What were we doing right, education-wise, in the 80s and 90s?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Class of '88. FCPS.

My classmates saw some failed educational experiments; open classrooms AKA pods that were trendy in the late 70s, early 80s, then a scramble to add temporary walls and then later, classrooms.

We had textbooks and workbooks and (I'm old) dittos. We checked out books from the school library to help with our school projects. I learned to use encyclopedias and reference books in second grade.

Spelling tests! Vocabulary tests! Current events drills! Pull down maps in classrooms. Handwriting - printing and cursive. Neatness counted. Flash cards. Math facts. Spelling bees (3x champ here). The Presidential Fitness Award.

Field day was a mini Olympics with (gasp!) 1st/2nd/3rd place ribbons and a winners' stand. It would then be class vs. class.

Student Government and elections. You really did run for office and created a platform and really could get involved.

On the last day of school, our teacher would give us a huge stack of spelling lists, handwriting worksheets, math facts...to take home and work on over the summer. Or, for kids like me, use these to play school.

I had both a visually impaired and a hearing impaired classmate. "Gifted and talented" students were pulled out to meet in one classroom for more challenging work, then they came back to their regular class.

Attended school with some recent immigrants, but they all spoke English, albeit some had accents.

There was a level of formality and professional distance with our teachers. They were mostly mysterious, but each seemed to build class camaraderie. Your class was your unit, your world, dysfunction and cliques and all.

Mostly, our parents stood at a distance and didn't get (hyper) involved. My dad was our ES PTA president and so meetings were at night.

Parents were peripheral. They weren't walking us (or driving us...unthinkable) to school, or meeting us on our walk home.
My mom wrote notes to my teacher if there was a concern. Parents didn't chaperone in-school events, either.

+1

Great post - so true. Hat to sound old, but the world was better in many ways, back then.

[Anonymous]

*hate

[Anonymous]

I think this has to do with stagnating wages and rising costs. Parents are less available to read to their kids.

[Anonymous]

Moderate bullying had its place and kept the smarmy snowflakes in line. Sorry, it's true. Playground justice was a thing.

I wasn't a cool kid, not even close. But I had to work hard to sidestep and peacefully coexist with some very mean kids. You had to learn to curtail certain behaviors to just fit in, otherwise, you'd be taunted and face the wrath.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People born 1978-1987
Had computers as children

Played video games

Watched a ton of television

Had cellphones.

We're the generator that started participation trophies.

The vast majority of these people grew up in the 90s. I assure you we were spoiled AF.

That wasn't the kids -- it was the parents.

Also, Gen X was the generation of latchkey kids and watched a ton of TV and played video games while their parents did...whatever. Try again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People born 1978-1987
Had computers as children

Played video games

Watched a ton of television

Had cellphones.

We're the generator that started participation trophies.

The vast majority of these people grew up in the 90s. I assure you we were spoiled AF.

That wasn't the kids -- it was the parents.

Also, Gen X was the generation of latchkey kids and watched a ton of TV and played video games while their parents did...whatever. Try again.

Millennials especially the older ones represented in the study , the majority of the study,) were latchkey kids too. You're not the champ here Xer.

[Anonymous]

Increase in students and where English is the second language and not spoken at home.

[Anonymous]

This can't be true. I was told the millineal generation sucked at everything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People born 1978-1987
Had computers as children

Played video games

Watched a ton of television

Had cellphones.

We're the generator that started participation trophies.

The vast majority of these people grew up in the 90s. I assure you we were spoiled AF.

That wasn't the kids -- it was the parents.

Also, Gen X was the generation of latchkey kids and watched a ton of TV and played video games while their parents did...whatever. Try again.

Millennials especially the older ones represented in the study , the majority of the study,) were latchkey kids too. You're not the champ here Xer.

Are people not reading the details of the study? In the US, literacy scores for white students peaked in 1975.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was born in 1979 and was in gifted programs from 3rd-12th grade.

My kids are both on the gifted track and I feel like they get more challenging work than I did back then. Their writing assignments have harder questions. More long term, multi step projects.

My kid’s experience with AAP in FCPS is nothing advanced, just some of the expectations everyone had when I was a kid. For example, Everyone learned root words, prefixes and suffixes from Latin/Greek.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s hilarious to me that people think that it’s the MC/UMC households and their electronics than are responsible for the decline in literacy rates. This study isn’t about Ava and Theo, who may spend too much time on Minecraft but can make their way through a Fly Guy book.

But it is. Literacy rates across the board have dropped since their peak in the 80s and 90s. For Ava and Theo in Bethesda. For Londyn and Jaxon in Ohio. For Jamal and Ebony in SE DC. What’s actually kind of hilarious is that you think UMC people are untouchable. They’re not. Are you one of those “oh my kids are upper middle class white kids so it doesn’t matter where they go...they’ll do fine anywhere” people?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think this has to do with stagnating wages and rising costs. Parents are less available to read to their kids.

This.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think this has to do with stagnating wages and rising costs. Parents are less available to read to their kids.

This.

Consider that there are parents who are illiterate in their native language.

[Anonymous]

Are people not reading the details of the study? In the US, literacy scores for white students peaked in 1975.

The whole premise of this thread was misleading. The study says that:

"The long-term stagnation cannot be attributed to racial or ethnic differences in the U.S. population. Literacy scores for white students peaked in 1975; in math, scores peaked in the early 1990s."

It was the "average OECD country" that saw those people born between 1978 and 1987 score significantly better than all previous generations.

I know - I posted the above earlier. It kind of proves the literacy point, doesn't it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s hilarious to me that people think that it’s the MC/UMC households and their electronics than are responsible for the decline in literacy rates. This study isn’t about Ava and Theo, who may spend too much time on Minecraft but can make their way through a Fly Guy book.

But it is. Literacy rates across the board have dropped since their peak in the 80s and 90s. For Ava and Theo in Bethesda. For Londyn and Jaxon in Ohio. For Jamal and Ebony in SE DC. What’s actually kind of hilarious is that you think UMC people are untouchable. They’re not. Are you one of those “oh my kids are upper middle class white kids so it doesn’t matter where they go...they’ll do fine anywhere” people?

+1