Just saw this stat on CNN:

The average American 14-year-old today has a vocabulary of 10,000 words compared to 25,000 words for the same age group in 1950. (source: TIME Magazine)

-- Dumb and dumber (@ .), February 13, 2000

Answers

What do you do you expect?When you model your school system after the Soviet Union it is the only outcome(Is that why they call it outcome education?)

-- cd (cd@spot this.com), February 13, 2000.

Yes, but its offset by the fact that Schwab is making "smarter investors". LOL

-- (@ .), February 13, 2000.

People aren't stupid--they are simply less facile with the written or read word. I personally think that's unfortunate, as I'm a writer, but there are other means of expression--mass shootings, for instance.

-- Mara (MaraWayne@aol.com), February 13, 2000.

Must be part of a vast left wing conspiracy. How else would they keep themselves in power?

-- JB (noway@jose.com), February 13, 2000.

It isn't just vocabulary that's lacking. It's also basic grammar.

How many people ON THIS BOARD can put a series of English sentences together correctly, w/o making glaring grammatical errors?

Do teachers even bother to TEACH simple basic grammar anymore?

Notice how often people confuse such relatively simple terms as its/it's, there/their/they're, and your/you're.

Notice how frequently these terms are misused by people who have very high opinions of themselves. They're so damned smart, but they haven't a clue where the apostraphe goes.

-- it isn't just (the@fourteen.yearolds), February 13, 2000.

Thats apostrophe, asshole.

-- ' ('@'.'), February 13, 2000.

Spelling, too. As in "apostraphe."

-- (third@grade.teacher), February 13, 2000.

"Thats apostrophe, asshole."

Should be "That's"... etc.

So, you can spell it, but you don't know how to use it...?

-- which one here (is@the.asshole), February 13, 2000.

This is how it used to be in America as well as in other countries. The following describes my personal experience:

"Our teachers rarely handed us forms or other printed matter, even to administer tests. Multiple choice, true or false questions and such were completely unknown to us. For example, our teacher dictated sentences in German and we had to write the translations in the foreign language that was being taught. Our time pressure was enormous because we had to respond to the speed of the dictation and we could not return to re-read questions or think about our answers later. Ten to twelve spelling or grammatical errors on a language test resulted in failure.

For other kinds of tests the teacher usually wrote the problems or questions that we solve or answer on the blackboards and later erased them again.

Even though several hundred pupils attended this school, it had no logo, mascot, advisors, counselors, nurses, and resource officers; no cafeterias, vending machines, copy machines, clubs, newspapers, sports teams, coaches or bands. We had no teachers aides or tutors. If we needed assistance with our schoolwork we had to hire our own tutors after school. And if that did not help we simply flunked out because there were no alternative schools. There were no loudspeakers, radios, telephones, movie projectors or sound equipment to distract us. We had no invited speakers or demonstrations, seminars or parent-teacher organizations. There were no courses in self-esteem, sex or social agendas. Instead of learning to mix drinks, we learned French. Instead of bouncing around in tutus, we beat our brains out with algebra. We did not learn how to put condoms on fingers, so we would know how to put them on something, and into something else. We were deprived and unprotected in this cruel world, but we were taught all the basics, including sciences, mathematics and foreign languages. We learned a lot and at a much smaller cost than what it takes to teach today. I studied so hard that some of my textbooks fell apart and became severely dog-eared and dirty.

There were no school buses per se, even though the pupils came from far and wide. They commuted by train, buses and bikes, or on foot, and we had to pay for our own transportation and textbooks and all other school supplies. Since there was no food served and there were not even any vending machines, we brought our own sandwiches and only drank water.

Our school taught facts, logic and no hocus-pocus of any kind. We had no distracting entertainment such as dances or assemblies in our boot camp. In other words, we were totally deprived, but learned absolute discipline and obedience. Even before Little Brother and I had entered school we were the paragons of discipline and urgently needed some hocus-pocus. Unfortunately our school did not provide us with such relief from our torments that were caused exclusively by people.

Like in many other countries, the German educational system has since veered off its course. It mixes in too much feel-good-about-yourself entertainment at the expense of learning. One American magazine recently mentioned the shocking illiteracy levels of the German youth, and that two successive car models of Daimler Benz had failed their road tests. This article continued that: In Germany, some thirty percent of students leave school unemployable due to lack of reading, writing, and math skills.

Are the teachers now beating their brains out of them?

Wait until no one wants to feed these unemployables. Then all hell will break loose. Again."

-- Not Again! (seenit@ww2.com), February 13, 2000.

