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http://blogs.chron.com/texaspolitics..._students.html
Granted white studnets and hispanic students probably remain about even due to high white in enrollment in private schools but still it's quite the sight to see the chicken little crown come out and bemoan the fact the reconquista is coming
What I find more troubiling is this
I fear the education of the state will be hamstrung by the old "Alamo" debateQuote:
3 out of every 10 Texas workers will not have high school diplomas by 2040
Oh ym
You do not see a connection between your two points? The increase of Hispanic pupils and the dropping educational standards?Quote:
Originally Posted by Strike For The South
This also affects white pupils, whose standards as a result slip as well. Notably in their English, where for example the difference between majority and majorly can get lost.
So, the original population of Texas are finally winning their long battle against the anglo-saxon immigrants?
Anyway; the two classes I teach both have around 50% immigrants. I don't see the problem here.
Also, Norway's population was predicted in the 80's to be lower in 2000 than it was in 1980, and we were thought to be swarmed by east asian immigrants. Instead, have seen a population boom and immigration from eastern asia is almost nothing.
Random numbers people think up while snorting coke scarface-style isn't the ultimate truth. The world will progress. As it always has, and always will. It won't be the same, but it will be better.
3 out of 10 so 70% will have diplomas, that's sounds normal to be honest we can assume that a big proportion of those 3 out of 10 will obtain apprenticeships in whatever trade they fancy like plumbing, carpentary etc etc apprenticeships start round 16/17 usually
Edit: checked wiki seems like apprenticeships start in America at 18 which is a bit strange if you ask me, which prob means you have to obtain a high school diploma, therefore 30% cannot even get a trade now that is bad.
:inquisitive:Quote:
Originally Posted by HoreTore
An interesting view. Do the American Indians not count?
And why view it as a battle? Seems to be a similar frame of mind to those bemoaning this statistic, just on the other side of the fence.
CR
I have a couple of friends you'd love to meet, they're called Mr. Sarcasm and Mr. Irony....Quote:
Originally Posted by Crazed Rabbit
yeah blue collar trades dont work that way here. everyone is expected to achieve at least a high school diploma.Quote:
Originally Posted by gaelic cowboy
How do you define the distinction between "American Indians" and "Mexican Hispanic (Indians)" and "Meso-American Indians". Mostly this destinction is a modern one influenced by political agendas and modern borders. Certainly the Hopi have more in common with other Natives an hour to the South than say the Lakota of the plains or the woodland/great lakes 6 nations.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crazed Rabbit
I used to have a map which displayed the distribution of the seven Native root languages throughout the Americas. From an anthrological perspective, the distinction between North and South American Indians is rather meaningless.
I always wondered why in American films/TV shows you see people going to fancy graduation ceremonies with their academic robes on just for finishing school. You don't get to do that until you finish Uni here.Quote:
Originally Posted by Centurion1
Yea you can leave in third year here which in America is I think grade ten or something, in fact it is entirely possible to go to Uni never having finished secondary school. You could leave and do a trade after the apprenticeship do a bridging course for first year of technical college later transfer to uni.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rhyfelwyr
The value of a private education cannot be overestimated, and that value will only increase in the future.
The value of the old boys network it gives you is far more valuable I would say.Quote:
Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger
Public schools used to be great. Most still are, but they are being bleed slowly it seems.
trust me going to a private school in the states does not equal an old boys network. they are as prolific as cod. Many are catholic and there are thousands of those. Sure you have schools like Exeter prep in NH or Sidwell friends or Bullis down in northern virginia and DC but many aren't what i imagine you are thinking about.Quote:
Originally Posted by gaelic cowboy
I think you have point, but even though Native American groups might share the same root language that doesn't mean they are the same culturally. For example the Paiutes, which are the group native to my region, belong to the Uto-Aztecan language group but were quite different from the Aztecs culturally.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jaguara
Plus most Hispanic Mexicans are a mix of Spanish and Indian blood. So I'm guessing that the Mexicans that settled Texas didn't have much in common with the Indian tribes that were already there.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chuchip
As to the migration of Hispanics into Texas, I certainly would not refer to it as reclaiming historic land or anything like that. I was just going off on a tangent myself regarding how we impose artificial divisions that have little to no meaning in a cultural sense (thread hijack). I have very little knowledge of the current social situation, I have no knowledge of the actual demographics of Mexican immigrants to Texas, and if they are more indigineous peoples or displaced urbanites, and have never been to Texas, so I would not dream to pontificate on the social situation there.
As to Mexicans...it grates on me how we tend to lump them all into the vague group "Hispanic", when one Mexican might basically be a Spaniard, another is of vague mixed blood and another may be an indigineous person. Overall, the degree of Spanish blood is smaller than most Americans would expect, and while many people in Mexico have certainly adopted Spanish as thier language, and have integrated into Modern culture, more than 5% of Mexican citizens still speak an indiginous language(though most of those are in the South and mountainous areas).
My main point was merely that just because we plopped a border which divided culturally linked groups, does not suddenly make them distinct. The establishment of the border between Mexico and the US, naturally had nothing to do with cultural divisions of indiginous peoples, and groups that had common heritage, way of life, and even frequent interactions found themselves on different sides of a border. In my experience, Indiginous peoples from all across the Americas share a great deal in common.
well i mean are all whie people identical? they are lumped together as european but i would argue that a western and eastern european are radically different.
Of course we're all the same, that's why the EU is such a smashing success with support from practically everyone!!Quote:
Originally Posted by Centurion1
Completely depends on the scale, a lot of the issues between EU members are more or less petty issues compared to the issues people have with eachother elsewhere.
It's just when you have no real issues, people tend to make a big deal out of the small ones that remain.
