A mind is a terrible thing to waste
I don’t know if this is a nationwide trend or if my kids just happened to get “lucky”, but almost every day I get more and more disgusted with what the schools are doing because of this “No Child Left Behind” crap.
I have four very intelligent daughters. I’m not saying that because I’m a proud father. I’m saying that because it is a fact. They read encyclopedias and dictionaries for fun. One of them scored a 31 on the ACT in ninth grade and is now attending a high school that only accepts the top 2% of the kids in the state. All of them are (or were before changing schools) members of the local “Gifted and Talented” program, band, and chess club, just for starters.
The local high school has, over the last few years, decided that getting the kids to pass the Benchmark exams (and therefore improve the schools ranking) is more important than actually TEACHING the kids anything. For the last couple of years, right around this time of year the kids lost a free period so they could take a class in how to take the benchmark exams. Mind you, this is not just a class covering what might be on the test. No, we’re not the least bit concerned with whether or not the kids KNOW this material, as long as they can, for one day, remember what they’ve had hammered into their skulls and make the school look good.
This year there is a different plan . . . sort of. Instead of taking away their free period, now, for three days a week, the social studies class is teaching math!
Because the school is more concerned with improving their ranking than they are with TEACHING things like social studies and history, I recently heard a sixth grade student state that Adolph Hitler was involved in the American Revolutionary War and Gerald Ford became President when Ronald Reagan was assassinated.
Excuse me?
I’ll admit that when I was 12 or so, I may not have known everything about the Presidents who were in office during my father’s childhood, but I at LEAST had a rough idea of the order in which they were elected and I had no doubt as to which ones were assassinated and which were not.
“The philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next” - Abe Lincoln
The philosophy of today’s classroom seems to be, never mind what you’re ACTUALLY here to do, just do what you must to make your superiors look good.
May heaven help us all!
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