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In 1912 this was the standard test given to 8th graders in Kentucky.
Follow Ups:
These people are accountable to no one. For example after 9-11 instead of holding those accountable for failure to perform they decided it would be easier to solve the problems by spending only god knows how many trillions and creating a much large government. And the same incompetent bozos who missed the warning signs got promotions.Of course we spend more per student than any other nations and of course we rate very low on the return of our money. No doubt some special interests are getting rich of all this spending. This is the American way.
Give me rhythm or give me death!
Edits: 09/27/14
.., you know something's gotta change!Indoors all day long, noses in books and computers, no time for play, doing whatever it takes to "succeed"..?
What has "success" come to mean in our modern times? Are we becoming educated, or are we becoming programmed?
"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." - William Butler Yeats
Edits: 09/27/14
Here are charts of relative performance/costs, whatever interpretation one attaches to the results. I don't think a precise reading of the graphs is appropriate, but it does indicate the general standing of things education-wise.
..... that the issue is one of self-motivation and personal responsibility. And those character traits must be carefully developed in kids by good parenting, fine schooling, and a decent government/social network (with parenting being far and away the most critical of all.)
Sadly, though, all three (good parenting/schooling/governance) are sorely lacking in today's America.
Yet we can all point to pockets of success, even in the most adverse of situations and circumstances. And that means that for motivated and responsible people, opportunities still abound. Which, in turn does provide some hope for our collective future.
But the odds are stacked against today's western youth, especially America's, as the media is there to hypnotize and mesmerize them on a minute-by-minute basis, and these powerful institutions of information control don't disappoint one whit. Kids and young adults in the USA and most other western nations, are being made into passive observers in life, infinitely more now than was ever possible in human history previously. And this frightening trend will only get ever more intense and focused. Mind control is everywhere, euphemistically called 'advertising'. Always has been, but never on this scale, or with this depth of subliminal reach and reinforcement. We are in uncharted waters, socially and psychologically. (Bernays, however, would be mighty proud.)
Thus, to take back our kids, we must first take back their minds. And that means being strong, being contrary, being involved, being concerned, being tough, hell, just BEING A GOOD PARENT! And that is where so many families slip up: discipline and reinforcement of critical character development is simply not happening,. And this is not good news, as these very character traits are indispensable foundations to any nation's long-term success. Lose them and you lose the future.
Not so much in the Third World, though. There they don't have it anywhere near as easy as their American fat-cat cousins. So they are HUNGRY. Hungry for success, for a better life. Hungry for what Americans take for granted everyday: opportunities. ANY opportunity.
This hunger requires third world parents and their kids on a daily basis to tightly focus on and fight for a better life, which in turn inevitably requires those key qualities of self-discipline and self-control. Apparently, many third world parents are fully aware of this, and enthusiastically pursue such a course with their children. And it shows in their relative scholastic achievement levels, versus American kids.
Parents MUST push their kids, if they love them and want what is best for them. Push them hard. Push them to be responsible; to be thoughtful and creative; to be honest, just and fair; to be strong and decent with good self-esteem; and most importantly, to be hard working. Sadly, just the opposite is happening in most American households today, which does not bode well.
America is in full-on decadence mode currently, while these hungry kids in these 'developing nations' are kicking some severe ass, education and motivation-wise, and America's unrivaled international dominance is clearly in their collective cross-hairs.
Competition is getting tougher and tougher. We'll see how America fares in the decades ahead.
But forget the government or the media or the church or the schools. How YOUR kids come out is entirely up to YOU and the amount of HARD WORK you are willing to put into being a parent!
It's all up to us. And we have only ourselves to blame if it all comes tumbling down around us.
I can't recall any leader who speaks for the public good. All I hear is leaders who pander to special interests. The major social issues today really are nothing more than hot topics to keep the public eye off the ball, dividing us, while others divide up the spoils. We have State and Local governments promoting for financial rewards alcohol consumption, gambling and smoking. Concerned parents and the interests of good people have been lost in the divisive political environment. The special interests and extremists are being rewarded, and the common hard working American is paying for everyone else's party.
