From: elg@elgamy.jpunix.com (Eric Lee Green)
Date: 10 Dec 92 19:42:59 CDT
Newsgroups: soc.culture.japan,soc.culture.asian.america,alt.sex,soc.culture.usa,soc.culture.african.american,sci.electronics,misc.consumers,misc.education,misc.entrepreneurs
Subject: Re: D O E S   A M E R I C A   S A Y   Y E S   T O   J A P A N ?
Distribution: world
Organization: Eric's Amiga 2000 @ Home

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".

The problems with math instruction in the lower schools today is more
complex. I have experience with the 4th and 5th grade Math series used in
Houston I.S.D. and have come to the conclusion that it would work -- but
only if the children had been educated using this Math series from day 1 of
Kindegarten. It assumes that my children know things that they have never
been taught. The children were never taught these things because they were
not in the PREVIOUS math series that H.I.S.D. owned. It wasn't in the
previous math series because there is no attempt to have a national
curriculum and because state curriculum planners make no attempt to "move"
the curriculum upwards (i.e., have a child experience only one math
curriculum during his entire school career, even though children a few
years younger may be experiencing an entirely different curriculum). And
finally, too many teachers CHEAT. They say that the children know something
or another when they really don't. I have some IEPs around here that state
that a particular child in my class can "when given sentences with words
underlined, detirmine the meanings of those words based upon context
clues." I know that child. I know that child's reading skills. It ain't so.
The kid can't do it. 'Nuff said.

The sad thing is that I participate in this, too. I sign off on certain
items knowing full well that the kid hasn't mastered that bit of trivia,
or, at most, mastered it only for the week that I taught and tested it in.
I make darn sure that my kids know the basics. But for things like science
and social studies, well, non-instructional things such as restroom breaks,
music class, library, etc. cut into instructional time to the point where I
can't maintain a coherent curriculum. Not to mention that there IS no
coherent curriculum in the first place, outside of "curriculum guides" that
exist primarily in dreamland when I look at what my kids can do vs. what
the curriculum guides say they SHOULD do...

--
 Eric Lee Green  elg@elgamy.jpunix.com   Dodson Elementary
 (713) 664-6446                             Houston, TX
                "Kids are kids, no matter what"
Newsgroups: soc.culture.japan