Thank you

I am teaching Biology to my son from Raven and Johnson. McGraw Hill won't give my access to their exams. Anyone know of any good exams to use?

I am looking for 'placement exams' (for lack of a better word) for my three girls who are supposed to be in 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade. They have been home schooling with a tutor for over a year and I want to see what level they are at. Basically, I am concerned that they may be behind. Are there any exams that I can purchase or somehow get access to which would give me an idea of how they are doing compared to others their age? Thank you

I enjoyed this thoroughly. See you all in a few months. :D

so would I or anyone else.

Excuse what? She, like you now, have become quite nasty. She is claiming expertise that she doesn't have. She is claiming that a friend of a friend said something that indicates that I "Obviously know nothing about" I am simply pointing this out (in the same tone of her argument).

I am not doubting some (perhaps) mythical gentleman's word. I am doubting yours, or perhaps your ability and willingness to represent my side of the argument to him.

I memorized them once. At some point, I forgot them. Should I test myself each morning, or each week to make certain I don't forget again? Again. I am not against memorizing anything. I am arguing against the idea that I or those kids are a disgrace because we forgot the oceans. I am arguing against the idea that it is somehow better NOT to verify information when it is important to be correct and verification is convenient.

I for one. If you want to my statement out of context it sounds ridiculous, but it is absolutely true that no ship captain, navigator, etc... woud be fired if he couldn't list all the oceans. You are assuming that because he can't list them, he is somehow stupid in other ways, like he can't find them, he can't look them up, he can't read a map, etc... ] Why do you NEED to know ALL of them? to be popular at parties and on internet forums. How could you possibly know all of them? ] Of course the point is that that much time does not exist. ] No. I am defending intelligence. It is intelligent to verify things. It is intelligent not to occupy your time with learning minutia at the expense of learning what is important to you. I am picturing you spending your time combing the internet frantically recording and desparately tying to commit to memory ALL the updates that occur in knowledge in all topics. I am not arguing against knowledge or memorization. I am arguing against the ideas of those who put on aires and pretend their 5 year old is smarter than some adults because their 5 year old knows ALL the oceans, those who deride others who haven't memorized near valueless minutia, those who deride others who wisely verify their knowledge. I am arguing against pseudo-intellectuality. (did I spell that right?)

After giving this some thought, I realized how ridiculous this is. You are saying that a Naval Officer is walking around asking young officers "Name all the oceans off the top of your head right now!! Go!" and the officer replies "Ah, OK, give me a second. Let me see, there is Atlantic and Pacific. Hold on, don't tell me. I know, I know. Indian. Now what is that other one, Oh yes, Arctic!" "Are you sure that's all there are?" "Ah, I think so." "I'm sorry, you forgot the Southern again. You're fired." :lol:

I am sure that I could miss that question every single time and answer all the others correctly and still get the job. Alternatively, I could miss that question once and then I would know it every time there after. Memorizing it to get the job would not be particularly helpful.

I never heard of him. Nor have I heard of many other published authors in educational fields. There are hundreds of educational fields and perhaps millions of authors. Why would I want to know what each one has to say. Even many of those in my own specialties. So what? Such knowledge is generally useful for impressing friends at soirees and symposiums and not much else. I wrote a physics book among others and I don't recall Einstein, Hawkings, Feynman, or many others published in the field of physics ever commenting on my book. As a matter of fact, I am confident that they never heard of me. Should THEY be ashamed?

I don't believe that it's a requirement for the job. It is probably assumed that anyone with the qualifications for the job knows the oceans, but it is not likely that anyone ever tests an applicant by asking them "Name all the oceans and look in this book if you need to." The point being, that if you are interested in these fields you will know the oceans without trying to memorize them.

