3catcircus said:No argument there...
I'm a firm believer in the idea that people have been getting dumber and dumber even as the amount of information necessary to learn gets larger and larger - so much for natural selection.
As an extreme example - there is a (and I don't know if it is a hoax or not) webpage showing a "Kansas 8th grade final exam" from 1895 - there is no way that an average "A" student from the current generation would pass the test. Unfortunately, too many kids have not been faced with failure, expect everything to be given to them without any effort, and are truculently assertive of their "rights." Of course, it doesn't help that too many teachers don't know the subject matter that they are teaching since Education is usually (not always) a major for people who couldn't cut it in engineering, math, liberal arts, or even business and who aren't football players with a half-assed "Recreation" degree.
That's a pretty horrible stereotype to perpetuate. Many adults aren't nearly as smart as they were when they were young adults, fresh out of university, and the lack of education displayed in the working world is pretty abhorent at times. I don't think that's just teachers.
I'm not a teacher myself, nor am I related to one....but I do think they get short shrift they don't deserve. And their jobs definitely aren't easy. Particularly since all those engineers, math-whizzes, doctors, and business people are spending so much time on their careers that they don't give adequate attention to raising their children properly...hence dumping their problem kids on those teachers who "can't hack it in the real world".....as well as everyone else living in the same community.
Banshee