Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Someone mentioned about how things were "better" 30 years ago, well no they weren't. Kids that couldn't cut it dropped out and worked. As far as knowledge goes check out the second article here: Class Struggle - Jay Mathews on education. - The Washington Post
"Is Knowing History So Important?"
As much as I hate using Matthews as a source it turns out that US students have never been knowledgable in history. Pre-WW I kids didn't know what happened in 1776 and confused Thomas Jefferson with Jefferson Davis. Pre-WW II students couldn't name the 13 original Colonies and thought we purchased Alaska from the Dutch and Hawaii from Norway.
These articles offer no statistical reference with which to compare to today’s results, they are worthless.
"The test called upon the students to identify at least two of the contributions to the political, economic, or social developments of the United States by such famous Americans as Lincoln, Jefferson, Jackson, and Theodore Roosevelt," an article in The New York Times reports. "Only 22 percent of American students had mastered enough history in their high school days to identify two contributions made by Lincoln to this country."
That article was published April 4, 1943.
The only statistical reference in your article states 22% knew pertinent information. That would mean in 1943 the numbers were almost twice what they are today. Gee, there's progress for you.
You can continue to deny the importance of teaching history while all the time the country sinks farther and farther into trouble.
The only statistical reference in your article states 22% knew pertinent information. That would mean in 1943 the numbers were almost twice what they are today. Gee, there's progress for you.
You can continue to deny the importance of teaching history while all the time the country sinks farther and farther into trouble.
Smack yourself! Where did I deny the importance of teaching history, let alone "continue" the denial? And although 22% is almost twice as much as 12%, that number came from an era when most people did not go to high school. So in reality, it's not much different. I repeat, I was not trying to make any point about teaching history, I was presenting some facts.
These articles offer no statistical reference with which to compare to today’s results, they are worthless.
Didn't read it did you? There is no straight line comparable for 2011 to 1943, or earlier, as there was no NAEP. In addition less than 25% of students graduated up through WW II.
You're one of those guys that knows what he knows and nothing will convince you otherwise even when you're wrong.
Well, THAT, or your daughter thinks in a more-worldly fashion; it would never occur to me to think of the Civil War in the context of China..
She might be a little "lost", but you can never accuse her of not thinking "outside the box"...
I think this is actually a very good point. The term "Civil War" in itself could potentially refer to many wars; this could simply be a good time to discuss context. If she has good teachers, she probably HAS learned about other civil wars, or at least has enough knowledge to know that they existed. I think the Spanish Civil War has probably been at least mentioned in some of her classes, for example. Kids take time to learn history; you can't just teach it in chronological order from kindergarten on to senior year, but rather approach it layers. Like another poster said, I think things will fall into place. This was the eighth grader (I think), so she still has four years to fill in the gaps. And how nice it is that she's thinking about things, and is asking her mother for clarification! That shows that SOMETHING is sinking in, or at least she's engaged enough that she's not just ceasing to think about anything historical once she leaves the classroom.
Are you a teacher? Do you even know how hard those teachers out there work when they're in the classroom? Do you know any teachers personally and what all they do? Do you even know if teachers are just slacking off on the job? If the answer is no then you lost your point with me.
Not all teachers are really teachers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by John23
*In a "real school", you'd study whats the point of a war? Who benefits? Have people always benefited from wars? And you'd see common threads between the punic war, and the gulf war or afghanistan. And it'd make you think. School has failed you if you don't understand that whats happening now has happened before.
Not knowing history means you don't know the past, and now you're much easier to manipulate.
It's important to maintain the context, which is that high school history is a survey level course only.
In theory, you would expose students to different areas of history and inspire them to pursue that more on their own, or if they go to university to take electives in that area, or get a degree in that area.
Generally, the history curriculum should fluctuate greatly, because if you can't relate what you're teaching to now, then you don't teach it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HandsUpThumbsDown
Those who fail history are NOT destined to repeat it!
That's funny.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Westerner92
Wow...You actually believe teachers are solely to blame? I just graduated high school, and I've had the pleasure of only running into a handful of "bad" teachers.
About 10 years from now you'll realize how ill-equipped you are to make decisions in elections and to make other choices, and then you'll say your teachers sucked.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jimhcom
I did not say teachers are solely to blame, I also included the administrators that establish the curriculum. The fact is it is the teacher’s job to teach.
But that assumes the teacher is really a teacher and not a wanna be or someone who showed up for education classes at university.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jtur88
The number of students that are more proficient than average is exactly 50%, no more, no less. Obviously, wrong criteria. What's the right criteria?
I would say it's 3%.
Memorizing does not equate to proficiency. Historical facts are, well, facts, and they are available through myriad sources: almanacs, indices, gazetteers, historical works, time-lines, etc etc etc.
A proficient student would know where to find facts; know how to collect them; to organize and sort them; to determine which facts are relevant and which are not; to analyze the facts they have deemed relevant; then report those facts in a succinctly brief narrative; synthesize an hypothesis and extrapolate on the facts.
