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[flyingfinn]

Well...this year has definitely been, if nothing else, a humbling experience. I've learned one thing: few of us are brilliant. Very few. Those who can do nothing and still do everything, they are lucky. As for the rest of us, hard work is the key. We live in a world where the goal is to make work easier, which it fine. But then instead of doing

Comments

[porgytirebiter]

i disagree. i think that's a huge generalization. every history or english teacher i've ever had(in a public school remember) has taught us to questoin things. my freshman english teacher told us about the patriot act and all of it's potential dangers, my sophemore history teacher was a lesbian, and my history teacher this year is unbiased but points out all of the pros and cons of US foreign policy in order for us to decide what we think. i've learned about all of htose civil rights leaders mentioned. I can choose to take a course which focuses on africa, and even though i havent i'm still aware at a fundamental of the problems there through my teachers. My parents and almost none of their friends took physics or calculas but now 95% of students at my school take both. The german students learn less math/science/history than we do, and the only thing which is taught better in germany is language. But the funny thing here is that no one ever talks about christian values in order to limit science class...but there's not even a complete seperation of church and state, and students can take religion in school. But if you started talking about creationism to a german they'd just dismiss you as a redneck(i've taught that word to several people).

[smantie]

You know I can't believe you said that. If your History teachers had tought you right, you'd think to think you're living in one of the richest suburbs in America and going to one of the best schools in the country. Your state has the 4th greatest public education aside from Alaska, Michigan and Connecticut. You literally have the best teachers in the country. Any place other than suburbia (I'm excluding my town as urban-suburban) is hellish. My school can't afford renovations, parts of it are crumbling on the inside, my old math class is just missing some floor panels and underneath it is absolutely covered in mold. We have a "critters" infestation the administration says, and our student/teacher ratio is 21/1. My cousin teaches in Baltimore, they have teachers that are good people and try hard to teach there, but they don't have ONE COMPUTER in the WHOLE school. They don't even have a Mac. They can't afford a computer and what sort of a good teacher is going to want to come to a school like that?
It's grand if your school offers all those things, but they've been lightened up to the point where you might as well not even take those classes. It's well and grand if your school gets physics and calculus. My school got physics and calculus, my mom took it there when she went to school here, now the kids are so stupid they don't get to physics and calculus, and neither of them are mandatory to take. There was no precal when my mom went either. Those are two of the most important classes in the development of an intellectual from a scientific point of view, and we're not required to take them. That's like giving us a free pass to idiocy. The teachers I have even admit their turning us into fools. My Latin teacher has been teaching 35 years and we went from a thick book that he taught all the way through, and now he only teaches a moderate sized book and he gets about a quarter of the way through. THAT ISN'T THE BEST EDUCATION WE CAN POSSIBLY GET.

If German students learn less math and science, how come they're ahead of us in math and science? They have to take an exam to get OUT of highschool. We're ushered out of it with ease. That isn't the best opportunity for our schools, they graduate highschool and they prove nothing. There's not much to prove, because we're stupid.

[smantie]

Oh, more genius' come from Germany or Austria than any other country.

[flyingfinn]

That may be true, but that is not the common person. The American people as a whole do not have sufficient math education.

[flyingfinn]

Of course we question, we've reformed much of our society. Im not talking about that. Politics and conflicting viewpoints are for once being brought into the spotlight, which is great. However, before anyone can go around making up their minds about world affairs, they've got to know the facts. Thats where we are slipping. So are those classes any good? Do those people actually come out of it with a solid knowledge of the subject? Has the teacher pushed the students to their full potential and made them work for the knowledge they've acquired? Have they really learned all that they could in the time given them? We have several more classes than we've ever had before, but they are not all substantial. At our school we offer Oceanography and Physiology - both slacker, half-baked classes. English: where is the grammar? I definitely do not know proper sentance structure or all the parts of speech and their proper uses, and very few of us do nowadays! I speak not only for my school system, because I am watching two young girls go through a different school system, and I experience their trouble just as they do. We have been deprived of the proper usage of our native tongues. What greater crime can be committed than to decrease our ability to communicate? Talk to many elders and they will actually speak in fluent english!

My comment about being "politically correct" was only used with History. Math, science, and english - I believe that in these subjects we are not as knowledgeable as we could be because we are not pushed hard enough. Our expectations are lowered year after year, as are requirements for graduation, and the curriculum for our core courses. Of course we've made progress! But that is to be expected with the changing times. We are capable of so much better.