"Wheel of time" is a really good book series (i can hardly wait until october 21st), but, I'm just wondering, are you aware that it does have, um, adult situations in it?

This has been known since Shakespeare's time. As the famous remark by the plotter of treachery in Shakespeare's King Henry VI shows - "The first thing we must do is kill all the lawyers," - the surest way to chaos and and subsequent tyranny even then was to remove the guardians of independent thinking.

Befor then, it was the Spanish Inquisition, which was an ecclesiastical tribunal started in 1478 by Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. It was intended to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms.

(Remember Ferdinand and Isabella? Remember Columbus?)

Repressions, censorship, and torture awaited anyone who questioned Catholic authority over all things secular.

I don't believe that Columbus was a victim of the Inquisition, but your general point is well taken.  

Sadly, the problem is getting worse with NCLB-mandated conformity.  The new Administration plans to continue where the old one left off, with Arne Duncan proposing more of the same.

A populace of educated thinking individuals is a direct threat to the status quo.

Yes, Davo, I suppose so.  But you'd think successive governments/departments for education would take the view that increased standards and achievement levels would mean greater incomes for those receiving the education, thus perhaps more paid in taxes, thus more to spend on education/health, etc and thus it becoming a self-fuelling system.  

There's been much criticism of the UK college/university system, for making exam questions easier, and easier, and degree subjects more contemporary.  Can you believe, you can take a degree in David Beckham  (thankfully this much criticised degree is now being phased out)? a) It's scary that the system's become this bad - what on earth are you going to use that knowledge for in real life?; and b) he's renowned for not being the sharpest tool in the box, so I guess that anyone wanting a degree in David Beckham is following in their master's footsteps. (Ouch)

Like I say previously in this thread, I've seen standards progressively drop, and drop, and drop at the companies at which I teach.  It seems to be okay to be stupid and to be spoon fed what you need to know in case your brain becomes overloaded with intelligence!

Finally, a friend's mother retired from teaching teenagers because of a significant drop in the quality of English literature she was being asked to teach.  She's spent the final years of her career as a librarian.  

Trust me, guys, I don't think I'm particularly bright, but I work damn hard to get high grades and learn properly when I've set mind on acquiring knowledge/qualifications.  My aim is to do as well as I can, and show that I deserved the place on the course I received.  It's a shame the education system doesn't see this as the best route to improving standards.

Never once was I patted on the head for being a dunce. Yeah that is me in the corner with my pointy cap and confused look on  my face. I would think I knew what was expected of me only to find out I was wrong.

I wrote a good essay. I thought I was supposed to write about guppies. And I did write one, the teacher read two lines and marked it F. No chance to redo. Just a big fat red F.
Why? Because the essay was to be about how filtration of an aquarium  not about what guppies are and why people keep them as pets.

I already knew what filtration was and how it worked so I did not think it was necessary to write about it. What I didn't know was how many types of guppies there are, why people breed them, how people make money from them. So that was what I wrote about.

I put my heart into learning about guppies and writing that essay. Only to have the teacher not acknowledge it in the least. Except to say  that I must have been acting stupid because no one is really that stupid to get her instructions so wrong.

I wasn't being disrespectful to the teacher I simply thought I was supposed to learn something new about guppies and tell what I learned.. But of course this was science class not creative writing. Sooo...

What did I learn that has stayed with me for years?
1)I am a dunce and no matter what I do will change the fact I am a stupid person wasting the time of the precious smart kids. And yes we dunces are accused of ..get this.. WANTING to stay stupid...

2)Hard work will never pay off when you're are the stupid one. Because no one will listen to stupid people anyway. If we say something smart we are laughed at as...parroting.

3)Life is rarely  fair. My teacher could have given me a D-.(but it would not be fair to the kids who got the lesson right.)  The children who did not even do an essay received an F. It's not like I knew it was wrong and chose to do the wrong thing. But she didn't even read it beyond the first two sentences. That really hurt my entire body. A D- for me would have been fair.

As for..
Why is Education Being Dumbed Down?...

