Text 30054, 67 rader
Skriven 2006-05-19 18:51:16 av Philip Lozier (1:267/169)
  Kommentar till text 30009 av Bob Ackley (1:2905/3)
Ärende: Canadian "Skills"
=========================
 FS>>> I'm amazed such a high percentage of young Americans can locate
 FS>>> the US on a global map.  Amazing!!  As for their inability to
 FS>>> locate Sweden, maybe that's an indicator of the global
 FS>>> *importance* of Sweden.  Ever consider that??

 PL>> You *ARE*... you *ARE* ... such a jackass Mr. Bunker.

 BA> Should also be noted that over 60 percent of those students
 BA> couldn't find
 BA> Louisiana on a map, either.  The quality of the education system in
 BA> the
 BA> US has been declining for over a century.

As far as geography goes, it was very important in school when I was young... I
remember in the lower elementary school grades lessons in geography were
already there. I can think back to an exam that seemd "fun" to a younger child
... an outlined map of the United States with numbers in the states.  Had to
correctly name the states by number. This is GRADE school just starting out.
Each year geography progressed and was consdiered important.  Of course they
used to have "scoial studies" where you learned the cultures of the different
parts of the world along with geography, but they no longer have that either in
most places I know of... people today are ignorant of the cultures of other
parts of the world.  Maybe it was a New York thing considering the
multi-cultural environment it is, but I dunno.

 BA> Several (10-15) years ago the Wall Street Journal published part of
 BA> an
 BA> examination on its editorial page.  The examination was for those
 BA> students
 BA> who wanted to get IN to a high school back in about 1905, IIRC in
 BA> New
 BA> Jersey (but it might have been in NYC).  Of the ten questions in
 BA> the article
 BA> the Journal could answer only nine, even with all of its resources
 BA> it couldn't
 BA> get the tenth one - the stated reason being that the definitions of
 BA> words change
 BA> over time and they could not properly interpret the question.

It could be, I don't know again.  I do know that the high school I went to in
NYC, Brooklyn Tech, was among the three hardest public HS's to get into in NYC,
the other two being Bronx Science and Stuyvesant.  You had to take a test for
these schools, and the passing grade to get INTO any of these schools required
a score higher than would be regquired on the HS equivelancy at the time. Had
to be above the minimum for a HS diploma to get INTO one of these HS's.


 BA> I have in my possession several elementary school history textbooks
 BA> published
 BA> between 1873 and about 1910.  The chapter questions in those books
 BA> are HARD,
 BA> and I don't doubt that some college history majors might have
 BA> trouble with some
 BA> of them - and these are ELEMENTARY (grades 1 - 8) school texts
 BA> (altho' I'd posit
 BA> that these texts are aimed at grades 6-8).

I really am suprised at the schools here today.  What I used to take as common
knowledge seems rarely known these days.  Maybe it was designed that way?  It's
alot easier to change the oppinions of the population when the public just
depends on the government to tell them right from wrong, and what is what, and
where.

Phil

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