A funny e-mail I received satirizing the state of the U.S. educational system...

[iKitten]

TheCustomer99, I use Yahoo! Education Reference for my definitions. (Not always the most thorough, but it works.)

 

[dekan]

The e-mail was pretty funny though. It reminds me of my math for teachers class. We always have to come up with word problems.

Ex. Jenny ate 1/4 of an orange on the way to school. On the way home she ate 1/3 of an apple. How much fruit did Jenny eat?

7/12 ? :black:

 

[Netty4mac]

7/12 ? :black:

You're right.

 

[mraya]

nah, is not worthy.

 

[baggss]

What a bizarre thread. From a joke, to racism to an orange, in just 2 pages....

 

[johntalin]

I like to mention a lesser known racism—white on white people.
People tend to categorize people based on their appearances. The most extreme would be Aborigines who are not considered White race by many uninformed. White Caucasian race is based on the characteristics of the scull and other physical features, not just the color of the skin, or blue eyes and blonde hair. Therefore, Aborigines belong in White race group. And, so is the Middle Eastern Arabs we tend to hate.

http://www.atmitchell.com/journeys/social/indigenous/portraits.cfm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race#Caucasoid

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_people

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/caucasian

This is a paragraph is about a group of people who are part of the White race and their languages:
The term "Indo-Europeans" does not usually refer to speakers of various Indo-European languages in historical times: linguists usually refer to such people specifically as Anatolians, Tocharians, Aryans (Iranians, Indo-Aryans), Greeks, Celts, Italic peoples, Germanic peoples, Baltic peoples, Slavic peoples, Armenians, Albanians (or subdivisions of these groups).

The point is that Aryans are not the only White people.

 

[Amen-Moses]

I'm still having a problem with the concept of 7/12 of "Fruit", is it just me or is that a meaningless concept?

Amen-Moses

 

[Netty4mac]

I'm still having a problem with the concept of 7/12 of "Fruit", is it just me or is that a meaningless concept?

Amen-Moses

Ok maybe that was a bad word problem. How about...

Eric runs 3 days a week. At the end of the week Eric has ran 12 miles. How many miles a day did Eric run?

 

[mraya]

Eric ran 4 miles each day professor Netty.

 

[Annihilator]

well i think people can learn how to live in peace together,and the important point is to respect outlanders.I visited Sweden last year and saw a good example that can be referred by other countries:they employ young people to teach immigrants children their culture.Everday these young girls and boys take the immigrant's children to a trip,taking them to a park playing with them,taking them to museums,telling them the points of their culture and so the immigrant's children can easily adapt to their lifestyle and they really behave them peacefull.
As long as your country is bulit on principles to protect the basis of democracy u should better listen your 3th president who wrote the Declearation of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
Thomas Jefferson

 

[mraya]

I went to the university in Bolivia. Due to several reasons, during my first year the number of brazilian students was more than three times the number of spanish-speaking sutdents, just in my class 75% were from Brazil, the rest of us from Bolivia, Peru and Paraguay. Most of the brazilian students didn't know a bit of spanish, so at some point they required classes in portuguese. Even though they tried several times the dean never agreed to such thing, as he explained the official language of Bolivia is spanish and that meant they had to learn in spanish. I remember one of my teachers, a great guy who besides spanish also speaks protuguese, he used to help some of the brazilian students but always outside the class, the official class was always in spanish.

Why do i mention this? Because most of the educational systems around the world (if not all) would not make the concessions the US educational system gives. I think that spanish-speaking groups take advantage of this, and in my opinion this can reach a level of disrepect, i honestly believe that if you want to live in a english-speaking country then you must learn the language, i expect the same (to learn spanish) of someone who doesn't speak spanish and wants to go and live in my country.

When i first read the joke i thought it was funny until i got to the last part, then i thought it was a little rough. But after reading it again, i have to recognize that there is truth in it. I don't think there is racism in it, just an honest complain of a social situation. I understand that, in some situations, kids may not know the language and that leaving them without education would be bad for them and the society, but this cannot account for the majority of cases. To make things worse, even if the kid is leaning english in school, he/she goes back home and speaks spanish, watches spanish-spoken TV and listen music in spanish, this not only slows the learning process but also creates the idea that he/she doesn't need to learn english.
I have seen situations like the one fleurya described and it makes me angry, spanish is my original language and i like it, but this (the US) is not my country and i must respect it.

