In this last year Arizona has decided to make it mandatory for American senior high school kids to be able to pass the same civics test as an immigrant applying for U.S. citizenship does. If they cannot pass it, they cannot graduate the grade. For those who think that the mandate is a little extreme, it might be noted that an 8th grade U.S. student in 1945 had to know more about our government than our average present day graduating college student does. Riding along with the Arizona ruling, South Carolina has made Civics a mandatory course for all seniors looking to graduate. Imagine, a senior in high school who actually knows the three branches of government and who plays what part in each or even (and maybe) the difference between the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights. Who can imagine what our young ones will learn when each state takes it's educational system back from the politically correct government run bureaucratic dumbing down of our present day students? Think of the possibilities: Math, History, and Geography might even be a part of school again. hmmmm...maybe even recess and Gym might come back to help solve the obesity problem. Yeah, I know that asking the students to know the Pledge of Allegiance and honoring the flag is a bit much on the wish list but...........who knows?
That is in Arizona, you say. So that means Arizona graduates would know more about the country than graduates in other states? Well, we may be experiencing a paradigm shift. Even here, there are lost of changes that I don't even know the name of the school subjects. Gone are the English, Social Studies, History, Health and Science. Even P.E. for physical education has a different name now. The Philippine alphabet has also changed in the recent years. Where we used to have 20 letters - a, b, k, d, e, g, h, i, l, m, n, ng, o, p, r, s, t, u, w, y, now they have added the f and some other foreign letters such as x. I have to admit that I am left behind by the changes in our school system and probably wouldn't pass a general exam for grade school.
Sounds good to me. I had a teacher who went even further... on the first day of class- and bear in mind, it was an English class- she told us regardless of how well we did in class, homework, tests, etc., she'd automatically fail any kid who didn't know the words to The Star-Spangled Banner, and the school's Alma Mater. She was a wonderful teacher- we all loved her! These days, if a teacher presented those requirements, students and parents would probably throw tantrums and threaten to sue the school!
I might have been a bit premature with my hopes of an upcoming better school system. It seems that Wayne State University in Michigan has decided to put away their requirement for a math course in the curriculum and decided to opt for a "diversity" course instead. From my understanding, one of the classes includes the better use of a new series of pronouns that describe those transgenders who dislike the present pronoun system. It's pretty confusing to me but maybe ya'll can figure it out. To me, if a person looks like a he it's "Mr./he/him etc" and not a "zir" because they might be a transgender. Seriously though, are we now supposed to ask someone what they do in the bedroom and with which gender in order to figure out what to call them? hmmmmm.........Maybe that's why Wayne State has opened their new classes on diversity. We do not need to know how many restrooms might be in target, just what is politically correct when describing the folks who go into them. My bad! http://nypost.com/2016/05/19/city-issues-new-guidelines-on-transgender-pronouns/
I can accept transgender as a diverse sexual orientation but an additional pronoun, really? If the decision to change their natural gender was made you would think that 'he' or 'she' would suffice since it was difficult to hear before.
And to think, the older generation used to say they couldn't tell the difference between boys and girls just because many boys had long hair! I recall one older person, trying to be funny, said the only way you could determine whether somebody was male or female was look at the person's front- these days, even that wouldn't work!
I could be mistaken, but it seems academics started going down the drain when schools took on parental responsibilities. I mean how much time can there be in a school day for "The 3 R's" etc., when the schools have to teach anti-bullying, sex education, drug/alcohol resistance, etc. etc. etc.? I'm sure most people here can relate: when I was in elementary school, our school days focused on English, arithmetic/math, Social Studies; once a week or so we had art and music classes. And even in high school, it was almost entirely academics, with the occasional "elective" like ceramics. We didn't HAVE any of this other stuff- except briefly touching on the topics in Health classes.
Much to my own chagrin, I have to agree with your query @Joe Riley. Teachers come from the same colleges that all of the other playtime graduates come from hence the liberal arts uneducated teacher, teaching nothing but personal bias to starving brains waiting for intelligent input. After which.....those information starved zombies will then be the new instructors merely teaching little ones how to push buttons at some kiosk in order to feed themselves. It will not be long before the Erasmus statement of: In the land of the blind a one eyed man can become king, will be the norm. All intelligence will be held within a computerized module of sorts and the ones who can operate it best will be the eventual leaders no matter the IQ of the individual. The eventual generations will not be able to add, subtract, divide nor multiply (mathematically nor sexually) and the written word will be an abstract of a forgotten ancient script last seen and understood sometime between the 20th and 21st century. Fahrenheit 451 will become a reality. Will somebody stop me? I'm depressing myself to the point of trying to run for president.
Well, you're a member here, so you're clearly over 35 years of age... and it sounds like you have better ideas than the current main candidates.
True you! One thing though that threw the entire government school system under the bus was the creation of the curve system. Everyone in class is graded according to the performance of the entire class being tested. If a test has 10 questions on it and the top student only got 5 right then all it takes is to get 5 correct in order to garner an "A" then all other grades are given between 0 and 5. 4 right gets a B, 3 right a C, you get the point! When I went to school, if I was tested and the test had 10 questions in it, I had to ace the test with a 10 in order to get that A. Miss 3 or 4 you failed. Period. Do not pass go, do not collect nada! It is possible, by using the curve method you can ace the year and miss half of the questions in a test provided everyone studies on the same level as you.
Seriously? I never heard of that. The weirdest that occurred was the pass/fail option, but most teachers didn't go along with it. Students got the grades they earned.
Oh I missed this part of the post before- plus I'd bet if they gave kids gym and recess again, there'd be a heck of a lot fewer kids labeled with 'behavioral' problems. I can't imagine how awful it is for kids to not have free/active time- bad enough for the older students, but especially the little guys.