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Just one more thought on "fluff" - while I would never argue that knowledge of M&Ms or Hubba Bubba were essential to the well-rounded education, I think one reason I get uncomfortable when discussing the value of things described as fluff is because the definition has changed so much over the years. It wasn't all that long ago that the only history that "mattered" was primarily that of wealthy white men. That view has changed, but I do think we need to be on our guard and to periodically evaluate what we consider to be signficant. The details of specific junk food may never be significant, for example, but food history in itself has come to become increasingly valued as something worthy of study. Of course no one topic in history should or could be studied totally independently from anything else, which is what makes it (to me) such a fascinating field.
Originally Posted by jps-teacher
But we never claimed there were NO wonderful things going on or that NO school does a good job or any of the things that you are countering here
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Originally Posted by uptown_urbanist
You might not be claiming that, but some people are indeed making that argument.
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A 7-year-old's understanding is not going to be anything like what a 12-year-old gets out of it, regardless of quality of education.
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This is where you are incorrect about my daughter at least. She is an exceptional child, half way through the sixth grade, and with the understand of an adult with some things.
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Originally Posted by uptown_urbanist
Saying that a 7 year old and a 12 year old are different doesn't mean that the younger child isn't doing advanced work; it just means that kids have different developmental milestones.
Let me try this a different way for both of you.
Your 7 year old daughter is unlikely to get as much out of somethings as she will as a 12 year old.
Conversely, that developmental milestones exist does not man that they are age-based milestones. There are almost certainly 7 year olds with a more sophisticated and mature grasp of material than most 12 year olds and some adults.
Saying that a 7 year old and a 12 year old are different doesn't mean that the younger child isn't doing advanced work; it just means that kids have different developmental milestones. A 12 year old has more years of life experience and has more years of education (both formal and informal), and therefor experiences the world differently. Give it a few more years and the 16 year old is going to have a different outlook than the 12 year old. It has nothing to do with quality of education, level of intelligence, or anything else. A seven-year-old, however smart, is not an adult. She is also not a preteen or a teenager. It has nothing to do with watering down the information.
I have a huge problem with this cookie cutter generalization. Our daughter is in fact as intelligent or more intelligent as any 6th grader. If you define preteen as a kid who is in the stage in which puberty begings, she also is in that stage as well. Why does everyone comfuse or deliberately mix up physical development with actual IQ ability? Everyone is different and develops differently on all the levels and their physical development IQ (which you call here "life experience") can be vastly different.
To take it into adulthood, I have a different appreciation for the experiences of women and mothers now than I did before I had a kid. I think one can be a top scholar on women's history without having had children, but I can attest that my personal experience with pregnancy and birth has given me a deeper understanding of some of the implications it would have had on the lives of women in previous centuries. You don't need personal experience to understand or appreciate or study these things, but it does change one's perspective. I've never been in a war zone, and I'm sure that anyone who has been involved in a war or who has visited such an area has a different reaction to reading about wartime experiences, for that matter. A seven year old has limited life experience, so it's only logical that his or her understanding of various things is going to evolve with time.
This is where I differed. I had this appreciation as a child. When I had children, the only thing that changed my view is that I lost empathy for mothers of today. Many gifted kids have various levels of understanding as well. Physical experience and understanding are two different things. If you go by this logic, how is it that a child from a family that loves to eat meat becomes as passionate as they do to be a vegetarian? Levels of understanding, passion for a subject, IQ, are all contributing factors.
In response to the Hubba Bubba post, you also don't "state" history. You interpret it. You teach kids the difference between firm facts and believed facts, and you teach them to be skeptical and to verify everything they can. You teach them not to trust that the written word -- whether the writings of a modern scholar or the publication of a source from the time -- is the "truth." Learning how to think is part of a solid historical education, too. It's great that you had an opportunity to fact check an erroneous Hubba Bubba story, but that's exactly the sort of thing that should be expected in any good historical learning experience. No one should EVER blindly believe what's in a textbook, and anyone who does so -- teacher or student -- is failing as a teacher or a student.
