h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

WM, the test is taken by every student, every year.

It's odd the personal responsiblity thing, one of the things I've started to not like about myself is a bit difficult to explain. Neither of my parents are in work, yet I've managed to go to University to do Medicine, without any finanical problems, or them contributing anything. My sister and one of my brothers have done the same. We all find the student loan plus our part time earnings easily enough to live off. However a lot of students don't and get into serious debt. The reason we can cope is that we have grown up learning how to budget and restrict ourselves.

I've started to get annoyed with people who don't cope, when I have done. IE people who can't cope in situations that I've coped well in, though I know I should really have sympathy because they haven't had a backgruond that's enabled them to cope.

Keep in mind Marv and Courtesy, students don't study for standardized tests, they're not like the ACT or SAT to get into a college or university. There's no staying up late into the wee hours cramming. They're given near the end of the school year to measure how children are doing in a given district based on what they've been learning and how they've been learning it over the course of the school year. It's basically popped on them (surely those of us in America remember?) just like those stupid Presidential Fitness Tests in P.E.--like some sort of horrible punishment of an avenging god.

The problem comes when people (usually cultural conservatives in the U.S.) use the results of standardized tests that compare unequal districts and states to bash the public school system and teachers in particular.

Bearing in mind what Z just said, there is the very real possibility that the flunkees just didn't give a hoot. They don't want to be in school and you won't make them read no book what they dont want to. I saw a lot of that, working in a Vocational-Technical school, very often the port of last resort for a lot of teeners.

And there ~isn't~ any way to make them because the concepts of discipline and self-discipline are absent from their home lives -- I'm talking across all racial and ethnic boundaries now. It's true of Dwayne and it's true of D'Amkeithon and it's true of Ramon.

I wanted to add that I'm all for reforming a bloated bureaucracy that sits at the top of every school system and sucks up needed monies that should go into the classrooms. However, I don't think this kind of testing is any way to measure the performance of American schoolchildren against each other and the world. I think one's feelings on the testing subject can mirror those about abolishing affirmitive action in this country. By that I mean, do you believe everyone in this day and age is on the same level playing field to begin with?

well what does the school pupil get out of the test? if all they want to do is get a job when they leave? if there are no jobs? they what have they got to bother trying?

The reason I worked hard at school was because I could see a clear path to getting out the town we were living in and getting a good job.

No, the playing field is not level. There will always be injustices and people with advantages. That doesn't give people an excuse to give up and blame the rest of mankind for their situation. What it means is that they will have to work harder to succeed.

It's like dieting. Some people ---mostly men ---lose weight easier than others. But everyone can lose if they really want to.

"They" (and we all know about "they") say kids have to take these tests in order to go on to the next grade level (they start in elementary school--our age 7 through 12 children), but in reality I don't think anyone is held back strictly because of the results. It's all politics. I know we all remember certain people in high school (age 14 through 18) where we wondered how the heck they got that far in their school career because they were a such complete loser.

Z - I too know that sense of irritation, but I have so often consciously reminded myself that if I had had the same background and upbringing as someone else I could have ended up *worse" that - if anything - I am probably too forgiving and liberal. It didn't work with my relationship with my mother though, I felt massively irritated with and unforgiving of her for years.

B

I certainly think that it seems to transalate to Doctors, those who come from middle class backgrounds are often more sympathectic to those patients who are pregany whilst at school, because "well it most be their awful background, I'm sure anyone in there situation would turn out like that" whereas those who came from working class backgrounds think "I grew up on a council estate but I could keep my knickers on"

Don't get me wrong. I know that things are not level for each student. But at some point the student needs to be held accountable for their actions/inactions.

My biggest problem is with the minority leaders who are trying to boycott the industry in Fl. Likely their kids are not as effected by the results of that test. And while I bear no love to Disney, why should that industry suffer for what is either a failing of the educational system there or the failing of those students themselves.

I live in the nation's suburb. It is better off than a good deal of the country, but the public school system still lacks incredibly. I was not given enough accountability in my own schooling and I have suffered somewhat since. I was vastly unprepared for the workforce on leaving school, and without working I was absolutly not going to college. With a little more accountability and a lot more discipline I think things would have been better later.

I do not blame the school system for my position. In fact I credit the two or three teachers that I had who cared enough to demand that I learn for any current success I might enjoy. The school system itself has some fundamental flaws that need to be overcome. Starting with standardized testing. The standards tests that *I* took decided that I was learning diabled because while I was ahead of the curve in every respect, I was not as far ahead in one topic as the others. This put me into an overcrowded remedial learning program that would have been better off if i was not wasting time there for a year. Many of my teachers were disinterested, or unqualified to teach the topics I was enrolled in. Others were burnt out. Others managed to make a good experiance out of it in spite of the odds.

On a side note, why is it that Gym teachers so often teach math? I think every math teacher I had was a coach of something.

Hi, everyone ! Marv, you should realize that the reason you were in "resource" classes is not because there was anything wrong with you. It was because the state allots more money for "special" students, thus increasing the personal power of administrators over those programs. Across the nation, increasing numbers of students are being placed in special education programs, put on medication (we've all heard of Ritalin), and being wrongly labeled to the detriment of their futures. Like every government agency, the school systems are about money, power, and propeganda, not education! Sometime I will tell the salon about my own experiences with the public school system. Suffice it to say I will never send a kid of mine to public school if I can help it.

