Re: Re: Modern Education and Intellect

[Guest guest]

Dr. Siff, it appalls me about the curriculum in the schools, especially

about the lack of math, science, history, and English. It is different from

when I went to school years ago. My sons are taking courses that are given

them that, to me, have no value and take up valuable time which should be

given to the basics.

Read some of the posts to Supertraining and other lists and you will notice that

the

foreign subscribers sometimes have a better grasp of English than Americans,

even though it is their second or third language. There was an article in a

local paper about a professional football player that went to a Florida college

and when asked by the police to write a report of a accident he witnessed,

he responded that " he didn't write too good and could he just tell it to

someone. "

Ask some local college students to do arithmetic in their heads or answer a

history

question and wait for the response. You will be amazed. Also check out the

local courses at the Colorado High Schools.

[We HAVE asked such questions and found that many cannot even name the

Presidents of

the USA during the Civil or both World Wars. We have also heard that the

capital of New

York State is New York, that the capital of CA is San Francisco. Many kids have

not even have

heard of Midway, the Ardennes, Delville Wood, Glenn, Owens. Many

think that

Luther is the same as Luther King and geographical knowledge is

even worse -

imagine not knowing the names and locations of the Great Lakes, or where

Anchorage, Moscow,

Paris, Madrid, Mumbai, Berlin, Sydney, Ireland, Bosnia, Sao Paolo, Tokyo, Taiwan

and Beijing

happen to be, let alone who Dickens, Tchaikovsky, , Rembrandt,

" Mark Twain " ,

Mandela, Nobel, Laplace, Kant, Mahatma Gandhi, lin, Gautama

the Buddha,

and Florence Nightingale were or are. Key figures, events, philosophies, places

and times that have

changed the face of this planet are unknown to far too many American youths and

even adults. Yet

you will find many disadvantaged folk from so-called Third World countries in

Africa and the East

who will often answer such questions with ease, though I understand that the

standards there are also

dropping.

Are we doomed to return to the caves and grunt: " How - me Tarzan, you Jane - we

do like what

we sort of kind of like saw in the movie things like that, sort of - hey, yo?

What I mean is cool,

huh, yeah man, kind of like radical, man - whaddaya say, I mean? "

Charlie Newkerk, C.S.C.S.

Rockledge, Fla

newkfit@...

----- -------

From: " newkerk " <Newkfit@...>

> Big Cat, according to the article, this was college material, but the

> level of education is apparently being dumbed down and many have to

> take remedial courses in college to make up for the lack of training

> in High School.

>

> My son is in 9th grade here in Florida and for his first

> 9 week period he was assigned Life Skills, drafting, basketball and

> Algebra for his four classes. I asked his counselor where the basic

> three Rs were and received no intelligible reply. By the way, he is an

honor

> student, so imagine what the slower kids get to take. I didn't take an

> elective in High School until I was a senior.

>

> [Are you serious that playing a sport counts as an academic school subject

in the USA??

> That is unheard of in most other countries, at least in other

English-speaking

> countries. All sports there are regarded as extramural, unless at

colleges where one has

> to study sport in terms of exercise science, coaching methodology, sports

technique, kinesiology

> and other academic topics. Playing of sport per se should never be

regarded as a legitimate

> academic subject. Moreover, Life Skills, Hygiene, Self Management or

whatever these self

> imporovement or self management skill classes may be called are sometimes

offered in other

> countries as extras for sheer enrichment, but they are not examined

subjects - at least beyond

> the lowest grades for kids. No wonder surveys and results show that USA

school children feature

> close to the bottom internationally in mathematics, science and languages.

Something HAS to be

> done about this disastrous situation. Mel Siff]

>

> Charlie Newkerk, CSCS

> Rockledge, Fl

>

> ------------------

>

> Big Cat <raven1008@y...> wrote:

>

> > > " Professor Anders Henriksson wants you to know that college kids

> > > today aren't necessarily more stupid or

> > > less informed than they were 30 years ago, and he offers an

> > > improbable book full of proof.

> > > The volume is NON CAMPUS MENTIS: non sequiturs, faux facts aned

> > > boneheaded statements gleaned from

> > > three decades of student tests and papers at universities and

> > > colleges across North America. It has inched

> > > onto the New York Times miscellaneous best seller list. And it

> > > certainly is miscellaneous. "

> > > The article goes on to state that he didn't make up the statements

> > > but has received them from professors

> > > at other universities and colleges after he published two

> > > compliations in Quarterly. Some date back

> > > to the 1930s, including Oxford, City College Of New York, and the

> > > US Military Academy.

> >

> > That certainly was funny. Thank you for that intermezzo, but is it just

> > me or does that not strike you as college material ? Most of that stuff

> > is 9th or 10th grade high school at best. If even that.

> >

> > Van Mol