38 Replies to “The Children Are Our Future”

  1. This is not new. Universities have been having to offer remedial arithmetic and english language and writing courses for at least three decades. Students have been increasingly losing any understanding of basic grammar. Most of these failures started occurring at the grade school level back in the 1970s.

    1. “Students have been increasingly losing any understanding of basic grammar.”

      Probably because grammar is racist or something.

      1. More likely that people outsourced teaching kids to the state.
        I was taught to read, write and basic arithmetic by my parents.
        Letting the gov’t run schools is the ultimate in conflict of interest.

        1. Both parents working full time at assorted careers has a cost. But you also have to include the huge amount of nonsense which has been built into school curricula from assorted social sciences over the past four decades.

          1. BS excuse , blowing smoke up your kids a–, and expecting nothing from them but a big hug ever night is a cost
            To everyone in their life like a teacher, or a future employer that does expect something out of them.
            My nephews wife was called by the teacher and asked if it was okay to challenge their hard working exceptional 8 year old son . They both work the difference being the kid and his sister get challenged at home.
            Not coddled.
            It’s that simple.
            Your right about all the other crap they waste time on.

          2. Mugs, of course it’s a BS excuse. But that’s what women who want a professional career have been trotting out for decades. They want children, a big-league career, expensive vacays, so something has to give. That’s why they let strangers raise their children.

        2. The state, through taxation and propaganda, made it necessary for both parents to work full time to provide for their familly. The state then steps in with the solution, state education. Voila!.

          Remember, the state is a socialist enterprise, always and necessarily. Socialism’s goal is to control every facet of society; it opposes anything that stands in its way, familly, religion, nation. Go read Plato’s Republic or Karl Marx for that matter.

          The state is a necessary evil, and this must be limited in pervue. However, it attracts socialists, those who think their technocratic rule is more enlightened than the benited masses that they “are responsible for”.

          1. The state is ALWAYS, and without fail, the cure that is worse than the disease.

    2. does kathleen wynnedfarm and the abandonment of cursive writing have anything to do with this?
      are all future generations going to rely on instantaneously available scan and traqnslate apps to handle all cursive documents that pass in fron of them?
      heck, if its ALL about merely ‘information access’ make SURE everyone is online then just spoon feed whatever procedure is called for. everything like a youtube vid.
      imagine all them skill shortages by the wayside.
      l used to mock the commode 64 commercials in my programming class.
      ‘cook with it clean with it educate your team with it your commodore 64 la la la’

      pointing out the setup time to computerize far outstripped any benefir going that direction.

      but now we have AI the multiheaded closet hydra

    3. The standard textbook package for college Latin, the Wheelock texts, includes a primer on English grammar. The primer was added by Wheelock in the 1970s because he noted incoming students couldn’t understand Latin grammar because they’d never studied grammar, period. The decline has been going on for a long time.

  3. “K-12 public education has failed to prepare incoming college students how to write at the public level. ”

    _____________________________________________

    Not just public education, but society as a whole. Listen to any interview of the NBA or the WNBA. Improper grammar. Double negatives. Made-up colloquialisms. Then consider the “trans” community and their improper/outlandish use of pronouns. My favorite is, of course: “I use the pronouns they/them.” That in itself is annoyingly improper, but the irony is the use of the word “I” in that sentence. If they truly identified as they/them, then the “appropriate” comment would be: “We use the pronouns they/ them.” They don’t understand the concept of a pronoun.

    I remember when comedians used to joke about this topic. Robin Williams had a bit where he conjugated the very “to be”…..I be, you be, we be, they be. If someone did that today they would be shouted down as racist.

    I’ll resort to the great philosopher, Harvey Danger. “All the stupid people are breeding.” In other words, education begins at home, and a whole shit ton of people have reproduced that have no business doing so.

    1. “…people have reproduced that have no business doing so.”
      Are you kidding me?

      1. Are you kidding me?
        __________________________________
        Of course I’m not kidding you. I come from a generation that planned ahead for a family and knew how to apply discipline so as to assure the best possibility of success. Today (as an example), we see nearly 70% of black children being born into single parent homes. If you don’t think that effects structure, discipline and education, you’re kidding YOURself. And, before you single me out as a racist for making that point about the black community, understand that their educational aptitude testing is significantly lower than other races or cultures.

