AdventureMoms Posted February 9, 2012 Share Posted February 9, 2012 And it's reason #1 why we're homeschooling. We still live in NYS. I'm scared for what my children will (not) learn if I put them in public school now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zaichiki Posted February 9, 2012 Share Posted February 9, 2012 the 10th grade teacher didn't bother with any required reading, I'm frankly not sure what we did during 10th grade English. I think we wrote a lot of bad poetry. Eek. Flashback to high school. My 9th grade teacher had studied Shakespeare in university in England (she was from England), so we read a LOT of Shakespeare in 9th grade. And recited sonnets, too. :ack2: My 10th grade teacher had a grad degree in Middle English or something, so we translated Chaucer in 10th grade. I think she was an alien. My 11th grade teacher thought Dante was God, so we read the Divine Comedy -- and acted it out and wrote essay after essay about it. Sheesh! I don't remember 12th grade English! :lol: I think my brain cells were fried by then! College English was a joke compared to my three English teachers from... I won't say it. (It was Catholic school.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
creekland Posted February 9, 2012 Share Posted February 9, 2012 What's funny about this (in a sad way) is that when I was taking the "hard" Regents exams in the late 1980s, they were considered EASY!!!! We sweated the AP exams, and thought the Regents were a piece of cake. Granted, I went to a rigorous school in a wealthy area - probably not the same experience as other areas in the state. I'm so glad we homeschooled our kids so rigorously for a number of years. Right now my 9th grader is in public school. He is reading ONE novel for English this entire year - an Agatha Christie novel. Sigh. I told him he'd better do a lot of reading at home. (He does.) I went to a public school in a rural county and we thought the 80's Regents were easy too. We sweated the AP exams, but often did well on them. My school regularly sent kids from our top classes to top 4 year schools. My guidance counselor was a bit displeased that I chose an OOS public when I had "better" options. Kids below me in the ranking went to Stanford and MIT... I don't know that it happens anymore though. We had the tracking mentioned before and were taught according to our ability. Since it worked for my peers and other classes at the time, I feel it ought to be the way things are done. Channel kids toward their likes and abilities and teach accordingly. It's what I try to do with our homeschooling. What doesn't work is trying to make all kids fit the same mold. Our world is diverse. Our talents are diverse. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mommyfaithe Posted February 9, 2012 Share Posted February 9, 2012 And it's reason #1 why we're homeschooling. We still live in NYS. I'm scared for what my children will (not) learn if I put them in public school now. Me too! They are now doing away with regents all together. They decided a few years ago ALL kids had to do and pass the Regents....so, of course...they had to dumb them down to the point of ridiculous, And the passing score was down to 65%. (It was 75%), when I was a kid. This year they announced incoming freshman would no longer have Regents to take at all. They do offer AP classes....a few anyway. Oh, and for the record, we live in an area with the highest taxes per capital, and the school only offers a whopping ONE Art class, The English classes are a joke, and the math teachers are so horrible, my poor nephew has to teach it all to himself anyway. I'll keep my kids home, tyvm:glare: Faithe...who would LOVE some educational choice in this area where we have one crummy high school, one Catholic High which is almost 45 minutes away, and $$$$$. Or a Sudbury school....also $$$$$$$ and completely an unschool school. Not my idea of school. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SKL Posted February 9, 2012 Share Posted February 9, 2012 Reading this is making me realize how good my rural Midwest public high school was. I had thought we had it very easy, since we transferred from a Lutheran school. We didn't take graduation tests, though. A test doesn't make anyone smarter, I don't think. What we did have were teachers who were there because they cared. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MBM Posted February 9, 2012 Share Posted February 9, 2012 (edited) Schools vary so widely in what they offer. The students in my son's English class are reading Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Mill, Kant, Marx and a number of novels. Movies, lyrics, and other pieces of literature are thrown in to help flesh it out. That's just for this quarter. My son, who despised all other Enlgish classes, has taken a shining to it now. He has to work like a bugger, but I think he's finally learning something substantial. His high school English teacher has his PhD in Shakespearean studies. He's fantastic and wonderful with kids. Anyone who can get my son to like literature is a gem. It's too bad I can't clone Mr. S and distribute him to other high schools. However, his English teacher in junior high was horrible. She didn't know much about literature or even grammar, but the writing assignments were the worst. Suspecting