QFT (First time I get to use that! Yay, I am almost 40 and I found a new "word")Quote:
Originally Posted by Husar
Personally, I have always found remarks about "whites" to be just as ignorant. It is often used in a context to justify reverse-racism. "Whites did X to us"
Here in Canada, people are often very distinct about their European heritage -be it Enligh, French, Irish, Scottish, Ukrainian, Italian, German, Polish, Russian etc. Certain groups more than others. With the English/French thing, I think the conciousness is a bit stronger here than in the US, but to a lesser degree it is similar there - though again some are more vocal than others - Irish and Italians for example.
Possibly, but I was referring more the discipline it instills in children. I was educated by the meanest collection of old curmudgeon's I've ever encountered, Lasallian Brothers. They had no tolerance for indolence, rebelliousness, or failure; and they made sure my parents understood that before I was accepted into their school. It was their mission to educate their students, and everything else including sports, extracurricular activities, and personal freedom was secondary to that.Quote:
Originally Posted by gaelic cowboy
I wasn't much of a troublemaker, but I remember one particular example of their methods which would never fly in public school. In my sophomore year, I had a very high average in English - so high, in fact, that I calculated that I could skip the final paper and still come out of the class with a B. So, on the last day of before summer break, I was asked to stay after class to discuss my failure to turn in the paper. I casually explained my position and my contentment with a B in the class, expecting an expression of disappointment and to be let go. As Brother McLaren explained, however, the assignment wasn't about earning points towards a grade, but about me learning the material, and my school year wasn't over until I had learned it.
As all my friends were headed off to parties and freedom, I was accompanied to the library where I worked on that paper until just after midnight as Brother McLaren looked on. After that, as my paper wasn't in a format suitable to turn in, I was taken to the computer lab and forced to type it, which lasted until well after 1:00 AM. Finally, I had to wait around while he carefully read it over several times, grading first for content and then for grammar. His grade? A-, marked down to F for lateness.
I hated that place, but I'm so very glad my parents sent me there. It taught me life lessons that go far beyond grammar and arithmetic. College and work have been more than simple in comparison.
There are so many pluses and minuses there, I don't know where to begin.Quote:
Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger
At the end of the equation, however, was a kid who came into the school a spoiled brat and left with a healthy respect for education, hard work, and self discipline. ~:)Quote:
Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name
Did it not occur to you that explaining you didn't need to do the assignment might go down badly*... I have done something like that only on a much smaller scale and I just pretended to forget the work... explaining to someone you decided not to do what they told you to is not going to go down well...
*Don't get me wrong I would have expected that, but even with lax teachers In a normal school I would have at least made up an excuse. I figure people are much more forgiving of stupidity than arrogance...
I wouldn't have lasted 5 minutes in that chamber of child abuse.Quote:
Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger
i cant imagine going up to my teachers and saying,
"i just didnt want to do it"
Umm I did do that, twice in the same class.
That's only because you are above average in intelligence. Sooner or later, smart people realize that the benefits of hard work outweigh the tedium of actually working hard. If it wasn't for that stimulus, you would have learned it later on at some point in your life.Quote:
Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger
Discipline is all well and good but you have admitted that personality and freedom was squashed at the expense of "learning" as if the two are incompatible. The fact is, the reasoning of your teacher just doesn't hold up. You excelled at your class, and it is very clear that you were a very smart kid. You took the initiative to calculate the cost-benefit of the increased grade at the expensive of personal happiness. You choose personal happiness rather than reaching an arbitrary grade which is meaningless in the long run. Your teacher knew you knew the material. You knew you knew the material. Your work until that point shows you knew the material. No one gets an A from day 1 until day 179 and then flunks the final on day 180 (assuming that you had the same # of school days as I did in high school).
It really wasn't about him doing his job making sure you "knew the material". It was a check on independent thinking, specifically, the idea that your happiness comes above the authority of your boss. This is not surprising considering your description of your education.
If I was your teacher, I would have perhaps given you a bit more information you might have neglected to incorporate in your cost-benefit analysis, such as the long term consequences of your happiness if this B perhaps limits the choices of uni's you get accepted into. This dude decided to isolate you, force you to work, then punish you for insubordination under guise of making sure that the A student in his class was indeed an A student.
I'm glad you got a useful lesson about hard work out of it, I just hope you didn't lose some other characteristic that might perhaps be more valuable in the long run. Overall, I would say it was quite poor teaching, imo.
ACIN, I owe you a proper, detailed, and point by point response. Ironically, my school work and work-work are keeping me unusually busy, so all I can offer is a condensed version.
In my completely amateur opinion on schooling, children, especially teenagers, first need discipline and structure before they can excel as independent, free-thinking adults. That same basic formula applies to virtually every acquired skill in life, be it arithmetic, reasoning, or fencing. You need to be disciplined in proper form before you can freestyle.
It is very true that plenty of kids make it through public schools ready for life's challenges, and indeed public schools vary widely in quality around the country and even around different areas of the same municipalities, but I would argue that they accomplish that largely in spite of their schooling and not because of it. As you noted, intelligent people will overcome a poor educational environment and push themselves to excel.
The most obvious example is the comparison between most Asian school systems and our own. They instill a level of discipline in their students that simply isn't found in our own public schools, and the results are reflected in our yearly embarrassment when the global standardized tests are published. (Of course, such discipline starts in the home - and that is a huge problem that our public schools don't have much control over.)
Anyway, the point to this now rambling post is to say that I went into the school spoiled, undisciplined, lazy, not particularly smart, and yes Centurion, a prick. Search for some of my earlier posts in here to see what I mean. The Brother's thousand big and small tortures (and my little story was nothing compared to some of their 'corrective measures') seemed intolerable at the time, but they changed me for the better in countless ways. I'm not sure I could have gotten the same results in a public school.
I don't think you would like the Dutch educational system very much then...