On Sat, 05 Aug 2006 11:53:16 -0500, F. George McDuffee
wrote:

On 5 Aug 2006 07:27:58 -0700, "Too_Many_Tools"
wrote:

It has always concerned me when the young amoung us are not taugh basic
skills such as how to change a tire, how to use a saw, how to...well
you get the idea...there are basic skills that one needs to deal with
the world we live in. Well this article shows what that lack of
training, due to whatever reason, means as they get older.

.... snip

In the United States most states require a minimum of 180 days
and/or 1080 hours of student attendance per year. It should be
obvious that as this time is now fully "booked," when additional
"stuff" is added, something else must be dropped. With the
imposition of "Academic Trivial Pursuit" AKA "no child left
behind," what was imposed was instruction in the skills necessary
to score well on standardized objective tests [bingo cards] and
short-term rote memorization and rapid recall of "factoids."
What is being dropped are all vocational or "shop" classes. In
addition to creating a generation that has no knowledge of how
things work, the abolition of the vocational classes has lead to
a huge upsurge in male dropouts who were attending school only
for the vocational classes.


While I believe that most of your premise is pretty close to on the mark,
I'm surprised that you pick no child left behind (NCLB) as your sore point.
Vocational and shop classes were being dropped long before the NCLB bill
was initiated. The standardized tests and other elements of that bill were
a response to the very real fact that children were graduating from school
who were unable to read, write, or perform basic math. Those are skills
that are fundamental, regardless of whether the person is going to college
or to a career in the trades. Some means of assuring that high school
graduates are capable of performing the most rudimentary elements of
societal activities (ability to balance a checkbook, read instructions and
ballots, etc) need to be established -- how else to do this but testing
those candidates for graduation? IMO, the real culprits in taking time
away from true education are those things identified as "crucial" by social
engineers in the education system to effect their own view of how the world
should work -- diversity education, inability to call anything "failure",
and other "classes" that spend more time worrying about emotional
adjustment of the child rather than instilling true knowledge, thinking
skills, and information into that child. We've got to get the social
engineers out of the educational system and get real educators back in. I
don't care if Johnny or Jill are emotionally "well adjusted" graduates able
to accept anyone who lives any sort of lifestyle and that Johnny knows that
as a male he is responsible for all of the oppression and ills of society
as it exists and that he must work to tear down the patriarchy and
male-oppression in this society all the while working to ban any sort of
technological advances in order to save the planet -- if neither of them
can read or do math they are going to become drains on society and
incapable of providing any sort of meaningful contribution beyond asking
"do you want fries with that?"

Please, note, I'm not defending NCLB; after Bush let Kennedy write the
bill and strip away the only portion that had any hope of saving education
in America (vouchers that would have instituted a competitive, truly
accountable educational system), I've seen no point in having the federal
government get involved in what should constitutionally be a state and
local issue.

.... snip


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If you're gonna be dumb, you better be tough

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