What public schools teach our children

[Not_Giving_Up]

Who invented the light bulb?
Albert Einstein - my eleven year old son

Mommy, who was President in 1998? - my nine year old daughter
Bill Clinton - Me
Oh, I thought it was Thomas Jefferson - my daughter

Where's the dome? - my husband, one sunday morning as I was watching Face the Nation
What? - Me
Where's the dome? - him
There's no dome on the White House, dear. - me
Yes there is! - him

Now, every time we see the WH on TV, I point out that there is no dome.

[evlbstrd]

1. You are his most important teacher.

Keep it up.

[Not_Giving_Up]

3. I know

We have little lessons whenever necessary.

They cracked me up today. They wanted to watch Ice Age, but I was watching something else, so they staged a protest in the living room. My daughter made signs on construction paper and they spent 30 minutes jumping up and down saying "We want Ice Age". I told them that I respected their right to assemble, and that I respected their freedom of speech, but they weren't getting the movie.

[evlbstrd]

6. Little activists!

That's very cool and funny.

[Not_Giving_Up]

8. My son is my future attorney

He'll argue the facts until he wins. There was one time that we had several varieties of snack foods all at once (very uncommon), and he wanted a honeybun. I said no, too much sugar. He looked at every box that interested him, and gave me sugar counts. The honeybun was the lowest. He proved his case, he got the honeybun.

[evlbstrd]

9. That's a smart kid.

Sounds like you're doing a good job, in spite of LOC.
(I've been following your saga, and I know what you're going through.)

[Not_Giving_Up]

10. My son is an Aspie

He can do math in his head to the point that teachers thought he was cheating. I had to tell them to just ASK him to explain it, he HATES to write.

Yeah, LOC isn't much help, but they are learning the value of an education.

[Spider Jerusalem]

11. Hahaha!

THat used to happen to me in school too. I used to get my grades docked for "not showing my work"; they were never satisfied with the explanation that I did it all in my head. (Oh, and I'm an Aspie, too.)

[Not_Giving_Up]

12. He was so pissed

The year before, we had gotten an IEP. One of his conditions is that he doesn't have to show work on math problems as long as he's getting the answer right. New school year, teacher was uninformed. She made him sit out of recess and gave him lunch detention, and counted the assignment as not done. He came home in meltdown mode. All was fixed the next day, with an e-mail to the teacher, copied to the diagnostician, which was forwarded to the principal.

[Spider Jerusalem]

13. Yeah. I can imagine.

That's one of the things that really bothered me about the public education system: too many teachers treat education as a sort-of assembly-line process, and to have a VERY rigid attitude. One size fits all, no need to make adjustments. And that coupled with the overly large class sizes I think probably has as much to do with the supposed decline in educational standards as anything else...

[Not_Giving_Up]

14. We were really fortunate last year

He had three really wonderful teachers. They listened to me when I told them how to deal with him in certain situations, and he had a great year. Honor Roll every report card, tried out for and made the choir, only sent to the office once all year. He also blossomed socially, to an extent. The year before, he was suicial (at the ripe old age of ten), had no friends, and was slacking at school.

[WCGreen]

2. Einstein didn't invent the light bulb?

[Not_Giving_Up]

4. Oh, and my daughter said that she ate sasquatch

She was eating shishkabobs, and was naming what was on it. Chicken, tomatoes, sasquatch.

Honey, that's squash. Sasquatch is bigfoot.

[WCGreen]

5. I guess that's waht having kids is for,,,,,,

Keep at it.......

[Not_Giving_Up]

7. It's just scary sometimes

I remember what grade I was in when I learned certain things. Now, if it's not on the TAKS Test, they don't teach it.

[WCGreen]

17. That is what Frustrated Mrs. WCGreen right out of teaching

Teaching to the test is the fastest road to the dumbing down of america,,,,,

[Not_Giving_Up]

18. It is, truly

Most of the teachers that I've talked to hate it. If the kid doesn't pass the test, the kid doesn't move to the next grade without summer school, even if they're an honor roll student. Luckily, both of my kids passed with flying colors.

[WCGreen]

20. There are so many differnt kinds of smarts......

There is no measure for creativity...

When Public schools first came on line in the late 1890's early 1900's, they were modeled after industrial prganizations....

When the liberal education offered at colleges started to be offered at the high school level, conservatives went beserk cause it ws teaching kids how to enjoy and prosper from a life time of self education.....

But that is so hard to quatify that it drove the number counters crazy and so all this standardized testing came into being....

[hfojvt]

15. William Jefferson Clinton - Thomas Jefferson

There is a Jefferson there anyway.

Also, it is well known that they took the dome off after 9-11 to make it a smaller target. I am surprised you hadn't heard that. I thought everybody knew.

It looks like Heinrich Goebel invented the electric lamp in 1854. In 1893 he won a court case against Thomas Edison, although the record goes back to 1820 when "Warren De la Rue enclosed a platinum coil in an evacuated glass tube and passed electricity through it in the first recorded attempt to produce an incandescent lamp". Sounds like an early light-bulb to me, and a Frenchman too. This is from "The Timetables of Technology" page 216. The same page says Eli Whitney also was the first American to utilize standardized parts, an idea probably originally owed to Leblanc, a French arms manufacturer.

[Not_Giving_Up]

16. I can assure you that the nine year old had no idea

Bill Clinton's middle name is Jefferson.

A dome on the WH???

[hfojvt]

19. sure, haven't you ever heard of Teapot Dome?

It was there, I tell ya. :tinfoilhat:

[Not_Giving_Up]

21. Yeah, Teapot Dome, Wyoming

I know I'm sleep deprived, but damn!

[left is right]

22. I'm convinced that what you cite as an education problem

is really one of attention in a world full of distractions. Einstein/Edison they are similar. Couple that with the fact that both were taught about in science class, it would be easy to confuse the two. And as far as the Clinton/Jefferson thing, 1998 seems as long ago as 1788 to a 9 year old.

[NMMNG]

23. I weep for the future

My friend tells me about the chowderheads on that tv show Streetsmarts, where the "contestants" (people on the street) have none. Apparently they often can't answer the simplest basic-knowledge questions. This idjit I'm saddled with for a few hours at work asks me yesterday "Is Labor Day at the end of this month or is it next month?".

This woman is in her twenties and grew up in the US. How can a person get to be that age and not know what month Labor Day is in???