, I call home, I beg, I barter… but still, they don’t do their work. They will only work if I am right there telling them to do the next one, the minute my eye leaves them they are off talking, making paper airplanes, writing notes, etc.. I can’t spend all my time on that one kid. I have kids who are trying who need help. I’m not alone… every teacher I know is faced with this and keeps working through it.
But somehow its my fault that they aren’t successful when clearly the problem is within them and their families.
Maybe the kids are smarter than you think and don’t want to enlist in the military?
However, it was ever thus. People have been complaining about general education standards for millenia. I could probably go on for hours as to what’s wrong with education as a system in North America. I think teachers individually are quite heroic, but that they aren’t given the opportunity to review and improve the process. One practice I read about from Japan makes a lot of sense – teachers are given time to watch other teachers at work and then the discuss what works and what doesn’t, a reflection of the kanzei philosophy of continual and incremental improvement. Another problem is that often the goal in American education is to get the right answer as opposed to understanding and trouble shooting the process that gets one to the answer. Yet the other extreme is to let the kids do what they want and to accept ANY answer no matter how dumb and undisciplined as right is also a cop out.
The best thing is that the Internet is making kids very literate, either with the Haiku of tweeting or the prevalence of fan fiction as two examples. Video chat no doubt will lead to a dumbing down effect and today’s 20 somethings no doubt will be bemoaning the illiteracy of the now teens that follow them. Now if something could be done about innumeracy….
Keep up the good fight. :-)
Speaking of Wikileaks, the 0bama administration took the side of the Honduran antisemite Manuel Zelaya with the consciously intended purpose of sucking up to tHugo Chavez.