Off The Cuff

The Value Of A Good Education

Posted by: From Arkansas in Are You Kidding Me?, Commentary, Shame of America, What Were They Thinking?, What's Wrong With This Picture? on Jul 27 2007

Welcome back!

What exactly is the value of a good education? In my experience, it gives a person a big lift up for the future. But what happens if a school system lets the kid down? Not just one kid. Everyone that goes there. Why? Have you heard of the “dumbing down of America”? I had heard about that some years ago but I wasn’t certain that I believed it really. After all, my education wasn’t so bad. Others I know had it pretty good too. Unfortunately, I was in school in the 60s.

Now, in the 2000s, there is a definite change it the way the school systems work. Badly. For those of you who are Boomers, do you remember when you learned things like Geography, Algebra, History? Were those things drummed into your heads like it was mine? I only ask this because I recall knowing the geography of our country and each state’s capitol by the time I was in 6th grade. Anyone else have that too? And I was in a public school system.

There are kids in our area who have not had any geography at all, of our country or anyone else’s at the 8th grade level. What about history? I was getting history…endlessly it seemed, from the time I was in about 4th or 5th grade. First, American History and then World History. ACK!! I really did not like it at all but I learned a lot about things, at least I thought I did. Turns out that there were some inaccuracies in the book but at least I was taught SOMETHING. At 9th grade level, I was in civics class learning about the government. Still have no idea why it works the way it does but we did get that class.

In our area, at the 8th grade level, no history has been taught except an occasional moment in other classes pertaining to that particular subject. What does get taught is how to take the tests that determine what funding the school system gets from the federal government. Last year, they were taking math for the Benchmark tests in Social Studies class. That so goes together, don’t you think? However, they were not learning history or anything actually related to Social Studies in Social Studies class. Must be a place holder.

Now, if this is not DUMBING DOWN AMERICA then I do not know what it is, but it is incredibly WRONG!!!!! The problem here is that the girl or guy that heads off to college still has to learn most of this stuff. So what happens? The college then has to do remedial work to bring the student up to where they should have been before they showed up at college in the first place. Is this wrong or what? Does no one see a problem here? Does no one get upset? Where are the protests? Or are we too dumbed down to see it? I am beginning to think we are just that.

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