by James Bowles

Created on: January 19, 2010   Last Updated: January 25, 2010

Date line August 25th, 2009, a feature article on CNN reads: "U.S. students fall behind international counterparts in math and science .."

The article goes on to say that in math U.S. students placed in the bottom quarter of the countries that participated, trailing countries such as Finland, China and Estonia.

http://cnnwire.blogs.cnn.com/2009/08/25/u-s-students -fall-behind-international-counterparts-in-math-scie nce-analysis-says/

Where does the problem lay? Is the US any less involved (or less interested) in the education of its citizenry? Are US teachers any less able, or students any less capable?

Or is the curriculum (the courses and their subject content) at fault? Or is there a critical element in the course work that is contaminating the overall effort?

I.) OBJECTIVE:

This study will examine some of the factors relating to America’s crisis in education.

II.) THE WHOLE OUTDOORS (lions and tigers and bears)

In very ancient times, citizenry of all countries and continents on earth would walk to the edge of the horizon and there (stretching endlessly before them) would be the sea!

The longing, the striving, and the truth in the sea, the sun, and the land was before them and gave them purpose for tomorrow. There was something wondrous beyond the crashing waves, and the ancient citizenry built their ships and sailed the seas and settled the distant lands in their name.

They built wagons and hitched their oxen, they fought the elements and those who looked upon them as intruders. They cleared the land and put their plows to the soil and sowed their seed. Their shovels unearthed fossil from marine sands and their mauls exposed them in hard rock and softer sediments. Carcass of all manner and description were hauled from tar pits or unburied from peat or river bottom.

But everywhere there was a sameness. Igneous mountains with volcanic centers in mid-continent, pebbles underfoot of every size, description and composition - small reminders of the larger rock from which they came. Fresh water lakes and rivers, and water falls cascading from fresh escarpments made of ancient rock.

http://www.geology.wisc.edu/courses/g112/mtns_wester nUS.html

This freshness amid ancient surroundings was the fare of all outdoors. It made up their awareness - and demonstrated the diversity of Nature (lions and tigers and bears)!

III.) THE "PAPER" TRAIL

In 1925 John Thomas Scopes, a biology teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, was arrested for violating the Tennessee Butler Act which

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>