that she didn't read the papers, my son once wrote some nonsense in the middle of one of his, and sure enough, she completely missed it. What is the point if the teacher isn't even reading the papers? :tongue_smilie: Edited February 9, 2012 by MBM added a word Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CAMom Posted February 9, 2012 Share Posted February 9, 2012 As a kid, I can remember cashiers who could not add a couple of small numbers or make change without putting in a lot of mental effort. In my 20s, I worked with a guy who shipped a case of stuffed chimps instead of cheetahs because his knowledge of the animal kingdom came from Tarzan. I could go on all day. Late to the party, as usual, but... I was at the pharmacy a few weeks ago and my total was $4.73. I gave the girl 5 one dollar bills. She punches a few buttons and then looks at me in a panic. Her: "I accidentally put in that you gave me exact change! Do you happen to have 73 cents?" Me: "You could just give me back 27 cents." :) Her: Blank stare..."But do you have 73 cents?" Me: Confused..."You could just give me back 27 cents." Her: Blank stare... Me: "Ok. Let me check..." Finds 73 cents to give her. Her: Gives me back one of my dollar bills and takes the 73 cents with relief. Don't know what she would have done if I only had a $5 bill. :confused: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ester Maria Posted February 9, 2012 Share Posted February 9, 2012 My 11th grade teacher thought Dante was God Consider yourself lucky for having had a teacher with such a clarity of insight into what is good literature. ;) In Heaven-on-Earth we typically study that work over three years. Yep, you read that correctly. Three YEARS. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
garddwr Posted February 9, 2012 Share Posted February 9, 2012 I cannot get the link to work In case you're still having trouble with this, I couldn't download any of the old exams until I set my pop-up blocker (on firefox) to allow popups from the site. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
momto2Cs Posted February 9, 2012 Share Posted February 9, 2012 (edited) But four now, Wm. Shakespare must Be a turnover in his Grave (1 point) I loved this line! As an English major, I am horrified that students are being allowed to pass with such poor writing skills - grammar, spelling, a general lack of the ideas behind writing coherently - I could go on and on. I'm so glad we homeschooled our kids so rigorously for a number of years. Right now my 9th grader is in public school. He is reading ONE novel for English this entire year - an Agatha Christie novel. Sigh. I told him he'd better do a lot of reading at home. (He does.) We read a lot more than that when I was in high school back in the late 80's. Steinbeck, Orwell, Twain, Caulfield, The Epic of Gilgamesh, Shakespeare, Chaucer, and so on. I was in the advanced placement classes, but even the regular classes had a lot of reading! Edited February 9, 2012 by momto2Cs Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stripe Posted February 9, 2012 Share Posted February 9, 2012 Her: Blank stare..."But do you have 73 cents?" Me: Confused..."You could just give me back 27 cents." Her: Blank stare... I've had funny encounters with cashiers who don't appear to understand why I hand them change that doesn't total the due amount until they punch it into the cash register, and I get a neat amount of change left instead of a quarter, two dimes and four pennies or whatever. But at the same time I've known old people who are convinced dividing an order in two and each person using a 10% off coupon will result in greater savings than one order with the same coupon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wheres Toto Posted February 9, 2012 Share Posted February 9, 2012 (edited) My oldest had to read 2-5 books over the summer every year. They then read another 5 to 15) books during the school year depending on what level the course was (honors, AP, regular). When they studied Shakespeare they actually went and saw the play performed. These are usually the type of books that are on lists of the 100 books to read before you die and similar lists. I had to do a lot of reading in my school days (way back when). We did Dante's Inferno in 8th grade and then created our own version of hell. I took a course in high school which was divided into a different course each quarter. One of my selections was Science Fiction literature and we ended up reading about 8 books just in that one quarter of the year. I used to work retail in a supervisory position 20 years ago and even back then, the cashiers were unable to make change. Whenever the power would go out and we'd have to "ring" people up manually, it was total chaos. I learned in my dad's store as a kid. He had a big, old fashioned (even for back then) cash register that didn't tell you how much change to give. Edited February 9, 2012 by dottieanna29 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LMD Posted February 9, 2012 Share Posted February 9, 2012 Eek. Flashback to high school. My 9th grade teacher had studied Shakespeare in university in England (she was from England), so we read a LOT of Shakespeare in 9th grade. And recited sonnets, too. :ack2: My 10th grade teacher had a grad degree in Middle English or something, so