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Ignore these 'us vs them' studies. The US attempts to educate everyone at the same minimum level, whereas other systems often cull students at various levels. Britain has two separate systems, one public, which is a disaster, and one private, which prepares kids for college. Sweden, Denmark are often compared against the US, yet Texas has cities bigger than the populations of these countries. Apples and oranges comparisons.
Parochial schools routinely have better students. Dallas ISD effectively ran the white and minority top students out of the district as the system collapsed. My DIL teaches in DISD. She was given almost 40 2nd graders, 10 of which were developmentally impaired, some very significantly, and most of the rest didn't know how to even read. No assistants. She spent the year effectively babysitting.
Look at private education, home-schooling. You cannot just turn the kids over to the schools and assume they will get an education.
The only surviving member of the Enola Gay crew that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was invited to a class in a local school to speak about the mission and how it ended WWII. The public educated teacher introduced the 90 year old veteran as having served in World War Eleven. The veteran rose and walked out of the room without saying a word. His grandson drove him home.
It is just sad what has happened to our education system. We led the world in manufacturing and innovation. We led the world in education. Then progressives took over the system. We went from #1 to #17 among developed nations. Now we are at #37 and if Common Core is actually adopted in classrooms, we will be in third world status in educational achievement. Today, Common Core is just a threat. It has not been fully implemented. It can still be defeated.
To address the original question, parents should put their children in private schools if they can afford it. If they can't afford private school, consider home schooling . You don't need a bunch of silly "methods courses" to do that. The worst case scenario is that you have no opportunity other than a public school. In that case, you really need to obtain some older discarded textbooks that teach facts. An excellent resource is the Kahn series of internet classes in math. They are free.
Protect your kids. Teach them facts and the truth. Defend them against schools who bully students who know more than their teachers in some subjects.
Northern Maine Land Man
Former test pilot
Engineer
Fine judge of onion soup
My suggestion would be to let the teachers teach and trust them to use their expertise in conjunction with the other professionals in the school and the district. No more standardized testing.
My suggestion would be to let the teachers teach and trust them to use their expertise in conjunction with the other professionals in the school and the district. No more standardized testing.
A nun told one of my sisters that science and religion don't mix. I didn't get any science courses in grade school even though there were science books sitting on the shelves.
Why don't we have a National Recommended Reading List for students and parents to choose from?
There are so many interesting books that have been around for ages that we never here about. That is older than Orwell's 1984 and a more interesting book.
Toni Morrison is a Nobel and Pulitzer prize winner. LOL at poorly written.
The Bluest Eye was written in 1970 and was Morrison's first book. Toni Morrison won the won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1987, and in 1993 she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. I wouldn't assume that because she won these awards 17 and 23 years later that her first book would be a masterpiece.
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Originally Posted by maciesmom
Because anonymous reviews on Amazon is how we're determining the value of literature now? I'll put that in the same catagory as using Wikipedia as solid reference material.
Amazon currently has 656 reviews of this book. Barnes & Noble currently has 343 reviews and goodreads has 82,828 ratings and 2,835 reviews. These ratins and reviews are overwhelming positive but all have a vocal minority who feel the book is not appropriate to be required reading in high school.
How do you determine value in literature? Does it matter if the book is an Oprah’s Book Club selection? What about whether it won a Newbery Medal for American literature for children?
I don't question that The Bluest Eye has value and I would be interested in reading the book. But based on the passages I have read, I would not want to read and discuss this book in a high school classroom. I'm not in favor of censoring of many books and I believe high school students can discuss mature subjects that include rape and sexuality; but I think this book goes into too much explicit detail to be read aloud and discussed in a high school classroom. Many students and teachers are not comfortable reading statements such as, "and softening the lips of his anus." Many high school English classes will take turns reading the book aloud in class because many students will not read books on their own.
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Originally Posted by nana053
Since Morrison recreates black speech in her novels, I wonder how many of these readers simply did not know how to read this kind of writing.
Morrison uses extreme situations to reveal her characters ability to survive. She concentrates on rural black communities. In this particular novel, she alternates between first person narrative and third person omniscient narrative which may confuse people, but it also gives the rural poor black person, the ability to resonate with the reader. Stream of Consciousness can be a real problem for the reader and seem disjointed even though it has a unifying intent.
See the banned book awareness sites about novels with similar themes.
As for the content, The Color Purple deals with similar content as does To Kill a Mockingbird. To Kill a Mockingbird was on the Banned book list in 1966 for dealing with racism, rape and incest as a parent in Hanover, VA protested that the use of rape as a plot device was immoral. A common reason to challenges brought forth in the 1980’s labeled it a “filthy, trashy novel.”
In 1984, The Color Purple was removed from the Oakland California honors English currriculum due to its sexual and social explicitness. It was eventually returned to the curriculum after 9 months of arguing. Pomperaug High School in Southbury, Connecticut banned it in 1995 because sexually explicit passages “aren’t appropriate high school reading.”
The more I think about it, I believe the conversation about whether it is appropriate for The Bluest Eye to be on the Common Core’s list of exemplar texts for 11th graders is irrelevant. It doesn't matter if it is on the list since very few teachers will use it in class. I doubt that a teacher would get through this book in a public school classroom without complaints to the principal and school board.
Last edited by villageidiot1; 04-10-2014 at 09:36 AM..
So 13,588 different curriculums in the US? How would you deal with student and teacher transfers?
Isn't child development a part of teacher training? I'm sure that teachers and educational professionals would choose content that is developmentally appropriate which would mean that students transferring from one district to another would have to adjust somewhat (they do now, even with Federal standards) but it would not be a huge leap.
Isn't child development a part of teacher training? I'm sure that teachers and educational professionals would choose content that is developmentally appropriate which would mean that students transferring from one district to another would have to adjust somewhat (they do now, even with Federal standards) but it would not be a huge leap.
Nearly thirty years ago, my husband was shut out of high school Calculus after moving between states, not because of poor grades or lack of room in the class, but because he had taken Geometry and Algebra II/Trig out of sequence. Yes, really. He's still angry about it, because he was completely unprepared for college Calculus, and he struggled much more than he would have had he first been exposed to Calc his senior year.
My kids have attended multiple schools in various parts of the country. I think a big part of the reason they did reasonably well in math is that all the schools they attended used the same curriculum, so the pain of transition was minimized. We can argue about the merits of Everyday Math until we're blue in the face -- for the record, not a fan -- but the consistency from one school to the next helped them stay on track.
So, you would be ok with a liberal or conservative curriculum, based not on facts but political leanings of the district?
Likewise, you see no problem with the highly educated northeast demanding more depth in education than parts of the Deep South?
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