Western Civilization and Other Fairy Tales

[Kaylee]

95%.. after being a goof and misreading the answers on the Monroe Doctrine.  Spaced on the powers of Congress and Keynesian econ ones.. shoulda known 'em to. Bother.

But anyhow, that test ain't "liberal arts." Modern Liberal Arts seems to be reading 'Despairing Novels of the 20th Century,' writing about how they make you feeeeeeel, and piling a bunch of trash in the College Quad and calling it art. :p A goodly amount of that test is economic theory and history - something that's sadly underrepresented in modern education I'd say. Good to see it there actually!

ManedWolf - WOW - never seen that before - that's cool! I'll never see a late 19th c. downtown the same again.

-K

[Tecumseh]

Huh. 75%. Not as good as I would hope, but not bad, considering that my school taught "social studies", rather than American history, and my last class of this sort was n 1990...
Guess I need to work on that. although, looking at my answers marked incorrect, they were mostly the ones I went back and changed from the correct answers..
Interesting...

  My school tought both interestingly enough.

[Dntsycnt]

Mine as well.  Social Studies through Middle School, then you switched to World History, then eventually U.S. History.

[BridgeWalker]

90% here.  But the much-decried end of common sense has little or nothing to do with one's knowledge of economic theories, or for that matter, the writings of Washington, Jefferson, and Locke.

[Tallpine]

Well, in the area where I went to school, we had to learn problem solving at an early age... Farming and all that... So it drives me nuts when I see an 18 year old kid who just LOOKS at something that's -almost- broken, and -can be saved- from being broken if he just actually does something.

Sometimes people ask me where I learned to program computers.  I always say: "from my days working in the timber as a logger." 

Sure, I went to school after that, but the problem solving ability I gained from trying to fix old bulldozers and getting trucks unstuck from the mud.

Nuts and bolts or bits and bytes - it's all about solving a problem in the simplest and most efficient manner.

that jokes only funny if youve heard of Santayana in the first place

I though everybody knew that Santayana was the mexican general at the Battle of the Alamo ...    

[SADShooter]

No, he's the dope-smokin' guitar player who made that hit song with Matchbox 20...

[Werewolf]

But then I am a semi-old fart and went to school when school actually meant learning.

What's changed since you went to school, specifically? How much do you actually know about a high-school curriculum in this day and age?

What did the schools teach "back in the day" that are no longer widely teached - which facts or which methodologies are missing?

I raised three daughters to adulthood all graduated out of the public <puke> school system by the year 2000.

1. Hours - 20% fewer hours in a school day than when I went to school
2. Choice of courses - at HS level - not as broad
3. Requirement to graduate - 10% fewer credits
4. Days - now start in Aug end in May vs Start in Aug end in June
5. Time spent on BS like feel good *expletive deleted*it, parties for every holiday, grief counseling, the sun didn't come up today counseling -
6. Lower emphasis on core courses - math, science, history
7. Lack of discipline - their peers got away with stuff that would have gotten kids in my day kicked out of school - cussing at teachers, always tardy/absent, not doing homework, talking in class, dressing like the scum of the earth, beards, slutty clothes on girls etc
8. Everyone gets an award for something instead of just those who actually deserve one - part of that feel good thing
9. Teachers - probably not their fault - but they just don't seem to teach anymore - hamstrung by silly policies that mix up the smart, average and dummies so that teachers have to teach to the lowest common denominator.

I started noticing stuff like that when I realized my kids were learning stuff in the 6th grade I learned in the 3rd and that lag pretty much stayed constant right up thru HS. 2 of 'em are now in college - their piss poor public education is now coming back to haunt them.

Where I work I have to deal with lots of HS graduates - most of 'em barely know where the US is on a map let alone where the rest of the world is, History - forget about it - they either did or never learned it. Math - hah - without a calculator they can't add 2 and 2 together and get 4 twice in a row. I've had to let more than one go because they can't fill out something as simple as a time sheet and some because they couldn't work simple percentages.

I have ZERO respect for the education system as it existed when my kids went to school and less now as I see the results of it on a daily basis.

[Balog]

Growing a beard in high school was grounds for getting expelled in your day 'wolf? Was your school taught by Marines? 

[BozemanMT]

You don't think government indoctrination camps, errr I mean schools might be the problem do ya?

[Vodka7]

Well, in the area where I went to school, we had to learn problem solving at an early age... Farming and all that... So it drives me nuts when I see an 18 year old kid who just LOOKS at something that's -almost- broken, and -can be saved- from being broken if he just actually does something.
 
For that matter, why, in Bob's name, would someone drive five miles on a freakin' flat tire, when they KNEW it was flat, had a cell phone, a wal-mart handy, and family inside that five miles...

God, isn't that the truth.  I work at a fairly small store--there's maybe ten of us total.  Today, one of the two toilets broke.  People fixed this by....  Ignoring it.

I came in to a toilet filled with piss, so I lifted the top off the tank to take a look.  The chain had rusted out and snapped.  Not a single person who used the toilet before me knew how to make it flush without using the handle...  *sigh*  I ended up having to make a diagram and circling the part to lift to flush it.

And really, this is just one in a long string of similar stories.  One time a cabinet door fell off, and the solution was to hide the door in the back.  It took five minutes and nothing more complicated than a Bic pen and a Philips head screwdriver to fix.  I really wonder about people like this--I'm not handy at all, and I'm not particularly good at putting things together without instructions, but wow.  Did these people just grow up calling someone every time the smallest thing broke?

[Bogie]

Yup. And if you're the person they call, 1) they don't respect you; and 2) they'll use your every waking moment in fixing things...
 

[Werewolf]

Growing a beard in high school was grounds for getting expelled in your day 'wolf? Was your school taught by Marines? 

I graduated HS in 1970. North Side of San Antonio, TX. Strict dress code; no beards, mustaches, hair over the ears all verboten. No jeans allowed, girls couldn't wear pants at all and skirts no higher than 2 or 3 fingers above the knee.

There was a very large middle class military population that made up most of the school district. I imagine those folks, my parents included, had not a little say in the school rules.

[mustanger98]

The course of this thread is reminding me of that bunch of punks in the Waffle House back in December... these kids were all probably about 16. Two guys had come outside to smoke before we got there. As we went to the door, which they were blocking in their quest for nicotine-enhanced coolness, they displayed a desire to not move aside from anyone. But they did move aside. Inside, the whole group of them were obnoxious. The only thing positive anyone said about them was when the waitresses said "they do know how to tip". Those kids didn't grow up the way I did. But then, they acted like they didn't grow up at all. And that was alluded to somewhere in this thread... the refusal to grow up.

What surprises most folks about me is that my Mom taught me to read at age 3-4. So I really don't remember not knowing how.