Richard Erlacher wrote:
[Stuff deleted]
> I think the reason our kids don't learn languages well is because the tools
> that should have been taught with English,
[more stuff deleted]
I recently had the sad task of judging science fair projects from three local
high schools. It was pathetic. Since this thread is about language skills
I'll ignore for the moment the more or less complete lack of understanding
of the scientific method and the extensive use of crayons in constructing
the presentations and focus on the stellar language skills that were almost
uniformly present across all of the entries.
The short form summary is that if I'd written in the fashion of these high
school students when I was in second grade I'd have been taken out and shot.
Certainly there were large collections of words, some of them polysyllabic,
but in general they were not arranged into anything that was parsable as
an english sentence. Written materials depended on spelling correctors
to eliminate spelling errors, sometimes with frightening yet amusing
consequences ("...our science fairy teacher...").
There were a few entries which were clever, well constructed, well executed
and innovative. Talking with the instructors I learned that these were
from the bright but bored students who twiddle their thumbs while their
neanderthal classmates struggled with basic coursework (in California the
instructional system is geared to address the needs of the lowest common
denominator; resources are generally not available for exceptional
students). The entry judged Best of Show was constructed by one such
student in a few hours on the day immediately preceding the judging.
> It's a sad situation.
It's beyond sad. It's criminal.
FWIW, California is now going to start imposing financial penalties upon
high schools whose students do not perform at some minimal level. The
problem, of course, is that the students are already lacking fundamental
skills that they should have received at the elementary level, thus
penalizing the high schools is not going to fix the problem. Rather, it
will cause even more resources to be diverted to already unsalvageable
students while penalizing those who actually have a chance to do something
useful with their lives.
*Grumble*,
Chris
--
Chris Kennedy
chris_at_mainecoon.com
http://www.mainecoon.com
PGP fingerprint: 4E99 10B6 7253 B048 6685 6CBC 55E1 20A3 108D AB97
Received on Thu Mar 09 2000 - 11:57:22 GMT