In school, we had M.A.S.H., Spice Girls, N'Sync, the fortune teller paper, cooties, slap bracelets and WWJD bracelets. At recess the all of the girls would play their radios, crying each time "My Heart Will Go On" played. When we had field day, the only heavy set kid in the class would be at the end of the rope, and whenever we sat down on the floor, we sat Indian Style, not Criss Cross Applesauce. Computers in the classroom was the hot new thing, the internet at home took forever and a day to go from one page to the next, thanks to dial up, and what in the world was an all-in-one printers?
Remember this?
Yesterday was the first time I watched an entire episode of Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader? Channel surfing would sometimes lead me to the end of the show, where the contestant would look into the camera announcing to the world that they are not smarter than a fifth grader. I always thought, "Do people not remember what they learned in school? How hard could it be?" I found out just how hard it is, or better yet, how easy it is to not be smarter than a fifth grader. One of the categories was First Grade Astronomy. Astronomy? In the first grade? The time I've heard of astronomy being taught in any school was college. Then I saw a question about rankings in the United States Navy. When I was in the fifth grade, I couldn't tell you the branches of the military, let alone rankings. I was stunned. But then I began to think of several things:
Somehow I actually do better on Jeopardy! than Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?
Are they teaching these what I call advanced learning in schools today to be better than other countries?
Did my parents send me to the wrong school? (Though every school I've attended were Traditional)
Fifth graders now and fifth graders then grew up in different times and studied differently, so it can't really be fair for a contestant to say that they are not smarter than a fifth grader
Every parent or at least I hope every parent wishes for their children to have what we didn't have, or to do better in school than we did. If these hard to answer questions subjects being taught in school now, then you will hear no objection from me, if it will better my child's learning. But watching that show did bring in a little humiliation that I didn't know some of those answers. Yet do those kids on the show really know the answers, or are they being fed the correct responses? In any case, a silver lining could be that someone who watches the show, and who can stomach Jeff Foxworthy, brings it upon theirselves to desire more education. That may not be the goal of the show (probably wants to show how uneducated Americans can be), but we all take something different than others out of situations, even silly game shows.
I'm amazed at what is being taught (and not taught on some occasions) in schools today. Not jealous, but hopeful that these kids will lead our country to brighter days. We don't need anymore Snookis or Charlie Sheens. Leave those whack jobs to our generations. I'm not saying that we don't or didn't have great figures from our days, but children are learning from our history, whether there were good times or bad times and applying it into what they want for theirselves and for the world. I was watching America's Got Talent earlier, and a second grader said if he had $1 million dollars, he would buy a big house for children who have no homes to live in, and fill it with a lot of toys. Children like this little boy are a lot more wiser than the kids I grew up with. If it didn't happen to us, we wouldn't give it a second thought. As corny as it may sound, children are our future, and if every child is learning these subjects as the ones on Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?, then that is a future I can look forward to.
No comments:
Post a Comment