 

[Amen-Moses]

Ok maybe that was a bad word problem. How about...

Eric runs 3 days a week. At the end of the week Eric has ran 12 miles. How many miles a day did Eric run?

Do you mean a school week and are looking for an average or a full week (i.e including the weekend)?

The problem with education today is the poor quality of the educators as you are demonstrating admirably. :spook:

A bigger problem to my mind is that by attempting to put mathematical problems into English we are in danger of obfuscating the thing we are trying to teach, instead we should be teaching how to read and understand problems in more logical symbolic formats.

Amen-Moses

 

[eric]

it's a trick question. eric doesn't run anywhere.



where's my cookie?!?

 

[Netty4mac]

Do you mean a school week and are looking for an average or a full week (i.e including the weekend)?

The problem with education today is the poor quality of the educators as you are demonstrating admirably. :spook:

A bigger problem to my mind is that by attempting to put mathematical problems into English we are in danger of obfuscating the thing we are trying to teach, instead we should be teaching how to read and understand problems in more logical symbolic formats.

Amen-Moses

Well, since this is for a 2nd-3rd grader, yes I mean a school week. I think you're over analyzing my word problems alittle bit. Either way I just put these up for fun.

 

[johntalin]

Do you mean a school week and are looking for an average or a full week (i.e including the weekend)?

The problem with education today is the poor quality of the educators as you are demonstrating admirably. :spook:

A bigger problem to my mind is that by attempting to put mathematical problems into English we are in danger of obfuscating the thing we are trying to teach, instead we should be teaching how to read and understand problems in more logical symbolic formats.

Amen-Moses

I am all for logical symbolic formats. Do you know what they are?

 

[TheCustomer99]

I am all for logical symbolic formats. Do you know what they are?

Well I know that 'x' is actually the greek letter 'chi'. So when you say "x" (pronounced as "eks") equals something, you should actually say "x" (pronounced as "chi") equals something. I learned that in stats class. I could be wrong though. I'm guessing mathogre would be the one to ask about this since he's an ogre when it comes to math... if that's what his name really means.

 

[johntalin]

I love diversity. Legal diversity. I do not love having to press 1 for English and I do not love dumping enormous amounts of money into the federal tax system so that more illegal aliens can suck our healthcare, penal, and social systems dry.

EDIT: Thread hijacking, I'm sorry . Back to the OP, regardless of the 2000 education status, the 1990 one made me laugh.

A lot

Very hostile! Especially when some of us have already mentioned that our parents were from a foreign country.
P.S. Your avatar is not helping the situation, either.

 

[Amen-Moses]

I am all for logical symbolic formats. Do you know what they are?

I was going to say that it's all Greek to me but someone beat me to it.

People sometimes ask me what my first language is (online that is, face to face the accent gives me away) expecting to get a response like 'English' or 'German' but I respond with 'Maths' or 'Ada' depending on how I'm feeling. I am far more comfortable with the accuracy and conciseness of those than with English.

Mind you I do turn vague English requirements into functioning software for a living.

Amen-Moses

 

[schweb]

Sounds like a debate to me :tusks:

Since I have no idea, how much do these aliens contribute to the US economy?

I actually did a paper on this issue, and as much as I agree with you that illegal immigration is bad, I have to say that from an economic standpoint it would be ludicrous to completely stop them.

All in all, some estimates put it at over $1 trillion into the economy both due to the actual labor performed and the fact that legal Americans are able to do more highly skilled, higher paying jobs instead of doing the jobs the illegal immigrants are doing.

 

[schweb]

Very hostile! Especially when some of us have already mentioned that our parents were from a foreign country.
P.S. Your avatar is not helping the situation, either.

I don't believe it was hostile at all. He is merely giving his opinion on legal vs illegal immigration. He didn't single out any members in his post.