[tips] Re: Spellings Releases Plan for Higher Ed

[Christopher D. Green]

Michael Scoles wrote:      1) Most students in my undergraduate statistics class has had some college-level math class.  On their first exam, which I had them take without a calculator, over one-fourth of them could not get the mean of 4 numbers, because the sum was 26!  (Five of them said 6.2, and one admitted that she new it was a little over 6, but didn't know what to do with the, "2 that was left over.") etc... Yes, it's the case all over. I was teaching a history of psychology course in one of Canada's premier acdemic institutions a few years ago, starting with Ancient Greece. As I was laying in basic backgound, I was puzzled by the blank stares. It gradually dawned on me that most of the students had no idea where Greece was. So the following week I gave them a map of modern Europe including the country boundaries and asked them to fill in the names of the countries. The avg. score was between 3 and 4 (out of over 20). Now, the fact that some couldn't get Bulgaria or Romania didn't surprise me. But that nearly no one could get even Germany came as a shock. England and Italy were the only really sure bets. France and Spain were at around 50%. Everything else was much lower. The little piece of Turkey sticking in from the right side of the map was often labelled India or China (and we wonder why the peoples of Central Asia despise us so). But then, I'm an advocate for charter schools, so my opinion is suspect.   Yes, especially considering that charter school do not increase students' academic performance: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/education/july-dec04/charter_8-18.html (but do enhance the ability of parents to strongly constrain the kinds of intellectual materials to which their children are exposed). -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-5115 ex. 66164 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.yorku.ca/christo ============================= --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english