posted
Ok so this email came to me from my stepfather's Pops...
quote: This is a good one to pass to the kids!!
To anyone with kids of any age, here's some advice. Bill Gates recently gave a speech at a High School about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world. Love him or hate him, he sure hit the nail on the head with this!
Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!
Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.
Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping - they called it opportunity.
Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.
Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.
If you agree, pass it on. If you can read this - Thank a teacher! If you are reading it in English-thank a soldier
Like most emails i get forwarded i was about to drop this one into the trash bin without giving it a second glance, but curiousity got hte best of me. It's nothing that unique or worthwhile in my opinion but what really struck a nerve with me was the last line tacked onto the email "IF YOU ARE READING IT IN ENGLISH - THANK A SOLDIER"
what the hell? that line just pissed me off?!
[ October 06, 2004, 08:45 AM: Message edited by: Ben ]
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posted
yea the body of the speech really didnt leave me thinking one way or the other, it was in one ear and out the other, it was that final line tacked on by the person circulating the letter that makes me go "wha?"
Posts: 1572 | Registered: Jan 2004
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posted
I've read that list before. One thing I find interesting is the implied antagonism between parents and schools, as if it's schools who turned all namby pamby over parents objections. Schools are exactly what parents, taken as a whole, want them to be. As a society, we may say one thing, but our actions speak differently. Our actions, on all things, from taxes to social services to teacher pay to what kind of schools we have, say what we as a society really want, deep down inside.
All of the watering-down I have seen has come in response to parental pressure and sometimes lawsuits.
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
I would think you reading it in English would be even more of a slam against your watered-down education. I think it should say:
"If you're reading this in Latin - thank a decent teacher"
Maybe we should get invaded and all have to learn Chinese. You know what that would do for our learning abilities?
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
Keep in mind that the stereotypes of Oriental students all being excellent is rooted in part the fact that we mostly have exposure to immigrant Orientals, and our immigration policies favor professional and educated Oriental families. In Asia, they do have their average and below average students just like we do.
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(The Book of Mormon was supposedly written on gold plates in a shorthand language we call Reformed Egyptian. Joseph Smith translated the plates, in part, using a breastplate/eyepiece device called the Urim and Thummim. So if YOU can read Reformed Egyptian . . . )
quote:Keep in mind that the stereotypes of Oriental students all being excellent is rooted in part the fact that we mostly have exposure to immigrant Orientals, and our immigration policies favor professional and educated Oriental families. In Asia, they do have their average and below average students just like we do.
I didn't mean that Chinese makes you smart.... I meant that having to be bilingual would make us smart.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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quote:I didn't mean that Chinese makes you smart.... I meant that having to be bilingual would make us smart.
I agree. Why not teach Spanish and French to elementary students? Immigrants from Mexico should learn English, certainly, but would it hurt English-speaking Americans to learn Spanish as well?
Ah, well. I suppose we can't even properly teach the basics, so this idea is just a pipe-dream on my part.
Posts: 407 | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
I believe in the benefits of being bilingual (of course). But I think it's a bad idea to force students with language issues to take classes in second languages. We chose to bring up our daughters speaking English because they were significantly developmentally delayed, and we felt that if we tried to bring them up speaking two languages, they would speak neither well. Now that they're both in kindergarten, they are being made to take Spanish. Most of their worst moments and outbreaks occur in Spanish class, and I believe it is due to their frustration at being asked to do something they simply cannot handle. Conventional wisdom has it that the brain's "window" for learning languages opens and closes early in life, but I think that this conventional wisdom does not describe everybody.
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posted
The population as a whole, however, could really benefit from it. Most people have more than sufficient capacity to learn at least one other language - your brain isn't like a hard drive that'll fill up if you put too much in it. This is more than evidenced in multi-lingual areas like western Africa where it isn't strange for someone to have to know 5 or 6 languages just to get around.
The problem is our teaching of languages - we wait until junior high to offer any substantial language training, and we treat it like a math class and make students memorize words and grammar rules. If we'd incorporate immersion learning early on, I have a feeling a lot more students would be able to pick it up. In my ideal aspirations, I'd like to speak to my children exclusively in French every other day. If nothing else, this will help them develop the ear for the language early on.
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posted
"I believe it is due to their frustration at being asked to do something they simply cannot handle"
Icarus, this comment intrigues me, because it reminds me of a number of instances with friends of mine, or just people I spoke to.
Is Spanish your first language?
Anyway, the reason I am curious is that there seems to be an emotional component to Spanish. Maybe your girls are rejecting Spanish class not because it is hard, but because they are being made to speak a language they consider private. Do you think this could be part of it? Was it ever that way for you, or for your parents?
