Post by Chris_Wendt on Sept 12, 2012 20:27:10 GMT -5
The NY Board of Regents is considering splitting-up World History and Geography into two separate courses, in response to high failure rates on History Regents exams. However, citing SED budget constraints, there is a probability there would only be one test of one of these courses.
Here are the 2010-11 passing rates for the Global History & Geography Regents:
NY State……..69%
Long Island…83%
NY City……….57%
State official are claiming that “many teenagers simply can’t remember…all that they learned in ninth grade" (at the end of tenth grade). Who is doing that kind of ineffectual teaching, teaching that does not translate in learning?
My wife, Sue, and I discussed this over dinner this evening. We had both studied European history back in the sixties, she in Wantagh High, and I at Chaminade. Here we are forty-some years later, and we both had fairly thorough recall of the Battle of Hastings in 1066, where William of Normandy (a/k/a William the Conqueror, a/k/a William the Bastard) invaded and conquered England, becoming King William I, the first Norman King of England. This is after 40 years of our having been taught that lesson.
They taught differently back then, and it stuck!
Long Island’s own Regent, RogerTilles, is a proponent of watering-down global history, himself being quoted in Newsday as having said: “I think the courses should be split”, citing “the problem of lessons forgotten between ninth and tenth grades”…”students don’t carry over”. What a crock.
Of course the real danger, dear parents, is with the state setting low expectations for YOUR kids and accepting high failure rates without addressing the root cause of that problem, is that 40 years from now your own kids will not remember that, in 1066 William the Bastard won the Battle of Hastings in England.
Maybe they will be able to Google it?
Ah-mazed!
Chris Wendt
Here are the 2010-11 passing rates for the Global History & Geography Regents:
NY State……..69%
Long Island…83%
NY City……….57%
State official are claiming that “many teenagers simply can’t remember…all that they learned in ninth grade" (at the end of tenth grade). Who is doing that kind of ineffectual teaching, teaching that does not translate in learning?
My wife, Sue, and I discussed this over dinner this evening. We had both studied European history back in the sixties, she in Wantagh High, and I at Chaminade. Here we are forty-some years later, and we both had fairly thorough recall of the Battle of Hastings in 1066, where William of Normandy (a/k/a William the Conqueror, a/k/a William the Bastard) invaded and conquered England, becoming King William I, the first Norman King of England. This is after 40 years of our having been taught that lesson.
They taught differently back then, and it stuck!
Long Island’s own Regent, RogerTilles, is a proponent of watering-down global history, himself being quoted in Newsday as having said: “I think the courses should be split”, citing “the problem of lessons forgotten between ninth and tenth grades”…”students don’t carry over”. What a crock.
Of course the real danger, dear parents, is with the state setting low expectations for YOUR kids and accepting high failure rates without addressing the root cause of that problem, is that 40 years from now your own kids will not remember that, in 1066 William the Bastard won the Battle of Hastings in England.
Maybe they will be able to Google it?
Ah-mazed!
Chris Wendt