What I'm saying here is the stats bares out the fact that profits are higher, the rich are richer, the poor poorer and the common working American is falling farther and farther beyond in providing security for the family.
It's an environment where the public good has been forgotten.
Give me rhythm or give me death!
I could not agree with you more.Anecdotally, I see parents regularly missing the opportunity to raise their children well. Every day, in the grocery store or other public environment, kids are mis-behaving and their parent only pays lip service to discipline. Last weekend, I decided to go to the store fairly early on Saturday. Wow, was that a mistake! Every poorly behaved kid in town was there with a parent who doesn't know the meaning of the word "parent".
On the other hand, a couple years ago, a kid in the store came around a corner and almost walked right into me. He was about 8 or 10 and wearing a Taekwondo uniform. He said: "Excuse me, sir, I'm sorry". I was dumbfounded! I tracked down his Mom, and told her what a well-mannered kid he is. She thanked me profusely. Turns out, he goes to the same TKD school that my son had gone to, so I totally got why he was so polite.
One more story. Several years ago, I noticed the local middle school parking lot was full on a Saturday. So, one day I asked about it. Turns out, it's Chinese students going to school - on Saturday - with their parents along! They call it "Saturday school".
:)
Edits: 09/27/14
was two let our two boys take Karate. Taught them discipline and respect beyone measure. Both are second degree black belts and, thus, fairly secure in the abilities to deal with personal threats. And, as a result, the have both become rather gentle souls.......
"Man is the only animal that blushes - or needs to" Mark Twain
.
Everything you said was true and backed up the sorry state of affairs currently, at least in my own experience as well.
Yes, self discipline is a critical aspect of character development, and TKD and other rigorous physical and mental training techniques can and do provide great assistance in character building. Sports are often maligned, but I personally think sporting is excellent, as long as a win-at-any-cost attitude is strictly avoided, and helping kids achieve personal growth and betterment is the watchword for the coaches and others in charge of helping the youths.
It's ALL about attitude and hard work, isn't it? And parenting is one of the HARDEST things we do as a species. Which is why the ever-softening masses in the USA are doing such a piss-poor job of things. They are turning away from hard work, and embracing self-pleasuring, and messed up kids are the result. A result that simply does not have to be. But change requires effort, and that "E" word is anathema to much of America's populace presently. Very sad, indeed.
And lastly, my wife and son are 100% full blooded Chinese, so I know EXACTLY where that last paragraph came from. My Dog! These asians work their bloody asses off! Well, I know that I'm very lucky to have one as a wife, and a great step-son as well. They inspire this lazy Gweilo every day with their hard work ethic and boundless energies. I couldn't be more impressed ---or in love! :-)
Yes, it would appear that all the very well-paid shills and dupes in the Western media simply have no clue how fast and far behind America's youth is being left.......
(Or America, for that matter.) :-(
Yes.
Are American universities still the ones people from all over the globe flock to?
Yes.
Is American medicine the world's gold standard?
Yes.
Do our leading universities have a surplus of excellent candidates?
Yes.
Now, there is a reason American students do worse when compared to students in other developed nations: we have a far larger poverty per capita population.
Compare scores of middle-class American students to other nations' and we do very well.
The internet, Facebook, Flickr, and many other recent tech inventions---- foreign?
No.
American.
The only depressing thing in sight is conservatives' America bashing.
Tin: "Now, there is a reason American students do worse when compared to students in other developed nations: we have a far larger poverty per capita population."
Non sequitur. The point is we are spending more **per capita** on education than any country in the world, yet our public school system continues to put out a lousy product. Qualitatively, it's akin to GM and Ford during the 1970s/80s.