You mean you don't have the ingredients memorized!!:D

I beg to differ. I don't believe that any of those jobs list memorizing the oceans as a requirement. I have no idea who he is. I suppose this is another one of my shortcomings that I should be ashamed to admit. :lol: I think you are missing one of my points, which is, having a base of knowledge does not include memorizing ALL the minute details of all seldom used lists (such as is done by a jeopardy expert) or, I'll add, keeping up with the latest fads in academics (such as adding a new ocean or a new vowel or changing the names from AD and BC to ACE and BCE:thumbdown:). Instead, in many cases such as this one, I think it is sufficient to be familiar with a list, but not have it memorized perfectly (i.e. If someone says, you just won a trip to the southern ocean! You can reply "Oh, that must be in the south perhaps beneath the pacific. I think I'll look on a map.) You have a limited amount of time and energy. Spending your energy keeping up with minutia on one topic limits you from learning elsewhere. Though I didn't know about the Southern Ocean, there are lists that I would consider to be quite basic, but I wouldn't be surprised to find that others didn't know them. For instance: dates like the battle of marathon, the death of Alexander and Caesar, the battle of actium, the traditional founding and fall of Rome, the french revolution, equations and concepts like Newton's laws of motion, Bernoulli's equations, uniform accelerated motion, the first two lines of the periodic table including the atomic masses, number nipples on a cat or a cow, that a platypus has poisonaous nails, simple quotes from Shakespeare etc... These are all incredibly basic things. My first instinct is to think that one is somewhat uneducated if they don't know ALL these basic things, but with a little reflection I can imagine that it's understandable and even to be expected given that I couldn't name the 5 oceans. There are many other basic things that people with no college or even no highschool degree may have committed to memory that I have not; things that I would be embarassed t admit. (the spelling of simple words for example:lol:) Yet, I know that if I spent my time memorizing things that YOU or Mr. Hirsch think I ought to know or be disgraced, then I wouldn't be nearly as well educated as I am.

1. I didn't know for sure that there were only 4 OR 5 oceans. I had never heard of the Southen Ocean. So, if you follow your 'assumption', then I don't have the 'basic intelligence' to work for you. I believe that demonstrates that such an assumption is specious. 2. I would hope that, no matter how confident your civil engineers are, they don't rely upon their memory for the important constants when building bridges and other structures. No matter how well they THINK they know them, I hope they will verify their memories by checking the book or computer. It's just 'basic intelligence' to do so.:001_smile: They do check and double check their constants, don't they? I mean, wouldn't that be the height of hubris if one of your engineers said "No need for me to verify the shear stress modulus for that steel because that would be a disgrace."

I didn't say that "I have no desire to learn the locations of the world's oceans." I think I said "I am not going google the Southern Ocean." I believe that this implies that I felt that such knowledge was not very important. If you believe that being a 'jeopardy expert' is an admirable goal, then I won't hold it against you. I admire those skills as well. However, I prefer to spend my time doing other things, such as memorizing AND understanding things in which I have a special interest. The implication was that it is somehow valuable in life to know the oceans. I listed some of my accomplishments in order to provide an example of one who has had a successful life by most people's standards without even memorizing all the oceans, thereby demonstrating that know the oceans is not all that valuable. So it WAS necessary for me to 'brag'. As for matching my accomplishments: I believe that there are many ways to have a successful life and 'matching' my accomplishments is not likely to be one of them. There are many who have made more money than I, who are smarter than I, and who are more educated than I, etc... Those things don't make those persons better than me. In fact, their accomlishments don't really reflect on me in any way. Nor do my accomplishments reflect on you or the value of your life.

As I said, you obviously associate with highly educated people. I believe that only about 25% of adults have a college education. Yet, you seem to view a college education as some type of minimum standard. We are talking about 15 year olds, no high school diploma. The test was on ALL the oceans. It apparently didn't say "list 4 oceans and 7 continents". That would have been much easier. 21 out of 23 looked in their books to verify their answer. I would say that those 21 took the more intelligent course of action. Memorizing the oceans is nothing at all like memorizing the alphabet. A person uses the alphabet nearly every minute of every day (reading signs and labels, using the internet, writing your name, etc...). There is a song that everyone learns in order to remember the alphabet. If you don't know the alphabet, you will have difficulty finding even the most menial work. By contrast, the names of the oceans rarely come up for the average 15 year old. Perhaps never. No job of which I am aware would require you to memorize the names of the oceans. Memorizing the oceans is more like memorizing the state bird, or state flag. It is a bit less useful than memorizing which months have 30 days or the dates of the solstices and equinoxes. It is like memorizing ALL Newton's laws of motion, or the exact conversion formula from feet to Meters, or the value of pi to 4 decimal places, only, again, knowing ALL oceans is less useful. Can you answer those very basic questions? How much of an advantage in life do you have if you can? I would say "a negligible advantage". On the other hand, "Can you use Newton's laws or pi? Do you know the signifigance of a solstice or equinox? Given the formula, can you convert from one system of measurement to another?" are questions whose answers are valuable life skills. This is not the same thing. If the question had been "where is Europe? Where is Africa? etc...", that would have been a much easier question. But the question was to list ALL the oceans and contents. Not only do you have to know them, but you have to know when you have named them all. This is different than where is the Southern Ocean (which I finally found on my globe, thank you :lol:) So you are 'sad' because only 9% of a group of a group of 15 year olds are as bright as a smaller group of professional Civil Engineers when it comes to naming oceans? :confused: Not only that, if your employees had had a book in their hands when you asked them, and you told them it was a test and that they could use the book without penalty, you believe that the smart ones wouldn't have verified their answers in the book?:confused:

