Lunch Scholars: High Schoolers can't answer basic questions

[WhoIsNumberNone]

Last edited Fri Feb 3, 2012, 06:25 PM - Edit history (2)

Very depressing. These kids have been taking too many standardized tests.

[Curmudgeoness]

1. Do you ever just lose faith?????

How many stars on the flag? 51, no no no 52, no 51, 53???

[msongs]

2. texting is not really an eductional strategy nt

[Enrique]

3. the one girl got Ukraine, Uruguay and Uzbekistan

[Suich]

4. How can you NOT know what two countries

border the US??????

[exboyfil]

5. How many students may have just been playing dumb for the camera

Kind of like the reality show effect. More attention with a wrong answer than a correct one.

[suzanner]

6. Not surprising. Schools have lowered standards.

Being kinda old, I notice the general knowledge, spelling, handwriting, and grammar of younger people is shockingly poor the past 10 or so years and getting worse. Even weirder, many of these young people did very well in college and are completely unaware of their competencies. Top that off with their argumentative indigence if someone points out a glaring misspelling or simple but important math error. Terribly frightening to think about where this is going. On the other hand, they are happy to do their own taxes online, which I would never do.

[petronius]

12. Indignation

[Tx4obama]

7. K&R. EVERYONE should watch this video. And parents should take note! n/t

[ScottLand]

8. I wonder how much of that was staged. Or are these children of teabaggers?

[SaintPete]

9. "This Video Is Private"

can anybody else see it still?

[Tx4obama]

10. Try the link below

Here:

[snappyturtle]

11. Yep, it works just fine. So sad. n/t

[Boombaby]

15. The girl in grey does fairly well (starts at 0:20)

She'll probably get bullied now.

[SaintPete]

13. As soon as my son comes home, he gets the test

I'll let you know if he survives to see Urope this summer.

[SaintPete]

18. He Scored 6/7

He couldn't remember Joe Biden's name. He called him "that guy with the teeth"



Should I have given him credit?

[WhoIsNumberNone]

19. At least he didn't think it was bin Ladin...

I know where the girl in the video got that too- Craig's List is crawling with Republican shills who constanly refer to Obama and Biden as 'Osama' and 'bin Ladin'. It's a very common right wing meme.

[SaintPete]

20. At least?

I think my kid did pretty good

And he knew what Biden looked like. Credit where its due...

[Moostache]

14. A bunch of Ms. Teen South Carolina wannabes?

Or are they just Fox-watching Future Republicans?

They are living in a fact-free universe.
No wonder its so easy to establish "doubt" about evolution or climate science or economic realities.
The youth of the nation are largely predisposed to be useful idiots already.

Now, he may have obviously edited out everyone who had 1/2 a clue about anything to enhance the video for yucks...but even so, the sheer ignorance of these students is stunning and sad.

[Kellerfeller]

16. The problem with your claim

that they have been taking two many standardized tests is that they were basically just given a standardized test. They should have at least rocked at that.

The problem is not standardized tests. Heck, we qualify our doctors and lawyers based on standardized tests. When I taught, I "taught to the test". Of course you should be testing them on the material you want to ensure they understand and that is the same material you teach. If not, then you are doing it wrong. Of course the test course not measure everything i taught, but it did test a representative sample of it. As do our standardized tests.

The problem is the low expectation by teachers. But I don't blame the teachers. The problem is the students and parents. The students often will not do the work if given challenging problems. And if the students do poorly, most parents fight a bad grade all the way up to the school board.

I recently spoke to my AP history teacher from 25+years ago. He said he can't begin to give students today the level of work he gave us because they simply won't do it. To many Americans simply do not value education. They want diplomas but wouldn't care if they were given the diploma without learning what is supposed to be expected to be learned in achieving it.

I wish I knew a solution to this problem.

[Armin-A]

22. other developed nations seem to be doing just fine...

I disagree with you on the low expectations by teachers. I think teachers are forced to have this approach because of reasons like you stated about the parents being worried about their child's self-esteem dropping. Maybe they should focus that energy they would spend yelling at teachers and teach their children at home.

[Kellerfeller]

25. Yep but other nations

value education more. I'm not sure why ours doesn't or what we can do to fix it.

But I agree 100% that it starts with the parents. Self esteem comes from working hard and seeing results. The human psyche can see through the self-esteem bubble that is created by unwarranted praise and the result is not a positive thing. (No I do not claim to be a psychologist or psychiatrist. But I do observe people.)

[Armin-A]

21. so we should cut funding right?

[anon-y-moose]

23. Why is important to know the capitol of Washington state?

[WhoIsNumberNone]

24. I figured this was shot in Washington.

I did a little Googling and it turns out I was right:
http://www.kxly.com/news/30375345/detail.html
http://www.q13fox.com/news/kcpq-lunch-scholars-from-olympia-teens-cant-answer-basic-history-political-questions-20120203,0,6387462.story

[RBInMaine]

26. This is what you get when you marginalize history and the other social studies disciplines. Sad.