Actually, dear, I wrote that history and it is a history that is currently being looked at by National Geographic in another country of the world to document that information. The research that I have done has put myself, along with two people that I have yet to meet face to face from the UK, at the top for having the most knowledge in the world in the subject. The Hubba Bubba bubble gum as a very small part, but yet, I was able to rewrite the history. Sadly though, history is not being taught well. In fact, kids are being taught lies. Such as the greatness that we were able to provide "savages"" in advancing their low lives...and I don't mean Native American, I mean Celts, Africans, ect. It was more destruction than the saving grace that many school history books state.
And as far as "fluff," you missed my earlier point that what seems like fluff on the surface can actually be used as an entry point into decidedly non-fluffy material.
Can't we find something that is not related to advertising a product that leading experts and doctors say are not healthy for our children?
How do you know that this German student was "four years more socially and emotionally mature" than her US peers? What does that mean? How do you quantify that? How would you possibly casually evaluate that in someone?
Because the tests she took proved it, which were suppose to be for grade placement. No wonder she was two years younger than the rest of us. One of the things that was cited by her and a male exchange student was the immaturity over nudity. "Ohhh...naked people...Its just are people!" was the attitude they had. There have been studies about this comparing college students. Our kids are really immature compared to other countries.
Acutally, here is one example....Look all through the curriculum. NEVER once is there mention of history as a subject, as it is in most public schools. This is just third grade but I looked at all the grades k-4 and they were all the same. There is mention of social studies however. And most kids have more knowledge coming out of elementary school about their own state than they do about their entire country and world history combined. Apparently though, learning how to be a good citizen is more important than learning real history.
History in elmentary school is a joke. If you ask about wars, kids will tell you about the war on Iraq and the war in Afghanistan. They may even be able to tell you WWI & WWI. They can not tell you about wars that are currently raging in Africa or how parents there are forced to kill one of their children to feed the rest of the family. They do not know about waring Celts, wars including famous leaders such as Napoleon or past wars in places from China to Brazil. They have knowldege of the medevial world and how this is part of their ancestorial background. If you ask kids how language has evolved into what we have today, they will not know.
At most they might be able to tell you there are pyramids in Egypt that were used to bury kings and queens, yet they will not be able to tell you how Egypt during that time period interacted with the rest of the world or among themselves for that matter.
It wasn't that long ago that I was channel flipping and caught the end of the National Geography bee. I was quite shocked that only the smarted of the smarted know the answers to those questions. Why are kids not learning all this in school naturally?
What is so very sad is that my 7 year old knows more about history than your average 6th grader.
I, btw, to not waste my time on timelines and making kids memorize when something happened at this point. It is important that they know what happened and can say..."At the same time in Europe..." for example that the exact date.
Sure kids are learning SOME history in elementarty but what is shocking to me is that we have already covered this with our 5 and 7 year old kids. DD has done the second half already. Where is world history here? Is it just the "rising of civaliztion" that they put out there for th e5th grade? FIFTH GRADE! All second graders should know this information!
BUT WAIT! Maybe they will learn some of it in 7th grade.
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COME ON! The high school years are needed for in depth analysis of histroy and they should be prepared with 7 years of "AND while this was happening in the America's, we also this going on in Asia, this going on in Africa, this going on in South America, and this going on in Europe.
The problem that kids have with timelines and figuring out dates is that we always seperate history as one tiny unit on a specific subject, usually related to American history, and do not expand on it. There are little informational bits but nothing substantial. It is like asking an anorexic if they had lunch and they answer yes but all they had was a sodium free cracker.
History in Elementary public schools is a joke. I know this from my extensive reasearch, looking for the most challenging public school curriculum in the US to base the curriculum I built for my kids. I've searched every single state's expectations. Sadly, I have to spend a great deal each year beefing up the curricula with more substantial information to keep my kids from growing up with such a sub par education.
