A couple of decades ago I went to a health-care symposium and learned the shocking truth that United States was not doing well in infant survival. The reason is that we actually are two countries, partly first world, high tech; partly third world, with people living in a endless, despairing poverty. Any national score we get in such rankings can't help but reflect the fact that millions of Americans are in terrible shape in lifestyle and education. It's criminal that we don't do more and that so many better-off folks are absolutely cavalier about the way many of our fellows live. -- Joe On Wednesday, December 4, 2013 6:54 PM, Wiggins Patrick <paw@getbeehive.net> wrote: http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/world/57215739-68/average-students-education-sh... Discouraging.  But I have to wonder where we're going wrong.  I do 35 to 40 physics and astronomy related outreach visits to elementary schools for the U every year and the kids certainly seem interested in STEM subjects. 'Course, then I go to local eateries and interact with the wait staff only to find just the opposite. Frustrating.  Sometimes I feel like the next voice we hear coming from the Moon or the first voice coming from Mars will be speaking Mandarin... But then considering we're also 20somethingth in infant mortality and healthy life expectancy I guess we have lots to worry about. patrick Sent from my iPad _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Send messages to the list to Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com The Utah-Astronomy mailing list is not affiliated with any astronomy club. To unsubscribe go to: http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Then enter your email address in the space provided and click on "Unsubscribe or edit options".

Hey, I’m waiting to see books in the bookstore with nothing between their covers but small-case print, acronyms and emoticons. As a university instructor I felt that writing skills took a major hit as kids came to rely more and more on technology. We quit putting essay questions on our exams because the answers were incomprehensible. We couldn’t stand to read them. I’m not kidding, we’d draw lots to see who had to endure the agony. These were kids in, basically, a graduate program. It was pathetic. It seemed to get worse every year. I haven’t been at the University of Utah for nine years, but I can guess the situation hasn’t improved. I kept a big red crayon in my desk (one of those jumbo-sized crayons one uses to mark posters) and would put huge zeros on the cover page of most of the first-draft papers I received. Because the papers were so poorly written my first suspicion was that the kids weren’t reading anything. Sure, they read assignments for school, but they weren’t reading for pleasure. Reading for school and reading because you want to are entirely different things. If you don’t read on a regular basis you can’t write well. It’s as simple as that. Reading nothing but text messages on one’s cell phone doesn’t cut it. I once “zeroed” a particularly horrendous paper and later (just to gather data to substantiate my hypothesis) asked the kid if he/she had ever read any book (completely through) just for enjoyment. Their reply was ‘only if they could count “Green Eggs and Ham” as the book.’ You think it’s bad, now. Just wait. Dave On Dec 4, 2013, at 18:52, Wiggins Patrick <paw@getbeehive.net> wrote:

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/world/57215739-68/average-students-education-sh...

Discouraging. But I have to wonder where we're going wrong. I do 35 to 40 physics and astronomy related outreach visits to elementary schools for the U every year and the kids certainly seem interested in STEM subjects.

'Course, then I go to local eateries and interact with the wait staff only to find just the opposite.

Frustrating. Sometimes I feel like the next voice we hear coming from the Moon or the first voice coming from Mars will be speaking Mandarin...

But then considering we're also 20somethingth in infant mortality and healthy life expectancy I guess we have lots to worry about.

patrick

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