Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for February 26, 2008 AN EXPLANATION FOR DUMMIES

Darn...I was ready to rumble, uh, rant.

However, the articles below took the words right out of my mouth!

The main points:

• Kids learn what you teach them. If you focus on reading and math, don't expect much in the way of history or other "nonessential" pursuits.

• "Critical Thinking"...You can't think without first acquiring the raw materials...the facts! (When you put ignorant - I did NOT say stupid - students together in a small group and expect them to "discover" that which took centuries for a few exceptionally smart folks to invent...who's the dummy?

• And, doesn't this say it all...loud and clear..."No wonder teenagers know less about the world, he says. Their focus on one another 'won't let the adult realities of history and civics through. What the mayor does with a city council meeting is not going to penetrate into what so-and-so did last week with his girlfriend.'"

Teens losing touch with historical references

By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY

Big Brother. McCarthyism. The patience of Job.

Don't count on your typical teenager to nod knowingly the next time you drop a reference to any of these. A study out today finds that about half of 17-year-olds can't identify the books or historical events associated with them.

Twenty-five years after the federal report A Nation at Risk challenged U.S. public schools to raise the quality of education, the study finds high schoolers still lack important historical and cultural underpinnings of "a complete education." And, its authors fear, the nation's current focus on improving basic reading and math skills in elementary school might only make matters worse, giving short shrift to the humanities — even if children can read and do math.

"If you think it matters whether or not kids have common historical touchstones and whether, at some level, we feel like members of a common culture, then familiarity with this knowledge matters a lot," says American Enterprise Institute researcher Rick Hess, who wrote the study.

Among 1,200 students surveyed:

•43% knew the Civil War was fought between 1850 and 1900.

•52% could identify the theme of 1984.

•51% knew that the controversy surrounding Sen. Joseph McCarthy focused on communism.

In all, students earned a C in history and an F in literature, though the survey suggests students do well on topics schools cover. For instance, 88% knew the bombing of Pearl Harbor led the USA into World War II, and 97% could identify Martin Luther King Jr. as author of the "I Have a Dream" speech.

Fewer (77%) knew Uncle Tom's Cabin helped end slavery a century earlier.

"School has emphasized Martin Luther King, and everybody teaches it, and people are learning it," says Chester Finn of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education think tank. "What a better thing it would be if people also had the Civil War part and the civil rights part, and the Harriet Tubman part and the Uncle Tom's Cabin part."

The findings probably won't sit well with educators, who say record numbers of students are taking college-level Advanced Placement history, literature and other courses in high school.

"Not all is woe in American education," says Trevor Packer of The College Board, which oversees Advanced Placement.

The study's release today in Washington also serves as a sort of coming out for its sponsor, Common Core, a new non-partisan group pushing for the liberal arts in public school curricula. Its leadership includes a North Carolina fifth-grade teacher, an author of history and science textbooks, a teachers union leader and a former top official in the George H.W. Bush administration.

DUMMY FATIGUE: 'Drumbeat' goes on for U.S. students

By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY

In her new book, The Age of American Unreason, cultural critic Susan Jacoby tells of a dinner conversation with a student who was about to graduate with honors from Michigan State University in 2006. After Jacoby dropped a reference to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "fireside chats," she watched as the student "looked absolutely blank" in response.

Shocking, but these days, par for the course.

A slew of new books, studies and films all tell a similar tale: Americans — especially young Americans — don't know much about much. Overfed on self-esteem, pop culture and digital entertainment, students are starved for genuine literary, historical, scientific and mathematical knowledge, critics say.

But others say teens are working as hard as ever, tackling coursework their parents only dreamed of. Each time researchers and think tank types attack, the response from educators gets a bit wearier.

For lack of a better term, call it Dummy Fatigue.

"There is this kind of Aren't We Stupid? industry," researcher Rick Hess says. "It's a drumbeat: 'Don't we keep getting dumber?' "

In addition to Jacoby's best seller, the latest evidence is the upcoming book The Dumbest Generation by Emory University professor Mark Bauerlein and a study by Hess, out today, that finds nearly six in 10 17-year-olds can't place the Civil War in the second half of the 19th century.

It all drives Leslie Edwards nuts. "I get tired of hearing it," says the Rochester, N.Y., high school English teacher. "I look at my kids' faces, and it's not really an accurate portrayal of what exists."

But numbers don't lie, do they?

Then what to make of the huge growth in the number of teens taking college-level Advanced Placement courses? Enrollment is growing at 10% annually.

According to the College Board, which owns the AP program, 63% of college-bound seniors took four or more years of social sciences and history in 2007, up from 39% in 1987. The number passing AP U.S. history tests has risen nearly 200% since 1992.

"Students are coming in and are being held to a higher standard than they were 10 and 20 years ago," says Trevor Packer, who oversees AP for the College Board.

And yet the percentage of 25- to 29-year-olds with high school diplomas has barely budged in nearly 20 years. Actually, says economist James Heckman, if you take a closer look, it peaked about 40 years ago and has dropped about five percentage points with no change in the gap between diplomas earned by white and minority students.

All this data suggest it is both the best of times and the worst of times. While the top students are exceeding expectations, the remainder are dragging the team down.

"At the high end, our best 5% to 15% of high school kids are pretty well-educated," says Chester Finn of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a think tank. "Those are the ones who go on to college and keep America the successful nation that it's been." But we're "still doing a pretty crummy job" with the rest.

Author E.D. Hirsch, who for decades has championed a "core knowledge" curriculum heavy in history and literature, says the problem began far earlier than most people suspect. "I've come to realize that this was a slow march from the beginning of the 20th century," he says.

He blames a K-12 education system that values "critical thinking" above content. It has led to "total incoherence" for most students from early on.

The education system also is focused less on facts and memorization than on analysis, says Wayne Camara, the College Board's director of research. He graduated from high school in 1974 and recalls memorizing Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.

"I don't think my kids have," he says. "Rather than memorize it, they've had to learn to analyze it."

Researcher Hess blames the poor results on a system that has largely forgotten the humanities.

Jacoby, who recounted the "fireside chat" encounter in her new book, says part of the problem is an inability of educators to agree on solid national standards. Her book, which appeared two weeks ago and is No. 13 on Amazon.com, has hit a nerve, she believes.

"If there is any reason to hope, it has to be that ordinary people, parents of ordinary children, are getting disturbed about this," she says.

Bauerlein, author of The Dumbest Generation, due in May, blames digital technology, which distracts kids in ways their parents could never imagine.

"When we were 17 years old, social life stopped at the front door," says Bauerlein, 49. Now teens can continue their conversations online, on Facebook, by instant messaging or on cellphones in their bedrooms — all night. "Peer-to-peer contact … has no limitation in space or time."

No wonder teenagers know less about the world, he says. Their focus on one another "won't let the adult realities of history and civics through. What the mayor does with a city council meeting is not going to penetrate into what so-and-so did last week with his girlfriend."

QUIZ: Are you smarter than a 17-year-old?