Randy Cassingham's Blog

It was an entertaining, if a bit oversimplified, eight minutes. But the last minute really got me: Why should any parent expect the state to do their job for them? Schools are fine babysitters but anyone who expects them to do more than the basics of reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic is sadly mistaken. Parents, not teachers, are the front line in the education of the next generation.

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I actually did address that, briefly: "More importantly, do the people we're paying professional-level wages to educate our children know it?"

Because the fact is, we are paying quite a lot of money to people to educate our children. We can argue over whether that's the "best way", but that is the way we are doing it. And since that is what we're doing, it is reasonable to expect a high-quality job of it, especially for the prices we're paying. -rc

I have to disagree with Nathaniel in Michigan...as a parent it is my responsibility to teach my child the social skills necessary to integrate into society. The teacher, on the other hand, is being paid to ensure that my child has the foundation of knowledge he needs to step up into college and obtain the advanced learnings necessary to ultimately become a productive member of adult society.100 years ago that meant reading, writing and arithmetic. In today's world, it means a lot more than that. Those core subjects are still necessary, however, they are inadequate to prepare a child for what they will face in college and in the workplace.

I am in a position to observe the result of a number of K-12 school systems, because my wife teaches at a Jr. College in central California. She teaches Computer Information Systems and is primarily interested in the introductory classes. One of the things she stresses is that her students must write papers and test question answers. She feels the students will be expected to write reports in most jobs, and they need to be able to express their opinions and thoughts clearly.

This requirement seems to shock and upset a fair number of her students, and in some cases been the cause of some hilariously funny errors. There are examples every week unfortunately, emphasizing the lack of understanding of English language skills in a significant portion of our populace attending college with goals that will require good language skills. It is amazing how many think that the computer will assist them in writing beyond spelling checks.

Where much of the rest of the world is beating us is basic education. Writing, reasoning, and math skills still need to be taught effectively.

Throwing technology at kids and hoping it will stick is not the solution. Sadly this is what often happens in the US. In our (relatively well-off) school district, laptops for every kid are more a distraction than a learning tool. One only has to look at how young people are using sites such as MySpace to see where learning is NOT going. The problem is that the vast majority of educators, not only K-12 but up into higher ed, are not equipped nor encouraged to require rigorous writing AND technology skills. Education "professionals" and the folks making education decisions with respect to curriculum need to step both forward and back -- back to basic skills as well as tying them to the the future of technology.

Did anyone else notice the syntax error at about -3:03? Kind of ironic . . .

It has been said, and the evidence is there, that there is an intentional "dumbing down" of the American student taking place. I know for a fact that the teaching of Math changes every few years; when my son was in Middle School he asked for help with converting fractions to decimals. I showed how it was done, and his response was "That's not how we were told to do it." We looked in his textbook and the text was (literally) incomprehensible. His math training was completely different from that taught me just 25 years previous.

Another example: One of our students was studying at the local High School. I asked him about the classes he was taking, and he started telling me about his "Health" class. Nothing to do with "health" as I knew it - It was about how to prevent suicide! The teacher even showed a video of a kid committing suicide, and passed out a handout of the 100 most popular methods! And told the little shavers which hurt the least!

HELLO! Wake up call! It is NOT how much money is being "spent on education" that matters, it's WHO is teaching the teachers... and what THEIR intentions are. And that is a snakepit the likes of which few can confront.

This is fear mongering and the questions asked at the end (what are we supposed to do deal with the upcoming changes?) has been answered earlier in the video: nothing, because we cannot predict what will happen. It happens all the time, that someone gets paranoid, because they catch a glimpse of a technology they haven't yet embraced, so they fall back on the trusted human quality: fear.

I bet that teachers and administrators at your Junior High and college were responding to what was happening *then* around them and reacted just like today's teachers and administrators are reacting. Those that are not afraid of the technological progress are embracing it and try to show to students that while the technology changes, the ability to think, communicate, and cooperate are still the same qualities that drove previous generations, independent of the technology.

I grew up in communist Poland, with no computers, yet I've spent the last 20 years designing and building software. I'm sure that my son will be able to handle whatever technology there will be in 20 years, even though I cannot fathom now what it might be.

Lastly, talking about India and China is like Japan bashing 20 years ago. Let's embrace their progress; competition is good and I'm sure that will help US in the long run.

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There is definitely wisdom in your words, but I can tell you my schools were quite unusual. There were very few in 1971 giving students hands-on access to computers -- and probably still very few in 1976 or 1981. How many generations had to wait? Did the majority of them ever catch up? My point was and is that my teachers paid attention to what was going around them and did something about it. The question is, how many teachers, principals and school districts are doing that? My guess: not nearly enough. -rc

I started my IT career in 1966 as a freshman in college on an IBM mainframe (360/50) while I was going to school. My public school education contained no computers, but I got there as fast as I could. A keypunch was the input device.

Damn it! I really wanted to see what was in this video. But being blind and this video having absolutely 0 spoken commentary, only music, I didn't get the full effect. I'm glad you wrote about it so I could get the point anyway.

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Sorry about that. Indeed a transcript would be helpful. I looked at the site mentioned at the bottom and didn't find one, so I've written the authors to ask for one (and pointed to this comment so they can reply directly, should they wish). -rc

I'm a college professor, and after a semester of teaching third-year undergraduates, I'm increasingly discouraged about my students' ability to write. Many of them suffer from Serious Misuse of Apostrophes; apparently, their informal rule is that a word needs an apostrophe if it has an "s" on the end. Quite a few of them still confuse "your" and "you're", "loose" and "lose", "choose" and "chose". Most don't understand why "I asked the child to put the pencil in their desk" is incorrect, and quite a few still separate sentences with only a comma.

These are college juniors, and future elementary school teachers. And the most frustrating part is that they get annoyed when I correct their grammar, and even more annoyed when I take off points for grammatical and spelling errors. I wish I knew how to make them realize that, as teachers of young children, being able to communicate in writing is an essential skill.

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You forgot its and it's! (Hint: it's always means "it is"; there is no word its'. But the one that drives me really crazy is something I get from readers all the time: they let me know about a "rediculous story". -rc