After thinking about it, if I were giving a job interview and I asked the applicant to name all the oceans and all the continents, and he/she had a book handy to verify his/her answer, and then didn't use the book, I would probably consider him/her blithe and I would count it against him/her.

My 10 yo son just reminded me what the state bird was and I actually did know it, so I stand corrected. That kind of knowledge should really take me places in life, don't you think? I still can't find a Southern Ocean on my globe.

I guess I should be disgraced then, because I never heard of a Southern Ocean. Now I am not a genius, but I am a Columbia Grad on the Dean's list, a published author in the field of education, 99.9% on several of the graduate standardized exams, 97% percent on wordsmart, have taught at the graduate level, and a self-made millionaire, but perhaps I am just a disgrace becuase I wasn't certain about all my oceans. Imagine, after 50 years of life it's all come down to this. I am a disgrace because I didn't know my oceans. And you know what else, I still don't know where the Southern Ocean is, and, even worse, I am not going to look it up. So I will continue to be a disgrace. And don't spoil it and tell me. BTW, I also don't know what the state bird of my native state is.

I would say you have highly educated friends then, that happen to be highly confident in their geography. Not that I would be surprised that some would know, but that all, or even most would know and with certainty, I would be very surprised. I graduated from Columbia University and I would not have bet a substantial amount of money that I would get all the oceans. The fact that there are four oceans is not knowledge that I walk around with. I would have to think about it and count them. To clarify, and without looking it up, I assume that you are talking about Pacific, Indian, Atlantic, and Arctic. To what Southen Ocean are you referring. The Arctic, as you know, is in the north. Are you talking about Southern Atlantic and Southern Pacific? If so, there are two. Why did you refer to them as one? If you were not refering to them, then I obviously don't know my oceans. Yet, I would think that most would consider me well educated. I think very few of my friends would know. I am nearly certain that most of my employees wouldn't know. Why would they? Why would anybody, unless they happened to have a special interest in that sort of thing or unless they learned it recently? Now, as for a 14 or 15 year old high school kid, I am impressed that 9 percent had the aplomb not to look it up.

I don't think that's a big deal. I am not attacking anyone, but I bet most people on this site would not wager a large sum of money that they could name ALL the oceans and ALL the continents correctly. Surely some of you know them with a high degree of confidence (especially if you have just been teaching your kids) but I would bet that most of you would not be confident enough to risk a large sum of money. I am highly educated and I looked on a globe just to be certain that I wasn't missing one and that I didn't mistake a sea for an ocean. How many would call Oceania, Australia? Is that still correct? I bet many of you will have to google to be certain. I think public schools are terrible, but I don't expect the kids to be jeopardy experts. If they had a class in it recently, they should know it cold, but if it was a pop quiz out of the blue, then 2 out of 23 getting all of them correct isn't that bad for 15 year olds that really don't care about this stuff anyway.

Have you taught her to count? (i.e. by 2s, 3s, 4s,... ...12s). A child should be able to count to one hundred by any one of these intervals in a matter of seconds. Counting is an essential math skill that seems to be overlooked these days. If she can count, she can easily subtract. I took my 16 year old out of school her 10th grade year. She was reasonable in verbal and very poor at math. We spent two months teaching her to count. From there, we worked through each grade level. She is currently working on algebra. I believe that counting helped her become confident in math. She actually seems to enjoy it now.

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