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Meye RANT on American edyoucayshun

Originally posted by virividox
yeah the teacher makes a lot of difference

but the orals, world lits, and the whole program is better than filling it blank dots and empty lines. at least you get to explore literature as literature was meant to be explored.

i loved my teacher, he rocked!!!
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yeah, the orals were surprisingly fun. i didn't like the "literature" we examined. we read house of spirits by isabel allende or something, and i found it pretty dull compared to 100 years of solitude, which i had read on my own time. marquez is much better at "Magical Realism," neither book had a lot to gain from. i wouldn't even dare to really call it literature in the sense of Dante or Shakespeare or even Charlotte Brönte. schools avoid even reading something like "The Lord of the Rings," which has a lot more to offer in terms of style, elegance, plot-building, and dialogue than something like magical realism or the 2 plays we read for IB, "A Doll's House" and "The Visit." with magical realism, the author seems obsessed with making the strangest possible thing happen and pretend like it's absolutely normal. while this is funny, entertaining, and can stimulate some level of philosophical reflection, i really can't say the books seem truly excellent as examples of great writing or great literature. don't even get me started on the plays, either, heh. a doll's house was such a ridiculous sellout of a story as a carefully constructed feminist hell, and while The Visit was heavy on condemning vengeance, it didn't really do much to advocate the opposite of it, redemption. even IB throws you into some literature that is subpar at best, even though they approach it in a better way than other programs.

i'm just thankful that my father made me read in the summers when i was younger, and I read good stuff for the most part. sure, there was the occasional tom clancy book, but most of it was more CS Lewis fiction or Dickens or Shakespeare...

That's how you learn to write, isn't it? you read other people's writing--you read books. it's really shocking how few people actually do that, and even the ones who do seem to respond to in in mechanical, thoughtless ways. why don't students emulate the styles of the authors they read?

i don't think teachers even consider advising students to do so. they give you formulas rather than taking styles from authors (of something other than a damn grammar textbook). Ah, government education. we give education to everyone, but the cost is that everyone gets a mediocre (at best) education--unless they have parents who are willing to educate them as well, or a lot of money, heh.
 
Originally posted by kingjr3
I partially blame the NCLB Act for changing what is taught in our schools, and I blame technology for masking the intelligence by providing tools such as spell checkers.

It still doesn't prevent the misuse of homonyms such as their, there, and they're as well as too, to, and two.
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ahhhh ahhhh die!!!
thanks to that stupid act gifted schools and programs are getting less funding, while poorly performing schools get millions :rolleyes:
grr. i dont see the freakin point of the no child left behind thing...only focuses solely on underachievers and nothing else. screw the leaders of tomorrow, we'll care more about drug dealers and others :(
sorry, whenever i talk about something bush did i get ticked off sometimes for even the weirdest reasons.
 
Originally posted by shadowfax
yeah, the orals were surprisingly fun. i didn't like the "literature" we examined. we read house of spirits by isabel allende or something, and i found it pretty dull compared to 100 years of solitude, which i had read on my own time. marquez is much better at "Magical Realism," neither book had a lot to gain from. i wouldn't even dare to really call it literature in the sense of Dante or Shakespeare or even Charlotte Brönte. schools avoid even reading something like "The Lord of the Rings," which has a lot more to offer in terms of style, elegance, plot-building, and dialogue than something like magical realism or the 2 plays we read for IB, "A Doll's House" and "The Visit." with magical realism, the author seems obsessed with making the strangest possible thing happen and pretend like it's absolutely normal. while this is funny, entertaining, and can stimulate some level of philosophical reflection, i really can't say the books seem truly excellent as examples of great writing or great literature. don't even get me started on the plays, either, heh. a doll's house was such a ridiculous sellout of a story as a carefully constructed feminist hell, and while The Visit was heavy on condemning vengeance, it didn't really do much to advocate the opposite of it, redemption. even IB throws you into some literature that is subpar at best, even though they approach it in a better way than other programs.

i'm just thankful that my father made me read in the summers when i was younger, and I read good stuff for the most part. sure, there was the occasional tom clancy book, but most of it was more CS Lewis fiction or Dickens or Shakespeare...