we translated Chaucer in 10th grade. I think she was an alien. My 11th grade teacher thought Dante was God, so we read the Divine Comedy -- and acted it out and wrote essay after essay about it. Sheesh! I don't remember 12th grade English! :lol: I think my brain cells were fried by then! College English was a joke compared to my three English teachers from... I won't say it. (It was Catholic school.) See, that sounds amazing! I'm humiliated to admit that I went to my first university literature class with NO CLUE who/what Dante, Homer, Virgil, Milton etc. was. And I wasn't the only one, the students were all looking at each other with deer in headlights faces - while the lecturer bemoaned the state of public education, I believe there was a lot of hands being thrown in the air! :lol: I was top of my highschool english class - with little effort - but our texts were really lowest common denominator, often <200 pages. My dad tells stories of going to highschool in England (long long ago and far far away ;)) where they had to translate the Iliad from latin to english. Always amazes me! And this amazing work from a boy who didn't start any school until 10y/o (he was running around a tea plantation in India before that, riding their elephant and avoiding leopards!) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
creekland Posted February 9, 2012 Share Posted February 9, 2012 Schools vary so widely in what they offer. The students in my son's English class are reading Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Mill, Kant, Marx and a number of novels. Movies, lyrics, and other pieces of literature are thrown in to help flesh it out. That's just for this quarter. My son, who despised all other Enlgish classes, has taken a shining to it now. He has to work like a bugger, but I think he's finally learning something substantial. His high school English teacher has his PhD in Shakespearean studies. He's fantastic and wonderful with kids. Anyone who can get my son to like literature is a gem. It's too bad I can't clone Mr. S and distribute him to other high schools. However, his English teacher in junior high was horrible. She didn't know much about literature or even grammar, but the writing assignments were the worst. Suspecting that she didn't read the papers, my son once wrote some nonsense in the middle of one of his, and sure enough, she completely missed it. What is the point if the teacher isn't even reading the papers? :tongue_smilie: I wish we lived in your school district for high school. We're far from it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beth in SW WA Posted February 9, 2012 Share Posted February 9, 2012 Consider yourself lucky for having had a teacher with such a clarity of insight into what is good literature. ;) My high school English teacher was Dr. Sharon Bridwell (eventual co-founder of TPS). We read/studied Shakespeare, Melville and C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity & Screwtape). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zaichiki Posted February 10, 2012 Share Posted February 10, 2012 Consider yourself lucky for having had a teacher with such a clarity of insight into what is good literature. ;) Yeah... I dunno... he was QUITE over-the-top about it... but maybe it was purposeful? Maybe he was weird b/c he thought it got the students' attention? I didn't list *everything* we did in those English classes... I listed what I remembered as each teacher's "trademark." Each of them was *in LOVE* with their particular topic: gushing, giggly, "this makes my week" kinda love. Maybe I should be thankful we had teachers who loved their jobs? LOL! We also did lots of other reading, vocabulary (etymology based), writing, and analysis each year. It wasn't *impossible* but compared to what most people are doing/did in high school I think it was WAY overkill. Like I said, college English was a joke after that. Seriously. I wish I had known about AP exams back then. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Violet Crown Posted February 10, 2012 Share Posted February 10, 2012 I've had funny encounters with cashiers who don't appear to understand why I hand them change that doesn't total the due amount until they punch it into the cash register, and I get a neat amount of change left instead of a quarter, two dimes and four pennies or whatever. But at the same time I've known old people who are convinced dividing an order in two and each person using a 10% off coupon will result in greater savings than one order with the same coupon. Recently at the bookstore, the cashier and I conferred about the choice between my 10%-off discount card and my $5-off coupon (good in January only) for a $75 purchase. We determined that though the card would save more, the coupon would shortly become valueless and so should be used, as using the discount card would save me $2.50, but not using the coupon would lose me $5. It made sense to both of us. Great Girl, whose textbooks I was buying, just about had a stroke. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zaichiki Posted February 10, 2012 Share Posted February 10, 2012 Great Girl, whose textbooks I was buying, just about had a stroke. :lol::lol::lol: Me too! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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