        So, yeah, some people are not cut out to be parents. That is not to say that they SHOULDN’T be parents. But, they don’t make the effort to put themselves into a position to do so effectively. If they are not in a position (or refuse) to apply the appropriate discipline should their offspring not prioritize their studies, they are the primary problem. That tells me an awful lot about what these parents, themselves, prioritize.

        1. If people thought like you do, the human race would have been extinct a long time ago.
          Also, you, or anyone else, have no business saying who should or should not reproduce.

  5. Test scores and academic performance is falling … yet GPA is rising. Not only are the public school teachers intentionally shitty at their jobs (intentionally NOT teaching American History and the ‘W’ man’s English) … but then they turn in bogus grades too! Just to create the illusion they’re actually doing the job they were hired to do.

    Answer: Homeschool.

    1. Yup. I haven’t had the opportunity, but I have friends who have home-schooled and the kids are doing fine, excellent even,.

      1. And yet teachers make $100,000 per year for a 1400 hour work year and have the best pension plan in the country, paid for by your property taxes. Curious, n’est-ce pas?

        1. Many don’t make that much, but they do make good money.
          Sometimes the system is the problem, not the teachers.

  6. One of our kids had a completely useless Grade 4 teacher. We switched schools. Another was faced with going to a public board high school with a staff chock-full of Elizabeth Mays. We changed school boards.

    My point is this: if your kids are illiterate, you’re likely a big part of the problem.

  7. I would suggest that the educational system is a great success for our rulers, who have un-educated a couple of generations of people now, reducing their ability to think clearly.

  9. Bingo….. On that point.
    Some people look at me funny when I say the state wants them stupid and lazy.

  10. Hey, anyone remember Strunk and White’s ” Elements of Style”?
    Strunk concentrated on the cultivation of good writing and composition; the original 1918 edition exhorted writers to “omit needless words,” use the active voice, and employ parallelism appropriately.
    E.B. White wrote lovely, simple books, such as Charlotte’s Web.
    Oh, and then there is Kurt Vonnegut, who sarcastically wrote this: ” I am bipolar, which is how come I write so good.”
    Parse all that, me lovelies.
    Yours truly,
    an old skool grammarian of the samuel johnson lost ways.

    1. My High School (graduated in 1974) used Strunk & White as “the English Bible” … sadly, I still haven’t learned one of their fundamental RULES … Brevity! LOL. I guess I just like to hear myself speak/write … hahahaha ha

      We were drilled, drilled, drilled in how to write an expository essay. As with all things, to learn it you need to write, write, write … and boy howdy did we write, write, write. Something tells me that isn’t being done much anymore.

      1. To this day, I can hear Sister Anna drilling into us, “…unity, emphasis, coherence!” We girls dare not submit any paper that did not meet that standard. Stayed with me through university as well.

      2. I find that “write drunk, but edit sober” is a useful guideline. I wrote this last night and editted it this morning. Last night, it was 7 paragraphs.

    2. We had The Little, Brown Handbook.

      Ruined more than just English class. Every teacher in the school required you to follow the handbook when writing anything..

  11. In the late 70s or early 80s there was some theory (more correctly known as a lie) going around that flunking a kid would destroy his/her self-esteem, so they stopped flunking kids. Then, to get the kid’s grades looking normal, they dumbed down the grading. It sure helped the kid’s self-esteem (another name for pride), and so, with his superinflated ego, he began to defy the teacher, classrooms became uncontrollable, and nobody learned anything. Self-esteem was the magic term, but it was a fatal concept. I believe the whole ADHD/Ritalin thing came out of this incompetence.

    Another concept was “No kid left behind.” So the whole class had to wait for the teacher to get the stuff into the slow kid’s head, and everybody got left behind. Society refused to acknowledge that not all kids are created equal. Some will have difficulty with academics, and need to study the stuff geared more to the careers they will fit. By grade 10 or so it should be obvious that this kid will be a scientist, and that kid there will be a shovel operator.

    I had some young folks applying for a job at the shop. Some couldn’t even fill out the application form. Grade 12 grads that couldn’t even read or write, much less do any math.

    Nice to see that universities are just beginning to notice it.

    1. Add to all those correct observations that there is no longer any “right” or “wrong”. Everything is relative. Everything is governed by each students personal reality. Therefore, what do grades mean? You cannot compare any individual student to an “arbitrary” standard … a ‘W’ standard, if you will. Hence EVERYONE is an ‘A’ student.

      Madness.

    1. Can’t stand Heather Hiscox, so yes, it’s unwatchable. The only toolbag worse than her is the ginormous Rosie Barton.

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