Why can't people write?

[Prashun Patel]

Hahahahaha! That sign is SO FUNNY! I can't believe they actually put 2 spaces between the 21th and the St!

[Belinda Barfield]

I routinely see peoples names mentioned with NO reference as to who they are and how they're related to the story. "Jim Basalli told reporters today that his car was not involved in the robbery." Who the heck is Jim? Why would anyone think his car was involved? Are we just listing all the cars that weren't involved? My car wasn't involved. Should I schedule an AP interview? It's become absolutely torturous to read a lot of this garbage.

Have I mentioned lately how pleasant it is to have coffee shoot out of my nose?

Attachment 179953 Here is another good example - This is an actual street sign in our little town. There has been quite a bit of poking and pointing but guess what...it is still up there...

Connnie, does your town have a Twenty Twoth Street as well. I live in the 900 building of my condo complex and some residents live in the next building . . . the "ten hundred" building.

I have an easy answer! I speak for millions of people just like me. My English teachers were the worst at connecting with students. I mean the worst. It was everything I could do to stay awake in that class. There's a lot of people out there that have no interest at all in literature when growing up. Forcing me to try and learn something that I have no interest in is a challenge. However, other teachers were able to do it. English teachers......not so much. I hated English class with a passion. From the time I entered high school until the time I left.

I've seen a lot worse example by a lot smarter people. Lay off us "Englishly Challenged" We don't mean no body no harm

Ditto Steve! I could have graduated high school at the end of my junior year except for the fact that I lacked one English credit. I attended the first quarter of my senior year to fulfill the English requirement by taking Business English.

[Joe Leigh]

I don't consider the lack of ability to tell time on an analog clock to be a dumbing down, I simply consider it a skill not taught...

How then, will you explain to your analog impaired pupils the meaning of "clockwise/counterclockwise"? Does directional rotation matter in their world? Wait, I got it, "righty tighty lefty loosey" Come to think of it, that was one of the questions on my Trigonometry Regents....never mind....

[Dan Hintz]

How then, will you explain to your analog impaired pupils the meaning of "clockwise/counterclockwise"? Does directional rotation matter in their world? Wait, I got it, "righty tighty lefty loosey" Come to think of it, that was one of the questions on my Trigonometry Regents....never mind....

I simply explain that clockwise means rotating in this direction (with hand motions) and counter-clockwise means rotating in that direction. It's no different than if I said rotate a screw alpha or beta, it's simply a convention easy to remember for those who can already read an analog clock... but knowing how to read an analog clock is not a pre-requisite to understanding the concept of counter-rotating directions labeled arbitrarily, as long as the convention is kept the same from person to person.

[Stephen Tashiro]

There has been evidence that the country has been going downhill since the days of Sputnik - math skills deteriorating, English skills deteriorating, going off the gold standard. I thinks it says less about the trajectory of the nation than the constant level of agitation in old people and TV commentators.

The strength of the US educational and political systems isn't that they maintain some static standards of "excellence", as defined by a particular generation. Their strength is that they keep changing. (For example, in the days of Sputnik, I attended segregated schools.) Feeling exasperated by the education that younger people are getting? - good! It's best they don't get the one that you got.

There was never a time when the general population wrote, computed and reasoned well. The statistics about how one country is 5 th or 35 th in the world might have some useful information, but it can't be deciphered until we know what part population was being tested and how much the tests measured something that can be taught vs some innate skill. Plus, it might not matter how the average person scores on these things. When a particular skill is a critical part of a job, you don't pick a person with an average skill level to do it.

[Rick Moyer]

Stephen, you make some good points, but I believe that the issue is to what level "average skill" really is anymore.

[Glenn Vaughn]

Look on the bright side. An IQ of 100 is supposed to denote "average" intelligence. As the population dumbs down our IQ will increase; eventually we will all be geniuses

[Jim Koepke]

What hampers them is their reliance on the calculator without understanding the problem at hand... but the same could be said for the sliderule.

In my experience using a slide rule involved getting inside the problem. It also presented a whole scale of answers next to the line.

A calculator only has buttons and a screen with jut one possible answer.

The "15 minutes or 90°" either is incorrect or does not reference the same type of measurements... It is apparent the reference to "15 minutes" is to the movement of the minute hand on a clock face not as an an angle measurement.

Yes, though it was not in my post, the original instructions did include the reference to a clock's face. Some just were not familiar with analog clocks. Some had actually seen them but never learned how to read them. My son was coming up in that generation and we forced him to learn to tell analog time. One of my wife's hobbies is to work on wooden burls and make clocks. They just don't look right if the are digital.

