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It may be worth noting the US Civil War ended slavery in the 1860s not because of some moral crusade, but because a continent-wide wage-earner society was more convenient for the emerging industrial ruling class. The moralist propaganda rose up to support that.....
There is no basis for this in history. The South seceded from the Union because they felt that state's rights trumped federal rights. Lincoln freed the slaves because it was necessary act which kept Europe from recognizing the CSA as a new country. Prior to this, Lincoln's position was that if it preserved the Union, then he supported Slavery.
When the slaves were declared freed by Lincoln, there were mass riots in the North by poor Whites afraid they would lose their jobs. It was a political move at the time and one not widely supported. Your other comments about the decline of the middle class have similar issues.
Our public education systems have been in an intentional decline for almost 50 years. To understand the reasons why, and the consequences of the decline, read this article in The Atlantic:
That article was written nearly 20 years ago and sadly, our schools have gotten even worse. Both the SAT and the ACT (college entrance exams) have recentered their scoring scales since then to adjust for persistently declining scores. More recent scores on those tests are artificially inflated.
I think the situation is much worst than that Atlantic article. Exponentially worst for the top 25% of students (mostly white, with college educated parents).
They've been stripped in the last 25 years, gone to these factories (schools). The schools fill your head with horror stories about if you don't go to college, if you don't do well, you'll be a loser forever, you'll work at McDonalds. They've basically loaded up the top students with worthless degrees (highschool), then more worthless degrees (bachelors and masters). The only non worthless piece of paper top students get now is a student loan statement from sallie mae each month after they graduate.
-The bottom 25% (illegal immigrants) have risen markedly. They get tons of free benefits (drivers licenses, health insurance). The two have become equal under our very sick educational and political system. The top achieving 25% will be working next to the illegal immigrant. What's the point of achieving then under that kind of a system?
In a place like California, you're educating illegals next to top achieving white or asian kids for 12 years. Who's the loser there? Isn't the pace going to be slower for top achieving students than it would be otherwise? Do you even have to think about it for very long to see who the loser is going to be after 12 years of that?
That's a big difference vs education in the 50's to 70's. Classes then were 90% homogeneous white. They all went at the same speed and learned at the same speed. They came from similar households. They started at a similar point and ended at a similar point.
With politics now, they don't want people starting and ending at similar points. They want equality for all. They want illegals buying 3 homes they can't afford (with no documented income). They want any family being able to qualify for a home. Intellectualism has died because there's no reward for it. You can just get a handout by not being intellectual. "Recentering" the scoring scales for the SAT and ACT is a nice word for recentering all of society, giving handouts to the bottom 25-50% and punishing the top 25%.
-With the "Richest 1% have captured America's wealth article", the points are mostly abstract soundbites.
The CEO pay vs average worker salary statistic has been way overplayed and overused. It's a diversionary tactic. It diverts your attention from the fact that workers in the 70's vs workers in the 90's or 00's are completely different. With completely different hours, job security, benefits, etc. The classification of work has changed. Comparing the two is not apples to apples.
The more dangerous thing for the average person is that, that top CEO making 90 times the average workers salary has basically been writing the textbooks in schools for the last 25 years. To even call them textbooks anymore is a misnomer. They've become anyones opinion who holds power.
I think back to the history books I had in the 90's in highschool. We "solved" depressions. That was the current thinking. They don't happen anymore. Bank runs, bank panics, financial panics...they don't happen anymore. Some very powerful people wrote those things and put those images in students minds. During our illusory prosperity of the 90's. They were setting students up for a suckers play.
-To understand the middle class decline from the 70's, look at what they read. Look at the books that make the best seller list. A book about Alan Greenspan, "The Maestro" was a best seller at one point. Popular books now are fluff books, infotainment, ego driven. They've become distant chains in the corporate machine. A CNBC host becomes popular and writes several investing books. Those aren't really "books", they are chains in the CNBC machine and in the image and publicity machine.
Real books blurred somewhere a few decades ago into infotainment and light, puffy reading. All these success books...by Jay Z, Donald Trump, Richard Branson, or different cable tv hosts, they are part of peoples images and brands. They aren't real knowledge to fight back against the top 1% of the economic elite. The schools somewhere along the line blurred the image of reading. If you "read", you're successful. But it depends on what you're reading. Reading a biography about a rapper isn't really what you need right now.