Snippet: "The United States spent more than $11,000 per elementary student in 2010 and more than $12,000 per high school student. When researchers factored in the cost for programs after high school education such as college or vocational training, the United States spent $15,171 on each young person in the system — more than any other nation covered in the report. ...The United States routinely trails its rival countries in performances on international exams despite being among the heaviest spenders on education."
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-education-spending-tops-global-list-study-shows/
Tin: "Compare scores of middle-class American students to other nations' and we do very well."
Wrong again. (You put out an alarming amount of misinformation.)
Snippet: "To give you an idea of how competitive American schools are and how U.S. students performed compared with their European counterparts, we gave parts of an international test to some high school students in Belgium and in New Jersey.
"Belgian kids cleaned the American kids' clocks, and called them 'stupid.'
"We didn't pick smart kids to test in Europe and dumb kids in the United States. The American students attend an above-average school in New Jersey, and New Jersey's kids have test scores that are above average for America. Lov Patel, the boy who got the highest score among the American students, told me, 'I'm shocked, because it just shows how advanced they are compared to us.'
"The Belgian students didn't perform better because they're smarter than American students. They performed better because their schools are better."
Disagree completely on all your points.China has displaced America. The Americans run the Federal Reserve greenback printing presses 24/7/365 to keep the moribund US economy barely alive, and then openly cook the books to be perceived as the biggest and best, but the truth is that the US and its economy is slipping fast and must turn to both fiat currency and neocolonialist warring and stealing in its murderously wild and flailing attempt to stay internationally dominant. Bloody pathetic! (And underscore the 'bloody' part, when it comes to Uncle Sam's 'humanitarian' interventions.)
The best and the brightest are NOT coming to the USA for schooling, they go to their own top universities in Tokyo and Beijing, where it is damn near impossible to get in, standards are so high and competition is so fierce. Those who do not cut it, go to the USA. Same for India, which has the most highly regarded engineering school in the world (move over MIT!)
American medicine? Don't make me sick (oh, I forgot; that's what American medicine is BEST at, isn't it?) Sorry, buddy, but you're way out in left field on that one. Here in New Zealand, we view American medicine as existing only to line the pockets of Big Medicine and Big Pharma, and thus the FDA and the AMAs frequent assaults on alternative and low-cost, effective care practices. Here, alternative care is embraced. And medical costs are incredibly lower here. A private MRI costs what, NZ$250? (US $197) Just TRY getting an MRI in the USA for less than US$200!! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Good luck there!
And do America's leading universities have a surplus of 'excellent' candidates? Well, not so sure about that 'excellent' description, but the fact facing kids coming out of American colleges and universities today is that they are not finding employment, despite possessing allegedly marketable skills. And you call that a sign of strength? I call that an OBVIOUSLY FAILING system.
But time will tell, won't it? We'll see who is right, and who is deluded by nationalistic fervor.
My prediction: more US wars of open colonialism and third world resource exploitation under the most obnoxiously obvious lies and pretenses. And all to keep yet another falling empire standing, and wallowing in mind-boggleingly bloody murderous hubris.
Glad to be a Kiwi, I must say.
(Although NZ being an unquestioningly loyal member of the "Five Eyes" is not too heartening, I must admit..... )
Edits: 09/27/14
.
I taught for a number of years and the issue of family structure/stability isn't always a predictor, at least in my experience.Wealthiness and doting parents could often be the cause of laziness and indifference, and on the flip side, children from "broken" homes would often be obsessive about neatness and grades.
A third issue is that many boys from "poorer" areas have a hard time reconciling their impossibly high standards of masculinity with enlightenment. "Real" men don't think, reflect or drink Chai Tea, (as Rove just recently intimated), real men drink Henney and simply "do."
And if you think the cell phone/video game obsession is bad over here, you'd be stunned to see immersed kids are in India/Asia.
