Quote:
Originally Posted by marki
Matt, standards have both fallen and risen depending on where you look. The kids do maths that used to be considered university level only. Chemistry is the same as when I went to school. English has become sociology and there is much less emphasis on the 3 R's and more on the ability to analyse and form an argument supported by work of previous authors. Physics has been contextualised and much of the math removed. Why, not enough girls were taking up engineering so they changed the sylabus to suit what they thought girls would be interested in. This has failed, no more females take up the subject and boys can't write essays, their one out (maths) has been taken away from them. Society and environment is dead, kids just don't care anymore. Much of this has stemmed from silly academic claptrap being forced into schools. They want kids to be working at abstract levels of thinking without giving them a chance to learn the basics. If you read some of the english assignments my kids have to do you would cringe, I know I do. I often sit down with my chem kids and a dictionary after class. Together we try to work out what they have been asked to do in english.
Mark
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They may do maths once considered university level, but how many of them really understand it?? Not many, I would imagine. It also doesn't matter how well you can debate a point in English (or any other subject) if you can't express yourself clearly and concisely in the written word. Even more staggering, how can you divorce physics from maths??!!!
It's the whole basis of the subject!!!!. Great, the kids can explain Newton's Three laws, but can they do the maths to work out how much force, mass or acceleration occurs for any given situation??. They know what light is, but can they derive wavelength and frequency of any given light source?? Maths is fundamental to physics. Society and environment is dead because the kids are assailed by all the nonsense they see on TV and distracted by the crud they sit in front of for hours at a time (xboxes, wii's, playstations etc etc etc). They're only interested in self gratification and mindless nonsense. Then you hit the nail right on the head...the stupid academic claptrap from fools who've spent most of their working lives cooped up in little offices at universities (especially in the U.S.), with no grasp of the reality surrounding them. "Oh, I have this great idea and it's totally applicable to real life...even though I don't have kids (or hardly see mine) and the last time I taught children was 20 years ago (or never)"...that's the sort of nonsense that's ruined education. Unfortunately, the politicians still have these grand ideas about social experimentation, as still do many of those academics, though some have woken up to themselves (the academics, that is).
Mark, you may also need a thesaurus as well, and another dictionary in Swahili, just to understand what the foreign language is you're reading!!!
