Education , Do you think that the general standard of education is better these days with new methods?

Question

Or are you diappointed by the lack of knowledge displayed by the youth of today considering the wealth of reference material that is available on the internet!
Personally speaking I believe that some of the exams are not challenging enough for some of the enquiring minds out there and the less intelligent (yes we do exist) are too easily pigeon holed into having issues with learning !

Answer 1

There once was a practice of advancing better students to higher grade levels ahead of their peers. It was possible for the better students to get into college at 15 or 16, sometimes even younger. They not only stayed challenged but had a goal to work towards.
During the same period students who couldn't meet standards were held back until they mastered the material.
This resulted in students always working at a level that matched their ability. This all changed in the sixties and seventies when the theory that all students should be kept in a particular grade level based solely on age was pushed with the claim that social development would be impaired by advancement or retention based on ability. This coincided with an obsession with self esteem that insisted that everyone must be told they're doing great despite any objective evidence to the contrary.
These changes were based on popular social theories of the time that had no scientific basis. The result has been a curriculum that has to to be geared towards the least capable members of each age group to insure that no one fails.
Until students are allowed to work at a level of difficulty that matches their ability, all the modern resources that huge increases in education spending, (2 to 4 fold per capita over the last decade alone), and massive growth of the Internet have made available will not do anything to change the current abysmal state of education.

Answer 2

I think the opportunities in education are much better that when I attended school , i.e in terms of available subjects , out of school activities , work experience etc.
However it is incredible, no appalling , that so many kids leave school with little or no reading and writing skills .
Maybe in the past they were swept up in to industry and manufacturing and continued a "life" education from there .Obviously our manufacturing base has shrunk somewhat leaving few apprentice opportunities for our young folk .
I am not close enough to education now to understand why with apparently so much testing the schools can not spot at an early age which kids are struggling with basics . I also think some parents do not take enough time with kids , reading to them . I and others in my peer group could actually read before school , simple words usually connected to pictures granted but it seemed to work.
I know there are as many and probably more kids today who are highly intelligent and literate so the system works for some . I suppose the secret to discover is how to make it work for everyone to reach full potential.
If I was clever enough to work that out maybe I would have been one of the many secretaries of education in the past few years ...

Answer 3

I think the standard of eduation has increased since i went to school, but i also belive the quality of teaching has dropped.

Teachers must be able to tell if a student cant read or write. Some kids i know have a shockingly low understanding of everything around them.

Yesterday i got involved in a heated discusion with a friends son about eggs, he did not belive that a chicken came from an egg, and argued that a chick was born "like wot we iz" and an egg was a chickens period!

PS, this kid was 14 years old, the education system has failed him(and to some degree so have his parents).

Answer 4

I so agree with your first poster. I've been around a number of
years and see how education has gone downhill. I remember
when our son was placed in a federally funded program with
a school system in Indio, Calif. back in the late 60's. He was
too small to be in second grade they said. And had been
placed according to his size and birthdate. When we were
informed of this,the school year was already two months into
their cirriculum. So we left things lie. It did benefit our son to
a big degree since some things he did need a refresher on.
But todays teenagers often cannot write in cursive, and that
is a disgrace. I discovered that, by accident talking to some
teenaged girls admiring my handwriting once in a public place. They said they only could print. And that writing was not
part of their cirriculum. I find our grandson from a nearby
school district, cannot write in cursive either. And he's 14. I
have discovered thru internet friends, that children abroad
have a broader scope of inteligence from the things they are
learning than what's being taught in the states. I realize that
alot of activities are missing today in schools but the basics
should still be maintained. Or are we to expect dumb and
even dumber graduating classes as our youth of today ages?

Answer 5

Have you taken the FCAT in Florida? I think here in Florida we are not able to spend enough time getting the students to "mastery" of the basic skills. We are trying to have them graduate college before they get a high school diploma. In lower elementary grades, students are asked to apply skills they have not had sufficient time to grasp the concept of. I thing some view points need to go back to the way they were. I am a high school graduate of 1999 and have been teaching for 4 years. I am very intelligent. It has not been that long since I completed my schooling. However, much has changed and everything is so fast paced. It is hard to teach a skill properly when I am given a short time span to do so and must then move on. I have also found that not many of my students have access to the internet for reference.

Answer 6

No, it's worse. Fewer children can read now than could read fifty years ago, and arithmetic is almost a lost art even with calculators and computers.

Answer 7

No - educational standards have dropped dramatically over the last couple of decades.