Edits: 09/27/14
... that makes a kid what they are, as that would rarely, if ever, determine a child's future directly. I believe it is the specific type of personal interactions they experience growing up: the strong parental guidance and positive role modeling they receive (or not); the required attention to the child's deficits as discerned (or not); and the manifest parental strength and love to endure emotional discomfort for requiring compliance with rules designed to help, not hinder, the child's development into a healthy, reasonably decent, strong and self-confident adult. All these experiences (or not) as we grow up help shape us (hopefully) into confident, decent citizens (or whatever becomes of us at the end of our 'childhood'.) And that applies to all, rich or poor.
Therefor I agree that it is not an issue of "family structure/stability", but rather one of individual character and motivation and the willingness to engage in the very hard work of great parenting. And these are individual character challenges that many fall down hard at, rich or poor, sad to say.
I suspect that where strong parental mindfulness and well-thought out efforts are applied, most such parents get good results with their kids, anywhere in the world, and just about at any income strata.
And yes, the media is distracting kids all over the globe, no doubt about that!
Which doesn't bode well for ANYBODY, sad, to say......
Thank you for your thoughtful post.
Cheers!
WS
Speaking of, there's really no framing and perspective provided by the author. How many children actually *attended* school in 1912? What were overall literacy rates?8th graders in public schools in my University town could certainly ace that test, if rote memorization was still in fashion.
"Consider: To pass this test, no knowledge of the arts is necessary (not even a nodding familiarity with a few of the greatest works of English literature), no demonstration of mathematical learning other than plain arithmetic is required (forget algebra, geometry, or trig), nothing beyond a familiarity with the highlights of American history is needed (never mind the fundamentals of World history, as this exam scarcely acknowledges that any country other than the USA even exists),...science is given a pass except for a few questions about geography and the rudiments of human anatomy...."
Edits: 09/26/14 09/26/14
I think you mean "descendants".
What do I win?
:)
.
There must be a CLASS divide in this country!
Otherwise, EVERYONE would be dumbed down, which is NOT totally out of consideration here, but I doubt.
There is given that of all industrialized countries the USA, UK and Italy have the lowest rates of social mobility.
Poor children in Denmark, Australia, Norway, Finland and Canada are nearly three times more likely to rise above the station of their birth than poor kids in the USA, UK or Italy.
But, since social mobility is a two-way street, US rich kids are 3x less likely to drop out of the social strata they were born into.
seems to be the goal these days. OH! And welcome to the new Water Cooler!
"Man is the only animal that blushes - or needs to" Mark Twain
If that is authentic, and it appears very doubtful, it doesn't state what the results are.
All these attacks on schools are nothing but thinly veiled attacks on taxation by Tea Party radicals.
Feathers!! Money is NOT the solution to everything
"Man is the only animal that blushes - or needs to" Mark Twain
d
.
Snippet: While critics tend to rely on the three-decades long decline of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) to document the dumbing down of American education, more alarming is our performance against the students of other industrialized countries. By virtually every measure of achievement, American students lag far behind their counterparts in both Asia and Europe, especially in math and science. Moreover, the evidence suggests that they are falling farther and farther behind. As educational researcher Harold Stevenson notes, although "the U.S. is among the countries expending the highest proportion of their gross national product on education, our elementary school and secondary school students never place above the median in comparative studies of academic achievement."
...there are a number of forces at work here, most from the religious right.
The questioning of science and the attempt to teach religious creation as science.
The starving of taxes for public schools to push for a voucher system to use public money for religious schools.
A lack of a consistent curriculum throughout the country as in others ahead of us.
There is no such thing as "public money". All money accrued and spent by various government/school district/hospital district entities is generated in the "private sector" by individuals and companies via the "send it to us, or else" approach.
Given that, and the fact that much money is wasted in public schools, it seems reasonable that some people would prefer to have a voucher which they can use toward the cost of schooling at an alternative educational institution, whether a religious school such as Catholic or Lutheran or whatever, or at some other school which is a private school.
There is a segment of society which purports to embrace "choice". Yet, many of these people vehemently object to choice when it comes to how our tax dollars are spent on what might be the most important tax expenditure of all - the education of our youth.
