American Kids Aren't the Only Ones With Low Test Scores

For years concern has been raised that American children do not fair as well as children from other countries in academics. Public education has been trying, in my opinion unsuccessfully, to rectify this problem by introducing standardized curriculum and standardized testing across the country, but it hasn't seemed to make the impact that was desired.

Unless you ask the companies who create the standardized subjects.

From MSN:

WASHINGTON — It's long been known that America's school kids haven't measured well compared with international peers. Now, there's a new twist: Adults don't either.
In math, reading and problem-solving using technology — all skills considered critical for global competitiveness and economic strength — American adults scored below the international average on a global test, according to results released Tuesday.
Adults in Japan, Canada, Australia, Finland and multiple other countries scored significantly higher than the United States in all three areas on the test. Beyond basic reading and math, respondents were tested on activities such as calculating mileage reimbursement due to a salesman, sorting email and comparing food expiration dates on grocery store tags.
Not only did Americans score poorly compared to many international competitors, the findings reinforced just how large the gap is between the nation's high- and low-skilled workers and how hard it is to move ahead when your parents haven't.

The study does note that children of college graduates do preform better than those children of parents who did not attend college.

The point is this: we are too concerned with teaching political trends in our school systems today, especially at the younger ages, than we are in teaching our children how to do one simple thing, the art of thinking. We have removed the thought process, the practice of using intellect and reason, from our classrooms and school systems, teaching a watered down, spoon fed, agenda driven curriculum in the classroom, that agenda mainly being the content of what will be on the standardized tests that students take at different points throughout their school years. Our kids are becoming experts on filling in the little bubbles on a card that will be scanned in to check their responses, but give them an essay examination  and the results are often frightening. Correct grammar is hard to find, as text message lingo often is used in place of correct grammatical entries. Throwing in the allowance of cell phones into the classroom,  kids today have learned a new way of getting answers that they've found on television, most notably from game shows, by using the "phone a friend" method of getting answers to questions they don't know themselves.

If the United States (I still, personally, cringe at using the generalized "Americans," as there is no nation called "America") is to succeed internationally in competition with other countries, then we're going to have to revert to an older method of teaching, and that is to include using rational thought processes back in the daily curriculum

Sic vis pacem parabellum

MT

Press 1 for English - you do know what a 1 looks like, right?

In a gathering at Powder Springs, Georgia, this week, Barack Obama responded to a question in the audience regarding the number of high school drop outs and his (present) position on bilingualism.

The "English-first" debate seems to be far from over. While out of the headlines in recent months, it's still a topic of debate for those who believe that the U.S. should pass legislation declaring English as the national language to those who don't see the need for a national language at all. It's interesting to note that the United States is one of the few nations, if not the only nation, that does not have an official national language.

Many Europeans, as Obama points out in his reply to a question regarding bi-lingual education, speak more than one language. A great number of Europeans are multi-linguistic. Not so for the majority of Americans, who speak only English, or a great number of Mexican illegals who speak only Spanish. It is because of the catering of a large number of businesses to the non-English speaking Hispanic population that has created such an uproar throughout the nation, with many Americans growing increasingly frustrated with business machines and automated telephone systems with a "Press 1 for English" menu at the beginning of the menu features.

You know, I don't understand when people are going around worrying about, "We need to have English- only." They want to pass a law, "We want English-only."

Now, I agree that immigrants should learn English. I agree with that. But understand this. Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English -- they'll learn English -- you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish. You should be thinking about, how can your child become bilingual? We should have every child speaking more than one language.

You know, it's embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe, and all we can say [is], "Merci beaucoup." Right?

You know, no, I'm serious about this. We should understand that our young people, if you have a foreign language, that is a powerful tool to get ajob. You are so much more employable. You can be part of international business. So we should be emphasizing foreign languages in our schools from an early age, because children will actually learn a foreign language easier when they're 5, or 6, or 7 than when they're 46, like me.

Admittedly, Obama has a point. Our education system should be geared, in my opinion, to ensuring that there is a variety of secondary and tertiary language curriculum available as an option for students who wish to pursue a more international means of communicating. And while I personally see Obama as an elitist over other issues, and perhaps even a bit so in his approach and reasoning behind his desire to see American children learning foreign language skills, it isn't for the reasons stated by Andrew Leonard at Salon:

There's nothing particularly exceptional about Obama's position, unless you are an English-only partisan cowering in fear of your cultural identity being swamped by funny-looking people from strange lands. Or one of the similarly insecure patriots who believe any criticism of the U.S. is a sign of "blame-America-first" treachery. And I suppose the whole comment about "going to Europe" opens Obama up to more charges of elitism, and disconnection from the lives of those who, right now, can't afford to even think about going to Europe.