Which reminds me of my favorite story, from a book on "The Dumbing Down of America". A young college student handed in a report on World War II, but whenever she referenced the war in her report, she wrote World War 2. Her professor asked her why she did this. Her reply..."there are no Roman numerals on my computer".

-- kritter (kritter@adelphia.net), February 13, 2000.

Kritter...that was classic! Not sure if I should laugh or cry though. :-|

Thank you for the post Dumb and dumber.

-- Dee (T1Colt556@aol.com), February 13, 2000.

"Must be part of a vast left wing conspiracy. How else would they keep themselves in power?" -- JB

Did that vast left-wing conspiracy since 1950 include Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Bush by any chance?

Just curious.

-- Firemouse (firemouse@fcmail.com), February 13, 2000.

Firemouse,

Yup.

-- Dean -- from (almost) Duh Moyn (dtmiller@midiowa.net), February 13, 2000.

Mara, you said,

" People aren't stupid--they are simply less facile with the written or read word."

I agree that the innate intelligence of the people is no different, but the *practical* aspects to society of decreased education are more important than you imply (putting thoughts in your head). For example, voacbulary really is defined concepts, the less words one knows, the fewer ways one has to either express themselves or to understand the world around them. And if a decreased vocabulary is an indicator of poor education overall, then students are also deficient in math and science. This would mean to me that people are less able to rationally process technical information such as oil production, computer failures, etc., not to mention less qualified to work in high-tech fields than their foriegn counterparts.

On top of it all, you have people like Steve saying Americans should all get stoned out of their minds each day before they drive to work. How does that help the American Tapestry?

Hi Steve, waiting for the link,

Frank

-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), February 13, 2000.

CD -

The American education system is based upon the Russian model?! Which comic book have you been reading?

The average 14-year-old Russian student would beat the average American hands down in any contest, most probably in English too. That goes for the students of most other European countries also. Let the American kids stick to their Nintendo and drugs - it's much more fun than studying!

-- Y2KGardener (govegan@aloha.net), February 13, 2000.

'@' As demonstrated by your response, evidently they don't teach grace anymore, either.

-- Daisy Jane (Deeekstrand@access1.com), February 14, 2000.

The average American 14-year-old today has a vocabulary of 10,000 words compared to 25,000 words for the same age group in 1950.

Hmmm...reduction in word count. I wonder how long it'll be before we think this is "double-plus-good"... -TECH32-

-- TECH32 (TECH32@NOMAIL.COM), February 14, 2000.

Dumb and dumber......it would be great to have a link to this:

"Just saw this stat on CNN:

The average American 14-year-old today has a vocabulary of 10,000 words compared to 25,000 words for the same age group in 1950. (source: TIME Magazine)"

I've looked at both CNN and Time and not found this particular story..I'd really love to have it! (Discussions on another board..:)

-- Birdlady (Bird@nest.home), February 14, 2000.

Thomas Sowell's Dec 20, 1999 column:

The tests made me do it!

IF YOU THINK the low test scores of students in our public schools are bad, and that the recently uncovered scandal of dozens of teachers and principals in New York City helping students to cheat on these tests are worse, then tighten your seat belt because the worst is yet to come. Excuses are now being made for the cheaters by the New York Times.

"Neither the students nor their teachers are equipped to face the new and harsher consequences of educational failure, which for students means no social promotion or graduation from high school," according to an editorial in that august publication. "For principals, persistent failure could mean being ousted from the schools."

Welcome to the world of accountability, where harsh consequences follow failure! What every store owner, shoeshine boy, or manager of a McDonald's faces every day is now seen as some terrible thing for the public schools to have to cope with.

What should be done instead of having the school system "driven and judged by test scores" is to "give the students and teachers the resources needed to meet new academic goals." In other words, pour ever more money down the bottomless pit, regardless of whether or not it produces any better results.

You would never dream from reading the Times editorial that bigger and bigger spending has been tried for decades, without the slightest indication that this produces better educational results. As a 1990 Brookings Institution study concluded: "When other relevant factors are taken into account, economic resources are unrelated to student achievement."

This was only one of many studies to reach the same conclusion. But apparently the facts have not yet trickled down to the editorial offices of the New York Times. Actually, the skyrocketing of educational expenditures in the 1960s was accompanied by declining test scores every single year until the early 1980s.

Although there have been some mild improvements since then, SAT scores have never gotten back to where they were in 1963. The way our public schools are set up, money only buys more expensive incompetents, whether among the students or the teachers.

An op-ed piece in the same December 9th issue of the New York Times elaborates on the familiar educational establishment theme that testing is the villain. Protesting against "heavy-handed demands for 'tougher standards'," Alfie Kohn says that they "not only invite cheating but also cheat children out of opportunities for meaningful learning."

