Gasoline Alley by Jim Scancarelli for July 13, 2011

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    Stevero  over 12 years ago

    Given the fact that young kids often ask why, kids should love school because it should satisfy their curiousity needs. The fact that so many kids do not love school indicates that there is clearly something wrong with our system of education.

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    Edcole1961  over 12 years ago

    Even Slim should be able to anser those easily. Tell him that cars cost money, and using keys makes them harder to steal; and that round tires are the best way of transferring the power of the engine to speed on the road.

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    Fangirl  over 12 years ago

    “Why” – the most important question there is. Never stop asking, Boog!

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    axe-grinder  over 12 years ago

    I think the curriculum is better now than then, with more work on thinking and problem-solving strategies than we had, but that the obstacles outside school are higher— too much video-gaming and social media; too little reading, unstructured activity and exercise. Boog’s questions are good, but he’s asking the wrong guy!

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    arye uygur  over 12 years ago

    Kids don’t like school because it’s too structured. When school is out they want unstructured activities. The same thing is wrong with Little League.

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    jpb_ca Premium Member over 12 years ago

    The difference between school and asking ‘why’ is the difference between cooking and eating, or the difference between making a bed and sleeping in it. School involves WORK, and the lazy hate it. Further, school reveals APTITUDE for certain skills – and some people without aptitude for those skills hate it, just like kids without aptitude for sports hate gym class.

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    gillianst  over 12 years ago

    It would be wonderful if we could teach kids in small groups (my classes average 35-45 in 11th and 12th grade English), and deal with questions as they come to the individual student. If Slim were a little sharper, he could have a wonderful “teaching moment” here. Alas, we are shifting away from individual learning and the shaping of hearts and minds in favor of lockstep regimentation in which the standardized test is god.

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    pbarnrob  over 12 years ago

    I’m told in CNMI, thirteen-page lesson plans are now required (for an hour class). As in industry, the bean-counters are running the show. Real teachers live for the one kid every few years who ‘catches fire’ with a subject, and thrives on it. But most of the kids resent the waste of both their, and the teachers’, time. My third daughter finally was able to just test out in her junior year, by taking the CHSPE test under a thin veneer of home-schooling. After LACHSA, where you had to audition or bring a strong portfolio to get in (but she concentrated on art to the detriment of other classes, and was returned to district) she found PHS miserable; nobody cared.I reminded her of the difference; LACHSA was all volunteers who worked to get in, and PHS was… everybody else.There are things that work, to fire-up students. There are things that don’t. Why are we choosing what doesn’t work?

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    jollyjack  over 12 years ago

    While the strength of the American school system WAS learning to think, the current focus is teaching to the test. This is how teachers and administrators are evaluated, retained and paid.The NCLB was a well intentioned (and even necessary) evaluation tool, the unintended consequences can be brutal.

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    EstrelitaH  over 12 years ago

    Back around the turn of the century (1890-1910), in most rural areas, it was considered to be a waste of time to teach girls how to read and write “because they would never need to know that.” However, when my grandmother went to church, someone there gave her a Bible for her very own. She became determined to learn how to read it. Every Sunday, she would ask the pastor about the place in the Bible where he had found the Scripture text which he used for his sermon – and he was happy to share it with her. My grandmother had 3 sisters and they, also, received a Bible for their very own when they reached a certain age. Each one of them became determined to learn how to read so they could read from this book which had been given to them. They all lived in Nebraska at the time. When they grew up, one of my grandmother’s sisters married a man who went off to the “wilds” of Montana to homestead. When my great-aunt and her husband arrived in Montana, they quickly built a sort of lean-to house and put up a barn for their animals. When my great-aunt’s neighbors learned that she knew how to read and write, they urged her to teach their children how to read and write, since the nearest “formal” school was hundreds of miles away. In those days, all you needed to become a teacher was to become certified by the state to teach. My great-aunt took the test administered by the state of Montana, which was used to certify teachers, and passed the test with flying colors. She soon began spending three or four hours per day, teaching her neighbors’ children how to read and write. The children met in her barn for their lessons. There was no stove in the barn, so it got pretty cold out their during the winter months. Most days during the winter, the kids all kept their hats and coats on while they worked on their lessons. In those days, kids who wanted to go to college were expected to have at least a nodding acquaintance with Latin, Greek and Hebrew during their high school years, because most colleges in the Western states had been established by churches, primarily for the purpose of training students for the ministry. Although the nearest high school was hundreds of miles away, my great-aunt became determined that the children whom she had been teaching in her barn WOULD be able to go on to high school – and then on to college – if that is what they wanted to do. So she taught herself enough Latin, Greek and Hebrew to be able to prepare her students to enter high school if they wanted to go that far. The reason why young students back in those days could accomplish so much on their own was because there were not a lot of artificial barriers which prevented those with the gift for teaching and the desire to teach from becoming teachers. Today, “professional” education has erected too many barriers, which prevent gifted teachers from being able to teach. Also, some where along the way, young people lost the desire to learn. All of the students who came to the school which my great-aunt conducted in her barn were students who were determined to learn – no matter how difficult it was – and that is the reason why so many of them sat with their coats and hats still on, reading and writing in an unheated barn during many Montana winters. A number of my great-aunt’s students DID go on to attend high school – and even college. In today’s “modern” educational system, I doubt that you would be able to find ANY eighth grade students in ANY school who had the nodding acquaintance with Latin, Greek and Hebrew which the 8th grade students in my great-aunt’s barn-door school were proud to have achieved.

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    Jollie_Ollie  over 12 years ago

    Jolly Jack—Are we related?!?!

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    OldManMountain  over 12 years ago

    You are all missing the most important feature of today’s strip. Slim actually is working!

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