is our kids getting more dumber?

[bleedorange]

Did Paul sneeze on your neck, too? Six years of that, middle through high school. Damn.

 

 

I almost came back to edit my post saying that Paul didn't sneeze on my neck, or that I held my breath. Beat me to it.

[Guest Speed Racer]

Okay, just wanted to confirm that you were avoiding the question. Take care!

[Guest Speed Racer]

How hard is it? And why don't people care more about these things?

 

That kind of shit is irrelevant.

 

...moving beyond this specific instance:

 

Drives me NUTS. Absolutely nuts when people do that. I mean, I assume most jobs involve at least a little bit of writing, and I have no idea why someone would sit down at a keyboard and type differently under two different circumstances.

 

Personally, I think it's exceptionally important on message boards and places where you only have electronic interaction with people; that's all you have to convey that you are someone capable of explaining your thoughts. People who can talk clearly but can't write the same casual (i.e., not formal like cover letters or professional work) sentence they speak, the same way they say it, just blow my mind.

[sonicshoulder]

Okay, just wanted to confirm that you were avoiding the question. Take care!

\

Sorry, the last few posts were just to agitate you because I couldnt answer your question because looking back my original post was part of a rant. My high school sucked, yours was obviously enchanting

[sonicshoulder]

That kind of shit is irrelevant.

 

...moving beyond this specific instance:

 

Drives me NUTS. Absolutely nuts when people do that. I mean, I assume most jobs involve at least a little bit of writing, and I have no idea why someone would sit down at a keyboard and type differently under two different circumstances.

 

Personally, I think it's exceptionally important on message boards and places where you only have electronic interaction with people; that's all you have to convey that you are someone capable of explaining your thoughts. People who can talk clearly but can't write the same casual (i.e., not formal like cover letters or professional work) sentence they speak, the same way they say it, just blow my mind.

Mom, is that you????

[sonicshoulder]

I always bristle at remarks like these. Is it that difficult? Nobody is grading you on anything here, but I just don't get why people don't pay attention to those things. For instance, it drives me nuts to walk down the halls of my daughter's daycare facility (a church) and see all the misplaced apostrophes. How hard is it? And why don't people care more about these things?

Sorry, its just not that important to me. I usually concentrate on what people are saying not how they are saying it. With that being said, believe it or not I correct my daughters(not daughter's) grammar daily. I thinks thats a contradiction but I would like to go to napalm for the confirmation.

[The High Heat]

High School was mostly worthless. For me.

Same here. My god is it a waste of time and effort for those of us who prefer to work alone and our own (often times accelarated) pace.

[Guest Speed Racer]

My high school sucked, yours was obviously enchanting

 

So again, an honest question: what would have made your high school experience better? I didn't enjoy it much at all, but I don't know how it could have been any better than it was.

[sonicshoulder]

So again, an honest question: what would have made your high school experience better? I didn't enjoy it much at all, but I don't know how it could have been any better than it was.

DIRECTION, Would have been nice to be able to learn in a direction relevant to my interests, instead of checking classes off of a list of requirements.

[bleedorange]

Sorry, its just not that important to me. I usually concentrate on what people are saying not how they are saying it. With that being said, believe it or not I correct my daughters(not daughter's) grammar daily. I thinks thats a contradiction but I would like to go to napalm for the confirmation.

 

So you try to make grammatical mistakes on purpose?

[u2roolz]

This is what happens when you fall asleep in class.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fw3XqD70ptE

Kinda NSFW which is odd because it's done through the Marist colleges.

They call themselves the HuMarists.

[sonicshoulder]

So you try to make grammatical mistakes on purpose?

Not at all. I just don't put much stock into critiquing grammar, others or my own. Its a bit of a formality in casual conversation and to me Via Chicago is casual. Do you use it to gauge intelligence?

[bleedorange]

Not at all. I just don't put much stock into critiquing grammar, others or my own. Its a bit of a formality in casual conversation and to me Via Chicago is casual. Do you use it to gauge intelligence?

 

In a way, sure. Because we're talking about elementary-level aspects of grammar (proper use of apostrophes, their/there/they're, your/you're, making words plural, etc.).

 

It's either lack of intelligence or carelessness. Either way, I think it reflects poorly. I teach my daughter to say please and thank you, chew with her mouth closed, and treat animals with kindness. I also repeat things she says to me using proper pronunciation and grammar so she can repeat it back. I think all of those things are equally important as far as life and social skills go.

[Guest Speed Racer]

In a way, sure. Because we're talking about elementary-level aspects of grammar (proper use of apostrophes, their/there/they're, your/you're, making words plural, etc.).

 

It's either lack of intelligence or carelessness. Either way, I think it reflects poorly.

 

I feel the same way. Hell, sometimes I'll even check the definition of a word before I use it, if I really think it matters in the sentence: lord knows I'm not a genius, but I also care about how I convey myself. Perhaps it's just that some people aren't handy with a keyboard and it's too time consuming to go back, but people aren't making typos - more often than not, I see fundamental grammatical and punctuational errors.

 

ETA: What would it say about someone if they *didn't* judge people for their use of grammar, spelling and punctuation? Why hold someone to a standard of laziness (if that's what it is) or ignorance?

[bjorn_skurj]

This, in the NYT Saturday, made me want to cry.

 

 

Playtime Is Over

By DAVID ELKIND Medford, Mass.

 

RECESS is no longer child’s play. Schools around the country, concerned about bullying and arguments over the use of the equipment, are increasingly hiring “recess coaches” to oversee students’ free time. Playworks, a nonprofit training company that has placed coaches at 170 schools from Boston to Los Angeles, is now expanding thanks to an $18 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

 

Critics have suggested that such coaching is yet another example of the over-scheduling and over-programming of our children. And, as someone whose scholarly work has consistently reinforced the idea that young people need unstructured imagination time, I’d probably have been opposed to recess coaches in the past. But childhood has changed so radically in recent years that I think the trend makes sense, at least at some schools and with some students.

