I went to public schools in the 50's and 60's and there was no religion in the schools. As a conservative, I must say I do not want religion in public schools, that can be taken care in the private schools and churches. Besides, whose religion would you want there. Yours or someone else's, As we have freedom of religion in this country, all religions would have to be taught so that someones religious believes were not stepped, including yours. That would leave no time for what really needs to be taught in school. Things like history, math, English, and sciences. Those things needed to be successful in our lives.
The biggest problem I see in schools are one the teachers who do not have any accountability to there work and work ethics, especially with the unions. And two with the parents, most of whom probably should never have had children in the first place. They do seem seem to care about their children in school and if there is a problem it must be the schools fault.

 

Moral chaos ensues with liberalism as the prevailing philosophy. Without right/wrong being well-defined this is what we have come to, there is no moral compass to guide society.

 

Closest thing we had to religion in public schools in the 70s was the line "..one nation, under god...".

Public schools have no business starting anything religion. It is a tax free sector, they don't need tax payers money ( funding for public schools ) to further it.

 

Finding the info was the short part of studying, the books you bought had the info in them.
It was understanding the material to pass the tests that was needed.
Calculus books have the answers in the back, it is the showing your work part that is studied ( as one example ).
All my circuit engineering books had all the info I needed for the class, it was up to the student to stay on top of understanding and implementing the material from the book and working in the lab to get usage of what you learned that day ( this was one of the longest parts ).

Typing is not writing and a writing test is not on a computer, at least one that would have spelling and grammar correction ( that would be a data entry / pounding on a keyboard class ).
If that is they type of class test they have these days, the it is no wonder why they do not do as well at a standardized test, they don't learn anything. That is back to state & federal guidelines being changed for the worse.

 

If you think a business wants to see long hand in a report, you are sadly mistaken. Also I think those who write books would consider writing whichever way the do it.

Homework is more than just what was in your school books. At least it was in my day. If you think finding books is the short part of home work, then you really never had real homework. If you were told to write a report on George Patton, I can guarantee it is not in your school books. And just where do you start looking for info. Just finding the right book can take hours. On the computer, about 10 seconds.

Teaching is a lot more than facts and figures. It is also teaching someone how to learn, to find things they need to know.

 

With jobs, there's two major things working right now. First is cheap education, there's more unemployed college graduates on the market simply because just about everyone could get a school loan to become an unemployed college graduate! Just because schools pump out more college degrees doesn't mean there are that many more jobs to be had that require them. Also, with the recent economic decline, the businesses that are hiring have the luxury of being selective about their recruits.

The other issue is very few people (baby boomers specifically) can afford to retire right now. Inflation, fuel prices, and general economic unrest is resulting in more people staying employed in their golden years. This will cause a slowdown in the employment cycle but it is only temporary.

I started to type a long argument about why most college kids are "holding out" for a good paying job - but this article, although more for humor, does a way better job saying it than I ever could.

http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-ways-w...et-generation/

 

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Governm...tired-spending

"We don't have a spending problem."

Either Obama is trying to collapse our economy, or the man is the most insane/evil president we have ever had with a statement like that, or both.

 

True, but we are talking about college students and their ( comparative lack of ) writing abilities.
The objective test used for scoring is not going to auto correct grammar or spelling for the test taker ( else that is a pounding on the keyboard test )

OK... Guess they hand out EE degrees ( on the Deans list ) like popcorn...
Finding the correct section of the book was the easy part, labs were hours each day to understand and complete. The info was right in those 3" thick text books that I hauled around.
Calc / transform analysis homework the answers were in the back, how you got to the answer is what was graded, and the part on how was right in the book. Had the same thing in HS with calc ( they did not have transform analysis in my HS ).

If you are a history major in college, you have the books for the course work.

If not in my day in HS, they had these things called encyclopedias in libraries, as well as other books on the subject matter..

Real easy to use the table of contents to find where George Patton was referenced in all of the books. Just needed to know to pick up the ToC book first, rather than grab a random book.

This was in HS, history majors I am sure have a more extensive library at the university they attend.

