>>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.
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>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.
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>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.
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>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?
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>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.
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>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.
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>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.
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>>There are exceptions coming out of public schools, but these students achieve in spite of the school system, not because of it.
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>Had the same impression back then - in each generation I had 120 to 160 kids, and not more than five of each were good.
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>>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.
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>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?


Because it was used/is being used as the 'social control' weapon in support of legislation known as the "Great Society", signed into law by Pres. Johnson in the middle 60's and expanded on a regular basis by additional periodic 'entitlement' laws every since. Night be come day, light become dark. People who criticised laws based on racist politics were accused of being racists. HUD, a federal gov org created under the Great Society, was even took citizens to court for 'violating civil rights of the homeless'. Their 'crime'? Even though the 1st Amendment 'guarantees' the following rights:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

they were threatened with fines and imprisonment for petitioning the government for a redress of grievances. Specifically, they filed a court case to get a reversal of a zoning ordinance which had been changed under pressure from HUD to allow homeless shelters to be built in areas populated by uppper middle class homes. It would have destroyed their property values, which is their retirement investment, and introduced crime and criminal elements well associated with goverment run homeless shelters. Only whe HUDs abuse and disregard of the constitution become public knowledge via a popular radio talk show did a massive wave of citizen complaints get the politicans to reign in the HUD officials.


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

You couldn't increase the pain of a wound that has reached the stage of numbness. And you are right, the best and brightest students in our graduate colleges are not Americans. They come here because American Universities can afford to well equip their science, math and technology graduate programs with good professors and the latest most expensive equipment, something not affordable in many of their home countries. It also means, as my son found out, that many of his teachers could not communicate in English very well, if at all, or they had no real interest in teaching and merely showed up in class to maintain the facade and, in effect, American students have a language barrier to overcome in their own graduate schools.

By the way, Cassius Clay, aka Mohamed Ali, was/is a very intelligent person, and better educated than many, if not most, HS grads today. His bragging was calculated show business, which he could back up in the ring with his exceptional talent. He is, in my opinion, the greatest heavy weight fighter ever to enter the boxing ring. He is a model for all Americans. He disagreed with Johnson's reasons for and his actions in the VietNam war, but Ali did not run to Canada, nor did he sit on triple A batteries in Hanoi and pretend to shoot down American planes. He had the courage to stand up for his political convictions and his Orthodox Muslim Faith, no matter what they may have cost him. His title was stripped from him and given to a professional hack who couldn't fight his way out of a wet paper sack. The court battles, which he had the money to persue, took several years out of the prime of his boxing career. He was vindicated in the end.

No, in my opinion, "Political Correctness" is a direct result of Lyndo Baines Johnson's main legislative package, known as the "Great Society". The graph of every educational, social and moral indicator shows a sharp reversal at and following the passage of that bill. It is the reason why education is so poor and still costly, health insurance costs so much but covers so little, the manned space program had been all but abandon, save for a puny space station and the occasional shuttle flight, and a general maliase had suppressed the American spirit.

Only after Desert Storm did the malaise start to go away, only to be supressed by wave after wave of political propaganda from agencies like HUD, academia, and the left side of Hollywood. The explosive outburst of American pride following the WTC attack is already being rained on by our national "news" broadcasters. You constantly hear Americans being refered to as 'being scared', 'jittery', 'panicy', and yet I see none of that by anyone anywhere here in Lincoln, or those whom I meet on the internet.

50,000 Americans were killed in auto accidents last year. Ten times the number killed at the WTC, but American aren't running around in hysteria everytime a car rolls by. No, I beleive that Dan, Tom and their friends are up to their old manipulation techniques, disinformation, misinformation and push polls. And, it's making me mad.




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>>(no, I didn't spell check this so ignore spelling and typos :)
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>None found...