A woman I met and talked to broke up with a man because he spoke Spanish. She said she could only speak it at home, ever. I remember feeling blown away by this, as I would assume she would welcome a man who spoke one of her languages. Boy was I wrong!
Posts: 10890 | Registered: May 2003
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posted
My first language was Spanish, but I do not speak to the girls in Spanish. This is more like Mango's problems in all of her classes last year (detailed in this thread, which I've been meaning to bump with an update), where she was being asked to do tasks that were simply beyond her ability. Mango (and to a lesser extent, Banana) does not deal with this frustration well.
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quote:(The Book of Mormon was supposedly written on gold plates in a shorthand language we call Reformed Egyptian. Joseph Smith translated the plates, in part, using a breastplate/eyepiece device called the Urim and Thummim. So if YOU can read Reformed Egyptian . . . )
Wow, I learned something new today. I had thought the Urim and Thummim were the plates themselves. I was told about it way back in high school by a Mormon friend, and apparently I misremembered what she said. Of course, it doesn't help that another of our (non-Mormon) friends couldn't remember the name "Urim and Thummim", so he called them the "Uma Thurman". As a consequence, for years I could never remember their proper name either. . . .
Posts: 1814 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
It does. I actually have a French friend who raised her son this way - French with Mom and English with Dad. He's adorably bilingual and corrects my pronunciation every time I talk to him.
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My friend's son did get a little flustered once when we were in France and ordering at a restaurant. He was trying to talk to the waiter and at the same time answering translation questions from all the college kids sitting around him. He finally answered a few questions, and then and rattled off a few sentences in English to the waiter. The waiter looked at him blankly, he shook his head really fast, and did it all again in French. It was cute.
He also uses phrases that demonstrate the fact that he's thinking in two languages. He was telling us about his day once and said "we installed ourselves at a few restaurants before we found one we liked."
Cute! I'm gonna call his Mom and see if I can come over and pinch his cheeks.
But I'd like to thank mom, for enrolling me in an English course when I was really young. I'd also like to thank all my nice english teachers, some of them American, some from England or Scotland.
No disrespect for soldiers, though. Posts: 1785 | Registered: Oct 2003
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The idea is an old, paranoid one: that if we had ever been conquered by another nation, we would have been forced to adopt a different language.
I think it's pretty far-fetched, personally.
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Which of the Founding Fathers wanted Greek to be the official language of the country? Madison? I don't recall right off, only that there was discussion as to whether an official language should be specified in the Constitution, and Greek was voted down.
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quote: In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer.
It took me a while to parse this sentence out. At first I thought it meant "In some schools they'll give you the right answer as MANY TIMES as you want to get it." Then I realized the proper interpretation is "They'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want... to get the right answer," where by 'times' the author seems to mean tries or attempts.
The list could've used an editor's touch, perhaps MANY TIMES.
Posts: 4600 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
Magson, I believe the real debate was between English, German, and to some extent French and not Greek.
The popular proponent for German was Benjamin Franklin, but it more of an ironic and desperate argument rather than rational logic (a sentiment that was probably aligned with some of his time spent in France).
quote:Notwithstanding a persistent legend that German missed becoming our official language by a single vote, American English has never been in jeopardy. In 1795, the 3rd Congress did consider and reject a petition by German Americans in Virginia to translate all federal laws into their language. A tie vote in the House of Representatives appears to have been broken by Speaker Frederick A. C. Muhlenberg, a Pennsylvania German with budgetary concerns and assimilationist tendencies. Poor recordkeeping leaves much uncertainty about what role he may have played. But the Muhlenberg legend is certainly false: German was never seriously considered as an official language – despite a century of claims by the likes of Ripley's Believe-It-or-Not, the German-American Bund, and Parade magazine.
Americans have traditionally resisted language legislation, beginning in 1780, when John Adams propoised to establish an official Language Academy to set standards for English. This idea was rejected by the Continental Congress as an improper role for government and a threat to individual liberties. A century later President Teddy Roosevelt's attempt to "reform" English spelling met a similar fate. There was no English proficiency requirement to become naturalized as a U.S. citizen until 1906 – the first major language restriction to be enacted at the federal level.
quote: To say that language has never been a major force in American history or politics, however, is not to say that politicians have always resisted linguistic jingoism. In 1753 Benjamin Franklin voiced his concern that German immigrants were not learning English: "Those [Germans] who come hither are generally the most ignorant Stupid Sort of their own Nation .... they will soon so outnumber us, that all the advantages we have will not, in My Opinion, be able to preserve our language, and even our government will become precarious."
This is more of what I was thinking about (like I said, it wasn't a positive suggestion).
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