Thursday, November 11, 2010

Chapter 3 summary response

I found Bauerlein's remarks concerning IQ tests being altered over the years, interesting. Of course, tests would be updated but I never thought in those terms before-probably because I do not work with standardizing test norms and the like...

I had a most interesting conversation yesterday (true) with a female student in second block. She stated that she believed kids now-a-days were so much smarter than their parents and adults in general -because they have the net behind them and adults didn't grow up with the internet.  We spoke for a while and I asked if she peer edited her classmates writings or if she ever read stuff on the net written by other young adults. She said she did. I told her that she was correct, her parents may not have had the net as a tool but, thinking historically of our greatest inventors, thinkers and social movers who also never had access to the net-  technology doesn't equal intelligence. She stopped and considered and then stated, "Yah, some of them are pretty dumb". It wasn't that I wanted her to be ashamed of her views or her generation, but I did want her to think about the greatness of the mind, and power of personal motivation.

 Currently our school is "on alert" and we teachers have been assigned groupings so we can work together to plan a strategy which will (hopefully) give our educational system a kick in the pants. Somehow, I think, it wouldn't be a bad idea if parents got a kick in the pants wake up call regarding what their kids do - and don't do- after school in "free time".

1 comment:

  1. I too thought the comments about the IQ test scores were interesting. I can see how this could be true. Over the years we have continually reworked the standards. In some ways we have lowered the bar.

    I appreciated Bauerlein's comment on the Kaiser report findings about leisure reading (p. 89). He reports that their findings show that the amount of leisure reading correlated with a students grades. More time spent reading correlated with higher grades while less time reading correlated with lower grades.

    ReplyDelete