My problem with Obama's views lies in other areas, and they are all directly related to the way that we conduct public education today, and for those who think this is going to be a partisan take on public education from a conservative standpoint, think again. What I'm going to say is going to be broad sweeping and will cover what I see wrong with public education be it under the administrations of the Democrats or the Republicans, and I will say up front I was never and still am not a supporter of President Bush's "No Child Left Behind" faux pas.

America's public education system today is the victim of two things: corporate textbook and testing and political correctness. I'm not going to dive into the statistical data supporting this, as this is an opinion piece, but it is out there to support what I'm saying. Those of you with children in school know what I'm talking about. Students are being taught a curriculum that is designed to teach them what they need to know in order to pass standardized tests that are required by the state for them to advance from one grade level to the next. They are spoon fed this information to ensure that it stays in their memories long enough in order for them to take their tests and move on to learning the material that will be required for them to pass the next level of testing, an endless cycle of spoon feeding and testing that begins at the kindergarten level and extends on through college.

Gone are the days of children learning at a young age the art of critical thinking. Indeed, it is a rare thing today to find students in whom this now rare trait continues to exist, generally amongst the intellectual rebels classified by school psychologists as "the classic underachiever (I fell into that category myself)."

Despite Senator Obama's contention that our problem with the education system is that we aren't geared to bi-lingual education, a much more deep rooted problem exists: our education system isn't geared to education.

And requiring, by law, that students who don't belong in a classroom and have no desire or interest in staying there, simply because it keeps funding coming into the school system for the body count on a daily basis, doesn't help matters in the least. It creates, often, a classroom setting where those who can and wish to learn can not because of the interference of those who would be better served in some sort of vocational program and not being forced to drag down others simply for the sake of "no child left behind."

Senator Obama's approach doesn't work, and it doesn't make sense, when the system itself can not do the job that it is supposed to do in the first place. The first focus needs to be ensuring that little Johnny and Peggy Sue can comprehend what they are reading and writing in the first place, as well as being able to come up with an answer of "10" when adding 8 + 2. Instead, they're being taught such concepts as why that it's not a bad thing for Heather to have two mommies, when such decisions and morality is the responsibility of the parent to instill, not public education.

This is the thinking of Senator Obama's "nanny state" mindset. "Government knows better." Obviously, it doesn't, unless the goal of government is to create generation after generation of a population that can be controlled and programmed on a whim, and the way to achieve this is the breakdown of true education of the youth of the nation.

Once and Always, an American Fighting Man

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Just when you thought it was safe to go back onto the playground…

Remember kindergarten? If I go back into the deep, dark recesses of my mind, I can. Letters, numbers, words, drawing, naps on little mats on the floor. School is supposed to be where you learn how to read, write, and as the old timers used to say, to “cipher.”

What part of reading, writing, and mathematics involves sex education? I suppose you could argue, tongue in cheek, that that would be multiplication, but let’s get serious here, because this is a very, very serious issue.

Our high schools are failing dismally. Students are graduating unable to do the most basic of mathematics and language skills. This has been an ongoing problem for decades, and it’s getting worse with each graduating class. Colleges are forced to offer remedial programs to prepare incoming freshman for freshman level English and algebra courses because they are coming INTO college ill prepared FOR a college education. Something is wrong with this picture.

Public education has taken on the mantle of being the be all end all in the rearing of your children. People who are in charge of the public education think that THEY KNOW BETTER how your children should be reared than you, the parents, do, and they create program after program that have NOTHING to do with teaching reading, writing, OR arithmetic. Educational theorists have TONS of ideas that colleges and universities incorporate into the Educational Instruction programs, training teachers to be everything BUT teachers.

The word “teacher” is even outmoded, having been replaced with the more politically correct “educator.”

How do I know this? Let me remind you, in case you’ve forgotten, or inform you if you didn’t know; I hold a BS in education and held licenses to teach history and government, which basically means double majors of education and history with a minor in political science. I have BEEN in the public education system, and let me tell you, from what I saw, it’s a money making racket. Textbooks and standardized testing are an industry. There is less concern with making sure that children get a quality education and learn something than there is a concern with making sure that the tests are watered down enough that my five year old Labrador retriever could take and pass them if he had a non opposable thumb. (When in doubt, check “C”). Case in point, I know one particular student who graduated over twenty years ago who had taken no higher mathematics in high school than algebra I who opened up the math portion of his ACT test, looked ahead at some of the equations based in calculus, geometry, and trigonometry, scratched his head, muttered “the hell with it,” and started circling in the “C” blocks through most of that portion of the test. He passed. Not with a low score, either.

