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2017-12-18 Home Front: Culture Wars

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Posted by Besoeker 2017-12-18 06:02|| || Front Page|| [11125 views ] Top

#1 The level of interest in and attention to the subjects was about as flat as a fallen arch. The ability to write a coherent English sentence was practically nonexistent; ordinary grammar was a traumatic ordeal. In fact, many native English-speakers could not produce a lucid verbal analysis of a text, let alone carry on an intelligible conversation, and some were even unable to properly pronounce common English words.

Yep, yep and yep.

Posted by Skidmark 2017-12-18 07:01|| 2017-12-18 07:01|| Front Page Top

#2 The quality of what we called the student "clientele" had deteriorated...
My sister, PhD in Ed and all that, decided to teach Remedial Math courses at a local Junior College. Every semester she had at least one "student" that was there seemingly to harvest the government checks and wanted to pass on trivial matters like attendance, homework and passing tests.

Posted by magpie 2017-12-18 09:05|| 2017-12-18 09:05|| Front Page Top

#3 Yea, well, magpie: if that's the worst your sister run into - she's well off. The worst thing, are the straight A, rote-memorizing students.

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2017-12-18 16:00|| 2017-12-18 16:00|| Front Page Top

#4 I put in 4 years as a middle school substitute when I retired in our upper-middle class district.

The kids, in general, were decent and nice, which is not to say diligent. I could reach some of them which was rewarding.......BUT aside from one assistant principal there was not much support from the administration and the support from the teachers was non-existent for the most part.

I stopped when 'common core" became wide spread. You'd think that a math minor and 30+ years in computers would make me competent to teach 7th grade math wouldn't you?

The left-wing indoctrination was grim in all things despite a few stalwart teachers holding out for real scholarship.

Posted by AlanC 2017-12-18 16:47|| 2017-12-18 16:47|| Front Page Top

#5 AlanC,
Can I get a heads-up; my daughter is doing stuff in 5th grade I didn't do until 7th grade. Was it the subject matter or the students' lack of preparedness. Daughter is lucky to have a tutor (me) who went far in math and genuinely enjoys the subject. I can see how that isn't the case for a goodly number of students.

Posted by swksvolFF 2017-12-18 18:34|| 2017-12-18 18:34|| Front Page Top

#6 swks...

every school is different; every teacher is different

in math, there have been a number of technical improvements in teaching over time; in algebra and geometry and trigonometry, there are on line resources that are really wonderful and some of the best teachers made videos of their classes and other teachers watched them

in social science, alas, the field has been invaded by charlatans, propagandists and the like

Posted by lord garth 2017-12-18 19:44|| 2017-12-18 19:44|| Front Page Top

#7 swks...

Sorry it was the course work that basically said that any answer was the right one if you thought it was. I left a couple of years ago now and the details are a bit hazy but the statistics unit was bizzare in the extreme. The regular teacher quickly believed that the traditional way of adding up the values and dividing by the quantity of entries had no benefit or validity.

Social studies refused to allow reference to the holocaust.

Posted by AlanC 2017-12-18 20:37|| 2017-12-18 20:37|| Front Page Top

#8 Indeed, one of the reasons I am where I am instead of where I was.

Couple years back I came home to a house of crying and shouting because of the frustration of a homework page. After getting everyone to chill TFO I looked at the problem at it was an Algebra problem. I was like, 'they don't even have their multiplication tables memorized, what is this?' So I went to the school and asked them. Long answer short, the Kansas version of Common Core is confusing the teachers, who then had a hard time teaching. I thought, my goodness, all the parents who never learned algebra or forgot enough of it to not being able to help their children.

Posted by swksvolFF 2017-12-18 20:41|| 2017-12-18 20:41|| Front Page Top

#9 Khan Academy might be of interest. I remember when the Khan Academy site first started up — he was a Wall Street finance guy, as I recall, and several of his nieces and nephews came to him for help because they were having problems with their various math classes. So he worked up a series of short videos showing them how — and why — to solve the problems they were facing.... and it grew from there. Now one can do an entire education from kindergarten through college just with his material.

Posted by trailing wife 2017-12-18 21:19|| 2017-12-18 21:19|| Front Page Top

#10 Thank you TW. Daughter is pushing the ceiling and I think the only good reason she is not a grade above would be skipping all the math. If I can fill that gap without burning her out, she could go on.

I have already shown her how, with math, there are various ways to figure the volume of, one example, a clay bowl.

And then from there, we went to 'two choices for clay - one is $1 per unit, the other is $0.75 but requires twice as much to build a bowl...which is the better deal?

A week after this one on one, and a few wry jokes from me about the abysmal wording of her word problems, she got it.

Posted by swksvolFF 2017-12-18 21:35|| 2017-12-18 21:35|| Front Page Top

#11 Two opposable thumps up for the Khan Academy. Watching the lessons is like having your Dad sit with you at the kitchen table explaining your homework.

And it is not just for kids. I used them to help backfill the lack of probability in my math education when I took part one of the first massive online courses in Artificial Intelligence.

Udacity, Coursera and edX also have some good stuff, although the latter two are more focused on college level material.

Posted by SteveS 2017-12-18 23:45|| 2017-12-18 23:45|| Front Page Top

23:48 trailing wife
23:45 SteveS
22:50 newc
22:26 Sock Puppet of Doom
21:35 swksvolFF
21:19 trailing wife
20:41 swksvolFF
20:37 AlanC
20:35 3dc
20:32 SteveS
20:25 SteveS
20:12 Clemble Hupavise1716
20:09 Clemble Hupavise1716
19:44 lord garth
19:44 newc
19:41 gorb
19:37 trailing wife
19:25 borgboy
19:21 Abu Uluque
19:03 Zhang Fei
18:54 NoMoreBS
18:49 borgboy
18:44 newc
18:34 swksvolFF