"F. Baum" wrote in
:

On Dec 2, 8:50 pm, "Matt W. Barrow"
wrote:
"B A R R Y" wrote in
messagenews:qdk6l35sjc8gpa98jtbh0t7u5v1puc7o4h@4ax .com...

On Sun, 2 Dec 2007 17:29:31 -0700, "Matt W. Barrow"
wrote:

Many times an "F" is deserved.

I totally agree.

As many times the teacher would have also
gotten an "F". When they gave math teachers the same math tests,
the average
grade was 60%, with 70% being a failing grade. It's nearly the
rule, rather
than the exception.

I'd like to read that. Where did you see it?

State of Arizona (run up to AMES tests) where my Bro-in-laws kids
tests were held off for four years until the teachers could pass them
or re-write the tests.

Remember, teaching
programs and educational requirements vary greatly from state to
state.

And just how much difference is there from the "best" states, to the
worst?



Would it make schools less likely to
spread Global Warming bull****?

I'm with ya' there.

And that's just one example of many, such as "diversity", racism,
sexism, etc., not to mention revisionist history, modern math,
"progressive" politics as the only answer.

Ask your wife what she knows about Thomas Mann, the "father of
American public schools" and what he wanted to accomplish, or John
Dewey.

It's been said that schools are not doing a bad job..they're doing
exactly what they were set up to do over 160 years ago and locked in
during the early 1900's. Unfortunately, teaching kids to reason,
engage in critical thinking, use inductive and deductive reasoning is
NOT the agenda.

==
Sitting on my desk I found a cite concerning Horace Mann, the Common
School, and development from the Prussian school in an extensive
chapter from a textbook used in undergraduate education classes at my
university. The title of the text is "School & Society: Educational
Practice as

Social Expression", (1993) McGraw-Hill, Publishers, ISBN:
0-07-557043-2

Selected quotes from pages 53-70"

p. 55: "Among the wide variety of educational topics addressed by
Mann during his tenure as Secretary [of the Massachusetts State
Board], perhaps the most significant were school buildings, moral
values, the example of Prussian education,discipline, teachers, and
the economic value of education"

p. 59 "He was first introduced to Prussian schools by [popular]
reports of their successes. The Prussian system had been organized in
the 1820s along a model recommended by Johann Frichte, the German
philosopher, during the Napoleonic occupation of Prussia. Fichte's
proposals were designed to develop Prussian nationalism and a nation
strong enough to unite the German states for world leadership. By the
mid-1830s the Prussian experiment had excited educators in western
Europe and the United States.

p. 60 "The system was class-based and consisted of two separate tiers
of schooling. The tier for the aristocratic class. . .was
academically oriented.. . .The tier for the common people. . .was
compulsory. Its goal was to develop patriotic citizens. . .In
addition to loyalty and obedience to authority, it provided basic
literacy and numeracy. Most of the graduates went directly into the
work force.

Loyalty and obedience, not initiative or critical thinking, were the
goals for training the common people. As Fichte had written on
education, "If you want to influence him at all, you must do more
than merely talk to him. You must fashion him, and fashion him in
such a way that he cannot will otherwise than you wish him to will".

...The Prussian *volkschule* (the common tier) evoked Mann's most
enthusiastic response. . .he was not completely oblivious to the
dangers inherent in using institutions designed for an authoritarian
society as models for a democracy, but he quickly dismissed these
dangers as inconsequential."

p. 65: "The Secretary's [Mann] arguments were persuasive because of
the different messages they carried to various segments of his
constituency. To the workingman, the message was: send your children
to school so they may become rich. Employers were advised that the
common schools would provide them with workers who were not only more
productive, , but also docile, easily managed, and unlikely to resort
to strikes or violence."

p. 67..."While Mann was emphasizing the intellectual results of
common schooling, his industrial supporters were emphasizing the
enculturation of a value system amenable to industrialized factory
life"

p. 70...Mann, however, unlike Jefferson, was not driven by fear of
tyranny, but by fear of social disorder and moral decay. . . .While
Mann believed he was advocating education for religious and
republican virtue, some of his contemporaries argued that he was
instead instituting a system of social control"

=====================

You may check this book out for yourself to guarantee that I have not
selectively quoted out of context.

This is just Thomas Mann. Here's Dewey:

"The mere absorbing of facts and truths is so exclusively individual
an affair that it tends very naturally to pass into selfishness.
There is no obvious social motive for the acquirement of mere
learning, there is no clear social gain in success thereat." --John
Dewey

Read some educational history, it's just simply a well-known fact
about the origins of our present educational system and it's
predominant principles!

MxMatt, I am facinated how you can deduece that the current state of
education in this country rests ENTIRELY on some guy who held office
167 years ago.



Yeah, everyone knows it was Clinton and the Chinese.


And to think he predicted what to teach our kids about
global warming ! Priceless. This is right up there with your theory
that Hillary Clinton is gonna corner the market on Avgas and jack up
the price.


The bitch!

Actually, th eglobsal warming debate goes back a startlingly long way.
Couple of hundred years, in fact.

One of the problems the the "deniers", if you will excuse the term,
have, is that they are often looking at experiments done small scale in
isolation a very long time ago.


Bertie