[lit-ideas] Re: More Student Atrocities
- From: Teemu Pyyluoma <teme17@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 28 Apr 2004 07:42:12 -0700 (PDT)
--- John Wager <johnwager@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Very depressing but still fun. To see how far we've
> sunk, take a look at
> a 1932 entrance exam to Chicago Normal College. (A
> "Normal College" was
> a college to turn out teachers.) See:
> http://academics.triton.edu/uc/1932test.html .
>
Many of the questions are of course out of date, but
the math questions looked pretty normal to me, even
easy. Exactly what kind of exams do kids have in USA
nowadays?
From the San Francisco Chronicle column:
"I have been writing about student ignorance for
more than 20 years. [snip] The media attention helped
fuel the "cultural literacy" movement that swept
education circles during the late '80s and early
'90s.
"Once all of the symposia had been conducted, the
seminars completed, the papers written, and the
meetings held, it turned out that nothing whatsoever
was done to institute reform, or to restructure
curricula. Educational bureaucrats were not able to
come to a conclusion as to what a baseline knowledge
might be, what cultural heritage might be worth
imparting to the average high school grad."
Why is this such a central issue? Seriously. I mean I
don't see whether kids should read the plays of
Shakespeare or Moliere, study Plato or Kant, learn
about computers or carpentry, is that important. What
is important ia that they know something and also how
one comes to know something.
I once had to edit an entire high school curriculum
plan, I figure out none will read it anyway by the
time I got to the biology course that not only covered
genetics but also enabled students to become
cosmopolitan, honest, hard working and tolerant. And I
suspect that such delusions of omnipotence are a
stricly Finnish curiosity. As education can in
principle help to cure almost any ill affecting
society (racism, unemployement, bad teeth, teenage
pregnancies, polution...) educators can end up with an
unrealistic wishlist posing as an educational plan.
What possibly could be more important than respecting
cultural diversity? Reading, writing, math, history,
geography, in that order and to begin with.
Cheers,
Teemu
Helsinki, Finland
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