An educational revolution

Post Reply New Topic

As has been commented, some things cannot be avoided in group study. The potential of the internet has a long way to go to be fully capitalized upon but a great deal of study is required as to how to prepare students and instructors to utilize it well. Personal interplay can not and should not be eliminated totally. There is much to be explored.

Try learning applied chemistry or applied biology from a book or from a computer screen. It won't work. Some things have to be taught within the context of the master-apprentice system.

ruveyn

I'll second that. As a graduate of Stuyvesant High in Manhattan there was nothing to replace pouring acid into a setup and generating oxygen or raising generations of fruit flies to determine mutation percentages or observing live protozoa of different species through a microscope. You have to feel materials, smell gases, observe live organisms to get a true feel of the real world. The same is true of working with materials in a metal or wood or plastic workshop which we did in my instruction at Pratt Institute. It is irreplaceable. But there is much that can be done very well with computers and with connections to related sites with videos and animation that a textbook cannot match.

They had to leave school to work to support their families, it was not a choice for either of them. And you (and other nostalgic posters) kept talking about people going through 8th grade as though it were typical and trying to compare that against today's high-school or college-educated youth, so I was continuing on the same standards you laid down.


Evidence please?


Evidence please?


Every generation since ancient Babylon has made this complaint, and it's virtually never been true.


You have got to be kidding on this one.

Evidence please?

As much as I have complaints about the current state of schools, it can NOT be said that my kids are not getting an education, or that they are being spoon fed, or that they don't have to "work." My fourth grade daughter has an hour of homework every night and my seventh grade son has 90 minutes. Last year, in 6th grade, he had many nights where he was working until 11pm to get assignments done; this year the focus of study has changed, so it isn't happening, but, still, you can't say its all lax. Yes, there are kids who skate by getting bottom grades and are moving ahead anyway, but its a complicated question as to how to serve these kids best. I have kids who can read well pretty much all material, who discuss the nuances of Shakespeare (really; they are much more into it than I am or ever was), and say that if they had a million dollars they would buy a science lab. AND my son knows how to build a computer, survive in the outdoors, and more. Some he learns at school, some he learns at home, some is because of who he is, and some is because its been forced on him, but, overall, he is learning what he needs most to know. And that, what one needs most to know, has definitely changed over time. Every generation complains about the things the kids are not learning, because it isn't what they learned, but they forget about what the kids know that they did not. It is, simply, impossible to compare.

I can dig up some quotes if you really want me to, but we have records from at least ancient Babylon and the Roman Empire complaining about contemporary youth and how they are lazier, stupider, and less respectful than their parents were. Within the past few hundred years (when we have more written records) you can find countless such lamentations in every generation.

EDIT: Here's a couple quotes for you.

"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for
authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place
of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their
households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They
contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties
at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers." (attributed to Socrates by Plato)

"I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on
frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond
words... When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and
respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise
[disrespectful] and impatient of restraint" (Hesiod, 8th century BC)

"The world is passing through troublous times. The young people of
today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for
parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as
if they knew everything, and what passes for wisdom with us is
foolishness with them. As for the girls, they are forward, immodest
and unladylike in speech, behavior and dress." (Peter the Hermit, A.D. 1274)

I haven't found the quote from Babylon yet. I remember hearing it from an old teacher of mine; a schoolteacher in ancient Baghdad had written in his journal complaining about his lazy students playing hooky.

I'm trying to find my book that has graffiti from ancient Pompeii. There was an inscription listed that spoke of the bad manners of children.

In the mean time you can google for Pompeii graffiti but I must warn you, the subject matter is not safe for work. Just the fact that it exists shows that your pappies pappy was an uncouth youth.

But Orwells point is made. People have been saying stuff about the stupidity and ill manners of children for as long as we have had language. You old farts have selective memories, just as your elders did.

I might have guessed it. I’ve seen those Socrates/Hesiod/Peter-the-Hermit quotes before. It seems they’ve been doing the rounds on the internet, and liberals often reach for them when someone dares to challenge their faith in progress.

You have – what – three quotes there from ancient & medieval times (make it four if you can dig out the Babylonian one), and with no particular evidence that any of them were incorrect in their own time anyway, and extrapolate from that that people in the present who complain about the youth of today should be ignored.

If you looked hard enough you could probably find people from centuries ago who moaned about the weather getting hotter, but most liberals wouldn’t take too kindly to suggestions that concerns about climate change should be ignored.

For what it’s worth, I think there are legitimate concerns about certain sections of “the youth of today”, but I don’t blame the youth so much as the political, educational and media establishment.

Were people smarter 100 years ago or 1000 years ago? I doubt it.

Yet 100 years ago there were newspapers for the elite and for the masses, yet even the "penny dreadful" newspapers had a vocabulary greater than the newspapers of today.

Can your ten year old child read the original "Alice in Wonderland" or "Pilgrims Progress" or "Robinson Caruso" or "Wind in the Willows" etc?
I could and so could my grandfather. Wrap your mind around "The Deerstalker" or the stories of Edgar Alan Poe.

In England the guy who wrote most of the stories for "The Boy's own Annual" wrote most of the stories for forty years.

In the 1960's he was asked to "dumb down" his vocabulary because kids couldn't understand him.

He said "Screw it! I will retire but I will NOT "dumb down" my writing.

Don't be so modest! You are obviously tremendously talented at dumb writing, and the profoundly dumb thinking behind it.

100 years ago, paragraphs used to be much longer. Look at what you have typed.

ruveyn

Language norms change over time. It isn't about "dumbing down" so much as adapting to the commonly used vernacular. They would have as much trouble with the recently written books my children read as my children might have with books written 100 years ago.

That said, while my kids are not interested in some of the books you mentioned, because of subject matter, both read the Wind in the Willows before age 10, and both (ages 12 and 9) really enjoy and understand Shakespeare, Tolkein and other authors (I'm still trying to figure out how they came to enjoy Shakespeare so much - its wasn't MY doing). The series of Eragon is pretty dense writing, and my son has been reading Edgar Alan Poe at school - as part of standard 7th grade literature. The stuff he is reading totally creeps me out; I'm surprised it is the curriculum, but it is, and we're not talking about some flagship or elitely populated school. If you want to see how the popular reading of today compares to the classics, look up their reading lexiles. It's a pretty interesting system, the lexile system, and I was surprised to see "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" scoring as more complex than The Chronicles of Narnia, but my daughter explained it right off - the wimpy kid books jump around a lot, and you have to have really remembered and comprehended stuff from earlier on to get the jokes later in the book. Which proves one thing: complexity isn't always obvious.

Every generation claims to have been better, smarter, harder-working, and more respectful than the generation that followed it. If they were right, human society would long ago have ceased to exist.


Apples and oranges. On one issue we have mountains of objective scientific data. On the other issue we have anecdotal accounts pried from the selective memories of bitter old men.

I have split off the portion of this topic that led to the uglier debate so that the original discussion could be unlocked.

Have fun. Stay within the TOS.