Where in the ???? Americans and Geography
A few years ago, I read a report that said Americans were weak at geography. Today a new survey comes out that suggests the problem is worse than I thought. What is happening to America, a land of immigrants and the so-called greatest nation on earth?
What do you guys think? What would you answer to some of the questions?
http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/05...est/index.html
What do you guys think? What would you answer to some of the questions?
http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/05...est/index.html
Comments
Originally posted by Bergermeister
What is happening to America, a land of immigrants and the so-called greatest nation on earth?
What's happening (amongst many other things) is that the education system focuses too much on hip technology, like giving laptops to elementary pupils who couldn't possibly actually benefit from it, while cutting funding, instead of actually trying to discuss what's important for students to learn.
You can win an election in a much easier way by saying "we'll give your children all sorts of high-tech!" than "we'll focus a lot more on Asian history in tenth grade from now on".
Originally posted by Chucker
What's happening (amongst many other things) is that the education system focuses too much on hip technology, like giving laptops to elementary pupils who couldn't possibly actually benefit from it, while cutting funding, instead of actually trying to discuss what's important for students to learn.
There are a lot of things you can blame for the bad public education system, but none of them are as significant as the culture of the students themselves. Unless students want to learn, the education system will never yield good results. In that respect, I think these kids should just get weeded out and put into trade school.
Originally posted by Splinemodel
[B]There are a lot of things you can blame for the bad public education system, but none of them are as significant as the culture of the students themselves. Unless students want to learn, the education system will never yield good results. In that respect, I think these kids should just get weeded out and put into trade school.
You can't blame students for bad education. That's like blaming consumers for not buying "the right" products (hello content industry!).
There's a reason students are severely disinterested in education to begin with. Obviously, there's a lot of factors to that, but primarily, there's three:
3) cultural influences, e.g. advertising, fashion, media consumption
2) interaction with teachers and co-students
1) most importantly: the parents.
I don't think people even realize that almost every public school in this country is now supposed to follow strict frameworks and guidelines set out by local, state, and federal governments.
Many schools now have their state funding based on their performance and how much they improve every year. Performance is now measured based on standardized tests and some states won't give high school diplomas to students who don't get a high enough score on the tests.
I've seen some of the frameworks for these states, geography gets almost no attention because the tests required for graduation are based around Math and English.
It's getting to the point where teachers are told that they need to spend a set amount of time on a subject each day, even at the elementary school level. 90 minutes of math, 60 minutes of reading, 60 minutes of writing/phonics work, etc. There's only so much time during the day, and science and history/geography are suffering as a result.
A lot of this is just pure ignorance on the part of people surveyed. If you don't know where Iraq or Louisiana are on a map, you haven't watched the news or picked up a newspaper in quite some time. Apparently, Americans who are 18-24 choose to ignore what is going on around them, only stopping to complain when something directly hurts them, like rising gas prices.
You can't blame teachers for this.
Originally posted by Fran441
You can't blame teachers for this.
Sure you can! You can't expect people to be held accountable for their own ignorance, can you?
Originally posted by Fran441
Teachers get shit on so much in this country, it's amazing to me that anyone even goes into the profession any more.
Very true.
You can't blame teachers for this.
Who in this thread did?
Viva la raza!
Si se puede!
We didn't cross the border, there isn't a border and if there is, it crossed us!
Nick
Originally posted by midwinter
Damn straight, comrade Nick! I assume that all of geography was covered on the days they went to march, so screw them!
Remember, the presumption that they were there on the non-march days is yours alone.
Nick
Originally posted by Aurora
This is what happens when you let in millions of mexicans and have a large black population who worships Rap & Hood and dont think a father is needed in the raising of the children, yeah we Americans are getting stupider all the time, just look at our president.
Classy.
Originally posted by Chucker
There's a reason students are severely disinterested in education to begin with. Obviously, there's a lot of factors to that, but primarily, there's three:
3) cultural influences, e.g. advertising, fashion, media consumption
2) interaction with teachers and co-students
1) most importantly: the parents.