Well, sorry to rant and run, But I have to work a graveyard shift tonight, and so must go... Goodnight all!

Funny thing about the school system bureacracy is that the further up the food chain you travel -- county office administrators, state level and so on -- the more the salary bloat occurs. The county school supervisor was earning something like $95,000 when I left my job; A junior member of a school's administration might earn $15,000. So when the job cuts come it's the junior admin staff that get decimated ... and then the gubnor, he suddenly piles on a whole new heap of administrative chores in the form of FCAT testing. The administrator has to collate the data and send it up to the county. If the administrator doesn't have any staff, then the teachers have to do the work themselves, and that of course is time spent not teaching. Isn't it beautiful how the system works?

Don't get me started on the state of education in Orange County.



My daughter, who is exceptionally verbal, exceptionally curious, and exceptionally engergetic, is in danger of being forced to repeat first grade NOT because she doesn't learn, but because she has "behavior problems." These behavior problems include the "grave actions" (this is according to the principal, who I think has spent all of 10 minutes around my daughter all year) of poking someone, saying that the handwipes they used to clean up smell like baby butts, and talking in line.

Her teacher is in her second year of teaching, and refuses to believe that I may know more about how to teach my child than she does. Her kindergarten teacher told me point blank that any teacher that had less than 10 years of experience would have a *very* difficult time teaching her, because she learns in a very kinetic way. Her teacher may be the sweetest thing since the invention of equal, but she is in no way prepared for a seven-year-old who may not be able to focus for longer than 5 minutes, yet can tell you what the word "kangaroo" means. Mind you, when she wrote that it means "I don't know what you are saying" (which is the aboriginal translation) on her homework, her teacher DID NOT know the answer, and took points off.

Yes, my daughter's handwriting looks like chicken scratch, and yes, she has a hard time sitting still. She's seven, for crying out loud. And one of the stated "learning objectives" for the first grade in the Irvine Unified School District is...get this..."the role of individual choice in a free market economy." I am not kidding.

Needless to say, I am fighting her repeating the first grade.



sorry. I'm a little huffy about it right now. And standardized tests like the SAT, and the ones they take in grade school? All that shows is how well you take standardized tests. It says absolutely nothing about what you actually know.

[{Courtesy}]

[Amy]

Well, now that 'thing we weren't allowed to talk about' is over, it is good to see that the Salon is back to its old self The embargo seemed to really stifle us.

Ben, but doesn't the entire revolve around the SE of England ? I suppose it could happen around Birmingham, but the M25 is a huge roundabout and it only takes a 5% increase in traffic to cause gridlock. Admittedly the programme was based on an awful lot of coincindences, although it hasn't happened yet, it could. I think the the main issue the programme showed was how little communication there is between the police forces who cover the M25 and how close Air Traffic Control is to meltdown. Not that any of this will stop me using my car or flying, I even like the M25!

Nice to see you back for rest, PWM, I hope you get plenty of quality time, you have certainly earned it.

One of the reasons I am glad I don't have children, is that I am not responsible for the decisions relationg to someone else's education.

There seems to be no clear vision of what education is *for*. It should, surely, be to prepare each person best for their future adulthood, and for some that means a very academic education, and for others it means a more practical education, and for yet others it means a more social education. Being able to understand the workings of loans and mortgages, and the consequences of debt, being able to understand how institutions work - the medical system, the benefits system, commerce, and so on. These are all things we find out as we go along, but surely they are things that we should be learning in school.

All of these things are more complex than they were twenty years ago, and almost infitely more complex than they were fifty years ago.

Oh, and languages. Don't get me started on English monoglots (of which I am one).

And given the responsibility that the US, and to a MUCH lesser extent the UK, have in the world, global political history should be virtually compulsory.

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying ignore the academic stuff - far from it - but we turn out people who cannot function in our overly-insitutionalised world, and the institutions are not going to go away...

My education was bizzare, I went to a girls' private school until I was 15. The function of this school was to do the best by the rather dim daughters of doctors and dentists. The education - such as it was - was excellent. We all got O'levels, (instead of the academically less demanding CSEs which is all that some of my fellow-students would have managed in a state school), we were all nicely socialised, and so on. But I educated myself there, despite the course work, not because of it. I had the worst record for turning in homework, because I spent the time I should have been doing that homework reading about ancient history and advanced maths and other stuff I found in the library.

Then I went to the local state school for two years, where I had to fight to be allowed to learn touch typing, (surely a fundamental life-skill, like cooking and driving). I was 'too intelligent' for typing, which was for the girls destined to be secretaries. The point was, I was too intelligent NOT to take advantage of the fact they would teach me it.

The most useful things I learned at school?

1) Latin, and English grammer
2) Touch typing
3) You can wing it more than anyone will ever want you to realise that you can

That third one is a double-edged sword though.

B

Grammar but not spelling, eh, Ben?

Absolutely, and I am forgetting the grammar, too. One of my A'level teachers observed that I could spell long and complex words better than short ones; which is something I attribute to the Latin.



B