Not long at all to find the info, few min of work to get all the books and pages written down. This was doing it Dewie decimal system out of card files if you were not sourcing encyclopedias alone.
This takes longer than a google search, but this should not have been the long part of any assignment.
Ben Franklin made this system back in the day, and it worked fine up to the 80s for a lot of people that had the ability to focus on the task at hand.

Exactly what I posted.
Don't know what college / university you attended, mine was not a trick.
It was about providing the material that the student was required to stay on top of understanding and implementing.
With EE program, there were a lot of facts and figures that were required for the exams. The student was expected to know these items and how to use them to complete both the written class and lab work.
Final test in the last year was the only "open book test" but it was a project that we worked from the midterm to the end. All or nothing test ( and degree ).

 

As someone who took almost a decade to complete my BS degree, I can honestly say teh research time has dropped considerably. I used to sit in the library 2-4 hours per night looking for information. When I finished up I would literally take 1-2 hours to find the same information. The majority of the time was reading the information. Using a brick and mortar library resulted in walking to the card catalog, finding the books on the shlef cursing when the one I wanted was checked out. Attempting to find another book that would provide the same information, then reading the book and evaluating the information. When I graduated I would simply perform a Yahoo search look at the webpages and throw out the ones that looked unreliable. That left a few to read and research.

 

Believe me when they talk about writing, they are not talking about penmanship.

If you think encyclopedias have the information you need, then you will have a report that is greatly lacking. Encyclopedias give a few facts, not how that person truly lived. You would need to read his books, and books by others about him. That takes time to find where online I can find thousands of pieces of info, including what book he read to make himself a better commander.

No doubt, it is far easier to find information and more information today than it was 40 years ago, possibly too easy .Of course it would take far less time to do homework today than then.

 

I understand, that is why I am making a comment to you cannot have a test where the device used to take the test corrects grammar & spelling for you. I am referring to the objective testing results from URL above.

Don't forget the other books in the library. To say the report would be greatly lacking is supposition at best.
Worked for centuries before yahoo or google came around. A lot of work completed that is not greatly lacking. Then again this is from people that could use a card file system in the library.

In college, no it should not.
The university I went to did not have us preparing reports on George Patton, we were more concerned with circuit design & machine code programming classes and labs.
Not too sure which university you went to and why they had you preparing reports on George Patton, like it was 10th grade history class.
I had all the information I needed for my coursework at hand, and it still took a lot of time. Then again it was a EE program, not 'communications'.

You get out of higher education, what you put into it. I graduated on the dean's list, but I put a ton of time into my course work.

The article states college students have an overinflated opinion of their abilities, do not study as much, and do not preform as well with basic skills such as grammar, content and coherent thought process ( tried to spell out writing for you ).
- You see no linkage here ?

 

We teach people what to think not how to think. That's the problem with the education system.

 

Another part of the problem. College has been watered down so that more people can attend and the colleges make more money. Most colleges are businesses for profit not for the benefit of the public. Stupid that you have to take classes covered in high school in college that have nothing to do with your degree. Once again, more classes you take the more money the college earns. Along with that you have the government causing the education bubble just like they did the housing bubble. Seems the public gets the shaft more and more th more powerful the government gets. Imagine that....now I know why they taught history.

 

Absolutely. I noticed this when I went back to school. When I first started college, my course work was rather involved. When I went back, it was very lacking. This could be for one of two reasons. Lowered expectations or the fact that I had gathered enough knowledge from work that I knew most of the material already. I have a hard time believing it is the latter. I think the colleges simply lowered their standards to try to get more people in and graduated. I majored in criminal justice, so rather than working on extensive projects I had to write a lot of research papers. I can't think of any class in my major that didn't have at least one major research paper in it.

SSCULLY--While I never had to write a report on Patton, Sir Robert Peale (he developed the first modern police force in England) was on the list. Granted it was for a lower level course dealing with the history of criminology and the criminal justice system, but it was there.

 

Most universities are non-profit.
Even Harvard, Yale, Princeton and the likes are tagged as non profit, they do not pay taxes ( similar to a church ).

The excess money is diverted into graduate programs, research, and other money holes, as not to have a profit.
They collect some high tuition as well as alumni donations, and do not pay dollar one in taxes.