Same here, only given my advanced age it would be more like 1964-66 for me. It sounds as if they were still doing things right about 8 years later, at least in your area. In my experience, the school system really started going downhill in about the late seventies. The seeds that ruined the school system were of course planted earlier, in the sixties, but it took time for all the older teachers to die off and the curriculum to change. But by the late 1970s and early 1980s, the careerist “educators” (mostly people with no real training in either hard sciences or humanities, but steeped in social pseudoscience) had wrested the system away from practically minded classroom teachers and parents, and proceeded to lower the standards by cutting much that was valuable out of the curriculum, while introducing a bunch of touchy-feely rubbish into it. My kids learned maybe only 1/3 of the Euclidean geometry I learned, they learned almost no systematic grammar at all, and of course spelling as a subject was abolished, with predictable results. Their sense of any timeline of world history was vague, because increasingly the emphasis in the schools was on national history, rather than ancient, European, Asian, etc. And of course the level of difficulty of the readings in English was progressively dropped, and the volume of reading as well. It was argued that Bronte or Dickens were “too hard” for students, and so they more and more tended to read modern, limited-vocabulary novels about modern teen problems, or the like. Eventually they started reading “graphic novels” in some high school classes. (For those who don’t know, “graphic novels” are a pretentious term for comic books of more massive length and more permanent binding.) Apparently the idea was that modern kids find language to difficult to learn from words alone, and need the help of pictures. It has been bad news all around. Both my parents took Latin in their public school systems, and now you can barely find Latin anywhere. (Maybe it survives in a few suburban schools where the parents are largely wealthy professionals.) But hey, if the kids would rather read about The Punisher filling someone full of machine-gun bullets than learn Latin conjugations, English grammar, European history, or the history of our system of numbers, shouldn’t we design the school system around those desires? (Note: sarcasm.)
@Eddie Well, I’m right behind you. It is interesting reading your comments. I recall that my fourth grade English was systematic grammar and it ended up to be the most challenging and informative English class I ever had, including college. We were, I believe, on the leading edge of the “new math” movement. Even in elementary school, I realized that it was just a way to make parents feel as though their children’s’ modern education was beyond them and that they had no place in it. It’s sad to see how desperately, now, the teachers are for parents to be engaged and to help in the process. I recall being one of the best in arithmetic in the third grade, but the new math lost me completely and I subsequently struggled with math through high school. Finally, my senior year while sitting in physics class, it clicked and I was back on track. What a waste, though, of time and energy, it seemed to me, both then and now.
Thats not so. they always stress this obscure place. In order to exalt a non european, non Christian intellectual accomplishment. Including the modern problems with the Muslim world.
I agree they did a little bit of thought but not enough to note it to general students. They were left behind very quickly by europe. Anyways the Spainish defeated them and rightly so and made a better Spain and from there had true great accoplishments in history until overturned by the protestant nations.
I remember seeing a meme on FB which argued: “If we don’t teach cursive, how will our children ever read the Declaration of Independence?”. They were being serious.
Read up on Wounded Knee, the Trail of Tears, and the treatment of indigenous Americans in general, and then get back to us. Oh yeah, don’t forget to read up on slavery and segregation.
Irony meters across the globe explode in unison.
this is silly. its like teenage stuff. First these are trivial things and anyways you must understand the word RELATIVE. Relative to time and numbers of people.
Even if you had one case, you don’t, it would be like saying Mother Theresa once was rude on a rainy afternoon.
Its not accurate sampling. its silly. I’m being polite.