That's how you learn to write, isn't it? you read other people's writing--you read books. it's really shocking how few people actually do that, and even the ones who do seem to respond to in in mechanical, thoughtless ways. why don't students emulate the styles of the authors they read?

i don't think teachers even consider advising students to do so. they give you formulas rather than taking styles from authors (of something other than a damn grammar textbook). Ah, government education. we give education to everyone, but the cost is that everyone gets a mediocre (at best) education--unless they have parents who are willing to educate them as well, or a lot of money, heh.
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Hey you did 100 years and house of spirits too. yeah i liked 100 years much better than house of spirits, the whole cyclic thing really intrigued me. Like water for chocolate is another good magical realism book. Im disappointed that most schools only teach shakespear's tragedy's like hamlet and lear and henry...and the cliche romeo and juliet, i wish more schools did much ado about nothing or midsummers night! I quite enjoyed a dolls house, our HL class didn't do it, but the other HL class did, so i borrowed on of my friends books to read in my spare time! I think we did gatsby, great expectations, pride and prejudice (i love this book so much i make it a point to read it each year), heart of darkness, and a couple others...heat and dust i think and 1984. our teacher chose pretty good books considering the fact that theres a wide selection.

we did a lot of plath, i hate plath, she makes me sick. haha

Yeah my parents too were really keen on encouraging me to read as a kid. didn't really matter what i read as long as i read, tolkien, eddings, CS lewis (love chron of narnia), vanity fair (not the magazine). you can never read enough.

I totally agree with you when it comes to style. The more you read and the more styles you are exposed to the better you become at writting and developing your own style. You can learn all the rules and expect to be brilliant, you have to be exposed and practice writting.

makes me glad i wasnt in a public school.
 
It is funny that you mention this. I am a new Mac user. i have spell check on when I reply to the forums. It is frustrating coming from Windows when words that Windows I think would have caught but the Mac doesn't. It does force me to re-look closer at what I post. I think that is a positive.
 
Originally posted by Chip NoVaMac
It is funny that you mention this. I am a new Mac user. i have spell check on when I reply to the forums. It is frustrating coming from Windows when words that Windows I think would have caught but the Mac doesn't. It does force me to re-look closer at what I post. I think that is a positive.
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yeah applespell isnt perfect...
i have tons of trouble with like computer terminology too, cuz the default dictionaries have only like generic words. grr.

virividox: hey i go to a public school :p some are great, some are crap
 
Originally posted by virividox
well back home in the philippines public schools suck
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ah.
well most public schools in the US suck ass, but there are a few notably good ones.

On the other hand, i can think of a zillion "good" private schools :rolleyes: eek :)

maybe i should consider myself lucky, after all there is no such thing as a free "public" school in some countries.
 
Originally posted by virividox
makes me glad i wasnt in a public school.
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I went to a public school too. it kicked some ass, i must say. it was competitive as hell at my level. i am no idiot, and i had to fight like a mofo to graduate in the top 10%. ok, so i'm lying, i was really lazy my senior year, but still, the place has some major achievers, and even a few math geniuses who were taking graduate level math (and laughing at it) before the end of their senior year.

i wouldn't diss on public schools categorically--my school was a national blue ribbon school my sophomore year, and not the other two years because they were criticized for "focusing on the 'low end' or 'special ed' children and the extremely gifted (AP/IB) kids but skimping on the 'kids in the middle.'" oh well; i wasn't "in the middle," luckily. ;)

If you liked Chronicles of Narnia, i HIGHLY recommend Lewis' Space Trilogy. it's a much more 'adult' series, but it's really amazing. the first book is called Out of the Silent Planet and then there is [/i]Perelandra[/i] and That Hideous Strength.

I think Tolkien and Lewis were two of the best authors of the 20th century. while other authors were going off trying to be as radically different as they could and many were selling their skills as writers out to ridiculous, narrow agendas, Lewis and Tolkien spent their time thinking about what makes a story great and implementing that into their books. And we read everyone else in school. pfft!
 
Re: Re: Meye RANT on American edyoucayshun

Originally posted by Frohickey
correct spelling is 'phonetic'

:D
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i thought that was the joke. "phoenetic" is the pseudophonetic spelling of "phonetic." i guess if he'd wanted to make it obvious, though, he might have said "foenetic."
 
I think that what is lacking is adequate homework. For writing composition, the correct homework is reading assignments of the classical works. This not only gets students to learn grammar, but also sentence structure and proper organization of the topic. I remember going to high school where there was a reading assignment for next-year's class being given at the last day of the prior class. The teacher for 10th grade was invited to the 9th grade class and he gave out assignment sheets with a list of books to be read during the summer break.

