Re: Some grave concerns to the US education

"J. H. Johnson" <jhj@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>In the past 15 years I have noticed a steady decline of my students' 
>quality and attitudes. They are less prepared and getting lazier. Their 
>interests have ****fted from learning and curiosity to simply getting
"good 
>grades" without willing to put out the effort. To my dismay, I learned
that 
>my observations were shared by my colleagues in their cl*****.

The change is in you, and not the kids.  Back in the 60s when I was in
school, people said precisely the same thing about my generation, and
for the most part it was true: the majority of kids did what they HAD
to do to get by, and not a bit more.  The same was true of my
daughter, who just graduated, and my son, who flunked one class
because he guessed wrong on the minimum needed to get by.

The primary difference these days is that kids have many times the
number of alternatives to doing homework than they did when I was a
kid.  Many high school kids then had a part time weekend job.
Nowadays they have cars to sup****t and work 20 or 30 hours a week, or
even full time.  Money and being able to get around is more im****tant
to most of them than grades. But that was equally true then.

lojbab
-- 
lojbab                                             lojbab@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 LeChevalier, Founder, The Logical Language Group
(Opinions are my own; I do not speak for the organization.)
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:                 http://www.lojban.org