-The Atlantic article cites lowering reasoning skills. I think that's in cohort with the banks and sallie mae. They don't want students (customers) with high reasoning skills when they're in school or when they get out. The objective of school right now is to get you out with low enough reasoning skills, so that you signed up for that student loan whether you needed it or not.
If college has gone from $40 a semester/quarter in 60's or 70's to $4,000 now, of course you're going to need lower reasoning skills, lower reading skills, lower comprehension skills. You can't have people functioning at the same level, or they'd revolt. And see how much they've been ripped off.
[quote=InformedConsent;12943875]Our public education systems have been in an intentional decline for almost 50 years. To understand the reasons why, and the consequences of the decline, read this article in The Atlantic:
[i][COLOR=black...While students in the bottom quartile have shown slow but steady improvement since the 1960s, average test scores have nonetheless gone down, primarily because of the performance of those in the top quartile. This "highest cohort of achievers," Rudman writes, has shown "the greatest declines across a variety of subjects as well as across age-level groups." Analysts have also found "a substantial drop among those children in the middle range of achievement," he continues, "but less loss and some modest gains at the lower levels." In other words, our brightest youngsters, those most likely to be headed for selective colleges, have suffered the most dramatic setbacks over the past two decades--a fact with grave implications for our ability to compete with other nations in the future."
Why do you think this is so? Many supposedly well-intentioned educational elitists have the belief that public education is primarily for the students from the most disadvantaged socio-economic classes. Some actually resent the parents of students who are from more solid family structures and are annoyed by their demands for higher-level courses and gifted programs.
NCLB has further accelerated the decline of our brightest students as many school districts have relegated the curriculum from a collection of diverse skills and concepts necessary to develop a well-rounded knowledge base to a framework that mimics the objectives used on the state test to measure Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). AYP is tied to federal funding and federal funds have become an integral part of a school district's ability to pay for mandated programs for the target groups. Most schools have become data-driven experts at finding ways to meet AYP at the expense of real learning which requires the development of meta cognitive skills beyond what is measured on a state test.
Real learning is what is needed for problem solving. It traditionally was called a solid liberal education. Now it is a paint-by-numbers approach to learning. When the numbers don't create the picture desired the learner is lost looking to someone else to tell them what to do.
It is truly a sad situation and a recipe for disaster.
Last edited by Lincolnian; 02-18-2010 at 05:55 AM..
I think the situation is much worst than that Atlantic article. Exponentially worst for the top 25% of students (mostly white, with college educated parents).
They've been stripped in the last 25 years, gone to these factories (schools). The schools fill your head with horror stories about if you don't go to college, if you don't do well, you'll be a loser forever, you'll work at McDonalds. They've basically loaded up the top students with worthless degrees (highschool), then more worthless degrees (bachelors and masters). The only non worthless piece of paper top students get now is a student loan statement from sallie mae each month after they graduate.
-The bottom 25% (illegal immigrants) have risen markedly. They get tons of free benefits (drivers licenses, health insurance). The two have become equal under our very sick educational and political system. The top achieving 25% will be working next to the illegal immigrant. What's the point of achieving then under that kind of a system?
In a place like California, you're educating illegals next to top achieving white or asian kids for 12 years. Who's the loser there? Isn't the pace going to be slower for top achieving students than it would be otherwise? Do you even have to think about it for very long to see who the loser is going to be after 12 years of that?
That's a big difference vs education in the 50's to 70's. Classes then were 90% homogeneous white. They all went at the same speed and learned at the same speed. They came from similar households. They started at a similar point and ended at a similar point.
With politics now, they don't want people starting and ending at similar points. They want equality for all. They want illegals buying 3 homes they can't afford (with no documented income). They want any family being able to qualify for a home. Intellectualism has died because there's no reward for it. You can just get a handout by not being intellectual. "Recentering" the scoring scales for the SAT and ACT is a nice word for recentering all of society, giving handouts to the bottom 25-50% and punishing the top 25%.
