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When I read this, just now, I thoght about how if this bill was to pass, that it would impacr the T.G. community as well. If not directly throgh sons, daughters, or family, then through other workers. This deserves discussion here, and with our family and friends
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090927/ap_on_re_us/us_more_school
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School hours
I recall hearing that the basic U.S. school term length had its roots in early agrarian society. Having all available hands for harvest is no longer necessary and perhaps reevaluating school term lengths is a good idea. I fail to see how this impacts TGs any more than any other group, though.
They know they can survive
Withheld, I
said that it would impact us, not that it would impact us more. No, this would impact the nation, even the word.
May Your Light Forever Shine
May Your Light Forever Shine
more school
Here in Florida most of our kids are taught the primary skill of passing the standardized testing and once they have taken and passed the test then they start learning useful stuff with about a month left of school. I find extending the school useless until our kids can learn real information that can help them survive in the real world.
My nieces did not learn how to balance a checkbook until after they graduated high school and they now how to cook burgersm spaghetti and ramen pride. Every kid before they leave high school needs a course on how to solve issues and problems in the real world such as signing up for credit cards, loans, buying cars and renting an apartment.
Hugs,
Jenna From FL
Moderator/Editor
TopShelf BigCloset
Hugs,
Jenna From FL
Moderator/Editor
TopShelf BigCloset
It is a long road ahead but I will finally become who I should be.
Huh?!!
You learn the urban stuff at school? I'm from the continent, and here we use school to learn kids how to calculate. Up to integration and differentiation and stuff like that. You know: calculus.
And history. Like who were the Greek. Egyptian. Romans. Inca. Renaissance. Enlightenment. Great discoveries. America. Australia. Other societies. India. China. Arabia.
Or language. Diction, writing. Other languages.
We don't learn them how to balance a chequebook. How to cook or sow. That's for at home, where your mother and father show you how it's done. You participate in cleaning. Cooking. Mending the grounds. At home.
Like how to treat your neighbours. Strangers. As you'd want to be treated.
You don't leave that stuff to a school! You're a community, only if you act like one.
Gah! What's wrong with people? You 'outsource' basic skills and basic human interaction and next you wonder why society is getting so detached?! Damn..
Jo-Anne
My only concern about
My only concern about year-round school is that the money to create a decent environment to learn is not available. A Chicago summer of sitting in a room over 90 degrees will not allow for any retained learning. Few schools in the system hold summer school classes for students that fail a course during the regular year. Settle that issue and perhaps...
I had to laugh at the -check book balancing- ... at 25 i didn't "know" how to balance a checkbook ... Why you ask? Well, I didn't have one. When I did ..lo' and behold I had learned how in second grade, just like the questions on the "standardized" tests...
OH FOR JOY !~
*curtsey*
Suna Amlin
It's Not Just Obama
There are many outside of just Obama who believe our school term should be extended and the classroom day should be lenghtened.
I have a teaching degree but decided to go into business rather than teach like my mother, father, brothers and sister.
I believe there's much truth to the axiom that states the brain can only absorb as much as the seat can endure. When I hold business seminars I allow many, many breaks during the day.
However, I'm fiscally responsible. It amazes me that those so-called conservatives who oppose a longer school year don't understand basic economics. Years ago McDonald's had an AHAH! moment when they opened their restaurants for breakfast. They reasoned that having so much resource sitting idle for a third of the day made no sense. I've studied schools' expenditures and understand that the cost of the building is a large amunt of the overall expense. Allowing the building to sit empty for long stretches of time is fiscally irresponsible.
Anyone who has taught can tell you that students forget a great deal over the summer months.
I would be in favor of longer days with more breaks and longer terms with more vacation days interspersed throughout the year.
Moreover, I would agree that "no child left behind" and its endless testing is asinine. I love testing as part of learning. People actually do learn faster when tested on that material. Testing to somehow judge the teacher/school is a joke.
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Study skills...
The basic principles of human learning are that people study best when teaching is interspersed with recitation, including frequent but small tests of knowledge.
I taught adult literacy and study skills for quite a few years at my local community college, and one of my popular modules was SQ3R: Survey (or Scan), Question, Read, Recite, Review. In this process, the student goes through the material quickly and generates questions about the material based on the rapid scan, then goes back over the material more carefully to answer those questions aloud (the recitation), and then revisits the material as needed to solidify the new information in one's mind. By involving many of the senses, sight, hearing, touch (in writing), and engaging in an interactive process, even when studying alone, the student becomes his or her own teacher, and maximises retention.
But the NCLB tests are meticulously designed to be as ineffective as possible, given at widely-spaced intervals, so there's no effective feedback to the testees, written through multiple choice selections after long delay, thereby precluding almost the entirety of the thought process, disclosed after similar long intervals, eliminating any effective feedback, and by total scores rather than specific questions and answers*, which would allow the student to identify weak points requiring further study.
The NCLB system was designed by and for idiots, in such a manner as to produce as many idiots as possible and thereby perpetuate the species.
Although it had good talking points, setting common standards to define what every American child should know, this power was ceded to the states, so students can be (and are) still educated to differing standards, in some cases to deliberately lowered standards to improve test scores, thereby garnering Federal rewards, whilst spending no state money to actually improve those scores.
Cheers,
Puddin'
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* Indeed, the questions and "correct" answers can never be disclosed through the life of the test, because that would destroy its utility and norming.
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
A Flash point issue with me...
I live in a state that consistantly scores among the five worst in the U.S. The poor scoring has little to do with how many hours, or days, the child might spend in school. It has to do more with what kind of support for learning the child has at home.
In households where education is prized as highly as food, such as immigrant and firs generation households, the children excel. In households where the parents are not available after school, or after dinner hours, the students don't do well, if they attend upper schools at all.
As much as we would love to blame unions, funding, lack of proper credentialing proceedures (and there is some merit in these accusations), the single most important factor is home life and atmosphere (regardless of economic class).