Are they pushing elementary school students a bit to hard in the U.S. today?

[Jean_1958]

No.

There’s something terribly wrong when so many kids:

a) Can’t write legibly now-a-days; and
b) Don’t even like writing.

My daughter spent the last couple of years tutoring at Huntington and has told me that a good portion of kids that come through the learning centers have terrible handwriting. It is apparently so bad that many kids must constantly make use of an eraser and engage in re-writing in an effort to make it legible for the tutor. Many teachers will tell you they spend to much time teaching tot he test and thus cannot spend the kind of time they would like to on teaching the kids printing and cursive writing. My daughter subbed a 2nd grade class once and said the teacher should have spent at least 10 to 15 minutes more on the handwriting lesson. She said the books closed just as quickly as they came open. Sadly many 5th and 6th graders cannot even read the cursive notes their teacher hands them.

My daughter also told me that many of the kids that go through the learning centers just do not want to write much of anything. She said many kids would just want to write broken sentences and would get very huffy when told they had to write more because broken sentences were not good enough. She claims she had to “pull teeth” from many kids in an effort just to get them to write something. As a sub, she saw a lot of work being turned in in which the teachers accepted broken sentences and the like. I think it is terrible that children cannot communicate effectively on paper because they terribly dislike writing.

So no, kids are not being pushed hard enough. They need to be pushed harder.

Jean

 

[mkingdomlvr]

No.

There’s something terribly wrong when so many kids:

a) Can’t write legibly now-a-days; and
b) Don’t even like writing.

My daughter spent the last couple of years tutoring at Huntington and has told me that a good portion of kids that come through the learning centers have terrible handwriting. It is apparently so bad that many kids must constantly make use of an eraser and engage in re-writing in an effort to make it legible for the tutor. Many teachers will tell you they spend to much time teaching tot he test and thus cannot spend the kind of time they would like to on teaching the kids printing and cursive writing. My daughter subbed a 2nd grade class once and said the teacher should have spent at least 10 to 15 minutes more on the handwriting lesson. She said the books closed just as quickly as they came open. Sadly many 5th and 6th graders cannot even read the cursive notes their teacher hands them.

My daughter also told me that many of the kids that go through the learning centers just do not want to write much of anything. She said many kids would just want to write broken sentences and would get very huffy when told they had to write more because broken sentences were not good enough. She claims she had to “pull teeth” from many kids in an effort just to get them to write something. As a sub, she saw a lot of work being turned in in which the teachers accepted broken sentences and the like. I think it is terrible that children cannot communicate effectively on paper because they terribly dislike writing.

So no, kids are not being pushed hard enough. They need to be pushed harder.

Jean

I agree completely. Educational expectations have fallen dramatically since I was in school, even in my former Catholic school. A good friend substituted there recently and said that I wouldn’t recognize it. No memorization of times tables or catechism, no penmanship lessons, no diagramming of sentences, no “themes” or essays and very little homework. She also said the lack of discipline would have had our former principal rolling in her grave. We both guessed that since this was a Catholic school, the parents were likely the force behind the reduced homework and lowered discipline standards.

 

[lauralie]

most definitly! i have 5 sons. ryan is 25, ben 22, spencer 20, mathew16, and ethan is 7. i can say kindergarden last year was awful. it was more like 2nd gr.

 

[eucharisteo]

The National Education Commission on Time and Learning found that most American students spend less than half their day actually studying academic subjects. The commission’s two-year study found that American students spent only about 41 percent of the school day on basic academics. Their schedules consist with course work in self-esteem, personal safety, AIDS education, family life, consumer training, driver’s ed, holistic health, and gym, the typical American high school student spends only 1,460 hours on subjects like math, science, and history during their four years in high schools. Meanwhile, their counterparts in Japan will spend 3,170 hours on basic subjects, students in France will spend 3,280 on academics, while students in Germany will spend 3,528 hours studying such subjects - nearly three times the hours devoted in American schools.

According to the National Research Council, average students in other industrialized countries are as proficient in mathematics as America’s best students. The Second International Mathematics Study found that the “performance of the top 5 percent of U.S. students is matched by the top 50 percent of students in Japan.” When the very best American students - the top one percent - are measured against the best students of other countries, America’s students finished at the bottom .