Following that, there were reading assignments where students were expected to read a certain number of pages, and daily 10 question quizzes were given to gauge if the required pages were read. Add to this some vocabulary words, and you had your classwork for the year. Midterm composition was researching an author, and presenting to the class.
 
Originally posted by �bergeek
ah.
well most public schools in the US suck ass, but there are a few notably good ones.

On the other hand, i can think of a zillion "good" private schools :rolleyes: eek :)
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I think most of school performance, in public or private schools, has little to do with the school itself; it has more to do with the motivation of individual students. I went to public school for high school, while a few of my friends went to private school. While the private schools were considered "better," I came out knowing just as much, and in some subjects more, than my friends in private school. I conclude that private schools perform better not because they are better schools, but because they select better students. I personally oppose the existence of selective high schools completely.

And like a few people have mentioned here, I think NCLB hurts education by wasting time and money. Giving students mandatory tests wastes the time and money that could be used to create smaller class sizes, buy better equipment, provide better training, and countless other things, and the only thing it accomplishes is identifying the same problems that have already been identified a million times before.

Using "assessment," or "higher standards" as a way to fix a problem would be considered ridiculous anywhere else. Imagine:

"Well, my house is falling apart. If I have it appraised, that will fix it, and then I won't have to repair it."

"Well, the paint is coming off of the walls. If I decide that the walls need more paint, that'll fix it, and then I won't have to paint them."

The former is basically what we are saying when we say that giving students more tests will do anything other then tell us we have a problem we already know we have, and the latter is basically the same as what we are saying when we say that we can fix our schools' problems just by setting higher standards than those that the schools are already not meeting.
 
Originally posted by Frohickey
For writing composition, the correct homework is reading assignments of the classical works.
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I would have to disagree on that one... While I think that classes give out the wrong kinds of homework (answering lists of questions doesn't effectively teach anyone to read or write well), I think the the correct homework for writing composition should be, well, writing compositions.
 
Originally posted by coolsoldier
I would have to disagree on that one... While I think that classes give out the wrong kinds of homework (answering lists of questions doesn't effectively teach anyone to read or write well), I think the the correct homework for writing composition should be, well, writing compositions.
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no, you can't just start writing. no truly good writer doesn't read. good writers are steeped in good literature. good writers learn to write well by reading others' good writing. you can't learn to write by just writing stuff using the "jane sheaffer rubric." your english teacher can't just go on about grammar rules, remind students to vary sentence length--mix up the simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences, to make the thesis the last sentence of the introduction, to make the topic sentence of every paragraph, to conclude each paragraph with a "catchy" summary... that makes for terrible writing. TERRIBLE writing. i wrote like that for the grade for awhile, and made it of course, but i hated my papers. on IB papers where we got more leeway (damn jane sheaffer, damn her to hell!), i got a chance to excel, and that has been true so far in college too. again, i didn't learn to write just by doing the stupid writing assignments in high school. i learned to write by reading good literature, reading my dad's writing and talking about it, talking to him about mine--and all of that within the context of authors and how they write well.

of COURSE students must write to learn how to write. that goes without saying. but that alone is not good enough to learn to be a good writer.
 
Originally posted by shadowfax
no, you can't just start writing. no truly good writer doesn't read. good writers are steeped in good literature. good writers learn to write well by reading others' good writing.
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Hence English Literature should be (and usually is) a prerequisite for English Composition. Composition courses are about making the transition from reading to writing. If you have not already been taught literature, you have no business even signing up to take a composition course.
 
Originally posted by coolsoldier
Hence English Literature should be (and usually is) a prerequisite for English Composition. Composition courses are about making the transition from reading to writing. If you have not already been taught literature, you have no business even signing up to take a composition course.
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yeah, though i think it's better to learn both at the same time.
 
Originally posted by shadowfax
IB is not always all that great. it's still highly dependent on the particular school. i graduated IB and i HATED the english department. my teacher was an incompetent fool whose writing was worse than several of the students'. it was ridiculous. I like IB's theoretical approach to english/literature, but it's not always implemented that way into a specific program.
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My School had both SACE (South Australian Certificate of Education) and the IB. Most kids take SACE since the course, as a whole tends to be easier, not requiring a second language (that is if you don't count maths as a language and I most definitely do.) I graduated with SACE and have come to believe as many my school friends have also come to believe (who did the IB) that the IB is a waste of time and effort.