Trying to teach a person how a feeler gauge is supposed to be used is another challenge. Especially when someone has an incorrect assumption. It is almost impossible to teach them that the gauge isn't supposed to be trapped to the point of deformation when making a setting.

It must be one of those catch-22 things. The very reason those who know the least think they know the most is precisely because the know the least.

jtk

[Don Williams Michigan]

All of you have made good points. Think about the last time a young person who was working as a cashier tried to give you change. If they are not looking at the results of the cash register, they have no clue! Also, several years ago I asked several recent college graduates who worked for me to answer some very basic American history questions. They did not know the answers to the following questions: Who was John Wilkes Booth? Which country attacked Pearl Harbor? What were the forty ninth and fiftieth states admitted to the union?

The lack of math and history knowledge is also very scary.

[Kent A Bathurst]

If you want some sobering information on the state of our education system, read George F. Will's column in today's Washington Post. We got big problems, folks.

I generally do not agree with Mr. Will's positions, but the man is supremely intelligent, and he is a master of his craft - so I read every column. In this one, he is praising Arne Duncan - the Democratic Secretary of Education.

[Dave Anderson NH]

Working a bit off of Dan's comment, there is something even more insidious than lack of a particular specific skill. I would decry the tendency of many schools and teachers to teach what I consider the most useful series of skills and values.

1) Critical thinking and reasoning
2) The use of reference facilities other than Wiki, google, etc.
3) General Ethics- not any particular value system, but a value system
4) Good reading skills- I shouldn't have to mention this, but there are still to many people who are either illiterate or who do not read with comprehension.

It is from these basics along simple arithmatic and decent English that a life is built. Yes, I'm over simplifying, but there has to be some kind of foundation. The old fashioned 3 Rs.

[Jim Koepke]

I simply explain that clockwise means rotating in this direction (with hand motions) and counter-clockwise means rotating in that direction.

I had to think about this for a while. Then while standing it was easy to check.

When you rotate your hand and arm in a clock wise direction, to a person facing you it is going counter-clockwise. No wonder the world is getting all messed up!

jtk

[Stephen Tashiro]

How then, will you explain to your analog impaired pupils the meaning of "clockwise/counterclockwise"? .

Tell them that clockwise is the direction that you turn the dial on a telephone. No...wait, that might not help.

[Dan Hintz]

Tell them that clockwise is the direction that you turn the dial on a telephone. No...wait, that might not help.

Tell them to take their right hand and point to the very top of their head. Now stretch their arm towards the sky, then away from their body towards the side, then towards the ground... that is a clockwise motion. Doing the same with their left hand will be counter-clockwise.

[John Coloccia]

One day, many years from now, I wonder what archeologists will think of our civilization. I wonder if someone will find an old clock, the purpose of which now long forgotten, and make up a mythology around it, much as we wonder about the ancient Egyptian and Mayan artifacts.

I think it's important to know how to do things the "old fashioned" way, if for no other reason that old solutions often lend themselves to new problems. For example, how many people know what a nomograph is? Ok, NOW how many people know what a Smith Chart is? How about graphical W&B for an aircraft...Piper style...the one where you draw lines on the graph (for you pilots). They're both nomographs. Though this is more "easily" calculated by simply entering numbers into a computer, I find it FAR quicker to simply glance at the nomograph for my answer. How will we apply these handy tools to new problems if we don't understand the tool in the first place?

Here's another one for you pilots. How many know how to use a slide rule? Now how many know how to use an E6B? An E6B is nothing but a circular variation of a slide rule. Again, I find it FAR quicker to use an E6B for some basic flight calculations than punching numbers into my flight computer.

I can come up with many more examples of old technology being repurposed for new applications. This will stop happening if we only teach what is contemporary knowledge. Think of the hundreds of years of knowledge that we will throw away. I understand the argument that these techniques are antiquated and are not strictly necessary for daily life in the 21st century, but since when do we only teach was is strictly necessary for survival?

To get back to the "clockwise" discussion, how will a child who knows nothing of clocks appreciate any writings from before 1980 (around the time digital watches became cheap enough for the masses to buy)? How will they appreciate the phrase "A broken clock is right twice a day". To them a broken clock is nothing but a blank screen! Incidentally, there's a very good reason why clocks go clockwise. Think about it for a second. Here's a hint: if the mechanical clock had been invented in South America, it would probably turn the other way Anyhow, when you make this connection, you see how much information is really contained in that stupid wall clock, and how it all gets tossed away.

Anyhow, that's just some random thoughts before I go back out and shovel yet more snow.