-With the "Richest 1% have captured America's wealth article", the points are mostly abstract soundbites.
The CEO pay vs average worker salary statistic has been way overplayed and overused. It's a diversionary tactic. It diverts your attention from the fact that workers in the 70's vs workers in the 90's or 00's are completely different. With completely different hours, job security, benefits, etc. The classification of work has changed. Comparing the two is not apples to apples.
The more dangerous thing for the average person is that, that top CEO making 90 times the average workers salary has basically been writing the textbooks in schools for the last 25 years. To even call them textbooks anymore is a misnomer. They've become anyones opinion who holds power.
I think back to the history books I had in the 90's in highschool. We "solved" depressions. That was the current thinking. They don't happen anymore. Bank runs, bank panics, financial panics...they don't happen anymore. Some very powerful people wrote those things and put those images in students minds. During our illusory prosperity of the 90's. They were setting students up for a suckers play.
-To understand the middle class decline from the 70's, look at what they read. Look at the books that make the best seller list. A book about Alan Greenspan, "The Maestro" was a best seller at one point. Popular books now are fluff books, infotainment, ego driven. They've become distant chains in the corporate machine. A CNBC host becomes popular and writes several investing books. Those aren't really "books", they are chains in the CNBC machine and in the image and publicity machine.
Real books blurred somewhere a few decades ago into infotainment and light, puffy reading. All these success books...by Jay Z, Donald Trump, Richard Branson, or different cable tv hosts, they are part of peoples images and brands. They aren't real knowledge to fight back against the top 1% of the economic elite. The schools somewhere along the line blurred the image of reading. If you "read", you're successful. But it depends on what you're reading. Reading a biography about a rapper isn't really what you need right now.
-The Atlantic article cites lowering reasoning skills. I think that's in cohort with the banks and sallie mae. They don't want students (customers) with high reasoning skills when they're in school or when they get out. The objective of school right now is to get you out with low enough reasoning skills, so that you signed up for that student loan whether you needed it or not.
If college has gone from $40 a semester/quarter in 60's or 70's to $4,000 now, of course you're going to need lower reasoning skills, lower reading skills, lower comprehension skills. You can't have people functioning at the same level, or they'd revolt. And see how much they've been ripped off.
Buried in that racially tinged abuse of the english language are actually some good points.
1) Ceo making 90x average wage? Evil.
Athlete making 900x average wage? Ask for their autograph.
(What do you think kids are putting their efforts into at school anymore? Especially when being academic means you are a NERD)
2) Cuts in school funding have hurt accelerated academic programs. So now my sisters kids have to sit and twiddle their thumbs with the morons who care about sports and x-box. (Oh well, we always need infantry. )
3) The point you left out...people are lazy and have a sense of entitlement.
Many supposedly well-intentioned educational elitists have the belief that public education is primarily for the students from the most disadvantaged socio-economic classes. Some actually resent the parents of students who are from more solid family structures and are annoyed by their demands for higher-level courses and gifted programs.
That's true, and the article briefly touches on that.
Quote:
NCLB has further accelerated the decline of our brightest students as many school districts have relegated the curriculum from a collection of diverse skills and concepts necessary to develop a well-rounded knowledge base to a framework that mimics the objectives used on the state test to measure Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). AYP is tied to federal funding and federal funds have become an integral part of a school district's ability to pay for mandated programs for the target groups. Most schools have become data-driven experts at finding ways to meet AYP at the expense of real learning which requires the development of meta cognitive skills beyond what is measured on a state test.
That's where schools are doing it wrong. You don't need to pull the entire school down to make sure struggling students pass the NCLB tests if the schools practiced flexible ability/skill level grouping and structured the curriculum to match the readiness/skill level of each group so that EVERY student makes forward progress. Note how there is nothing in NCLB that requires the ability to barely pass a basic-level test be set as the ceiling, or the end goal. To the contrary, it should be considered the floor, the barely acceptable level.
Quote:
Real learning is what is needed for problem solving. It traditionally was called a solid liberal education. Now it is a paint-by-numbers approach to learning. When the numbers don't create the picture desired the learner is lost looking to someone else to tell them what to do.
