Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Zoltan! who wrote (23032)	6/24/1998 7:35:00 PM
From: Krowbar	Respond to of 108807

Zoltan, So, do you see removing any mention of evolution as progress? Del

To: Zoltan! who wrote (23032)	6/29/1998 8:43:00 PM
From: Grainne	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Duncan, I live in California and have a child in public school there, and totally disagree with you. The new math was really a great improvement over the old programs. It introduced children to geometry and algebra very much earlier, and integrated them conceptually, instead of waiting until high school. The Cal-Tech academics have made some adjustments to the program, as I understand it, but left parts of it intact. And California math scores rose while the math to which you object was being taught. I really don't know where on earth you get ideas like this. Why would Clinton want to "dumb down" education?: <<California recently had an advisory panel made up of liberal academics try to hijack math and science education as part of Clinton's infamous "Goals 2000" scheme to "dumb down" education.>> Liberal and conservative educators definitely have different ideas about what constitutes an effective curriculum. However, as the daughter of one of the educators who did the early experiments in team teaching, and who later taught liberal educational theory at the graduate level at the University of Southern California, I can tell you for sure that liberal educators love children and are very excited about teaching them. They just don't believe that rote memorization and confining them to little rows of desks for hours on end is the best way to do that. And they believe in programs that have been cut by the conservatives, like art and music. Art and music are absolutely essential for proper brain development. Children who take music have higher math scores. The problems in California are complex. Almost thirty percent of our children live in poverty, and come to school speaking many, many languages. School funding per pupil has gone from the very top of states to the bottom, and we now compete with Mississippi for the low rung. You can argue until you are blue in the face that there is no correlation between funding levels and educational achievement, but I heartily disagree with you. Some of our humane shelters are more pleasant places than our schools, which have broken windows, unclean water, big holes in the walls, leaking ceilings, and frankly look like warehouses. It does send a message to children about how much we prioritize them and their needs, when we fail to provide decent schools for them. Also, the statistics from studies on social promotion indicate that children who are held back actually do even worse than if they had been promoted without mastering key concepts. The better solution is to offer after school, weekend, and summer tutoring and other remedial programs for them, not to make them feel worse than they already do because they are failing. They need help to try to catch up, not more negative stigma. I don't believe in telling a child he is doing wonderfully when he is not--please don't misunderstand me and trivialize this as "self esteem" teaching, because that is not what I am advocating. But serious diagnostic and remedial attention needs to be paid at that time, not simply making an already intellectually fragile child on the verge of permanent academic failure repeat the grade. Anyway, Del's point in his original post was about the dumbing down that goes with teaching creation theory as science. What is your opinion on that?