You can shift the blame however you want, but if the kid doesn't want to learn, there's no much you can do. Whether the root of the problem is culture, the parents, or heredity can be up for debate, but at the end of the day the problem is still the student. Altering youth culture is probably a good idea towards "fixing" this problem, but talk is cheap. I can't think of a better way to light a fire under someone than to take something away: that is, I'd separate achievers from non achievers and put the non achievers in trade school instead of high school. Maybe then they'd instill a little more responsibility in their children.
Originally posted by Aurora
This is what happens when you let in millions of mexicans and have a large black population who worships Rap & Hood and dont think a father is needed in the raising of the children, yeah we Americans are getting stupider all the time, just look at our president.
Wow.
Originally posted by hardeeharhar
Wow.
Yeah. Classy, huh?
Originally posted by midwinter
Yeah. Classy, huh?
That's a sweet home South Carolinian for you...
Seriously though, when the study first came I out, I thought to myself, surely the youth of America can't be that stupid. I was horribly wrong, and the blame can go all around the table as far as I'm concerned:
1) The Students - Students rarely care about anything unless they are driven by some outside influence like a teacher or their parents. It's complete apathy. If you noticed, during all of the walk-outs from school for whatever reason, a good portion of the students have no idea what they're walking out for, other than the fact that because they're doing it they get the day off from school. So yes, I would blame some of it on the students - they don't want to learn, they don't want to be in school. I say if they have shown repeatedly that they don't want to be there we send them to a trade school or tell them to get a job.
2) The Parents - My parents and grandparents remember a day when parents actually supported teacher and school officials when their child was in trouble. Those days are gone. Especially in lower-class families, parents seems wholly uninterested in their child's education. I never understood why either. If your kid goes to school ( and they don't even have to go to college, just finish damn high school) then they have a chance at getting some kind of a job. If they want to go to college, Universities give out so much need based aid, it's unreal. But no, parents want to act like their child is an angel. They'd never cuss at the teacher, or never assault a police officer, or never act up in class. The parents only reason for coming to school anymore is to bail their child out of trouble - who cares about the kind of education they're getting, just as long as they make it through school without going to jail.
For those students that are athletes, there is also a focus on grooming their child for the pros before they're even out of middle school. One in every 25,000 high school football players goes on to sign with a pro team. My high school team had 50 guys that all thought they were going pro. Their record - 1 - 10. Hell son, you're not even getting signed by a DIII school if you play that shitty. Wake up and go to class.
3) The Schools - They want to coddle the children, protect their self esteem, bring out their creativity, introduce them to technology that in many cases, the teachers themselves can't grasp. The schools want to do everything but teach basic classes. We can teach you how to bake a cake or take care of a baby, but we can't teach you basic math or geography. We can give you a laptop, but we can't troubleshoot it for you or tell you how it works or tell you even a basic reason why it works. But praise God! They're light years ahead of the poor kids of the past that never had such conveniences. I'm so pissed I didn't get to check MySpace back in 1996. Schools are using the internet like it's going out of style. Remember books? Damn, when I learned to write research papers in high school, it was beat intomy head that the internet was no place to find sources unless you could cross reference them to an actual book somewhere or it was a government document. Now, kids write papers that are copied and pasted from the net, the teachers don't care or are too dumb to notice.
So there's plenty of blame to go around ... but at least the Animaniacs video should do some good!
Originally posted by Aurora
This is what happens when you let in millions of mexicans and have a large black population who worships Rap & Hood and dont think a father is needed in the raising of the children, yeah we Americans are getting stupider all the time, just look at our president.
The left will freak out on this one! Put aside your lefty PC mentality and look at the problem. We can't solve the problem unless we have the guts to look at it and not pretend it does not exist.
Originally posted by Aurora
This is what happens when you let in millions of mexicans and have a large black population who worships Rap & Hood and dont think a father is needed in the raising of the children, yeah we Americans are getting stupider all the time, just look at our president.
Who do you think you are? Steven Colbert?