Productivity Meetings
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@jasmine2501 said:
@Mason Wheeler said:
@hoodaticus said:
It's not moronic at all. Teachers are glorified baby sitters. Nothing will change my mind on this until Detroit's literacy rate exceeds at least 60%.
If you believe that literacy is the teacher's responsibility, you're already hopelessly lost. That responsibility lies with the parents. If a kid doesn't enter school already knowing how to read, they're already badly disadvantaged and there's only so much a teacher can do.
BULL Shit. I have heard this time and again and it always annoys me. TEACHING is the responsibility of TEACHERS, who are specially trained to TEACH. I am a computer programmer, and I am not trained in the skills to teach a child to read. THAT'S WHAT I PAY TEACHERS FOR! Reading with my child when he was that age was a major struggle - partly because he wasn't actually being taught to read at school, but mostly because I'm not trained for that.
You're right. You should be required to have training and certification as a parent before you are allowed to reproduce.
@AndyCanfield said:
WHAT? I entered school without knowing how to read, and eventually did OK (a Master's from Stanford). Reading and 'riting and 'rithmatic were the three R's, the basic stuff that public schools were created to teach. AFAIK the whole idea was that the nation is better off if it's citizens are literate, so they created public schools to ensure that all citizens were literate.
Now it may help a kid if she can read before she gets to school. It also helps if she know calculus before she gets to college. But demanding that as a prerequiite is changing the rules of the game.
@dhromed said:?
I find your comment nonsensical. School teaches kids to read.
I don't know how it is in the US, but kids go to school at 4 years here. You enter grade 1 and 2, e.g. kindergarten, which is mostly fucking about. Then move on to Base School, starting at grade 3. You are now 6. I was 5 because I was already capable of reading and skipped grade 2.
In grade three kids learn to read. Things like Tree, House, Fish, Dog, Cat. Cursive writing. Aa Bb Cc Dd. Controlling a fountain pen.
There was a math exercise in grade 8 that playfully introduced me to x!. Grade 7 and 8 teach some basic English.
Obviously, parents should expose their kids to reading material by having books of every kind around, and by reading stories to them. But to say that school should be deferred until basic literacy is fully achieved (~8, 9 years) is poppycock.
See, I have a hard time grasping arguments like this because I am in a poor position regarding grounds for comparison. Partly due to the assistance of my sister (two years my senior), I could read, write (I think...I know I could write numbers), add, subtract, and multiply (again, I think) when I was 4 (division, as I recall, took me a little longer to grasp). The two of use were home-schooled until I was 8 (I don't remember when we started but I suspect that I was included starting when I was 4), at which point we transferred into a private school using the same curriculum, and I had to repeat 4th grade (We don't number them the same way here...where you have Grade 1, 2, 3, etc, we have K-4, K-5, then 1, 2, 3...so 4th grade for me would have been chronologically equivalent to your grade 6) math...because I had been a grade ahead in that subject. I don't recall getting it through my head that being able to read books (children's book, to be sure, but books nonetheless) without assistance before the age of 5 was unusual until the following year, in a combined 5th and 6th grade class, when it registered with me that even some of the 6th graders had trouble reading.I'm well aware that my sister and I were not typical in that part of our upbringing, but I still have a hard time not assuming that we should be.
...I think nowadays in America we're no longer teaching cursive, at least not in all schools, and I definitely did not have the benefit of school instruction in learning to control a fountain pen, although somehow I've never made a disastrous mess with one. Just several illegible messes and a few halfway respectable sentences or signatures.
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@AndyCanfield said:
@Mason Wheeler said:
If a kid doesn't enter school already knowing how to read, they're already badly disadvantaged and there's only so much a teacher can do.
WHAT? I entered school without knowing how to read, and eventually did OK (a Master's from Stanford). Reading and 'riting and 'rithmatic were the three R's, the basic stuff that public schools were created to teach. AFAIK the whole idea was that the nation is better off if it's citizens are literate, so they created public schools to ensure that all citizens were literate.
Now it may help a kid if she can read before she gets to school. It also helps if she know calculus before she gets to college. But demanding that as a prerequiite is changing the rules of the game.
Yeah, that's because "the game" is society, and the rules have changed. Reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic is the classic 19th century definition definition of a solid education. Today, just in case you weren't aware, we're living in the 21st century, in the Information Age. The Internet is a central pillar of modern society, and if you can't ingest information you're hopelessly behind.
I was reading really simple books by age 3, and the more advanced Dr. Seuss stuff by kindergarten. And I've done really well for myself. By third grade, when my dad brought home a computer one day, I was able to read and understand "intro to programming" books and start teaching myself BASIC, and my course in the world was set from that point on.
A close friend of mine, someone who I've actually kept in touch with all this time, wasn't so fortunate. His folks never taught him to read. He's very smart, though that worked against him a little. The teachers never actually picked up on the fact that he couldn't read, because he could watch and listen to what the teacher was doing and remember it perfectly, and repeat it back to them when asked memorization or analysis questions. But when it came time to take tests or written assignments, he wouldn't do anything (because he couldn't read them) and he got branded as lazy and rebellious.
