Quote:
Originally Posted by huge-pigeons
Schools today want to dumb down students, not increase their intelligence. Look at some mandates that have been put in place these last few years: no more tests because too many can’t pass them, or anybody can get into any public university without any prescreening/testing. In the future you will have surgeons that can’t read or write because it’s mandatory you hire from all pools.
The plus I see from students getting paid in high school is the kid doesn’t have to cut his daily sports training short (if this is what they want to do later in life) to cut grass to make a couple dollars.
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I'm not sure that the goal is "dumbing down". The Three R's are still taught. Rather, there seems to be a concentrated effort in public elementary and secondary schools seems to be to teach kids WHAT, rather than how, to think; not as a replacement for the aforesaid Three R's, but certainly (it seems) as co-equals.
Not all kids go with that particular flow however. My step-granddaughter graduated last week from one of the largest public high schools in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area. Top-of-the-class student. National Honor Society. The recipient of three rather handsome scholarships for college. I doubt she'll need them: she has worked full-time summers the past two years for the University of Minnesota Extension, as well as for her high school during the school year (both before and after classes end for the day), and managed to save up to buy her own car (cash) as well as accumulate a significant savings account for college. Those scholarships are nice but I have little doubt that she would make it on her own without them. She certainly doesn't lack ambition.
Her goal is to be a teacher, and to that end she has already enrolled in a smaller University in the University of Minnesota system in a small town in the Southwestern part of the state: one with more traditional values than one would expect, considering its affiliation. The values at this college and in the area where it is located line up with hers: not pie-in-the-sky wishfulness or marching in lockstep to some cotton-candy "cause", but instead a dedication to hard work; interpersonal relations that stress the virtues of honesty. dependability and morality; and respect for one's fellow human beings. I have no doubt she'll make it. She's a whiz at the Three R's, so that won't be a problem. But along with that she intends to bring to her students an ethic, and a view of what life SHOULD be; to prepare them for life as it SHOULD be lived. I equally have no doubt that she will succeed at that, as well.
eighteen-year-old idealism? Maybe. But America would be a far better place if more people shared it.