It is truly a sad situation and a recipe for disaster.
It's a disaster because schools are teaching everyone at the lowest level. They don't have to, or even need to. They do so in a misguided attempt at forcing artificial egalitarianism. Social justice is a driving force behind that.
Last edited by InformedConsent; 02-18-2010 at 09:57 AM..
Buried in that racially tinged abuse of the english language are actually some good points.
1) Ceo making 90x average wage? Evil.
Athlete making 900x average wage? Ask for their autograph.
(What do you think kids are putting their efforts into at school anymore? Especially when being academic means you are a NERD)
2) Cuts in school funding have hurt accelerated academic programs. So now my sisters kids have to sit and twiddle their thumbs with the morons who care about sports and x-box. (Oh well, we always need infantry. )
3) The point you left out...people are lazy and have a sense of entitlement.
To be fair, kids are getting lazy information. If all I could read were government school books, I'd be pretty lazy. There's no information in them.
-We solved depressions. They don't happen anymore.
-We solved bank runs and panics. People don't lose money in banks anymore, do they?
-The Federal Reserve is good. They stabilize the system.
-Basically, the govt is good. They always know what they're doing.
Poverty and sickness happened in the "old days". In current times (80's and 90's), people are prosperous. Never mind that unemployment calculations, cpi calculations, etc were all being changed when I was in highschool. But of course, that wasn't in our books.
Schools do a good job of creating a very thin line of passivity in their students. People in the old days were stupid! They didn't understand money. They got their gold confiscated by FDR. The robber barrons and the monopolies back then.....JP Morgan was more powerful than the Treasury. That doesn't happen anymore, does it? People aren't that powerful anymore, are they?
Funny that all these people now behind the scenes were never mentioned in our books...Goldman Sachs, Geitner, Paulson. And you wonder why people are ill informed and in denial. The schools have created a very passive body of people.
Unfortunately teachers often have very little say in how or what is taught in many school districts. Many districts are moving toward common lesson plans and looking to see homogeneous experiences in each class.
The flexible grouping is an admirable goal yet many schools are dealing with serious behavior problems that makes it nearly impossible to run flexible groups effectively within a large class with only one teacher. Many kids simply will not or are unable to work independently. This is also a big reason why many schools have moved to eliminate homework. Much of the previously given homework is done as guided practice in the classroom. Many educational leaders justify the elimination of homework adding that it is not fair to the student who does not have the support system (an involved/capable parent) at home.
Yes, we are our own worst enemy. However, teachers who voice opinions that differ from contemporary positions held by the educational experts and administrators find their opinions are not welcomed and the teacher may face retribution.
Until these issues are discussed in an honest and open manner we will continue to see an erosion of the upper quartiles. Additionally, we can continue to dance around the root cause issue and make disingenuous statements such as "all problems are left at the door." The fact of the matter is that a continually eroding family structure with a much higher growth rate of children born into poverty has a serious negative impact on learning. The number of children being raised by single mothers who didn't graduate from high school and are on public assistance continues to rise. In contrast, the overall family size of children being raised by married, educated parents continues to decline.
Last edited by Lincolnian; 02-19-2010 at 04:49 AM..
Our public education systems have been in an intentional decline for almost 50 years. To understand the reasons why, and the consequences of the decline, read this article in The Atlantic:
[i][COLOR=black...While students in the bottom quartile have shown slow but steady improvement since the 1960s, average test scores have nonetheless gone down, primarily because of the performance of those in the top quartile. This "highest cohort of achievers," Rudman writes, has shown "the greatest declines across a variety of subjects as well as across age-level groups." Analysts have also found "a substantial drop among those children in the middle range of achievement," he continues, "but less loss and some modest gains at the lower levels." In other words, our brightest youngsters, those most likely to be headed for selective colleges, have suffered the most dramatic setbacks over the past two decades--a fact with grave implications for our ability to compete with other nations in the future."
Why do you think this is so? Many supposedly well-intentioned educational elitists have the belief that public education is primarily for the students from the most disadvantaged socio-economic classes. Some actually resent the parents of students who are from more solid family structures and are annoyed by their demands for higher-level courses and gifted programs.
