I read this in the K Chronicles comic strip over the weekend. Seems a bit paranoid to me, and I have to say I don’t believe the (all-too-present) deficiencies of US education aren’t the result of planning, but apparently others feel that there’s intyent behind it.
Has anyone else heard this? Is there a group claiming that this is the case, or is this the cartoonist’s own opinion?
http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/10-4-2005-78111.asp
It appears your first sentence is contradicting itself.
That said, I think it would be untrue to say that it would be false to affirm it is a lie if I said that it would be true to deny that I would not disagree that unintentional deficiencies in the US education system do not exist.
Furthermore, an annual ‘bomb-a-country’ program would do wonders for improving US citizens knowledge of world geography.
Huh?
It occurs to me that you might want to move this to GD. My point in posting this was to see if this was a widely-held belief (which is a GQ), but people might start arguing the premise, which is GD territory.
Purposely limited? I guess that’s why, in seventh grade, we had to fill out worksheets on every major country in Europe (and probably Andorra as well) listing all the salient details, population, primary imports and exports, major cities…
If Americans don’t know a lot of geography, it’s primarily because there’s so much of it, so unless it’s particularly relevant to them, your average 13 year old (which is when it’s taught) isn’t going to absorb all that much of it. Really, your average German isn’t going to do any better locating, say, Iowa, than your average American can locate Bulgaria.
I can speak to Germans not having the first clue where Iowa is. 
Best bet is to tell them it’s near Chicago, to which the reply, “Ahhhh, Tschicago! Al Capone! Bang-bang!”
My mother teaches German in an American public high school, where every student is required to take at least two years of “world cultures,” which includes foreign languages and a class called “Global Issues” to graduate. (As it happened, I took “Global Issues” when the course was introduced, lo these many years ago. It covered a lot of stuff that is notoriously left out of history classes, like the Viet Nam war, plus we learned a lot about the Middle East, admittedly because this was the time of the first Gulf War.)
So I’d say, uh, no. Curriculum is set by local school boards, not mandated by the federal administration, so it’s hard to explain how the the “Education President” has “purposely limited teachings of all things non-USA.” Which is a graceless turn of phrase if I ever heard one. Was that intentionally clumsy to sound unedumacated, or is Keith Knight really that bad a writer?
Not that I’m defending Bush’s actual education policies. As my mom about the moving-target standards in “No Child Left Behind” if you’ve got a couple hours to spare.
Rote memorization, sure, but the conspiracy theorist who lurks deep with my soul has always hinted that failing to teach critical thinking skills is intentional. “The Government” wouldn’t want a critically-thinking populace. It would destroy our current political system.
Knowing the capital of Sudan is not nearly as important as understanding the factors behind the genocide in Darfur, or who the various ethnic groups in Iraq are, and why they ended up sharing a country.
We also fail miserably when it comes to recent history. I remember as a kid that we never seemed to get much past three-quarters of the book before the year came to a close. The Vietnam War was only briefly mentioned, as an example. It would be so much better if people understood the recent past as it relates to where we are now.
The reasonable person in me knows that the last part probably isn’t intentional-- there’s a lot of shit they need to cover in a year. But it doesn’t need to be that way. The historian in me bemoans it. We drown kids in names and dates, making history off-putting and crushingly boring. We present history as a set of facts which must be memorized, rather than something to be explored and debated.
First of all, as a teaching drudge with some exposure to what the average college undergraduate is capable of learning in sixteen weeks, I have to say that I’m pretty damned impressed that a seventh grade social studies teacher manages to teach the little weasels where we are on a world map, never mind anyone else.
Having said that, in seventh grade social studies it was an absolute requirement that we all be able to label every country big enough to show up on an 11x18" map, and some that weren’t. And that was in a red state.
I also suspect that if it was possible for American teenagers to pile into a car and drive to Amsterdam for the weekend, they too would know more geography than they currently do.
Oh please. I think the conspiracy theorist lurking deep within your soul must have been out the day they taught critical thinking. Unless you really think that elementary schools have a Simpsons-like independent thought alarm.. Aside from the anecdotal fact that I did have teachers that encouraged critical thinking, how could you possibly coerce all the teachers and all the boards of education in the country to go along with you? About all the power that the Feds have over local school systems is, perhaps, the ability to withhold some funding. Granted, I wouldn’t have liked to have been the social studies teacher who stood up in front of his class in the late 1950’s and said, “I think Communism is the ideal political system. Discuss.”
