From: irvine@uxh.cso.uiuc.edu (Brent Irvine)
Subject: Education (was: Re: DOES AMERICA SAY YES TO JAPAN?)
Summary:  No more useless crossposting!!!
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1992 22:40:06 GMT

In article <00724038179@elgamy.jpunix.com> elg@elgamy.jpunix.com (Eric Lee Green) writes:
>From article <Bz0D9J.4x2@fc.sde.hp.com>, by fritz@fc.sde.hp.com (Gary Fritz):
>> The sad fact is, America's educational system is busted, bad.  We're
>> churning out tens of thousands of kids who can't read, can't handle
>> basic math, and can't handle any job much more complex than flipping burgers.
>
>America's educational system is no more "busted" today than it ever has
>been. The basic problem I see, though, is that the world has changed but
>America's educational system hasn't. For example, our current methods of
>teaching reading worked just fine when most Americans lived on farms and
>had nothing to do for entertainment at home besides read. But nowdays, when
>kids are more tuned in to Erkle (Urkle? Hmm?) than to Robert Lewis
>Stephenson or Jack London, we can teach all the "reading methods" we want
>to at school and the kids still won't learn how to read. Because: you learn
>how to read by READING, not by learning "reading skills".

Yea verily!  In fifth grade, I had a teacher, Mrs. Kovasic, who was a real
hard a**, (I didn't like her very much) who made us turn in one book
report every week.  The book had to be approved by her (there were a few
LONG books, like _Gone_With_The_Wind_-long that she would give 2 weeks),
and was usually 100-200 pages long.  I got bitten by the reading bug,
and read all kinds of 'adult books' - Science Fiction, Westerns, 
Mysteries - it wasd there that I really got the 'hang' of reading - 
since then i was able to pore through novels of almost any length and
at least write a few coherent sentances about them.  I think about that
age, that kind of program should be adopted, it really cured me (and
we even had an Atari to compete with! :) :) ).

By the way, I still can't diagram sentances! :)
(In my opinion, one of the LEAST useful skills I ever was forced to try
to learn!)

[math teaching deleted]
I think Math and scince are two subjects that need a national adjenda:
	My Elementary education in both was highly confused and
	fragmented - the science we learned was just a blur, and not
	much good - no labs, just reading (bleh!), Math was regemeted,
	but fragmented, it took until my first Calculus class in college
	to get all that math straightened out (it was *not* a fun first
	semester when i was a Freshman).  I still, in grad school, feel
	the deficit between what i know and what my peers who were educated
	elsewhere know and can do.  So much time was wasted!

I think that a national cirriculum is important - and I would like to
see aptitude tests at the beginning of the year to let the teacher at
the new level know what needs to be emphasized more.  But a list like:

	"At the first grade level, the student should know
	addition and subtraction, multiplication and division
	of any size number"

etc...

Anyway, rambled enough...
Brent

-- 
+-------------------------+-----------------+---------------------------------+
| Brent L. Irvine         | NE PER INGENIUM | The above personal opinions     |
| irvine@uxh.cso.uiuc.edu | MEUM SED DEI    | can be yours too for only $50!  |
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Xref: sparky soc.culture.japan:12308 talk.politics.guns:25168