Educational standards ??? What standards ?? 10

[RDK]

http://www.sci-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=11300002RKP5

Nearing a diploma, most college students cannot handle many complex but common tasks, from understanding credit card offers to comparing the cost per ounce of food. Those are the sobering findings of a study of literacy on college campuses, the first to target the skills of students as they approach the start of their careers.

More than 50 percent of students at four-year schools and more than 75 percent at two-year colleges lacked the skills to perform complex literacy tasks.

That means they could not interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, compare credit card offers with different interest rates and annual fees or summarize results of a survey about parental involvement in school.

How did these illiterates ever get out of high school?

Presumably some of them are graduating with engineering degrees.


It doesn’t say much for the future of a knowledge based society does it?

Almost 20 percent of students pursuing four-year degrees had only basic quantitative skills. For example, the students could not estimate if their car had enough gas to get to the service station. About 30 percent of two-year students had only basic math skills.

Anyone want to explain a complex technical idea to a group made up of these people?

Rick Kitson MBA P.Eng

Construction Project Management
From conception to completion

http://www.kitsonengineering.com

 

[Ashereng]

Remember when the Japanese was going to take over USA and the world because they are:
- smarter
- harder working
- save more money
- better school
- their kids were kicking our kids in schoolastic tests
- etc.

I even remember at one point, the Japanese owned 3 out of the 10 largest banks in the world (don't know how they measure largest, but I think it was in Fortune).

Well, guess what? Japan isn't doing much more than we are right now. Yeah, Toyota, Honda, and a couple of others are doing great, but the rest are doing about the same as US companies.

Why? They are affluent like we are. Their kids now watch as much TV (all those Japanese cartoon animine anyone?) and eat as much junk food as ours. They also text message and IM as much, or more, than our kids.

I call this the Coke Cola MTV effect. When a nation gets prosperous, the next generatin kids get used to the good life, and, some become as lazy as ours.

Wait a generation and all those Indian engineers who busted their heinie to get a good lifestyle will lament the fact that their kids are lazy blah blah and they are losing to the next emerging nation.

 

[epoisses]

This is also how the Roman empire went down. There's nothing really new in all this and nothing much do be done about it, except work hard, learn everyday and especially don't forget to enjoy it!