The comic strip is a rant against the tendency of Americans to be somewhat self-focused. There is no true belief, that I’m aware of, that Americans intentionally avoid world studies, world geography, etc. But the point of the comic strip appears to be that we are so arrogantly self-centered that we can’t be bothered to learn about other cultures and places. The capper to the whole strip is that this attitude is blamed for our willingness to attempt to impose our belief systems and ideals upon countries that, up to the point we focus upon them, didn’t even really enter into our collective consciousness.
While the concept behind the rant has some merit (we ARE a bunch of self-centered jackasses and tend to act that way: just study our history of foreign affairs, with emphasis upon the Western Hemisphere), I can’t go so far as to say that this results in us intentionally dismissing any need to know about the rest of the world. Rather, if we are failing to learn about, say, Asian cultures, it’s because we don’t attach importance to it when we have it presented to us. My step-son-unit is studying this week about Harappan and ancient Chinese cultures, which I damn sure never learned about in 7th grade back in the mid-70’s!
I have to disagre. The comic strip is clearly pointing out ourignorance of the world at large, but the cartoon at the bottom and the deliberate use of the words “Purposely Limited” clearly imply not self-absorption, but someone’s imposed agenda. No question in my mind at all.
Mind you, I don’t say that I share this belief (although I also criticize what seems to be almost willful ignorance – try watching Jay Leno’s “Jaywalking” and not screaming back at the set), but he tosses this off in such a matter of acceptance, without any explanation, that I have to ask if this is a widely-held belief, like those about AIDS being deliberately manufactured.
Exactly! This is also the reason Americans as a group only speak English. Why should we bother to learn another language? We’re never going to interact with these people on a personal level…why spend time learning their language. For 95+% of Americans for 95+% of their lives, the rest of the world is something they see on TV and read about in magazines, but not “real.”
As for “conspiracies”…well, if you ever get the chance to talk to the author of that cartoon (Kieth Knight), as I have on several occasions, you will find that he is very funny, quite articulate, and very, very bitter about a few things.
How? I’d start by having a bunch of Statewide assessment tests that take up weeks of the (too short) school year. Of course, teachers and schools would be held accountable for the scores by having them published in the newspapers, so their incentive to spend several weeks coaching and assigning “practice questions” would be great. Then I’d add in some Federally mandated tests with completely different rubrics and goals. Then I’d mandate at least a few days for “Anti-bully” rallies and assemblies, a School Spirit week, a few days for Terrorism counseling, at least a week for Sensitivity Training, and at least three bomb threats a week.
Or maybe that’s just my kid’s school. I’m frankly amazed he learns anything at all.
I’m not sure the purpose is to limit education. On the contrary, I think the motivation is to expand and provide a lot of the charcter building and psychological counseling families used to provide AND to try and make schools who aren’t doing so well better schools. I think it’s all failing miserably, but I think those are the goals: giving a shitty education as a result is merely a side effect,
I didn’t say the cartoonist didn’t think there was an intentional lack of emphasis. I simply said such an intentional lack of emphasis doesn’t exist in reality.
Sigline!
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I think what you’re asking is this: Have U.S. educators purposely “dumbed-down” educational requirements? If that’s the question, then there’s no objective or succinct answer. It’s been a matter of debate for a long time.
Other threads on education & standards:
You said:
But it’s clearly not the cartoonist’s contention that it’s our own arrogant self-centeredness. He’s saying it’s imposed by the Powers-That-Be. That’s very different.
You’re not reading me very carefully. As I’ve stated clearly – twice – I want to know if this is a belief that’s held by a lot of people, not whether it’s true.
It seems to be held by them to be so clear and obvious that there’s no need to support the assertion (or direct you to someone who will).
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OK, sorry this took so long, but Mods are human and require sleep, as well as liberal doses of food and caffeine at times.
I agree. This is GD material. Off we go. WHEE!
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Belief in baseless Conservative conspiracies is no less ignorant than belief in ID. And unlikethe evolution/ID debate (or maybe just like it), it is harmful because it distracts from legitimate problems in the education system.
The education system is purposely limited because there just isn’t an infinite budget to pay for it.
IMHO, part of the problem with the system, and where I think the comic strip is accurate, is more of a cultural acceptance of willful ignorance. There are a lot of lazy students out there. To many, math and science and other difficult subjects just aren’t “cool”. The things that students perceive as being cool and worthwhile - sports, MTV, whatever - just aren’t the skills that will help them in the real world. If kids don’t want to learn, there’s little to nothing that throwing money at the problem can do.
But what is the role of the public education system anyway? What skills should someone have coming out of high school?
Yeah, because NO ONE would give a wrong and humorous to some anonymous passerby like Jay Leno to appear on TV.
Jaywalking only works if the marks don’t think anyone will see the results of their answer.