Quote:
Originally Posted by Lbmb24101
Geography is not a strong point in schools.
I taught 30 yrs ( 15 in high school and 15 in middle school) and even the smartest students lacked a lot of basic geography knowledge....however the kids coming from foreign countries knew their geography.
I dated a pre med student from Johns Hopkins ( smart kd)MANY yrs ago who asked me:
SO, how many driving miles are there from Cuba to Puerto Rico, Maria TEresa ?
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That was funny but sad at the same time........(the last sentence).
My husband just shared with me this morning something he had read re the lack of teaching "cursive" in the schools today......instead, printing or keyboarding is preferred by students.
Our kids did learn cursive handwriting and penmanship as we did, but obviously it is now GONE.
All of our "younger" relatives, pre teens and teens, block print thankyou letters to us for gifts received. Any thankyou is preferable to none, but come to think of it, I haven't seen a child or teen write in cursive in a casual fashion (meaning out of school) since the 1970's....maybe early 80's?????
Anyway, a grandfather had written to his grandaughter telling her of how proud he was and knew she would achieve much (I'm shortening it).
He wrote it out in his own handwriting, in cursive.........he then told her to read it aloud to her parents...........she could NOT read it to her parents as she had never been taught to even write in cursive, never mind read it.
Times have changed.
Doing genealogy, I know where the Czech Republic is and where Chechnya is..........but do the kids of today?
Granted, many countries' borders have changed, as well as name changes of major cities in India and elsewhere.......but that was a remarkable letter from the Czech Republic , which was originally posted at the beginning of this thread............a sad commentary on modern times and how some young folks using social media probably do not open a book or look at a map. NOT ALL.......just some.
p.s. If a kid today went to the Library of Congress or the Smithsonian.......they wouldn't be able to read some of the historic papers by our founding fathers.........