Eventually, in the second grade, things got bad enough that his parents investigated, because they knew he was *not* lazy and rebellious at all. Turns out he couldn't read. They had never taught him, and he was one of the 30% or so whose brain is just wired in a certain way that the sight-reading techniques they try to teach you in school simply do not "click" for. So they bought him a Hooked on Phonics set (remember those things?) and used it to help teach him to read at home, and he was an excellent student the rest of the way through school.
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@kilroo said:
Partly due to the assistance of my sister (two years my senior), I could read, write (I think...I know I could write numbers), add, subtract, and multiply (again, I think) when I was 4
[...]
I'm well aware that my sister and I were not typical in that part of our upbringing, but I still have a hard time not assuming that we should be.
@Mason Wheeler said:
I was reading really simple books by age 3, and the more advanced Dr. Seuss stuff by kindergarten.
Ok, smart people have that tendency to be able to read (or, if not able, at least potentially capable). That's alright. Same here, as I said earlier. That's cool, obviously. A wealth of diverse information at your fingertips in your fundamentally formative years. You're in the top 10% or 5% or less, of all kids. I think most people on this forum are, in fact*.
So you really think it's a good idea to enforce such a strict general requirement based on that very small section of the gaussian curve?
*) except blakeyrat.
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@PJH said:
@Lorne Kates said:
One more note re: pensions. I've always been baffled when people bitch and complain about teacher's pensions-- especially the Ontario teacher's union's pension. "Why should I pay for someone's retierment?". Newsflash, milkfucker, you aren't. It isn't your money.
So, in reply to a post on how teacher's pensions are funded in the UK, you deny that it's subsidized massively by tax payers in the UK because that's not how it works in Ontario?
Riiiiiggghht.....I did preface my argument with "Warning: I'm talking about Ontario", sooooooooooooooooooooooooo....
Sidenote: how the hell do you pronounce those repeating "g"s? Are you dictating while on a bumpy road? Are you trying to gargle mouthwash?
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@boomzilla said:
@Lorne Kates said:
An oversimplification for comedy's sake, but in the 90s, the conservative government made it its mission to cut funding.
I don't really follow Canadian politics, but I thought it was the Liberal government, under Jean Chrétien who got your fiscal house in order:
The Liberal government under former prime minister Jean Chrétien and finance minister Paul Martin began a concerted effort to balance the budget in 1995. Between 1995 and 1998, the government cut spending by a whopping 14%. As the report's authors note, "if the U.S. government were to cut real spending by 14% over the next three years, the budget in [fiscal year] 2013 would be US$473-billion (in 2010 dollars) less than the FY 2010 budget."
...Most importantly, the Chrétien-era Liberals were able to balance the budget, "not with large tax increases, but with substantial cuts in government spending." Federal spending as a percentage of GDP went from 18% in 1993 to 13% in 2009. And the Canadian economy prospered because of it.
Sort of an only Nixon can go to China moment, I guess.
No, Chretien was great, as far as politicians go. But he was federal, I was talking provincial. That'd be Ontario Premiere Mike Harris. He came up with the "Common Sense Revolution" budget, which worked about as well as you'd expect something to that's called a "Common Sense Revolution" that came from a politician. Some highlights:
- Fired 6200 nurses
- Caused a 2 week teacher's walkout
- Racked up a $20 billion dollar defecit
- Sold (sorry, leased in perpetuity) the province's first toll road (the 407), which they'd just dropped $2 billion dollars on, which has cost the province billions of dollars in revenue since (and spawned a truly evil corporation)
- Engineered the selling off of Ontario's public hydro generation-- which, to this date, customers are still paying for not only in higher rates and unfair anti-consumer practices, but also through myserious things like "purchase restructuring fees" that show up on everyone's bills.
And all that came on the heels of Bob Rae and his "Social Contract" (which had also worked about as well as you'd expect something called a "Social Contract" that comes from a politician).
[/civics lesson that half the forum understandably skipped]
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@dhromed said:
@kilroo said:
Partly due to the assistance of my sister (two
years my senior), I could read, write (I think...I know I could write
numbers), add, subtract, and multiply (again, I think) when I was 4[...]
I'm well aware that my sister and I were not typical in that part of our
upbringing, but I still have a hard time not assuming that we should be.@Mason Wheeler said:
I was reading really simple books by age 3, and the more advanced Dr. Seuss stuff by kindergarten.
Ok, smart people have that tendency to be able to read (or, if not able, at least potentially capable). That's alright. Same here, as I said earlier. That's cool, obviously. A wealth of diverse information at your fingertips in your fundamentally formative years. You're in the top 10% or 5% or less, of all kids. I think most people on this forum are, in fact*.
So you really think it's a good idea to enforce such a strict general requirement based on that very small section of the gaussian curve?
*) except blakeyrat.
No, not really...in fact, in my opinion, my own circumstances leave me unqualified to judge whether it is realistic to expect the average child to be able to learn to read by the age of 4. But I have to make a conscious effort not to assume that most 4-year-olds can read.
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@kilroo said:
my own circumstances leave me unqualified to judge whether it is realistic to expect the average child to be able to learn to read by the age of 4. But I have to make a conscious effort not to assume that most 4-year-olds can read.
Yeah, that's my point.