:)
...glad to hear you're pro-choice ;-)
Horse Feathers Isn't it odd that those most in favor of a voucher system are minorities looking for a better future thn what we're offeing at present
"Man is the only animal that blushes - or needs to" Mark Twain
Hey Dave, how you doing?
Minorities looking for a better future? I don't know about that here
in NC. Those championing that cause here are either fundamental
christians (bible beaters) or affluent (mostly white) people who don't
want their children attending public schools. For several reasons.
Private schools here are very expensive. Whether children receive
a better education at these private schools is also a debatable point
since they hire teachers from the same universities that the public
school systems do.
The problem I have with the voucher system proposed here in NC
has to do with the make-up of private schools. Many of them
are religious based. IMHO you have the right to believe in whatever
you want, just don't shove it down my throat or try to convert me.
I do NOT agree with taking any of our tax money to pay or subsidize
a private religious school education. The voucher programs proposed
here were never clear to me on this.
Thomas Jefferson's views on the separation of church and state
are very important to me.
Both of my children attended one of the higher ranked public high schools
here in Raleigh and IMHO received a much better education than I
did back in the woods of WV. So I have not given up on the public
school system here in NC yet. But it can always be improved.
Take care.
Bill
Nicely stated, Bill. Kudos too for skillfully avoiding the political quagmire.
I had written a response that elaborated on why your perspective on the use of tax dollars (or the exemption thereof) to fund private education should apply doubly so to organizations engaging in activities intended to influence the outcome of....oh, never mind.
The problem with the schools is the breakdown of the family which results from the collapse of ...
Choose One
At the request of the Moderators,
This space has been deleted
...the sequester cut of Head Start Program funding last year.
Growing up without any Federal programs, none, in the school system, and discriminated against for my ethnic background, I somehow managed to get an education in public schools, the University of Chicago and Magdalen College.
Of course, I didn't have 'important people' with $2,000 dollar suits that were paid for by telling me how disadvantaged I was.
At the request of the Moderators,
This space has been deleted
Usually, they are exposed to this by 8th grade, but they don't really acquire it as there is so much MORE in the curriculum. By high school, they are taking PSATs and SATs and if they don't know it, the test results will show. But, yes, it is a thinly veiled attempt. However, it is true that they learned Latin, too, back then. We're all dumb by that measurement, then!
That's probably what we need more of today. The calculation of a profit is clearly not going to be of survival value much longer.
The comment at the bottom on the evolution of math questions is hilarious.
I also wonder what that test was used for. Being the South, might it have been a way of keeping blacks out of high school? I doubt that many school teachers or administrators, then or now, could have passed that test.
"I also wonder what that test was used for. Being the South, might it have been a way of keeping blacks out of high school?"lol! No paranoia in your house! ha!
:)
Edits: 09/26/14
As far as I know all the Southern States had separate Black high schools during this time or they had none at all.
Will
Kentucky is in the "south"? I did not know that.
Last time I looked, Kentucky was just below Illinoise, Indiana and Ohio, and above Tennessee, which are above Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia.
.
Of course it is dumbed down. So is tv, movies and music.
which makes me uninterested in pursuing that site any further.
That's a tough test but most of the 8th graders I know could
find all the answers they don't already know on their Ipad in
about 9.5 minutes.
"Once this was all Black Plasma and Imagination" - Michael McClure
has a function which leads to the correct answer even if you spell Sir Walter Raleigh wrong like the people who set the test did.
Never mind 'Servia' which I presume means 'Serbia'.
That said two years later everybody knew how to spell that.
"That's a tough test but most of the 8th graders I know could
find all the answers they don't already know on their Ipad in
about 9.5 minutes."
Non sequitur. Finding the answers with an iPad does not make one educated, any more than your finding answers to difficult medical questions with an iPad makes you a physician.
pass 8th grade in Kentucky.... : )
102 years ago.
"Once this was all Black Plasma and Imagination" - Michael McClure
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