In other words, the test made me do it! And whether or not "meaningful learning" has taken place must be based on whether the education establishment says so, not whether test results show it.

There are of course good tests and bad tests, but all tests can be improved if that is what people are worried about. But bad tests are a red herring.

"Educators" do not want to be held accountable and to pay the consequences of failing to do their job. That is what it is all about and that is what it has always been about.

Since there is more than enough blame to go around, some of that blame must fall on those parents who go along with the education establishment's propaganda that things are fine and we just need more money. Parents who themselves received dumbed-down education may be slow to recognize the need for solid education with real standards and real consequences for failing to meet them.

Inflated grades and bumper stickers that say, "My child was student of the month at Jordan Middle School" may be enough to keep some parents fat, dumb and happy. But smiley public relations will not turn out educated Americans. Neither will excuses for bad education or for cheating to escape responsibility for it.

Although testing students is depicted as something "new" and "harsh," New York state has had Regents exams for more than half a century, and generation after generation of students took them. Of course, it was a lot easier to pass these exams back when schools taught basic subjects like English, math and history, instead of becoming little propaganda centers for the latest fads in environmentalist hysteria, New Age attitudes, and politically correct views on everything from sex to race.

Real standards are going to make it harder to be a teacher, a student or a parent. But who says that everything worthwhile has to be easy, much less fun?

-- Jerry B (skeptic776@erols.com), February 14, 2000.

I read a very interesting article a while back. I don't know where or when exactly but I think it was in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. It described some tests they gave to various countries around the world. It pretty much said that of all the countries tested, American children were the most confident of how well they did on the test. Guess who came in last place? U.S. That means american kids are cocky and stupid, a real bad combination.

-- J (noone@the.door), February 14, 2000.

People call me a Kook for prepping for Y2K, but there are larger dangers facing us. Gen-X is one of the largest. When the balloon goes up on the economy, and the legions of drones are unemployed, here come the riots.

Civilization? A temporary condition at best.

Middle aged Kook

-- Y2Kook (Y2Kook@usa.net), February 14, 2000.

This is an interesting topic! Here are some (related?) thoughts I've struggled with regarding education, and on some of these I'm still not sure of my position.

The poor foundation I received in elementary/secondary school only seemed to hurt me in the first couple years of college--is that typical? After I had played "catch-up" for the first two years of college (taken in 1.5 years because I only had three total till I had to move), I found that I moved to the top in many of my classes, even classes where I was competing with foreign exchange graduate students in graduate classes I took for undergraduate credit. I was almost always taking an overload schedule to get done in my available three years.

Why could I often think better "outside the box" in the more advanced classes than foreign exchange students, even though they knew the details better most of the time? Was it because I was less accomplished as a regurgitator of knowledge? Although I also had to do that in college. Was that difference a factor resulting from our free and independent culture, or could that be what I developed in elementary school and highschool (instead of a solid academic foundation) while doodling during class, cramming for my classes instead of just keeping up all along because I had rotten study habits, and hiding the books I brought to class to read when I was done with the assigned work? I was banned from bringing my own books to class two different years.

In some countries, where students do very well on tests, I would have been tracked right out of math and science based on my early performance in those subjects, yet I turned out to be very good at math and science in the end. I'm glad I didn't grow up in any of those countries. In another country, I read that teachers only teach three classes a day, along with other differences compared to our educational system. Are we willing to pay for something like that here?

Yes, we have problems in our educational system. But I don't think the solution is to blindly copy the methods used by other countries just because their students score better on tests. What is the cause for each effect in education? And what effects, exactly, are interested parties looking for in students?

We homeschool, and in our children we're looking for effects including: independent and critical thinking (I haven't read about any school system in any country that does that for real, that I can tell); facility with the basic tools of learning, such as reading and math (writing follows naturally from reading, IMO); and the habit of evaluating the world and making decisions from a Christian worldview, as defined by Christ's life, more than by theology.

I also appreciate the opportunity to cover other subjects, such as world history (including that of non-Western civilizations) because the patterns that emerge are amazing, even at my novice level. But I did/do that with no teacher--so could my kids, in certain subjects. I want my kids to be free to choose their own "electives", or "fields" in which to become knowledgeable as they grow. That's what I want for myself too, after all. Can something like this be done at all within a rigid institutionalized school structure, of any kind? I just don't know. I can't think of how it could be implemented, anyway.

-- S. Kohl (kohl@hcpd.com), February 14, 2000.