And now two famous comments from Donald Rumsfeld  former United States Secretary Of Defense.

"You're right, this is very confusing and will continue to be so. The only way I know how to reply to that is to give you my blank look!"

And this...

'By keeping in this silent mode we prove that our enemies won't know what we're doing any more than we do."  


I know its not about education its about defense but I could not resist.

By dumbing down education, more people get to graduate. More graduates translates into more funding for the school. More funding translates into better furniture for the teachers' lounges, the school boards' offices, and other administrative perks.

I seem to butt heads with you in every single topic I see you comment it.  Is this a fact?  I doubt it.  Next thing you're going to say is blame it on the public schools.

*I see you comment in.  Is there anyway to get spellcheck on this site...I keep typing the wrong word...I'm typing so fast!!! Grrr!

Having worked in a high school, I can verify that what Fnord said is true.  There is a great deal of pressure on schools to graduate students no matter what, because their funding is determined by graduation rates.  Working in a school is not about helping kids learn; it's about getting more money for the school.

John Taylor Gatto has the conspiracy theories with the best support.  While he has some good general points about the failings of the education system, I think it's more about beurocracy gone wrong than anything else.

When I was at university I asked the staff about why so many grossly unqualified students were being admitted.  Someone who enters a CS degree course not knowing about the ENTER key is not going to do well (I am not exaggerating).  The fact is that they needed money to run the university and reductions in government funding (partly due to some mismanagement by previous governments) had forced them to take more foreign students who were full fee paying.  When such students failed they could repeat as often as they liked, and they couldn't always fail the course (there were quotas of how many students may fail - too many failures in a normal situation indicates a failure in teaching).  So the quality of university education dropped due to lack of government funding.

When I was at high school I asked one of the maths teachers why they didn't "stream" the maths classes (divide the students into classes by skill instead of random selection).  I was told that it was to avoid making the less capable students feel bad.  I asked whether being in the same class as me would really make the less capable students feel better and the teacher had no answer (most of the A students didn't want to be compared to me).  So a flawed psychological analysis contributed to problems there.

When I was at high school the teachers had a belief that praising students for working hard was a good thing (which in general it is).  They implemented this by praising the students who worked hardest - IE the ones who struggled to understand the work.  This was of course noticed and praise for working hard was regarded as criticism for being mentally retarded.  Even the least intelligent students were capable of understanding this, so publicly praising one of them for working hard (which was not uncommon) was humiliating for them.  Again, psychology is not for idiots.

Funding pressure forces large classes on schools.  Private schools (which could have smaller classes) waste their money on grand building projects and sports fields rather than education.  Teachers at private schools tend to get paid about 50% more than teachers in public schools (*) but spend more time working for the extra sporting activities so it's not a great incentive to work for private schools.  I expect that schools which had a maximum class size of 10 could employ some of the most talented teachers at public school salaries and the quality of education would increase dramatically.  Apart from the fact that most teachers are simply incapable of keeping 25 teenagers in order, even if all students behaved perfectly then with 25 students in a class a teacher could spend at most one minute with each student - that means an average child would get at most 7 minutes of attention from teachers per day.

There is a lack of interest in the teaching profession, partly due to salaries not being particularly good and large classes making a stressful working environment.  This means that the people who run schools can't be too fussy about who they hire.  Teachers who are immature (EG ones who start name-calling contests with students) and teachers who show sociopathic tendencies (EG delighting when children suffered and refusing to do anything about bullying) were not uncommon in my experience.  Having psychological tests for people who want to be teachers would be a good idea, but attracting more skilled people to the field is a necessary pre-requisite.

(*)  In Australia "public school" means one that is funded by the government and is open for general admissions to any children in the local area.  This is opposed to "private schools" which receive funding from teachers, religious groups, etc and can be more selective about which students they take among other differences.

Oooocht ... dinny be daft all of you! Democracy is not the problem. Stupidity is. Democracy is the power in the hands of the people. disempowering people by holding them back is just plain idiotic. And yes, so much of this happens so that the poor wee ne'er-do-wells who only want to disrupt classes have an inferiority complex.