 

Children today are growing up in a world vastly different from the one their parents knew. As the writer Richard Louv has persuasively chronicled, our young people are more aware of threats to the global environment than they are of the natural world in their own backyards.

 

A Nielsen study last year found that children aged 6 to 11 spent more than 28 hours a week using computers, cellphones, televisions and other electronic devices. A University of Michigan study found that from 1979 to 1999, children on the whole lost 12 hours of free time a week, including eight hours of unstructured play and outdoor activities. One can only assume that the figure has increased over the last decade, as many schools have eliminated recess in favor of more time for academics.

 

One consequence of these changes is the disappearance of what child-development experts call “the culture of childhood.” This culture, which is to be found all over the world, was best documented in its English-language form by the British folklorists Peter and Iona Opie in the 1950s. They cataloged the songs, riddles, jibes and incantations (“step on a crack, break your mother’s back”) that were passed on by oral tradition. Games like marbles, hopscotch and hide and seek date back hundreds of years. The children of each generation adapted these games to their own circumstances.

 

Yet this culture has disappeared almost overnight, and not just in America. For example, in the 1970s a Japanese photographer, Keiki Haginoya, undertook what was to be a lifelong project to compile a photo documentary of children’s play on the streets of Tokyo. He gave up the project in 1996, noting that the spontaneous play and laughter that once filled the city’s streets, alleys and vacant lots had utterly vanished.

 

For children in past eras, participating in the culture of childhood was a socializing process. They learned to settle their own quarrels, to make and break their own rules, and to respect the rights of others. They learned that friends could be mean as well as kind, and that life was not always fair.

 

Now that most children no longer participate in this free-form experience — play dates arranged by parents are no substitute — their peer socialization has suffered. One tangible result of this lack of socialization is the increase in bullying, teasing and discrimination that we see in all too many of our schools.

 

Bullying has always been with us, but it did not become prevalent enough to catch the attention of researchers until the 1970s, just as TV and then computers were moving childhood indoors. It is now recognized as a serious problem in all the advanced countries. The National Education Association estimates that in the United States, 160,000 children miss school every day because they fear attacks or intimidation by other students. Massachusetts is considering anti-bullying legislation.

 

While correlation is not necessarily causation, it seems clear that there is a link among the rise of television and computer games, the decline in peer-to-peer socialization and the increase of bullying in our schools. I am not a Luddite — I think that the way in which computers have made our students much more aware of the everyday lives of children in other countries is wonderful, and that they will revolutionize education as the new, tech-savvy generation of teachers moves into the schools. But we should also recognize what is being lost.

 

We have to adapt to childhood as it is today, not as we knew it or would like it to be. The question isn’t whether recess coaches are good or bad — they seem to be with us to stay — but whether they help students form the age-old bonds of childhood. To the extent that the coaches focus on play, give children freedom of choice about what they want to do, and stay out of the way as much as possible, they are likely a good influence.

 

In any case, recess coaching is a vastly better solution than eliminating recess in favor of more academics. Not only does recess aid personal development, but studies have found that children who are most physically fit tend to score highest on tests of reading, math and science.

 

Friedrich Fröbel, the inventor of kindergarten, said that children need to “learn the language of things” before they learn the language of words. Today we might paraphrase that axiom to say that children need to learn the real social world before they learn the virtual one.

 

David Elkind is a professor emeritus of child development at Tufts University.

 

 

[Guest Speed Racer]

Wow. You know, I distinctly remember how awesome it felt to get invited to a kickball game started by a bunch of kids I wasn't friends with or didn't even know, and having a blast. To me what's sad is not that there's a coach overseeing it, but that kids don't have the mental/social faculties to do that on their own anymore.

[The High Heat]

Tennessee to receive $500M in federal grant money in the "Race to the Top" education program. Delaware has been awarded $100M.

[uncool2pillow]

The Onion weighs in on this topic.

[Guest Speed Racer]

Nice thoughts - wrong thread?

[Sweet Papa Crimbo]

Nice thoughts - wrong thread?

 

Yeah...my ADD kicked in.

[sonicshoulder]

In a way, sure. Because we're talking about elementary-level aspects of grammar (proper use of apostrophes, their/there/they're, your/you're, making words plural, etc.).

 

It's either lack of intelligence or carelessness. Either way, I think it reflects poorly. I teach my daughter to say please and thank you, chew with her mouth closed, and treat animals with kindness. I also repeat things she says to me using proper pronunciation and grammar so she can repeat it back. I think all of those things are equally important as far as life and social skills go.

I can't deny a correlation between speaking properly and intelligence, but I can deny one in speaking improperly and intelligence. I grew up in Northern Ky(insert punchline). There is a certain dialect used here and in Cincinnati that is unique to this area: words get smashed together, syllables skipped, and definitions distorted...example, instead of saying "what", people often say "please" short for "please repeat yourself". These are elemantary aspects of grammar but using them as an I.Q. gauge can be dangerous. As for the other night when our dicussion started I was tending to two kids(4 and 2) and cooking dinner when I got caught up in our back and forth. Coupled by the fact I'm not downloading a spellcheck program on my computer strictly for Via Chicago plus not giving a shit about my spelling and grammar when typing in general I guess I looked/sounded like a jackass and my original point got washed away. If kids are dumber these days, which I think is far from true, it's due to the people they rely on for education in life(mom and/or dad) and in school.