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Reader comment on:
Inconvenient Truth At School

Submitted by David Simonoff, Feb 9, 2007 16:14

I am a retired high school mathematics teacher. I spent twenty years at Prospect Heights High School, which is now phased out, and four years at Brooklyn Technical High School, which has now become an empowerment school. I'm not sure to what that refers. Tech was once a prestigious technical high school that offered a fine instruction in foundry, architecture, and various other technical skills. It is now demoralized. A principal left because of irregularities and a principal came who is thirty-three years old and wants to make his mark, perhaps before he leaves to a higher level of bureaucracy here or elsewhere. Children at Tech can't do calculations without a calculator. This is not to deny there are many capable and superior students. But they are being shortchanged by the many who shouldn't be at the school, because they have no work ethic: they don't do homework, they don't study, they wear their coats in class as if it were the street, there are no consequences for any actions, only excuses made ad nauseam.

There is far too much standardized testing and not enough transmission of knowledge. And constructivism produces little.

And the learning consequently is inferior.

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Other reader comments on this article

Comment	By	Date
None of what Wolf is saying is news to me. I'm getting tired of reading articles like this, which describe... [MORE]	Robert F	Feb 14, 2007 18:13
It is very difficult to say that the drop in performance was mostly due to a weaker high school education... [MORE]	Rob Rasmussen	Feb 14, 2007 13:55
If you want your race horse to win, you don't feed it fast food and beverages with artificial sugar. instead... [MORE]	Robert M. Stockmann	Feb 11, 2007 01:24
The article illustrates another reason why the United States will soon be another third rate, third world nation. I don't... [MORE]	Howard Lee	Feb 10, 2007 02:21
The reality about our education system is that it is in disrepair. Yes, there is a precipitous decline in test... [MORE]	Maury Leon	Feb 9, 2007 17:55
I am a retired high school mathematics teacher. I spent twenty years at Prospect Heights High School, which is now...	David Simonoff	Feb 9, 2007 16:14
I find it astonishing that there is such surprise generated by the findings of Professor Wilson's study. Given such apparent... [MORE]	Terri	Feb 9, 2007 15:46
Unbelievably, no one has ever scientifically tested Maria Montessori's 1912 contention that if kindergartners get sufficient practice printing alphabet letters,... [MORE]	Robert Rose, MD (retired)	Feb 9, 2007 15:31
Our once proud school system here in St. Louis is so rotten, the state is on the verge of taking... [MORE]	Denis Roach	Feb 9, 2007 09:31
I am the superintendent of a school district in South-Central Texas. We have been watching this for years. The pressure... [MORE]	Cathy Booth	Feb 9, 2007 15:04

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Inconvenient Truth At School