Well, being in Louisiana explains a lot-being ranked 50th in quality of education says a lot. Try living in a state ranked #1 and all the things you are complaining about not being done ARE being done here. Our kids' history education up until this point has been totally appropriate and educational. They know a heck of a lot more about our country, wars, etc. then the Iraq war. I think you need to get out a little, stop being so negative and look around. You may have had a bad experience but your are FAR from the norm, in fact, very far and I would venture a guess that your "exceptional" 7 year old would be an average student here. I am sorry to say but you have a very narrow mind about education and hopefully your children are being exposed to other viewpoints.
Quote: A 7-year-old's understanding is not going to be anything like what a 12-year-old gets out of it, regardless of quality of education.
Let me try this a different way for both of you.
Your 7 year old daughter is unlikely to get as much out of somethings as she will as a 12 year old.
Conversely, that developmental milestones exist does not man that they are age-based milestones. There are almost certainly 7 year olds with a more sophisticated and mature grasp of material than most 12 year olds and some adults.
Is there a high percentage of them? Nope.
Then why is it that my 7 year old can teach a 5th grader when don't get a concept? Why is it she can tutor them in every subject? Why is it she did not believe me after seeing a Sylvan learning center ad about a preteen walking in their building with an algebra book and I told her that was normal for his age? Why is it she can read with more fluently than a 17 year old I know who is right on for his age academically?
There is a small percent but our daughter does indeed fall into that category. While she was born the way she is, I also accredit it to not talking down to her, not reading too many watered down toddler books to her and reading JRR Tolkien, Pride and Prejudice, (she picked the book from my bookshelf and attentively listened to it. She had wanted me to red the thing in one day.) and other books of the like starting at age 2. Currently she is finishing up the Series of Unfortunate Events (2 books left) and is excited to begin the Eragon trilogy. She also has Inkheart, and Mark Twain (the real ones, not watered down) on her list. She has always chosen her own books and taught herself to read at age 3. She has been begging to read Lord of the Flies but I have a very indepth lesson for that...one in which I went over the head of my 10th grade teacher and wrote material for her to teach her future classes with, that she is not ready for so we'll wait on that one.
That is another subject with a weak base....literature, with an emphasis on classic works, in either elementary or high school.
Just one more thought on "fluff" - while I would never argue that knowledge of M&Ms or Hubba Bubba were essential to the well-rounded education, I think one reason I get uncomfortable when discussing the value of things described as fluff is because the definition has changed so much over the years. It wasn't all that long ago that the only history that "mattered" was primarily that of wealthy white men. That view has changed, but I do think we need to be on our guard and to periodically evaluate what we consider to be signficant. The details of specific junk food may never be significant, for example, but food history in itself has come to become increasingly valued as something worthy of study. Of course no one topic in history should or could be studied totally independently from anything else, which is what makes it (to me) such a fascinating field.
I was simply stating that the history of a candy company can be handy but I guess the point I never really stated was it was very easy to find without having to be taught it in school. IF kids need this information life, they should have been taught the research skills in school to find it on their own.
As far as the gun, a military person had stated that they had discovered a piece of history that most of the world had no idea exsisted. It had been lost in history. This person, when speaking of the account, was talking about his trip and had mentioned Hubba Bubba bubble gum. Since some of the details were sketchy, I was able to either prove he did what he said he did in the year he said he did, or prove he was lying. This information was very important for the ability to actually find this artifact in that specific area again and obtain further information from the locals living in that area. Some people believed that this guy was lying and that he had made the item and had benefited financially from his experience. We found he had simply forgotton the name of the gum and were successful, after a year of someone in that country doing the footwork, in finding it...and still being used by the locals there.
