Reply to Anyone else educated by FCPS and sees the decline?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think the older generations are always doom and gloom about school. My dad is livid that kids aren't learning cursive anymore. I couldn't be happier that it's gone.

I understand the suspicion of quality of snippets, materials cobbled together from online sources, etc., but the reality is that with electronic media there is often no reason to have a textbook. As a college professor, I have moved in the last 15 years from relying primarily on a very popular textbook to teaching my class without a textbook. I've read all 8 or so well-known textbooks in the field and I feel that, through powerpoints and assigned brief readings, I am able to outperform any textbook on the topic (students seem to agree). There is no benefit to reading a 50 page chapter in a bloated book that gets key principles incorrect or has not been updated to reflect changing theories or evidence.

I'd also point out that, in response to someone's comment about reading an abridged version of the Odyssey, this happened at both a public AND private school that I attended in the 90s, so this is not new unless you classify the mid-90s as "new."

Finally, while I have been skeptical of the changes to learning, I don't observe that my oldest son is behind where I and my peers were (in an advanced program) in terms of reading, writing, and math. It seems that students can learn to spell and write without memorizing vocabulary/spelling lists for hours every month. I say this is a wonderful development.

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I am not sure what field you are in, but as a Humanities professor, I can say that a shocking number of students these days are extremely weak writers. The lack of explicitly grammar and writing instruction has had a profound effect. Yes, some kids can learn to spell simply by reading but many cannot. And I would argue that most kids cannot earn to write well without being taught. Writing instruction should be organized and systematic and start at the elementary level. I personally don't care about cursive or even much about neatness but teaching grammar, vocabulary, how to construct a sentence, then a paragraph-these are very basic building blocks. Putting a blank paper in front of a third grader, handing him a rubric, and saying it's poetry week is not teaching writing!

I can believe that you may be able to outperform all of the available textbooks, but can all the teachers?? Of course, not. Also, there used to be a value to having a text to go back to and reread, even if it was just s to have all the formulas in one place, all the dates easily accessible, all the verb forms and tenses well-organized. I don't know how kids study these days.

I wasn't educated in FCPS-I went to a private school in Massachusetts. But the education I received was immeasurably superior. The demands were greater, the expectations higher. To give a silly example, my highschooler  in honors history has taken only multiple choice tests this year. What a waste of an opportunity to teach a kid to think and write critically, in addition to learn the material. Of course it's a lot easier to correct multiple choice and if you have 30 plus kids in every class, you do what you can to survive.

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