Re: Entrance Exam for EMS Courses

December 25, 2004

speaking of high schools, does anyone know the 411 on the TAKS tesk thing in

houston schools? what were those teachers thinking?

-- wegandy1938@... wrote:

There was a time when a high school diploma was evidence enough that the

holder possessed the simple skills of reading, writing, and basic math. What

happened?

Dr. Spock, Social promotions, and the coup de grace, the Department of

Education- another Federal boondoggle meant to 'help' us.

" We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit

violence on those who would do us harm. " - Orwell.

Larry RN LP

January 3, 2005

After teaching high school for over 2 years now,l and being in EMS in

all facets for 21 years before that, I can give you a good analogy.

Most high school students are like balloons. Stuff, a lot of stuff -

gets pumped into them. Thus, they swell up - some call it growth - but

it is just swelling. Once they have passed the 'exam' or 'test' or

'unit' they let all the stuff inside go out, flutter about and make a

flatulent noise. This cycle is ingrained from the first day of Pre-K.

In the evenings when I am tending my 30ft x 20ft koi ponds, I see my

fish growing and swimming around -doing what happy fish do. They eat

bugs and the food I give them. I also clean their bio-mech filters and

give them clean water. They actually grow.

I look upon my HS students(especially EMT and Pharm Tech) as my koi

fish, by making sure they know they are suppose to grow and apply

knowledge, not just remember inane facts then forget them after the

test.

This is why we see some honor students coming out of HS without the

sense that God gave a goose. So what can you do, tell teachers and

administrators what you are seeing with their graduates. Tell them you

want to see students, that have the ability to grow, not swell.

aloha,

mikey

(Mike Hudson)

>>> barry.sharp@... 12/20/04 9:04 AM >>>

I'm going to put my neck out on this, but does anyone else see the

irony

here? In the past couple of weeks, we've been howling like a burned

puppy

about the college requirements of the national SoC and now we're

complaining

that kids who are coming into the field straight from high school can't

do

basic English or math.

We want students/medics who are academically competent so they can

understand, digest and apply the materials taught, but we don't want

to

raise the academic bar for entrance. So we either maintain the status

qou

and put a lot of remedial work into the courses so that our students

can

learn or we raise the bar so that we get more selective in who gets

into the

classes (hopefully students who can learn material without having to

learn

how to learn first).

Thus the question becomes, do we re-engineer our training programs so

that

they are basically a vocation program with all the remedial education

so

that our students can learn to write, read and do math to EMS standards

or

do we link into higher education where those institutions, by their

very

nature, should create (or weed out) students who can read, write and

think?

Either way is not necessarily all good or all bad, but you have to be

willing to live with the consequences of the decision.

Barry S.

NOTE: The Texas Department of Health (TDH) has merged with other

agencies

and is now part of the new Department of State Health Services (DSHS),

resulting in the following e-mail address format change for all

employees:

firstname.lastname@....

January 3, 2005