Yes, the food industry is worthy of being studied....but if we asked our schools to teach it, would the teach about how this is tied directly to our governement and how our FDA is allowed to pass products that they knew were bad to begin with? Would they teach that the FDA has allowed candy companies (since we are on that topic) to label anything with cocoa powder in it as chocolate when most of the flavor is artificial and the texture is an increased amount of wax? Would we talk about how the USDA is also bought into the BS? No, we would tell them how happy go lucky we are for believing that the happy little food pryamid is actually good for us. Such as:
Quote:
In terms of protein, the guidelines continue to lump together red meat, poultry, fish, and beans (including soy products). They ask us to judge these protein sources by their total fat content, and "make choices that are lean, low-fat, or fat-free." This ignores the evidence that these foods have different types of fats. It also overlooks mounting evidence that replacing red meat with a combination of fish, poultry, beans, and nuts offers numerous health benefits. Food Pyramids: What Should You Really Eat? - What Should You Eat? - The Nutrition Source - Harvard School of Public Health
and
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There was not much receptivity in the 1990s, when we raised these criticisms of the food guide pyramid. It was almost an accepted religious belief that fat was bad and carbohydrates were good. Then there were lots of economic interests behind the food pyramid as well. Clearly the dairy industry is extremely well represented in the food pyramid. The beef industry is there, and it's very convenient that beef is combined along with fish and poultry and nuts and legumes. So each one of those industries can say: It's healthy to have three servings a day of our product. …frontline: diet wars: the fattening: reassessing the food pyramid | PBS
Yeah...I'm going to teach my kids that they need to limit the amoung of legumes they eat as they do meat. If they ate green beans every meal every day, three times the recommended allowance, I'm betting they will be healthier than the kid who eats that much in beef every meal. (DD went through a green bean stage just like this and we let her eat until her heart content but would definitely restrict unheathier choices.)
Well, being in Louisiana explains a lot-being ranked 50th in quality of education says a lot. Try living in a state ranked #1 and all the things you are complaining about not being done ARE being done here. Our kids' history education up until this point has been totally appropriate and educational. They know a heck of a lot more about our country, wars, etc. then the Iraq war. I think you need to get out a little, stop being so negative and look around. You may have had a bad experience but your are FAR from the norm, in fact, very far and I would venture a guess that your "exceptional" 7 year old would be an average student here. I am sorry to say but you have a very narrow mind about education and hopefully your children are being exposed to other viewpoints.
Where do you get that we live in Lousiana?? I am laughing my butt off with that one. In fact, our state is ranked in the top 10.
Our daughter is nowhere close to normal compared to most kids.
Then why is it that my 7 year old can teach a 5th grader when don't get a concept? Why is it she can tutor them in every subject? Why is it she did not believe me after seeing a Sylvan learning center ad about a preteen walking in their building with an algebra book and I told her that was normal for his age? Why is it she can read with more fluently than a 17 year old I know who is right on for his age academically?
There is a small percent but our daughter does indeed fall into that category. While she was born the way she is, I also accredit it to not talking down to her, not reading too many watered down toddler books to her and reading JRR Tolkien, Pride and Prejudice, (she picked the book from my bookshelf and attentively listened to it. She had wanted me to red the thing in one day.) and other books of the like starting at age 2. Currently she is finishing up the Series of Unfortunate Events (2 books left) and is excited to begin the Eragon trilogy. She also has Inkheart, and Mark Twain (the real ones, not watered down) on her list. She has always chosen her own books and taught herself to read at age 3. She has been begging to read Lord of the Flies but I have a very indepth lesson for that...one in which I went over the head of my 10th grade teacher and wrote material for her to teach her future classes with, that she is not ready for so we'll wait on that one.
That is another subject with a weak base....literature, with an emphasis on classic works, in either elementary or high school.
Where do you get that we live in Lousiana?? I am laughing my butt off with that one. In fact, our state is ranked in the top 10.
