>In principle nothing. It's just that they often fail in their primary
>purpose: educating people. Instead you get "validation". It was
>particularly awful in my area because the public I went was the best
>in the county, had great teachers, and amazingly low standards.
>Arrogant wasn't I?

Yes, standards. I've actually noticed the reverse here. I've been helping out an old teacher of mine this summer for some extra cash and been able to get a look at the actual standards, the ones for English, at least. All I can say is that they go from rediculously simple in elementary and intermediate school to extremely difficult in high school. It's as if they expect students to learn everything in the last four years. Better to work up to it more gradually, I think. I guess you could say I'm lucky, I haven't noticed too many holes in my education, but I guess getting involved in academic decathlon probably filled those. I'm still not quite sure exactly when to use a semicolon, though.

>What happened is that the schools' teachers had created a curve to
>standardize teaching. This inverted bell gave the honors kids and the
>failing kids the most attention. The kids in the middle, you'd know,
>80% of the population, recieved less funding and less attention.
>Worse, the English department had 1/3 the funding of math or science,
>or foriegn language. History had 1/8.

Well, that's to be expected. I know the physics department at my high school got some nice new computers. But they use them for labs, force probes and motion detectors and such. History can be taught straight from the book. I'd bet if the school gave the history department those computers, they wouldn't know what to do with them.

>That said, enjoy school this semester!

Thanks, I hope I do. All in all, one of the main problems with public schools in the United States, in my opinion, is the lack of uniformity. Every state, in fact, every school district pretty establishes its own standards. Those standards that I mentioned before were district standards. Someone higher up needs to set some higher minimums and get everyone to follow them. But I guess that's what this most recent deal with standardized testing is all about. There are more and more tests every year. If I were a few years younger, I'd have to take a high school exit exam to graduate.

Well, let this be a lesson to you all. Pay attention to your kids' education. Make sure they're learning everything they need to. Don't let the bureaucrats decide what's good enough.

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Y. Michael Chang
Laguna Hills, CA