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Over the last 35 years or so, the education establishment has been overrun by a modern liberal indoctrination that has disregarded the education of our future leaders for the "outcome-based goals" of insuring these children's "self-esteem". For a prime example, one needs look no further than the "Goals2000" initiative. But here I will be more specific.
An illustrative example occurred in the mid-1990s when a large group of eager American 8th graders from two hundred schools (coast-to-coast) became excited about pitting their math skills against youngsters from several other nations.
The math bee included 24,000 thirteen-year-olds from America, South Korea, the United Kingdom, Spain, Ireland and four Canadian provinces... all chosen at random and given the same 63-question exam in their native language.
It was a formidable contest, and the American kids felt primed and ready to strut their mathematical stuff! In addition to the math queries, all the students were asked to fill out a "yes-no" response to one simple statement: "I am good at math."
With typical American confidence and high self-esteem (even bravado) the American kids responded as they have been programmed to and as their teachers would have hoped. Buoyed up by the constant self-esteem and ego building in school, two-thirds of the American kids answered yes.
The emphasis on "self-esteem" (which has permeated American schools for at least three decades) was apparently ready to pay off.
Meanwhile, one of their adversaries, the South Korean youngsters, were much more guarded about their abilities... perhaps to the point where a modern American liberal would question whether their self-esteem was being jeopardized! Only one-fourth of these youngsters answered yes to that same query on competence.
Then the test began. Many questions were rather simple, even for an 8th grader. Here's one such multiple-choice question:
"Here are the ages of five children: 13, 8, 6, 4, 4. What is the average age of these children?" Now, I'm sure that even adults, long out of the classroom, would have no trouble with that one. (Obviously, you add up all the ages and divide by 5.) The answer (an average age of 7) was one of the printed choices.
How did the confident American kids do on that particular no-brainer, one which we would expect a near 100% correct response? The result was, shall we say, ego piercing. Sixty percent of the American youngsters got it wrong!
When the overall test results came in, the American's were shocked. They finished last. In an interesting paradox, the winners were the South Koreans, who had the lowest "self-esteem" score. In fact, the math scores were in inverse ratio to the self-esteem responses. The Americans had lost in math while vanquishing their opponents in self-confidence. On the other hand, the South Koreans had lost in self-esteem but won the coveted math prize.
This bears an uncanny relationship to the American Education Establishment and the attitude of many of those in charge of teaching our children. Many are self-confident, even arrogant, about their modern theories and methods of teaching, which they believe are doing an excellent job. Unfortunately, once again, self-esteem (this time of many in the teaching vocation) is challenged by the results.
Was this an isolated incident? If American children are not doing well, and they are not, are there other examples which demonstrate a shortfall in their performance? In fact, there are many, including contests that show American students regularly vanquished by youngsters from around the globe.
In February 1998, the U.S. Dept. of Education issued the discouraging results of American high school seniors in the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), a worldwide competition among 21 nations. That report stated: "U.S. twelfth graders performed below the international average and among the lowest of the 21 TIMSS countries on the assessment of mathematical general knowledge." In fact, that wasn't an exaggeration. The American students scored nineteenth out of the 21 nations, doing so poorly in math that they only outperformed students from two underdeveloped countries - Cyprus and South Africa!
But what about "general knowledge", responses that adults can relate to? After all, we were all in elementary and high school ourselves and took similar courses. One would expect today's children of the same grade level to at least have the same basic general knowledge competency that was expected when we went to school. So, let's put aside these defeats in international mental battles.
The best estimates of schoolchildren's learning skills come from the "Report Card to the Nation and the States," one of the few successful federal efforts in education. Conducted by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the "NAEP" tests in reading, math, science, history, and geography provide biennial scores that give us a rude insight into what's really happening in American schoolrooms.
What do they show? Very simply, the results are, well... a discouraging confirmation of the ignorance across the academic spectrum.
From the American history quizzes, it is apparent that America's youth are not properly taught the story of their nation. Two out of three 17 year olds, most ready to go on to college, did not know the meaning of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. Less than half of the 16,000 high school seniors tested even recognized Patrick Henry's defiant challenge, "Give me liberty or give me death."
Even fewer teenagers knew of the existence of the War of 1812, the Marshall Plan (that saved Europe), or Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society".
Fine, but that's just history, what about science? In a nation whose future depends heavily on high technology, the high schoolers displayed a frightening ignorance in science. The majority could not figure out that a shadow cast by a rising sun would fall to the west! Only 1 in 8 of the 11th graders were judged even "adequate" on the test of Analytic Writing. AND, on a map of the world, most couldn't find Southeast Asia.
But the students are only a part of the school equation. If they aren't smart enough, or nearly as smart as their parents seem to believe, at least their teachers can hold their own in intelligence and knowledge. Right? RIGHT?
Here we are in Massachusetts, where in April of 1998, the State's department of education introduced a new examination for the licensing of would-be teachers, almost all of whom had received a bachelor's degree in education shortly before.
We'll get to the actual test in the next paragraph, but suffice it to say that it was not designed to challenge the teacher candidates at particularly high levels. But it did expect that they could at least write a lucid sentence. If so, everyone involved was disappointed. Of the 1,800 test-takers, 59 percent - basically three out of five - flunked!
The results were "abysmal" and "painful," said the state education chief, pointing out that not only were many teaching graduates unable to write complete sentences containing nouns and verbs, but their spelling was often atrocious. Released snippets of test submissions contained such spelling aberrations as "horibal," "compermise," and even "universel". Spellings, which, to any legitimate teacher or parent, should be considered affronts to both educational and literary sensibilities. These were the "wannabe" future teachers of our children...
How did Massachusetts "correct" this problem? Just as the National SAT scoring was "dumbed down by over 100 points in 1994 to compensate for lower test scores, Massachuetts simply changed the scoring criteria!
[This message has been edited by Panther (edited July 06, 2001).]