Our daughter is nowhere close to normal compared to most kids.
Quote:
Originally Posted by flik_becky
Acutally, here is one example....Look all through the curriculum. NEVER once is there mention of history as a subject, as it is in most public schools. This is just third grade but I looked at all the grades k-4 and they were all the same. There is mention of social studies however. And most kids have more knowledge coming out of elementary school about their own state than they do about their entire country and world history combined. Apparently though, learning how to be a good citizen is more important than learning real history.
History in elmentary school is a joke. If you ask about wars, kids will tell you about the war on Iraq and the war in Afghanistan. They may even be able to tell you WWI & WWI. They can not tell you about wars that are currently raging in Africa or how parents there are forced to kill one of their children to feed the rest of the family. They do not know about waring Celts, wars including famous leaders such as Napoleon or past wars in places from China to Brazil. They have knowldege of the medevial world and how this is part of their ancestorial background. If you ask kids how language has evolved into what we have today, they will not know.
At most they might be able to tell you there are pyramids in Egypt that were used to bury kings and queens, yet they will not be able to tell you how Egypt during that time period interacted with the rest of the world or among themselves for that matter.
It wasn't that long ago that I was channel flipping and caught the end of the National Geography bee. I was quite shocked that only the smarted of the smarted know the answers to those questions. Why are kids not learning all this in school naturally?
What is so very sad is that my 7 year old knows more about history than your average 6th grader.
I, btw, to not waste my time on timelines and making kids memorize when something happened at this point. It is important that they know what happened and can say..."At the same time in Europe..." for example that the exact date.
Sure kids are learning SOME history in elementarty but what is shocking to me is that we have already covered this with our 5 and 7 year old kids. DD has done the second half already. Where is world history here? Is it just the "rising of civaliztion" that they put out there for th e5th grade? FIFTH GRADE! All second graders should know this information!
BUT WAIT! Maybe they will learn some of it in 7th grade.
[/font]
COME ON! The high school years are needed for in depth analysis of histroy and they should be prepared with 7 years of "AND while this was happening in the America's, we also this going on in Asia, this going on in Africa, this going on in South America, and this going on in Europe.
The problem that kids have with timelines and figuring out dates is that we always seperate history as one tiny unit on a specific subject, usually related to American history, and do not expand on it. There are little informational bits but nothing substantial. It is like asking an anorexic if they had lunch and they answer yes but all they had was a sodium free cracker.
History in Elementary public schools is a joke. I know this from my extensive reasearch, looking for the most challenging public school curriculum in the US to base the curriculum I built for my kids. I've searched every single state's expectations. Sadly, I have to spend a great deal each year beefing up the curricula with more substantial information to keep my kids from growing up with such a sub par education.
From the information you posted about requirements for history--it is from the State of Louisiana. Silly me, I would assume since you are going on, an on, and on about the crappy schools in your state and how they don't teach history that you would have posted information from your own state. My mistake .
Oh, and an FYI, if you go to pages 55-67, under Social Studies (which is where you will find the history information) it talks extensively about the history curriculum as well as the rest of the Social Studies requirements for preschool-12th grade.
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) and other books of the like starting at age 2. Currently she is finishing up the Series of Unfortunate Events (2 books left) and is excited to begin the Eragon trilogy. She also has Inkheart, and Mark Twain (the real ones, not watered down) on her list. She has always chosen her own books and taught herself to read at age 3. She has been begging to read Lord of the Flies but I have a very indepth lesson for that...one in which I went over the head of my 10th grade teacher and wrote material for her to teach her future classes with, that she is not ready for so we'll wait on that one.
If they ate green beans every meal every day, three times the recommended allowance, I'm betting they will be healthier than the kid who eats that much in beef every meal. (DD went through a green bean stage just like this and we let her eat until her heart content but would definitely restrict unheathier choices.)
I am laughing my butt off with that one. In fact, our state is ranked in the top 10.
