On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 12:37 PM, Michael Rowe <mdrowe@optonline.net> wrote:
> What a sad commentary on our culture and educational system.
>
Amen, Mike. And it started way more than 20 years ago and has been going
downhill ever since. In 1990 & 1991 I taught a basic meteorology course
(freshman level - no calculus) in our local 2 year school. What a fiasco!
The students couldn't read well, couldn't write worth a damn, didn't have
even basic math skills (High School Algebra & basic Trig). Worst of all,
they wouldn't come to me for help and they wouldn't do homework and they
moaned about how hard I was on them!
It was so bad that in the second semester I spent the first 3 weeks teaching
some very simple algebra concepts just to help get them through the math
they'd encounter later in the course! Even at that, I had to flunk more
than half the class. I had irate parents calling me day and night screaming
that I was being WAY too hard on their little darlings. I told them I'm not
going to say their kid knew something about the science when they clearly
didn't. It's not only good for them to wake up to the fact that they didn't
learn much, its also a matter of my pride and the schools quality rating.
4 semesters and the regents asked me to quit because I was being too hard on
the kids. I asked the physics and math profs for their take... They agreed
I wasn't being hard on the kids - in their experience most of the kids were
lazy and felt that they should be just GIVEN a passing grade for coming to
class. The whole department went to the dean of instruction on my behalf.
They agreed that I could come back provided I dumbed the course down so that
the little morons could get through it. I refused thus then end of my
teaching career.
--
Cheers!!
Jim
In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a
shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress."
John Adams
US diplomat & politician (1735 - 1826)
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