Liberals are firmly entrenched in the education field. Many of these people who enter “educating”, screw that, let’s call it what it should be called, teaching. Many of the people who enter teaching go straight from the high school classroom to the college classroom, and then BACK into the education system into the classroom as teachers. Their entire life, from the time that they enter the system until they retire, is spent in the classroom. Is it any wonder that they are filled with a lot of theory when they have no practical experience with anything else? I was one of the rare exceptions to the rule. I was a military veteran, a veteran firefighter, and had a contractor background for my work experiences. I was totally and completely out of my element being surrounded by these feel good, think good, right speak children who were learning to be teachers. It led to more than a few rather heated debates with professors over matters of theory versus reality and an ongoing conflict (war) with campus administration who had obviously labeled me as a trouble maker.

I find it amusing, looking back now, that the handful of people whom I got along well with were one history professor in his eighties whom I considered then and still as my mentor, both in the subjects of history and politics (he had been an oil rig worker in his youth and was the FOREMOST historian on the war of northern aggression), a philosophy professor, a geology professor, and two of the campus police officers.

I digress, but it makes for a point. Teachers are not being taught to teach your children what they need to know, they’re being taught to be surrogate parents under state mandate to indoctrinate your children with what the state wants your children to know.

Think I’m off base?

Let’s see how many of you parents out there get as pissed off about THIS as I did when I considered my seven year old daughter:

Sex Ed for Kindergarteners 'Right Thing to Do,' Says Obama

July 18, 2007 1:13 PM

ABC News' Teddy Davis and Lindsey Ellerson Report: Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., told Planned Parenthood Tuesday that sex education for kindergartners, as long as it is "age-appropriate," is "the right thing to do."

"I remember Alan Keyes . . . I remember him using this in his campaign against me," Obama said in reference to the conservative firebrand who ran against him for the U.S. Senate in 2004. Sex education for kindergartners had become an issue in his race against Keyes because of Obama’s work on the issue as chairman of the health committee in the Illinois state Senate.

"'Barack Obama supports teaching sex education to kindergarteners,'" said Obama mimicking Keyes' distinctive style of speech. "Which -- I didn’t know what to tell him (laughter)."

"But it’s the right thing to do," Obama continued, "to provide age-appropriate sex education, science-based sex education in schools."
Watch the video:
http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=3386492

Speaking to a young woman who asked a question about sex education, Obama said, "You, as a peer, can have enormous power over your age cohort but you’ve got to have some support from the schools. You certainly should not have to be fighting each and every instance by providing accurate information outside of the classroom because inside the classroom the only thing that can be talked about is abstinence."

THIS man wants to be your president, ladies and gentlemen. Kindergartners haven’t even reached PUBERTY and Barack Hussein Obama wants them to learn about sex. Oh, of course he adds the disclaimers into his statement; sure, he would HAVE to do that so that what he’s said doesn’t come across quite so dangerously. The bottom line is that Barack Hussein Obama wants sex education to start as early as kindergarten.

I want you, the reader, to take this information with you as you finish reading this article, and to think about it long and hard.

It matters.

It is very important.

Barack Hussein Obama is simply ONE politician who thinks this way. Don’t kid yourself into thinking that there aren’t others. And I will guarantee you that each and every one of them is a liberal.

In the 1960’s, Nikita Khrushchev said to the United States at the United Nations, “Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!” This was later “amended” by Khrushchev who said “I once said, "We will bury you," and I got into trouble with it. Of course we will not bury you with a shovel. Your own working class will bury you.” Take a look back through the years at public education and the growing mindset of Marxist theory that has inundated our government and our public education system. They WILL take us over without firing a shot, at this rate, if we don’t get a grip on what our children are being taught today. And they will do it by the electoral process, killing liberty not with a war, but to the delight of the indoctrinated masses…

Reading.

Writing.

Arithmetic.

From these come the foundations to teach our children to do something unthinkable. They can learn to THINK.

Leave parenting to parents. Good or bad, it's on them.

Sex Ed for kindergartners my arse.

"He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future," Adolf Hitler.

"How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think," Adolf Hitler.

“That government is best which governs least,” Thomas Paine.

“The GREATEST sin to be committed by modern man is the sin of failure to think,” MT (yes, it’s finally time that I take credit for my own quote, and I might as well do so here. Feel free to use it and share it with others).

“I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine,” Ayn Rand, from Atlas Shrugged.

Once and Always, an American Fighting Man

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