New Gallup poll

Who were we fighting on D Day?
(% who gave the correct answer)

Age 18-29 47%
Age 30-49 62%
Age 50-64 75%

I view World War II as the most important "event" of the 20th century. Today, not even half of 20 year olds can answer the question above. What's going on here?

A few months ago I looked at my sister's American History book and was more impressed than I thought I would be. I wouldn't blame it on the textbooks - if hers is any indication.

My personal experience in high school is that the teachers were dreadful and didn't motivate me. I also taught for a year and discovered that students were easily motivated and interested in learning when I cared enough to make it interesting for them.

Anyone have kids in school now? What're their experiences? What are your experiences with it?

Another interesting thing. I asked my sister some basic world geography questions and she didn't know the answers. Now, she is an excellent student, a 3.8 average but something is going wrong somewhere.

Very sad. Liberals must be smiling, they continue to dumb down public schools so students will become "godd little voters" who cannot think for themselves.

Take off your tinfoil hat Mike!! :P

I have no kids, but I can tell that the teachers motivation is very important... Ideal situation would be teachers who are working a job, beside their teaching job - that job should be something where they use what they teach about in the classroom - ex. history teacher working also in a museum etc. Would keep teachers motivation high, because they are not only teaching kids, but also getting input from the outside world.
Maybe to ideal, but that would solve alot of the problems in education imho.

Treat education as a business.

Test teachers frequently , increase pay and tie pay to performance.


Pay teachers by results.

Yeah, and Conservatives can't even spell the word "good". :P :P :P

Quayle coudln't spell "potato". Dubya can't pronounce "nuclear". Arnold can't even say "California" correctly.

Must be that high-priced Ivy education system! :okthumb:

Public "schools" are POW camps for children and political pawns for bureaucratic warfare with the warring parties being taxpayers, parents, teachers, teachers' unions, bureaucrats on school boards, local elected officials, state elected officials, national elected officials, and "students." The war is being fought on several fronts, including the monetary front, the curriculum front, the racial front, and the religious front. Mercenaries have been called in to help wage the war, specifically the ACLU on one side, religious lawyers on another, the NAACP on another, and concerned watchdog groups on another.

And that's not including the deterioration of the family or the cultural race to the bottom.

Good luck and God Bless,
Buff

Maybe I've lucked out but my kids have both excellent teachers.

My oldest son has special needs in school and I've been met with nothing but support and understanding. I've had to educate his teachers about selective mutism and they've been very receptive.

I have seen a lot high school students who don't seem to give a fuck. Maybe we should start opening special trade high schools instead of more general ones. We have a VoTech school here and I know other communities have them. We need more. I think we need more tech education in schools. From what I've seen the most obsolete teachers appear to be the computer instructors.

of course, in that poll the age group closer to the actual events had the more correct answers.

That said, even though it was taught in my school the majority of the other kids in my classes wouldn't have been able to tell you the answer. Of course, those of us that did know got shoved in honors history so that we wouldn't make the other kids feel bad :)