Just happened to read a couple student essays; how do these kids get into college much less graduate? Repeatedly ‘there’ for ‘their’ and ‘are’ for ‘our’, ‘your’ for ‘you’re’, and forget tense and punctuation.
We all make mistakes; we each have our quirks that stick with us regardless of knowing better, and we have Spellcheck, which bad as it is, appears to be far superior to many of its users. There seems to be a growing lackadaisical attitude towards grammar as being an important part of our communication. So why do we need bigger classrooms (physically) to hold fewer students per class and provide them with all the bells and whistles of technology? Somewhere around third grade they lost interest anyway.
Yeah, let’s pour more money into lowering standards and making it easier for all to have a college degree.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
What made them lose interest in third grade? The inability to compete with the two or three “smart” kids in the room. When it’s about achievement over learning for the passion of discovering things, those who can’t be brilliant won’t be anything. It’s self-preservation.
You’re right. I think that kids would be best off in a learning environment of no more than 5 students all within a +/- 3 point IQ range of each other.
Sorry, ME, couldn’t bite back the sarcasm. If I didn’t care about the future and the world we’re preparing I wouldn’t be posting about education at all.
The thing is, is that your response applies to a small portion of underachievers as their reasoning for giving up if they can’t be number one. If this were a major influence at all, then why do sports need a winner and loser and yet hold such a high place in America’s heart at all levels and ages? Let’s do away with scoring games. Let’s just watch a performance. How do you think that’d go over? Employment certainly is better based on knowledge and ability rather than who’s been there longer when it comes time for layoffs; but doesn’t that mean someone’s doing their job best?
Everyone is good at something. Everyone sucks big time at something. Should I not consider learning French because I know so many others will do so much better at learning it? Besides, it’s been decades since they’ve established class levels, i.e., special education, remedial, advanced, accelerated, so there is less likelihood of a single ‘star’ outshining the others. Back in my day, I tried to beat Virginia Oliwa from kindergarten through 8th grade and whenever I did, it felt damn good. Now I compete against my own expectations and I’m sure that’s what a good portion of students do too, setting up their goal to meet, match, or beat both what is asked of them in achievement and what they ask of themselves.