cdiver2
Contributor
Boy this came as a surprise BBC NEWS | Americas | US slips down development index
US Low On Development
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"No child left behind" at work. Our educational system seems more adept at boosting egos and test scores than in educating children, and some that SHOULD be left behind to repeat the grade until they "get it" are being advanced just to make things look good on paper.
Our higher education institutions aren't doing much better. We now have an entire culture building careers on the University of Phoenix education system, which "educates" by committee. Classes are divided into teams, and teams tackle different aspects of the subject. The team gets the "grade", so the slacker on the team gets the same grade as the person who busted their buns doing the work.
You can get an education from the University of Phoenix, but it isn't necessary in order to get a degree. Heaven help us all if medical schools start following their model. We already have enough problems with management weenies and engineers that got their promotions with UoP credentials.
SparticleBrane
Contributor
Some children should be left behind.
adurso
Contributor
The Human Development Index is a United Nations tool. It is a feel good crock that purports to measure the options of persons, giving greater opportunities for education, health care, income and so on.
The HDI is NOT a good comparison between countries, nor does it present a picture of the actual interworkings of a country in question as the HDI cannot be compared on an annual basis due to shifts in GDP.
NCLB has nothing whatsoever to do with lagging test scores. The comparison is apples to manual transmissions. The old "US lperforms behind blah blah" are simple minded comparisons that are bad research.
These comparisons lack too many variables to make any sense.
The HDI is NOT a good comparison between countries, nor does it present a picture of the actual interworkings of a country in question as the HDI cannot be compared on an annual basis due to shifts in GDP.
NCLB has nothing whatsoever to do with lagging test scores. The comparison is apples to manual transmissions. The old "US lperforms behind blah blah" are simple minded comparisons that are bad research.
These comparisons lack too many variables to make any sense.
sandmanz32
Contributor
i totally agree with that. way to go bush! make the usa even dumber, so no one has the sence to oppose you
shoturtle
Contributor
A big blame for children being behind other development countries is the media. They all want to be rock stars and movie stars. They rather watch hours of TV instead of reading a book, they use the internet to socialized and dl movies and song instead of educating themselves. The media will point to the negatives but will never accept responsibility for being part of the problem. It is not sexy or cool to be and engineer.
The government is not completely responsible for the education of the children. They provide the schools, but it is the responsibility's of the parents to make sure that their children do the proper preparation for school. Spending the time to over see what they are doing and to see how much they are understanding.
For the health index, as a group Americans eat badly fast food and processed food and drive everywhere instead of walking or taking a bicycle.
The government is not completely responsible for the education of the children. They provide the schools, but it is the responsibility's of the parents to make sure that their children do the proper preparation for school. Spending the time to over see what they are doing and to see how much they are understanding.
For the health index, as a group Americans eat badly fast food and processed food and drive everywhere instead of walking or taking a bicycle.
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Air One
Contributor
?
Finland has probably the world's best education system.
They don't left their children behind, and they don't have that many people jailed.
adurso
Contributor
In most states education is compulsory to at least age 16, in most age 18. Very few other countries do that.
You very rarely see statistics comparing 18 yr olds in other countries
Americans see possibilities and want to live up to them
Americans doubt themselves as a nation because we do not live up to our own high expectations sometimes
As long as we continue to try to meet our own expectations we will not follow the path of the Romans
I look at what we're seeing in our colleges and in our workplaces. Skills that were once assumed to be basic to any high school graduate are absent in far too many university freshmen. I've lost count of the number of cashiers that could not accomplish a simple "count back" of change if the register didn't tell them how much the correct change should be. For pity's sake; that is simple counting. It's basic, rudimentary math that I was expected to know how to do in elementary school.
