Stone Soup by Jan Eliot for October 16, 2014

…and, you wonder what’s the matter with America’s schools?

Thank you to all those people who filled me in on your American education system. It made some very interesting reading. Very recent research on our education system showed that many of the teachers in previously disadvantaged areas didn’t understand the maths problems they were trying to teach. Hopefully now that the authorities have identified part ot the problem they will address the matter. Hopefully…

Joan! Tell Holly about how the Industrial Revolution made clothing cheaper, and was the first step in making fashion affordable for ordinary people! That might actually interest her in a way the development of the steam engine won’t.

(OK, so Joan can’t hear me because she’s a comic strip character. This is for parents and teachers who might be struggling with a Holly of their own.)

Oh how I hated writing term papers. Of course in all of our days we had to get one of our parents to drive us to the library, pull the big, heavy encyclopedia off the shelf and write the paper right there. No checking out the book since it was a “reference” book. Yes, those were the days my friends.

I’ve always loved history, still do. It’s fascinating to look just at the history I’ve lived through let alone previous history! simply fascinating!

Part of the problem also lies with the parents and society. For a while, it was not cool to be smart and even now if you use vocabulary that people don’t know, you’re viewed as pretentious. People can’t handle complex documents or ideas anymore because everything is dumbed down. And parents don’t encourage their kids to work hard and learn. I don’t care if my kid has an interest in the subject or not, they’re still expected to work hard on the assignment and learn something.

Trade Unions were created? When did they devolve into Labor Unions?

Our Yongest Son started university lasted month. All through elementary and especially high school, he had to correct the grammar, spelling, and punctuation on his assignments and exams before he could answer the questions.

MaryKitten teacher’s and instructor’s frown on Wikipedia articles as can be added by other writers. Not always accurate.

somebodyshort you are right about thesaurus change word usage so not to repeat but keep in same context.

I am taking on-line class almost done. I despised writing papers. When I was going to regular school I was placed in Special Ed due to eye issues and lost out on major English word issues. I do speak English but struggled with parts of English speech. My mom was far worse back then teacher’s not certified used HS boy’s as teacher’s and they knew nothing one school classroom in a country setting. She dropped out at 8th grade and she cannot stand reading waste of time. I think my dad finished. For me a big struggle.

Please no criticism on what I typed. I will never be a professional writer. I am not a professional reader I struggle there.

Now for Holly where is her text books. Holly loves fashionable clothes she needs to research as the subject would be great for her.

As I’ve mentioned before, maybe here, when I was teaching I could tell whether a student wrote something by looking at his or her (writing) style. After awhile I could often tell which student wrote something even if the text was typewritten. Once when I asked students to write a paragraph as a homework assignment, a C student began his paragraph, “Presently I chanced upon the carnage.” When asked, he said he had written it himself. Then he allowed as how his father might have helped him. I hied over to the school library (it was the late ’50’s) and finally found that sucker!

Hee hee. I just tried to Google “Presently I chanced upon the carnage.” I found it, and was led to a comment on “Jump Start” I’d made on January 27th, 2012.

Oh boy.

The fire at the Triangle Shirtwaste company that killed so many young women and started the call for workplace safety…

Looks like Holly will end up working at the Limited, a retail store or a restaurant if she doesn’t get serious at that point of her life.

Child labor, sweat factories, mass production at the cost of jobs and quality not to mention the introduction of petrol based products that have destroyed the environment

Holly can always get a job on the nearest corner.

In college, I actually liked writing papers. For part of my nursing education, I had to take two semesters of human growth and development. We could contract for our grade and make the paper the major part of our grade and make the exams as little as possible. So, that’s what I did. I knew I could get a good grade on the paper.