Sunday, October 19, 2008

Are there any standards anymore??

Well today at church we talked about "the Truth Project". The part that we discussed focused on the founding principles of our government. Basically it makes the case that all of our founding fathers (including Ben Franklin) believed that the Christian faith was foundational to their system of government working. From there morals were developed and then you had a people who were prepared to make good decisions. Interesting - and not what you learn in school.

Also, we learned that The New England Primer was the second most bought book in America after the Bible during the 17oo's and early 18oo's. Later in the century the McGuffey Readers became more popular and they replaced the Primer as the second most bought book in America. Basically, after the Bible, pretty much everyone used the same elementary textbook (at least in terms of introduction to literacy). These were focused on faith and morality as well as teaching reading. Today you can't even get people in the same district to use the same curriculum. Of course, the past was not perfect, but at least there was some real education going on.

One friend talks about the "group math" her granddaughter does. Basically this math allows students to determine if they think 2+2 = 4. If 8 of 10 students don't agree with this then you have to consider that maybe their answer - 2 +2= 5 is correct! WHAT?! This is craziness.

Somehow, we are allowing 1st graders to overturn centuries of mathematical understanding. We do this in other areas as well. Actually, we just don't teach them what our forefathers really thought and understood - because it doesn't fit an educational agenda that caters to personal exploration and denies absolute truth. Maybe this is why I couldn't find it in my heart to enter public school education. It's not really education!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Good stuff!