Yay! Joanne Jacobs is on her new Moveable Type site! I love MT, and I hope she enjoys it as well.
Today, she's got a link to a hilarious Dave Barry article, in which he ponders the mysteries of standardized tests:
Knowledge is our nation's most precious resource, after agriculture and Ray Charles. Yet study after study shows that American children are not learning as well as children from foreign countries such as Sweden and Hawaii.
On standardized tests, most American 12th-graders are unable to correctly answer such basic academic questions as:
1. When you wear a baseball-style cap, which part is supposed to go in the front?
2. What is the difference between "hip-hop" and "music?"
3. Who is Dick Cheney?
(ANSWERS: 1. The front part. 2. Plenty. 3. None of your business.)
Why do our children perform so poorly on standardized tests? Does the fault lie with our teachers? With our school administrators? With our political leaders? Can we, as concerned parents, sue somebody about this and obtain millions of dollars?
Or maybe it's time that we parents stopped passing the buck on education. Maybe instead of pointing the finger at everybody else, we should take a hard look at ourselves in the mirror, and place the blame for our children's lousy test scores where it clearly belongs: on our children. They have a terrible attitude.
Love his conclusion, in which he implores kids to study hard and learn a lot of facts because we, their parents, are getting stupider by the day.
Posted by kswygert at August 18, 2003 10:53 AM