I agree with this. It is a pity though. Kids always laught when I show them Bowles and Gintis's study of schooling which suggests that it is the time you spent in school that matters not anything you learned. (and of course this time is highly correlated with parents' income.
michael
Steve Perry wrote:
>
> I've had the same experience of students, both as a graduate teaching assistant babysitting freshman comp students and as a guest speaker (journalist/editor) in any number of "advanced" high school classes. There are probably a hundred contributing factors that could usefully be discussed, but I can't help feeling that part of what's going on here is that kids understand what the score is in contemporary America. They know the game is fixed, that all the important questions have been settled in favor of the prerogatives of money and power--or so says the behavior of the adults they see. For working class kids, it means their exclusion has been decided upon prior to anything they might do, so why bother; for the children of more privileged parents there is the sense that everything but their own entitlement is a dead letter, a joke they're too hip to want to hear.
>
> ----------
> From: Michael Yates
> Sent: Wednesday, February 10, 1999 6:14 PM
> To: marxism at lists.panix.com; lbo-talk at lists.panix.com; pen-l at galaxy.csuchico.edu
> Subject: students
>
> Friends,
>
> I have been a teacher for 30 years and by most accounts a good one. In
> teaching economics and labor-oriented subjects I have developed hundreds
> of concrete analyses, stories, etc. to make the material clear. Now I
> know we have discussed on these lists the state of education, the nature
> of today's students, etc. But I have to say that the level of
> illiteracy and general stupidity seems to be rising among students. the
> most basic words are unknown to them, and they never bother to look them
> up. I have to continually check myself when I am about to use a word I
> know that they should understand but do not.
>
> On a recent quiz someone said that the name of Adam Smith's famous book
> was "Rivethead."!! this after at least a dozen mentions of "The Wealth
> of Nations." They hear a word or remember a snippet of something I said
> and put this down as an answer, no matter how preposterous. Last year I
> had a simple fill-in on a quiz:_____!,_______!,_______!, That is Moses
> and the Prophets. I had said the correct answer at least 20 times in
> the preceding two weeks and explained why Marx said it and how neat of a
> statement it is. However, because I have arthritic hands, it is hard
> for me to write on the board. So to save effort, after I had written out
> the word "accumulation" several times, I started just writing
> A_____,A____,A____ and saying the word "accumulation." Sure enough on
> the quiz at least a half dozen persons put "A,A,A" as the answer. One
> student said that that is what she had in her notes!!! Today a friend
> told me that a student in an anthropology class had written the
> following on an exam,"The Africans used Native American slaves to build
> their railraod system." Another, after reading the book about Guatemala
> by the Rigoberto Menchu wrote in a paper about the "Finca" tribe of
> Indians.
>
> I really can't take too much more of this. I mean I still take this
> stuff seriously. Any advice? My advice to myself is to retire, and
> soon. If it were not for the working people I teach, I do believe that
> I would have an emotional collapse more serious than the ones I have
> already had. To make matters worse, students without a clue or any
> desire to learn whatever will be bitching about their grades.
>
> I have always tried not to an elitist academic. I seldom lose my temper
> and I always treat students with respect. I am not telling you these
> things as a joke or to make fun of students. But it seems to me that
> capitalism has succeeded rather well in preparing young people to
> believe just about anything and not to know how to analyze anything.
>
> michael yates
>
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