Is there no too much emphasis on reading writing and 'rithmetic?
The No Child Left Behind Act makes those items key to a school’s funding.
So many places now have exit exams in those areas only.
And of course most colleges require math and English SAT or equivalent tests.
So kids can no longer graduate based on decent grades in biology, music, phys ed, civics, rhetoric …
Teachers in those latter areas are singing the blues because money is being diverted to the three R’s.
Well I suppose that a Blues singer who cannot read, write, or calculate his or her agent’s percentage is just the sort of thing you want to let loose in the USA.
Why not go the full hog and leave out potty training - it would do wonders for the diapers market.
Come to think about it, this seems to be what is happening
I think you missed the point, FRDE. The OP seems to be arguing not that the “three R’s” aren’t necessary in education, but that they’re absorbing a disproportionate share of educational attention and funding.
In other words, the proposed goal is not to stop teaching kids basic reading, writing and math, but to devote more effort to teaching them other subjects beyond those bare basics.
If you can’t walk well you probably can’t run well. If you can’t read, write, or do math effectively then physics and biology will eat you alive. At my (seemingly average) high school you could get college credits in biology, calculus, and English if you knew your stuff, so I’m finding the premise a little shaky.
In fact, if we’re focusing on the three R’s to the exclusion of other subjects then we should be more than a little embrassed. Last I checked we’re average, at best, in the world community, sometimes getting outranked by third world countries (which, presumably, our students couldn’t locate on a map).
I’ll leave writing (in the sense of composition and not mere literacy) and math for later discussion, but without good reading skills, you aren’t going to be able to get a good education in any area. Reading deserves a large amount of emphasis.
If you will permit a mere furriner to chip in here, are you saying that even in high school, little or no attention is paid to actual mathematics, biology, physics, chemistry, other languages, and so on, with too much emphasis placed upon the basic “three Rs”? I ask because my first reaction was to think “no, this cannot be the case”, but then I began to wonder if I had interpreted the question correctly.
Please understand that I do not ask this by way of nitpicking, but am actually asking for clarity, just in case I am confused, the reason being that I have, in other threads on this board, seen “graduate” used even for kids moving from kindergarten to actual primary school (grade school? elementary school?), so I want to be clear that your O.P. refers to high schools, not to children moving from a basic school to a high school, and I suppose this is as good a thread as any for me to learn about this.
Heheheh, and once I have learned which level of schools you are talking about, THEN I can get all shouty about my views. 
However, I do rather think that the children need a good basic founding in the old reading and writing thing, and in arithmetic, before they proceed to other things. Other things being, for instance, getting eaten alive by physics and biology, for which image, um, thank you very much, marshmallow for making sure I shall once again have nightmares about my schooldays and the scary science teachers. (Evil bad nasty marshmallow, and when you go to hell for this thought-crime against poor innocent me, you will certainly be toasted.
)
And a belated welcome to the boards, henrijohns.
(Of course, good old Gaudere’s Law will mean that my post is full of messes and dab mistooks, but that is a risc wee all mist take. )
I parrot the “if you can’t walk you can’t run” sentiment. Trying to learn biology or physics when you can’t read or do simple math is like trying to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich without bread. There’s just no foundation to build on.
But does knowledge have to be so compartmentalized? Especially in the early grades? How hard is it to incorporate, say, biology into a reading class by reading about biology? You could have kids practice their math skills by doing simple physics problems, practice writing about government, science, history, etc. I don’t know to what extent this is done presently, but my point is that focusing ‘only’ on English and math doesn’t necessarily mean that other subjects have to be ignored.
I did not read it like that, and on review I still don’t.
Arithmetic and basic literacy are the foundation stones of education
In the U.S. biology, chemistry, social studies, civics, physics et al. certainly get significant attention in High School.
I think a lot of the current initiatives focus on that student that gets screwed over royally in grade school. For whatever reason a good chunk of students just don’t pick up reading comprehension, writing skills, or basic math very well. This problem compounds again and again and again, by the time they’re taking (usually the bare minimum) courses required to graduate in High School they can barely perform at a D level, and that’s often times with regular cheating and having friends more or less do their work for them.
At that point, you can’t really fix it, and most schools don’t want to bother trying. The reason they got there in the first place is a long line of educators who either let the problem slip by, or noticed it and realized they couldn’t really fix it at that point (buck-passing in the extreme.)
That is what my kids do at their (public) elementary school. They write about math, read about science, learn different writing styles and apply those styles to other subjects (such as history or health). However, in the early grades, reading was it’s own subject because the kids were learning that skill specifically.
In my son’s now (private) middle school, he will lose points on a history or math test if his writing doesn’t have proper grammar and punctuation- which I love that they do.
Just that they are called “the 3 R’s” is proof enough that more focus is needed on at least 2 of them (if they were called the 4 R’s then more need to focus on all 3 would be obvious).
Whatever biology, history, physics or geography you don’t learn in high school, you can always learn later. Leaving HS without reading, writing and basic math, on the other hand, usually spells disaster, no matter what you want to do with your life. Trying to learn them later in life is teaching new tricks to an old dog (if you will pardon the disproven cliche)
You need to put something on top of the foundation in order for it to have any value. If you are diverting resources away from the above ground construction because you’re only measured on the quality of the foundation, you wind up with holes instead of homes.
I only say this to indicate that it is actually possible to put too much focus on the 3 R’s. I spend 12 years in school I don’t think it’s appropriate to tell me I can learn science, mathematics and history on my own time, because the school had to focus on literacy.
I’m wondering how much of a real problem this is- are high schools not teaching those other things? The reality is that kids need to learn to read and write first, so if they haven’t gotten to grade level in HS they must be remediated, even if it is at the expense of other subjects. However, are grade-level students really being denied biology, physics, history etc?
I know in CT the mastery tests begining next year will have science component in the elementary school level (which is actually a directive from NCLB) and have always had science as a mastery test in Jr. High and HS- so clearly they were part of the focus early on.
We had that! We learned to recognize a spotted cocker spaniel and to describe the way he moved. We also learned how to motivate him to greater exertion, incorporating yet another lesson into our reading.
“See Spot Run. Run, Spot, Run.”
See? That’s what I’m talking about, right there. Science in the classroom.
And motivational speaking. We were taught management skills in the first grade!