My home-schooled daughter and I took an advanced writing course at the local college a few years ago. This was a course for students with ample writing experience, with the purpose of working on book-length projects. We were both shocked by how many of the students in this advanced course didn't know some of the basics of writing mechanics. Honestly, by the time a student reaches college Writing 101, they should already know such things as changing a speaker in dialogue requires a new paragraph, general usage of upper and lower case letters, basic punctuation, etc. In an advanced writing course, all of that should be old hat, andthe course should be able to focus on manuscript content.
My son works at a mini-market right next to the University of Arizona. Granted, his business is not one that attracts the best and brightest of clientele, but his opinion of the UA students is that, if this represents the future leaders of our nation and our industry, we're in deep doo-doo.
Our local school districts lobbied to allow students to use calculators on the standardized testing, primarily because they did not want to look bad when a large number of the children failed the math portion. Apparently, our schools do not teach math skills, they teach calculator usage.
In the midwest a few years ago, a teacher failed a number of students on an essay project because they plagiarized their work straight from the internet. From the sounds of it, the only editing these students did was to remove the real author's name and add their own. The parents went to the school board and whined that this was unfair, and the teacher needed to give the kids another chance. The school board agreed, and the teacher ended up resigning over it. She stated the parents and the school board essentially rewarded the kids for cheating, and if they were not going to allow her to teach, she wasn't going to stay in the profession.
A 2002 National Geographic survey of young people, aged 18 - 24, in 9 countries found the United States scored second to last in knowledge of world geography. Almost 30% of the Americans could not locate the Pacific Ocean, Earth's largest body of water, on a map. Nearly half could not locate the state of New York, our Nation's third most populous state.
I haven't tried in a while, but I think I could still fill in the state names and major geographic features of the U.S. on a blank map, something we were required to do in the fifth grade.
Computers are wonderful, and the internet is an incredible repository of information, but I fear we as a society have grown to rely far too much on electronics, and have forsaken the basic skills we should know. It might be one thing to need to Google obscure, trivial information, but when we don't know even the major features of our own planet, I think we're in trouble.
My home-schooled daughter and I took an advanced writing course at the local college a few years ago. This was a course for students with ample writing experience, with the purpose of working on book-length projects. We were both shocked by how many of the students in this advanced course didn't know some of the basics of writing mechanics. Honestly, by the time a student reaches college Writing 101, they should already know such things as changing a speaker in dialogue requires a new paragraph, general usage of upper and lower case letters, basic punctuation, etc. In an advanced writing course, all of that should be old hat, andthe course should be able to focus on manuscript content.
My son works at a mini-market right next to the University of Arizona. Granted, his business is not one that attracts the best and brightest of clientele, but his opinion of the UA students is that, if this represents the future leaders of our nation and our industry, we're in deep doo-doo.
Our local school districts lobbied to allow students to use calculators on the standardized testing, primarily because they did not want to look bad when a large number of the children failed the math portion. Apparently, our schools do not teach math skills, they teach calculator usage.
In the midwest a few years ago, a teacher failed a number of students on an essay project because they plagiarized their work straight from the internet. From the sounds of it, the only editing these students did was to remove the real author's name and add their own. The parents went to the school board and whined that this was unfair, and the teacher needed to give the kids another chance. The school board agreed, and the teacher ended up resigning over it. She stated the parents and the school board essentially rewarded the kids for cheating, and if they were not going to allow her to teach, she wasn't going to stay in the profession.
A 2002 National Geographic survey of young people, aged 18 - 24, in 9 countries found the United States scored second to last in knowledge of world geography. Almost 30% of the Americans could not locate the Pacific Ocean, Earth's largest body of water, on a map. Nearly half could not locate the state of New York, our Nation's third most populous state.
I haven't tried in a while, but I think I could still fill in the state names and major geographic features of the U.S. on a blank map, something we were required to do in the fifth grade.
Computers are wonderful, and the internet is an incredible repository of information, but I fear we as a society have grown to rely far too much on electronics, and have forsaken the basic skills we should know. It might be one thing to need to Google obscure, trivial information, but when we don't know even the major features of our own planet, I think we're in trouble.
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