However this thread isn't about how adequate the education system is in various locations around the world, but rather that the general level of non-maths based languages is beginning to fall, especially in terms of English.
However this thread isn't about how adequate the education system is in various locations around the world, but rather that the general level of non-maths based languages is beginning to fall, especially in terms of English in the US. One could also argue that the standing of handwriting has fallen over the years as well

Therein, I would say computers and the infamous “spell check” have a lot to answer for. I for one tend to write far better by hand (grammatically) than on a computer. As an Engineering student I have had to write many reports and without fail my hand written ones are always substantially better.
 
personally, i think blaming computers for people's laziness is kinda cheap. i use a spellchecker in word, but not online or anywhere else. and i don't misspell words; i rarely even "commit" typos. i don't capitalize here and in some of my writing (and on AIM) as both a convenience and a stylistic element. when i write my dad an email, i always go back and make sure everything is properly capitalized. I don't think that computers should be the cause of such a thoughtless backsliding, and i don't think they really are. our education system was slacking in value long before every paper became word processed. computers are a good thing. you can edit your writing without turning your paper into a palimpsest or filling the page with scratchouts of mistakes, or (oh evil!) writing your paper all over again from scratch. I know oxford stands by the rewriting principle, but it really is just a bunch of BS. people should learn how to use computers to their advantage rather than use them to slack off or blame them for their stupid problems.
 
Originally posted by shadowfax
our education system was slacking in value long before every paper became word processed. computers are a good thing.
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I agree with a fair amount of your post esp. this section. My main poin tis that while computers can be used to do a great amount of good. The slack person can cut countless corners and still get a half reasonable product at the end.

The problem then arises when it comes time to take a hand written exam. and all thoses short cuts are not avaliable.
 
Originally posted by Opteron
My School had both SACE (South Australian Certificate of Education) and the IB. Most kids take SACE since the course, as a whole tends to be easier, not requiring a second language (that is if you don't count maths as a language and I most definitely do.) I graduated with SACE and have come to believe as many my school friends have also come to believe (who did the IB) that the IB is a waste of time and effort.
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i disagree, i think IB wasnt a waste of time. i got 3 7s and enough credit to skip a lot of introductory courses, and having a second language aside from english is helpful, not necesarilly apparent in your academic life, but when you travel and eventually when you look for a job.
 
Originally posted by shadowfax
I went to a public school too. it kicked some ass, i must say. it was competitive as hell at my level. i am no idiot, and i had to fight like a mofo to graduate in the top 10%. ok, so i'm lying, i was really lazy my senior year, but still, the place has some major achievers, and even a few math geniuses who were taking graduate level math (and laughing at it) before the end of their senior year.

i wouldn't diss on public schools categorically--my school was a national blue ribbon school my sophomore year, and not the other two years because they were criticized for "focusing on the 'low end' or 'special ed' children and the extremely gifted (AP/IB) kids but skimping on the 'kids in the middle.'" oh well; i wasn't "in the middle," luckily. ;)

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im glad you had a good public school. unfortunately in the philippines the public education is really terrible. most of the time there arent enough books for students, classrooms are overcrowded, and only a minute percentage have access to computers. So if people can afford it they send their kids to private schools.
 
Originally posted by virividox
i disagree, i think IB wasnt a waste of time. i got 3 7s and enough credit to skip a lot of introductory courses, and having a second language aside from english is helpful, not necesarilly apparent in your academic life, but when you travel and eventually when you look for a job.
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Yes that's one of the advantages aspects of the IB, the fact that if you undertake some of the higher level subjects, eg, maths (in my situation) I would have been able to by pass the first simester of maths @ uni. However Should this had been the case by second simester I would have been far behind because of not having done any real maths for 6 months. Where I'm at uni, first and second year maths is very challenging, along with the mechanics and fluids subjects engineerng students must also undertake.

Due to the high work load imposed in the IB, the one thing a good student will really get out f the course is a great work ethic, and will learn to manage their time effectivly. As I said I however did SACE, and must say enjoyed the year (all be it almost a year and a half since I finished.)

Really though it's 'horses for courses,' some kids will get a lot out of the IB, while the demarnd placed may cripple and depress others. On the other hand an average student who works hard in the State standard (SACE in my case) may do better, than if they attempted the IB. It's really up to the indervidual and how much EFFORT they are willing to put in.
 
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