NCLB has further accelerated the decline of our brightest students as many school districts have relegated the curriculum from a collection of diverse skills and concepts necessary to develop a well-rounded knowledge base to a framework that mimics the objectives used on the state test to measure Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). AYP is tied to federal funding and federal funds have become an integral part of a school district's ability to pay for mandated programs for the target groups. Most schools have become data-driven experts at finding ways to meet AYP at the expense of real learning which requires the development of meta cognitive skills beyond what is measured on a state test.
Real learning is what is needed for problem solving. It traditionally was called a solid liberal education. Now it is a paint-by-numbers approach to learning. When the numbers don't create the picture desired the learner is lost looking to someone else to tell them what to do.
It is truly a sad situation and a recipe for disaster.
I definitely see your point here, but I think that our best and brightest are going to be the best and brightest regardless of the environment they are in. Many kids make the best of a situation and go on to do great things in spite of the K-12 educational environment.
You have to look at the resilience of kids. I think to a large degree, genetics, coupled with a stable home environment that promotes learning, determines a child's success. I think that that study you are quoting, just like the one the OP posted, is rather one dimensional.
I think the figures you point out are irrefutable, but I don't see the figures by themselves as all that significant. There are too many variables to draw absolutes. America does need to push math and science a lot harder than we are, though. I am a firm believer in that.
I definitely see your point here, but I think that our best and brightest are going to be the best and brightest regardless of the environment they are in. Many kids make the best of a situation and go on to do great things in spite of the K-12 educational environment.
You have to look at the resilience of kids. I think to a large degree, genetics, coupled with a stable home environment that promotes learning, determines a child's success. I think that that study you are quoting, just like the one the OP posted, is rather one dimensional.
I think the figures you point out are irrefutable, but I don't see the figures by themselves as all that significant. There are too many variables to draw absolutes. America does need to push math and science a lot harder than we are, though. I am a firm believer in that.
The dumbing down is really quite pervasive - to the point that our public schools now educate less than half of the students to basic grade-level proficiency.
Nationwide, public school student achievement is actually much, much lower than most people think. Each state's education officials establish their own state standards, commission/construct their own tests, and set their own 'passing' scores. This has resulted in manipulations that make it look like public schools are educating our country's children, when in reality the majority of students in many states are far below acceptable levels of proficiency. In some cases, there's as much as a 70 percentage point difference in proficiency levels between state achievement tests and the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) tests. Not one state listed in the chart below educates even half of their students to grade-level proficiency on the NAEP.
If anyone wants to see their (or any other) state's reported proficiency level vs. the NAEP proficiency level (to see if their public schools are being honest about providing an adequate education), check here: NAEP Researchcenter - NAEP and State Equivalent Percent Table
For each grade level, the first column lists the percentage of students scoring as proficient (meets or exceeds state standards) on the state test; the second column lists the percentage of students scoring as proficient on the NAEP (National Assessment).
Warning! This tread is NOT posted ,nor intended, as a political discussion. Please don't make it one!
Ever wonder why no matter how hard you try you simply can't stay even let alone get ahead? This story will explain why you're not supposed to be able to do anything but keep your head down and your nose to grindstone.
Freedom from want is the only way to break the materialistic cycle that threatens to destroy the middle class. Until we are willing to do without the garbage that has been brainwashed into us as "necessary" for survival such as weekly trips to McDonalds, cable television, new cars, expensive houses, etc., the American Middle Class will never crawl out of the hole they have dug for themselves.
I live very humbly but happily on about $18k - $20k per year. I eat well, my house is paid for. I do not watch television and I do not go to movies. My car is 16 years old. I have not purchased a NEW piece of clothing (other than underwear in many, many years.) I can buy *anything* that I want, yet, there is nothing I want to buy.
When I tell this to people they shake their heads and say.... "I could never live like that". Fine. Let your wants eat you alive. Until you are willing to walk away from the desire for THINGS, you will always be a slave to someone who provides those things to you.
Reading Buddhism really helped me understand that the material things of this world are nothing but a burden and that want is the killer of happiness.
20yrsinBranson
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