>oh, hell no. But that's not a function of government so much as
>fundamentalists putting pressure on text book companies, teachers,
>and local school boards--and a basic decline in American education
>that has taken place over the last 40 years.
All areas of American life has switched from thinkiing mode to feeling
except maybe you and me and I'm not sure any more about me <G> No one is
being taught to read and think critically and the only thing that matters
is how do you feel about a topic.
For example, I am a recent member of the Christian Reformed Church. The
CRC has a long tradition of pushing education, particularly CRC
controlled schools. probably 80% of the adults in our congregation went
to "Christian" school as do probably 80% of the children. Yet I can't see
any obvious superior levels of education in the congregation and most of
the adults do manual labor.
One would think that a denomination which pushes education and comes from
a Puritan backround would produce readers, yet the CRC was one of the
first which dumped the King James translation as being to complex. They
went to the NIV Bible which is probably the most simplified of the real
translations and now people are complaining that the NIV is to difficult
to read. In like matter, the "hard" words have been removed from the old
hymns. We have attained a "1984" world where words have become dangerous.
Prior to WW2 a high School graduate could handle 80% of the available
jobs and most college students graduated on the "Arts" side. These days
High school grads can't add a column of three digit numbers without a
calculator and most of the diplomas are in the sciences. (???) Not to
long ago one of the young hot shots at work was adding a column of single
digit numbers with a calculator. One of the old timers grabbed it, looked
at the list and said the total is thus. The young fellow didn't believe
him and went back to the calculator.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Nov 22 2000 - 12:15:50 EST