However, there are some other things to think about.

Everybody has been saying that education has been dumbing down since ... ocht ... Plato probably. I reckon that a part of this is because the needs of society are at odds with the time of education ... that is, they are out by at least ten years because of the crass stupidity of kids to get themselves born not 18 ears old and fully educated.

Too many people are going to university who should not be because it is not for them. ... Bunkum. Atually, this is a democracy argument actually. And you really need to evaluate what you mean by education to be able to consider it. As far as I am concerned the potential of sending everybody to university can only be a good thing. It introduces more of the population to the higher and wider concepts that are associated with the world and the part they are about to play in it. Yeah yeah yeah, a plumber doesn't need to go to university, college will do. But that will make him a very good plumber. Will it also make him an informed participant in the life game?

Is there too much to learn now? In the past few years we have added IT to our training needs. the other softer skills (citizenship blahdy blahdy blah) have also been added. This is because we have given up educating our own children in how to be decent people, how to be sexually responsible, how to be tolerant people, how to think etc etc. We can't really expect to do less ourselves, heap more of it onto the education system, demand less taxes, and then complain when there is too much for the kids to do.

Do we need to know everything? I know that I could do anything. I can't actually do everything. But I could do anything if I wanted to. I cannot do algebra ... sorry quietone ... and I am not dead because of it. I have undertaken a PhD. algebra not required. If it had been I would have learnt it (oh the pain that would have caused with my discalculia).

Is it reasonable for an employer to expect a young person to appear in their organisation with all the skills necessary. So that the employer can maximise profits with no input and on the job training? No. But unfortunately that seems to be what some of them want. And when we grant it to them, they will then want it tailored to them. And then our young people (read 'us') will be no more than widget pushers for widget makers. Life is about more than that, if you don't mind.

We cannot know everything. We cannot learn everything. The reason the kids in universities don't know the basics of the subject they go for is because they have far too much else to do learning about stuff they don't know and won't need to know.

Oh, and as for keeping kids back to protect the others. for sure it happens. But is that the fault of the kids, or the system, or the idiots that populate the system? Standing around hand wringing about it gets nothing changed. You have to get up and change things.

And just don't ... that is, DO NOT ... accept the mediocrity that is being pushed by the touchy feelly wombles who have swallowed the self-esteem worm whole. Kids thrive on achievement. These days the touchy feelies only perpetuate their misery by making them more able to deal with the disappointments incurred by not achieving, rather than turning them into achievers.

Bring back the belt!

(not proofreading this one .. .sorry!! :p)

Doubting facts does not make them any less true. There are many public school systems here in America that would lose much of their funding if a certain minimum percentage of their students did not graduate, or if the average grade of their students fell below a certain minimum. This funding comes from local millages (property taxes), state and federal funding, and even private donations. This is part of what puts impoverished school districts even further down the rankings -- lower grades means less funding, which means fewer learning resources, which means lower grades ... vicious circle.

It's also about "Teaching to the Tests," whereby a teacher is more concerned that her students answer the tests correctly than she is with whether or not her students actually understand the questions on the tests and the answers they're giving.

It does not surprise me that so many students are failing in or being failed by our public school systems. But what never ceases to amaze me is that so many people come out of our public school systems having actually learned something in spite of the failures of our public school systems!

It doesn't help when a student gets a detention just for writing an essay on how modern education has for the most part has gone down the drains, and critisizing the low level reading material taught in most "on grade level" classes. Of course, a lot of this does fall on the teacher. The english teacher I had last year did a really good job, and encouraged the class to read decent literature. But the english teacher I have this year dumbs down everything and sugarcoats what should be simple statements so much that I'm afraid that I might get diabetes. Its gotten to the point were I write pages long, highly sarcastic (and they say aspies are incapable of sarcasm) journal entries about how horrifingly insulting the curriculum in the class is. Sorry for venting, but it is relevant to the topic.