>Most HS coaches I've met in HS are semi-literate packages of testosterone, who can't even teach the students to wash their hands after they use the restroom.

I knew there was something wrong, but I didn't realize how far has it gone. Before I came here, I exchanged a few emails with a classmate of mine - she's running small business in Boston, in Access/Excel or something, though I think she's always been a better mathematician than me. Her only warning regarding the life in USA was "you're lucky that your kids went to school at home, got a good base, so the American education system can't do them much damage". I'm beginning to understand.

I'm also beginning to understand why am I jobless... the company I worked for actually relied on few of us older guys, but spent too much nurturing a bunch of transient kids.

I'm wondering when did it all begin? Was it Cassius "I am the greatest" Ali, the virus which eventually made all kids think they are the greatest?

While teaching, I had to deal with five generations of kids who thought their consttional right was to get a passing grade for just sitting there. What happened: when I was in elementary school (8 grades there), you had to have all the passing grades (i.e. at least 2 on the 1-5 scale), else you had to repeat the year. Some years later, some idiot in the ministry of education decided elementary schools should be guaranteed to be passed, and practically banned the repeats. The teachers there could still grade someone with a one, but then had to spend half the summer with the kid, teaching all the stuff all over again. The net result was - twos were practically granted to all.

And then these kids came to high school, and didn't want to move a finger. About 15 generations were screwed with this lack of work ethic, until the decision was reverted.

I figure something similar happened here, but probably has no chance of being reverted. Those who can decide on that will send their kids to private schools, and their voters have kids in public schools and wouldn't approve of the schools becoming too hard for their kids. That's a circulus vitiosus, and I really don't see a way out of it, given these constraints.

>There are exceptions coming out of public schools, but these students achieve in spite of the school system, not because of it.

Had the same impression back then - in each generation I had 120 to 160 kids, and not more than five of each were good.

>I fear for America. Not because of Ben Laden and his thugs, but because of what Political Correctness has done to our educational system in the name of diversity.

This is the part I don't understand. To me, PC is just a way of speaking, trying not to use names which may offend certain (groups of) people; there may be other aspects of it I am not aware of. How did it affect education?

Funny how potentially good ideas get screwed up when applied to education. Our high school reform of 1975 was based on the book "School and factory" by a certain high communist functionary; while the ideas in the book were noteworthy, and it had a vision of working class becoming intellectual and capable of actually running the country (which was the theoretical goal of Yugoslav socialism at the time), the implementation went widely astray, as if the practitioners wanted to build the proof the theory won't work. The results were disastrous, the intellectual level in traditionally intellectual schools dropped several notches, and the votech schools produced workers who were somewhat more literate, but didn't know jack about the work they were supposed to perform.

> Even the college level has been badly damaged. The only segments of our educational system that produce top notch graduates are the graduate schools, in most areas except the social sciences.

Because about 1/3 of graduate students come from abroad :) (sorry to add salt to the wound, but just couldn't resist).

>(no, I didn't spell check this so ignore spelling and typos :)

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