I would have to disagree about ponics, oops, phonics, G. I think our educational system went down the toilet when teachers stopped requiring the students to read (say, whole books) and to be able to write about what they read later.
Maybe I'm just an abberation, but I went to a school where our class stream was part of an experiment in educational skills at the Saskatoon Board of Education. I remember we had to do those damn tests every year, starting in Grade 2, where they make you sit in the auditorium and fill in those dots with your pencil for 4 (sometimes 6) hours. Then they'd show us a movie and it was over for another year. Later I found out everybody else only had to do them a couple of times over the course of their education.
Most students were taught the normal way, but starting with Grade 5, they stopped teaching me and my classmates English.
Instead, all we had to do, for the next 4 years, was read a book (any book, our choice) once a week. Then, you had to write a summary of the book and your opinion on a 3x5 card (and you were supposed to properly write the title, author, year, publisher, etc., just like we would have to cite later in a college paper). The cards were there for other students to peruse, so after a while there was a review of most of the books in the school library. Some students read Dick and Jane, some read Vonnegut and Phillip K Dyck; it didn't matter what the subject was to get a passing grade.
Since High School English was more about literature than the parts of a sentence, I never did learn that stuff. Imagine my shock in University when they started talking about gerunds in English 110 and everybody except me knew what they were. I still don't know that stuff past nouns, verbs, pronouns and adverbs.
My guess is our poor scores on certain portions of the standardized tests (you know, the parts of a sentence) probably killed the program. I think there were also problems with kids that moved to another school, where they were expected to know that stuff.
But I can assure you that everybody from my class, even the "D" students, can express themselves very well, whether it's speaking or in print. At the end of Grade 8, everybody was reading & comprehending at a High School level, and the better students were at a College level.
Back on the subject, there is a group of peace activists who left for the US this week. They plan to stop and protest at various chemical, biological, nuclear and conventional sites in America where "weapons of mass destruction" are made, stored, or deployed.
Also, there are still a half-dozen or so of the Soviet Era "suitcase bombs" that are missing and unaccounted for. These were low-yield nuclear bombs that the Russians had developed, and were literally built into suitcases. The US hasn't anything like that technology (NASA is trying to buy it from them); but the Commies developed excellent versions for it's space program (many of their sattelites were nuclear powered).
Naturally, these missing devices (and the fear that others may build or have them) are behind much of the "Homeland Security" paranioa coming out of Washington lately.
Ah, a posting with two of my favorite topics -- peace and literacy. It is just about as hard to bring about world peace as it is to teach everyone to read and write effectively in the same manner. Just as nations differ in their approach to peace and security, so too does the diversity of unique learning styles and "multiple intelligences" (see Gardner's work for more on this theory) require a variety of instructional approaches and materials. Still, we need to peacefully co-exist, and in our educational systems, we need to help students become strategic and effective persons who can utilize literacy. As well, people need to want to continue to read and write, in that it is a lifelong journey of discovery, not some destination that ends when one leaves school. Give peace a chance.......give a student a book, help him/her learn how to read with understanding, guide a student to be able to write their own books, and we are on the road to a world where we will have life experiences to share.
No need to pass around the collection plate. Throw what money you have up into the air. What God wants, He/She/It will take, and let what is left for you fall to the ground.
So endeth the sermon/lecture.
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Dr.G.
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"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read these books." Mark Twain
The literacy problem seems most pronounced in students who graduated in the eighties, and later. I have trained young engineers at wellsite who were absoloutely brilliant...and could only spell at a grade three level. LOTS of them. I have also worked at a restaurant where the top honours student from our local high school was a part-time waitress. I watched her spell "halibut" three different ways on the same bill. None of them correctly, I should note.
On to one of my favorite subjects...the so-called "suitcase nuke". I have mentioned this little monstrosity several times over the past year in previous threads. It is actually more like a backpack than a suitcase, according to what I have heard. The articles I've read say that there are forty+ of these things unnaccounted for by their Russian creators.
What a frightening thought. One guy with a backpack could wander unimpeded into any major city on this planet and change the course of human history.
Ask the Israeli government if one fanatic with a backpack can get through even the toughest security and wreak havoc on innocent people. Think about it.
The first time we see a small mushroom cloud in downtown NY or Los Angeles, our lives will change forever. It will probably be accompanied by a threat "...we have more of these already in place in your other cities, and we will use them"
and a demand "...do the following (fill in the blank), or we WILL use them. You have twenty four hours"
What a scenario! People would flood out of every major city in that country, fearing for their lives. Commerce and trade would halt. Chaos would ensue.
This is one of the situations that we do NOT ever want to happen. To say the least. The US administration is very well aware of this possibilty, and that is one of the reasons that there is such a desperate push to eliminate global terrorism, and to remove the leaders of that terrorism (and strip them of their cash reserves).
But some people around here still think that "it's all about the oil".
Macnutt, on both of your points, we are basically in agreement. I would have to specify the limits of my agreements, but we are at least on the same wavelength. Now, what to do to rid the world of it's literacy and terrorist problems is another story...for another posting.
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Dr.G.
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"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read these books." Mark Twain
I honestly believe that the US administration is doing exactly what needs to be done in order to eliminate this threat. To do nothing would be the real crime.
As for literacy...well, we are discussing it at the very least. Identifying a problem is the first step toward solving it, after all.
But there are people out there who are still arguing that neither of these things really are problems...and that the best course is to do nothing in each case.
Ok, I graduated in 1999 and I can spell jim dandy, better than most of my classmates could actually. Simple slip of the keyboard it was.
47 l34s7 1 7yp3 1n 3ngl1sh.
I'd have to say that no matter how bad the spelling/grammar of myself or anyone in my age group here seems, it could be a whole lot worse.
This is what I am talking about:
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>from a geocities site: *don't eva b afraid 2 come 2 me n cry*don't eva hesitate 2 look me in tha eye*don't eva b afraid to tell me how u feel*rememba ur mah boyz n we gotta keep it real!*<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Ye gods, try reading an entire site written like that. I am a big fan of the net, but I also hold the belief that it is responsible (in a big way) for the breakdown of current teenagers grammar skills.
I don't know how it happened, but there are kids in the world in upper level high school courses who can barely write at an 8th grade level.
Of course in some cases there are other factors involved, but you can't ignore the proliferation of bad grammar and english since the internet became popular.
--PB
__________________ Awesome Friday! movies, games, and other nerdy things.
Macnutt, I am a dove, but I have great fears about what Hussein will eventually do with the various weapons he has hidden throughout Iraq. In a way, it is like the Munich Accords signed by Chamberlain in 1939, and the rhetoric of the Japanese to US officials at the State Dept. in 1941.
Re literacy, since this is my area, I strongly support individualized assessments, and feel that instruction should be guided by the findings of this diagnostic assessment (via informal reading inventories, modified miscue analyses, etc). I am not a fan of standardized, norm-referenced group survey tests, since they yield numbers rather than patterns of strengths and needs which might be utilized by a teacher to adjust his/her instruction. I have been teaching six web courses in literacy here at MUN since the winter semester of 1997. These six web courses in literacy education represent the most courses in this area of any university in Canada...a fact of which I am most proud.
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Dr.G.
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"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read these books." Mark Twain
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