When looking at WW II, the fact that US troops threw down their weapons and ran like frightened 4 year olds, or that the Allies invaded Sicily and Italy, and then D-Day, and finally the fall of Berlin are irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
What would impress the hell out of me is a student taking those facts and others, collating them, analyzing them, and then hypothesizing if the war would have been shortened if the Allies had invaded the Balkans and seized the oil fields at Ploieti, or if the war could have been shortened if the US had adopted the recommendations of Patton and been more aggressive, or if things would have been different if the Allies had not withdrawn troops from Czechoslovakia or Romania, or had entered Berlin months before the Soviets did.
It's important for students to see how polices, and policy failures have short-term and long-term ramifications and consequences.
Quote:
Originally Posted by uptown_urbanist
I think this is actually a very good point. The term "Civil War" in itself could potentially refer to many wars; this could simply be a good time to discuss context.
Any teacher who can't teach the US Civil War in 3 days of classroom time or less should be taken out and shot.
It is little wonder that our country is in the dire situation we find ourselves.
After all, how can we know where we are going without knowing where we have been?
In another glaring example of how our educational system has failed us, a study performed by NAEP states that only 12% of High School Seniors are proficient in history.
Most are incapable of answering even basic questions of American History.
Thank You to the Teachers and Administrators who have failed us all.
If you've been reading this board for long, you probably know that I am quite willing, when I believe it to be true, to comment on teachers' and administrators' shortcomings (as I see them, of course).
That said, this is not their fault.
The way history curricula are designed is the problem of the school board, actually, and they're under the pressure of special-interest groups of various kinds.
To me, the teaching of history seems quite logical: Begin at the beginning and stop when you come to the end. Divide history into meaningful, manageable chunks, focusing on Western Europe and Britain and America (in that order) because those are the three cultures most relevant to most people in this country. (Needless to say, if we were in another country, this order would not remain the same.)
However, merely outlining this (to me) commonsense program is politically charged from the git-go. Focus on Western Europe, for example, or the cultures of Greece and Rome, and you risk being called an elitist or someone who's bought into the white, male-dominated power structure. Focus on the influence of Britain, and you risk being called all of the above as well. Focus on the other cultures of the world -- the cultures who had less influence on America -- and you risk being called a politically correct liberal who teaches ideology under the guise of history.
What American history are we to teach, anyway, when we come to America? Do we teach the myth (Columbus discovered America) or the reality (He never set foot on the N. American continent and it had been "discovered" 10 to 20,000 years before by explorers who crossed over the Bering land bridge from Asia)?
What we have is a disastrous hodgepodge designed by committee, one in which the incoherence is nearly matched by the irrelevance.
That said, teachers' hands are genuinely tied, as are the hands of administrators. It's their job to make some kind of coherent logic out of this, and the fact that some cannot do so is genuinely not always their fault.
frankly, unless things have changed since I last took history in high school, the way history is taught to kids is ridiculous. it's all memorization, not learning. more emphasis placed on matching up dates w/ important events and not really discussion those events. I despised history in high school yet have taken many awesome history classes at the college level. There's a stark difference in how they are taught. In my college level classes, I have yet to use a boring history text that the teacher merely skimmed over anyways.
This method, at least, has some kind of value in that what you're left with is a sense of what-happened-when. Now, you do not even have that much. Though you speak of your experience with bitterness, your education was better than you give it credit for and better than the education many students are receiving. If you know the significance of 1776, can identify to within a year or two when the Civil War was fought, and know that we fought Korea after we were done with Germany, Italy, and Japan, you're better off than you think.
Any teacher who can't teach the US Civil War in 3 days of classroom time or less should be taken out and shot.
What does that have to do with a child asking her mother about the US Civil War outside of class? We have no idea whether she'd studied the Civil War or not, or at what level. Presumably by eighth grade she's at least spent some time talking about it, but ideally the Civil War is not something only covered in three days. It's something that you talk about in elementary school, in junior high, in high school. It (and other historical events) should also be integrated into other subjects. English, for example; English and History naturally work well together, as it's important to understand the context in which any piece of literature was written and/or set.
Its the way they teach it nowdays. Instead of simply teaching history, they want to get "creative" with it. For example, in my dd history class, they learned all about "significant documents" and lumped in the Magna Carta, Declaration of Independence, US constitution, strung them together in such a way she had no idea what happened when!
Ok, she got a 99% in history, pretty good, eh? then, just yesterday, she asked was the Civil War between North and South China? Or was that North and South Vietnam? she's lost as a goose, yet according to the school system, an honor student, very "proficient" in history!
Okay, but here's my question to you, Marylee --
The teacher may be under pressure from the administration to do a double-header: inflate grades (for instance, labeling as "very proficient" a student who doesn't know the main combatants in the Civil War) and dumb down the curriculum (e.g., by studying 'significant documents' out of chronology and context). After all, giving As is fun. Giving easy work is fun. Giving As for easy work is waaaay fun because then, parents are happy, students are happy, and that makes administrators very, very happy.
Given that this sounds very possible, what was your response?
Did you call the school and demand to know why they are essentially lying to you and your child?
Did you call the school and demand that your child be taught a content-rich, coherent curriculum?
Did you call the school and demand to know whether or not students have the right to fail?
If not -- if you just said, "Oh, well -- at least she's getting an A" -- then with all due respect, you are being part of the problem. If your child graduates with an incoherent understanding of these core subjects, feel free to blame whom you wish, of course, but ask yourself, "What did I do to change this?"
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
she's lost as a goose, yet according to the school system, an honor student, very "proficient" in history!
