I've been watching the debates and some politicians say we need to put more money into the education of kids at a young age like K-5th grades. But isn't K-5 really a joke now? I remember in 1st grade being told Columbus discovered America, and in 7th I was told, guess what, the vikings did LONG before Columbus. Also in 1st grade, we were taught they're are 3 stages of matter, solid, liquid, and gas. In 9th grade I remember being told there are 4 stages of matter, Solid, Liquid, Gas, and Plasma. And for those who say that we're just finding out about new discoveries and all of that, plasma has been around for a while, and it's been known that Columbus didn't discover America, so why do we keep telling little kids all of this and just say in a few years it wasn't true, and then we still want to put money into these "lies" ?
It doesn't stop there. In middle or high school pretty much everyone remembers reading Romeo and Juliet, the story of 2 teenagers who couldn't be together so they killed themselves because they were in "love". Now if any teenagers say they love each other we say it's not "true" love and send them off to a phyciodrist, but we're still pushing Romeo and Juliet on them. It just doesn't make sense to me.
In 2nd grade I was taught North America was made up of only Canada, the US, and Mexico. I corrected the teacher. When an 8 year old corrects a teacher, there are serious issues.
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I don't think it's a joke. But I will be sending my kids to private school.
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YOU ARE EXACTLY RIGHT, THATS WHY I AM NO LONGER A TEACHER!!
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Romeo and Juliet is written by Shakespeare who is great playwright. You are studying it as literature. It is a timeless story. I think one of the reasons "lies" are told in school because the truth gets complicated. You do not want to overwhelm young learners or discourage them. I took Chemistry in college and there are plenty of lies or half-truths there but they exist because they are trying to teach a larger view. Once you understand the basics then you can move on to more advanced concepts. That is how I understand it. I do not necessarily agree with it. We do need to revamp our educational system. There is no question about it.
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I was also told colombus the earth was round and not flat , butactually Leaf Erickson really discovered the earth was round not Colombus, so i guess i was told wrong as well , i also thought the Indians discovered America, well to be politicaly correct the native americans lol i guess they are the originaly natvive americans lol
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As far as I can see, our educational system is a joke from top to bottom.
In my last job I got to work around a great many twenty somethings. Out of a staff of fifty people, it was the majority.
The job was a technical kind of job, and the people seemed on the surface intelligent enough. But as for them knowing anything about anything at all… another story.
It was clear that they'd gone all the way through their schooling
and come out with good grades, and not a thought in their mind; to a person, they lacked intellectual curiosity. The most talked about books were Harry Potter. The most referenced arts were action and monster movies. None of them could play music, or knew anything about music other than pop. Their conversations were singly lacking in any reference to any learned experience.
I had to help one of them get through a seminar in how to
organize data for digital archiving. It was like working with a ten year old, except the ten year old might have been sharper.
I believe that our educational system, for a number of reasons, turns out people void of interest in the world.
It's only about getting a job, and after that, the mind rots.
Which is a piss poor way to train a work force that will likely have to change jobs five or six times in their lives.
But they all had big loans to pay off. I've come to think that's all it's really about now: create a nation of ignorant, incurious debtors. Give them high paying jobs for the first few years after college to pay down the debt… then use aggressive agism to downsize all the workers after the age of thirty.
I'm certain that this plan has actually been articulated by leaders of industry and education.
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Meanwhile the second grade teacher chiming in below kind of proves my point:
She sees no harm in confusing the kids with simple historical truth. She explains that the Europeans didn't know that the American continent was here… but that's not ever remotely true. The Norwegians who came here a century and a half before Columbus WERE Europeans. And she makes no effort to clear up the confusion of Dee, above, who thinks that Leif Erickson 'proved the world was round'… Actually Epicitus the Greek proved that nearly seven hundred years before Columbus, and the Chinese centuries before that.
We wallow in self enforced ignorance, because teachers like Nubiangeek, 'see no harm done' by misrepresenting and furthering the lies of convenience taught in the past.
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First of all, I am a second grade teacher. I don't feel that education is a joke. The things that you have mentioned are not the brunt of the educational system. I don't know of anyone that was damaged by thinking that Columbus discovered America. (This is a matter of semantics 'discovered' meaning that most Europeans didn't know that it was here.) As far as the states of matter. Sometimes in younger grades we don't give all of the information because it is not necessary. Again, I don't know anybody that was damaged in any way by not knowing about plasma. Now, I guess a teacher could say, as I have done, that there is more to a certain topic that they will find out about in subsequent grades. The things you have mentioned are not the main problems of the education system. I think that our time is better spent on the more important problems.
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In 2nd grade I was taught North America was made up of only Canada, the US, and Mexico. I corrected the teacher. When an 8 year old corrects a teacher, there are serious issues.
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