Here are the average IQ’s by country:

• • Hong Kong (107) [though not a country, I think that the city itself is worth putting on here]
    #1 - South Korea (106)
    #2 - Japan (105)
    #3 - Taiwan (104)

#11 - China (100)
#17 - USA (98)

Within the next 50 years, it is estimated that American will have to import technicians.

There are a lot of causes for this drop in education. Finances has become a real problem. How people can think that the first place they can cut expenses is in education. Teachers are underpaid, and schools are underfunded. The Federal government intervening also doesn’t help, and because of such tests as the SAT, students aren’t taught but they are rather “taught to the test”, meaning they just get the surface of what they need to know to pass things like the SAT and CRCT while not going very far in depth. The long summers also don’t help.

Statistics are a very funny animal. In a country that thrives we have other talents not reflective of technicians. We’ve become lazy, not stupid. But that laziness is quickly coming to an end. And the need to import technicians is not because we’re dumb and can’t provide own, it’s because we have so many other fields of study more fulfilling than being a “technician” which I personally hate. Engineers treat us like we’re idiots as well as other professions. Technicians do the hard work while the engineers and other professionals get the credit. American’s are stubborn and proud. We don’t like to give other people credit for anything we’ve done. Just look at the politics in this country. Everybody takes credit for the good things and blames the bad on the other guy.

Further, abortion and contraception have become so effective that we are slowly working towards a negative birth rate and that need will grow exponentially if we do not wake up. Look at England, France and Germany. They have huge populations of Muslims and many of them are increasingly highly technical. However, I have a Muslim friend who is dumber than dirt. I think we get the cream of the crop here. The same is true with Koreans, Vietnamese, etc. I say this because I’ve met the dumber ones from there too. Further, my IQ is around 142, but I’m sure my children’s is much higher. However, had I had a proper upbringing and had been more stable I’d have probably scored much higher. I discovered later on in life as an adult that I had a real academic talent in areas that blew my mind. However, I don’t find any fulfillment in what I currently do in engineering but because of licensing requirements can not claim to be an “engineer” simply because a bunch of engineers hired a law firm to fight for degree and licensing requirements. The same is true for surveyors. I do exactly what an engineer does with exception of sealing and signing. So my title is “senior engineering technician”. At least the medical doctors have recognized “Physician Assistant” as a respectable profession. I probably should be allowed to call myself an “engineering assistant” or analyst, or something else that describes more accurately what I do. The point is that this method of comparison is not fair. We test less gifted people in our country that aren’t tested in other countries. My opinion…

 

[human_being]

Statistics are a very funny animal. In a country that thrives we have other talents not reflective of technicians. We’ve become lazy, not stupid. But that laziness is quickly coming to an end. And the need to import technicians is not because we’re dumb and can’t provide own, it’s because we have so many other fields of study more fulfilling than being a “technician” which I personally hate. Engineers treat us like we’re idiots as well as other professions. Technicians do the hard work while the engineers and other professionals get the credit. American’s are stubborn and proud. We don’t like to give other people credit for anything we’ve done. Just look at the politics in this country. Everybody takes credit for the good things and blames the bad on the other guy.

Further, abortion and contraception have become so effective that we are slowly working towards a negative birth rate and that need will grow exponentially if we do not wake up. Look at England, France and Germany. They have huge populations of Muslims and many of them are increasingly highly technical. However, I have a Muslim friend who is dumber than dirt. I think we get the cream of the crop here. The same is true with Koreans, Vietnamese, etc. I say this because I’ve met the dumber ones from there too. Further, my IQ is around 142, but I’m sure my children’s is much higher. However, had I had a proper upbringing and had been more stable I’d have probably scored much higher. I discovered later on in life as an adult that I had a real academic talent in areas that blew my mind. However, I don’t find any fulfillment in what I currently do in engineering but because of licensing requirements can not claim to be an “engineer” simply because a bunch of engineers hired a law firm to fight for degree and licensing requirements. The same is true for surveyors. I do exactly what an engineer does with exception of sealing and signing. So my title is “senior engineering technician”. At least the medical doctors have recognized “Physician Assistant” as a respectable profession. I probably should be allowed to call myself an “engineering assistant” or analyst, or something else that describes more accurately what I do. The point is that this method of comparison is not fair. We test less gifted people in our country that aren’t tested in other countries. My opinion…

Sounds like you need a union. But that’s off topic.