Is we keeping up with other nations?

[Forest_Dump]

Depending on where you live, Spanish or French seems most likely but I can see the point for some Asian languages too. Of course, in some places native North American languages make sense too.

[Serpent]

Anybody watch Jeopardy? I was a devotee for many years, but no longer: it's become pop-culture trivia. The same thing has happened to the historical and science documentaries. (Honestly, if i see one more cutaway diagram of a pyramid, i'll scream.) I'm not surprised if it happens in schools.

In Ontario, you can date the arrival of each wave of immigrants by the high school honour rolls.
Greek names minus 5-10 years; Hungarian names minus 5-10; Vietnamese names, Korean... Language acquisition is not the only reason. Many nations have tougher education systems, so the kids started out with more discipline than their Canadian counterparts; the parents are more authoritarian and demanding; immigrant kids have no established peer social structure to provide either validation or distraction; their parents have no connections or advantages to facilitate success by anything other than personal achievement. Once an ethnic minority is integrated, the next generations tends, with a few notable exceptions, to fall into the mainstream.

It's not difficult, in any subject but language, to compare results with other countries. Math has absolute correct and incorrect answers. So does most science, geography and history. Knowledge can be measured objectively, and so can reasoning, spatial and verbal problem-solving ability and the breadth and depth of understanding in a given subject. The things that might be difficult to evaluate are creativity and innovation, but i'm pretty sure tests can be devised.
The hardest part in standardizing education is not the testing or the curriculum content but bringing students from disparate backgrounds and economic conditions to the same level starting-point. That's why you can't even begin to have competing systems or methods by state: there can be no meaningful competitions between Connecticut and Missouri.

By all means, introduce Latin, sometime in secondary school. In elementary, teach whatever language is widely (? and badly) spoken in the community, or embodies a culture that's represented in the community. That, the students can actually practice, with children who might otherwise become their rivals and objects of prejudice. And get the pesky preachers out of the schools! By all means, 'teach the controversy' - in history or civics class. Never, ever let religion and biology into the same room!

[neuro]

I good idea for improvement could be to put greater value in learning a foreign language?

I quite agree. I favor Latin, though I understand the appeal of Greek to those interested in the humanities.

This is interesting!
I would suggest Latin for English-speaking people and Greek for Italians (I know this is but a tiny fraction of people, but I have personal reasons to consider it :°) and possibly all those speaking Latin-derived languages.

The reason is Latin is very rigorous and grammatically / lexically rigid.
To say one thing, there only is one right way in Latin: if you change a single word with a synonim or displace it in the sentence, either the sentence becomes wrong or it assumes another meaning. This trait persists to some extent in neolatin languages.

On the contrary, Greek is characterized by a number of words that can assume any meaning depending on how you position and associate them (something like "get" in English), and you can play with ordering and associating words to let a single word assume an infinite series of semantic and evocative results. Which is more like English than Italian, or French. (don't know anything about German).

The nice thing is that when you discover the power of the alternative way of using words (e.g. when I discovered the unexpected ways words could be used and combined in ancient Greek language) your relation with your mother-tongue (in my case, Italian) becomes much more plastic and rich, and your approach to another language (inn my case, English and "use of English") becomes much easier.

[BadgerJelly]

Building on this idea some more I would like to say Tonal languages do lack grammar and give a concise way of thinking.

An example of Thai and the English versions :

Where are you going? > Thai > Go where
To eat some food > Thai > Eat food

Not fluent in Thai by any means but this is the general gist and reflects the simplicity involved in Tonal languages. Obviously training the ear to hear the differences in tone and the voice to pronounce correctly is where we struggle.

[Serpent]

But, hey! Wouldn't it be fun to teach a baby version of Thai to kindergarteners? I mean without too much emphasis on the pronunciation and inflection, as thy only use it to communicate with one another, not have to do business with adults. Then, when they returned to their own language, they might have a stronger grasp of the bones, so to speak, on which to build structure.

I do find, in teaching ESL to adults, that Europeans have a much easier time than Koreans. Perhaps it would make all kinds of learning easier if we were exposed to a very different language early in life.

[CanadysPeak]

(sigh) Focus.

[BadgerJelly]

"They calculate accurately and efficiently, express numerical answers with a degree of precision appropriate for the problem context."

What do you see as the problem with this?

[Forest_Dump]

There are certainly changes through time in what education is supposed to do. I got into this a bit not long ago through reading up in debates over whether there should be a canon of literature (in different subjects?) and how or why that canon should change. So certainly I can see why some things like computer literacy should be emphasized at the expense of say the teaching of latin. However, I also do strongly believe that kids these days are being taught less and learning less. No matter what format, they definitely don't read or write as well as they had to 20-30 years ago (and I did some serious checking of old university papers to check this out) and I have no doubt that students today are less comfortable doing math, etc., in their heads. Way too dependent upon technology and someone else doing the real hard work these days. Every year when I have to explain median vs. average vs mode and how statistics can be misleading (with a good quote from Mark Twain), it seems like I am teaching rocket science to these guys. In fact, I always make up an example using numbers I manipulate in my head but the students almost drown me out with the clicking of their computer calculators as they furiously check my numbers.

[Serpent]

(sigh) Focus.

What on and to what end?
No you is not keeping up with many other nations.
Yes, it's okay for them (whoever they are) to calculate quickly and efficiently and to express the answers with the appropriate level of precision (whatever appropriate and precision mean in the context).
Done.

[CanadysPeak]

(sigh) Focus.

What on and to what end?
No you is not keeping up with many other nations.
Yes, it's okay for them (whoever they are) to calculate quickly and efficiently and to express the answers with the appropriate level of precision (whatever appropriate and precision mean in the context).
Done.

Thank you for wrapping up my silly topic and redirecting it to something more to your liking. As you said, "Done."