The only way to remedy this travesty is for parents to take the bull by the horns and homeschool their children. I have homeschooled my 14 year old grandson for 8 years now, after witnessing the fiasco in school, and he is now in the 10th grade and and knows more than I do, academically, that is, and I have finished nursing school! What a difference in this boy when compared to the average student. I am so proud of him.

-- janet marsh (jmarsh4185@aol.com), February 14, 2000.

S. Kohl,

Re your: "Yes, we have problems in our educational system. But I don't think the solution is to blindly copy the methods used by other countries just because their students score better on tests."

Simply, not to mention blindly, copying any one method, whether of country x, or of country y, might be an improvement relative to what passes for education in many schools today, but would seem likely to miss much of what could be achieved.

The methods and content of Marva Collins differ from those of Jaime Escalante, which differ from those of John Gatto, etc, etc.

In various parts of this country there are schools whose students do very well using methods and content which may have similarities, but which are not clones of each other.

Other varieties of methods and content are used by homeschoolers who do very well.

In short, there are many methods and contents that work well, but which seem therefore to be anathema to all too many so called educators at all too many so called schools in this country.

Jerry

-- Jerry B (skeptic76@erols.com), February 14, 2000.

I agree that homeschooling is indeed the only solution. Jerry has hit upon the main reason for this as well. The public school system attempts to force all students through the same round hole which fails every student who isn't perfectly round. Square pegs are left out, fall behind and made to appear inferior. They have gone so far as to label oddly shaped pegs (complete with paper trails and governing laws), single them out and destroy them emotionally as well as intellectually, all in the process of addressing their 'needs'.

I believe we would see more homeschooling being done if it weren't for the highly successful PR campaign that was waged approximately 30 years ago by the liberal mindset which determined that women belonged in the work force. They ridiculed the role of women as homemakers and relieved us of the many 'burdens' and sacrifices needed to raise happy, healthy, well adjusted contributors to our society. "Anything goes as long as YOUR needs are being fulfilled" sort of thing.

We homeschool and recieve the most astonishing blank stares from people whenever this fact is discovered. America now has a fun-filled two income society that wouldn't consider giving any'thing' up in order to achieve the goal of properly educating our children. We want others to do it for us because we are too busy attempting to provide our children with 'things'. Warped priorities are PC.

The other obstacle to homeschooling might lie in the fact that we have destroyed the existence of the middle class. In our household, a fulltime minimum wage job would only pay for our insurance 'needs'. It wouldn't even touch our daily needs. Health, home and auto insurance run us nearly $700 per month and the deductibles do not realistically make the policies appear helpful other than to protect from catastrophic occurrence. Insurance eats up nearly 40% of my husband's income *after* taxes. We have cut corners to the bone in order to continue homeschooling. In the four months since we took control of his education, our third grade 'learning disabled' son is currently doing fourth grade math, has raised his reading level by a full grade, is able to work independently (with confidence) for the first time, knows what the Constitution is, loves to read Bible stories and discuss philosophy, has learned 'how' to locate information to questions he has, I could go on and on if time allowed! No more humiliating testing, no more psychological profiles, no more playground ridicule or classroom taunting by public school mob mentality. Can you put a price on that? Can you afford to homeschool or can you afford not to? At this point, what our children ARE learning in the public school systems is nearly more disturbing than what they are NOT learning. Wake up America.......you're running out of time and there are NO 'do overs'.

-- Will continue (farming@home.com), February 15, 2000.

To will continue, Hooray for you, homeschooling is not easy, but, you and I and many other people have made this commitment and found out that our children are our priorities. In years to come, the homeschooling movement will produce such superb students that they may be the only ones that will be able to run this country properly. The gov. worries about this. Today, in public school there is no such thing as love of country and love of God. This is most important for a child to learn, if they learn this, then they will be respectful and honest. Honesty, today is long forgotten and we have not seen much of this in decades. Our polititians are a joke, one cannot even believe a thing that they say and their morals are lower than pigs. Until parents begin to see that their childrens lives are at stake, they will just go on and on the same old way. My grandsons life is precious to me and I will not put him in danger in public school at the loss of his life or worse yet, his soul. I pray that parents will wake up before it's too late. By the by, I can usually tell a homeschooled kid as soon as I see him and when he first opens his mouth to speak. MANNERS If anyone asks you if you are afraid that your children are not getting enough socialization, just tell them, the socialization that they would get in school is something that they can do without. They will need to socialize with adults the rest of their lives, not children. The most dangerous place for a kid to be today is in publi

-- janet marsh (jmarsh4185@aol.com), February 15, 2000.