NEARLY ALL 8TH GRADERS FAIL SOLAR CAR PROJECT \doc\web\98\10\solcar.txt They handed students a motor, and a solar pannel and told students, "Go to it." The girls had taken shop so they designed, measured, sawed, and put together another solar car. This time, of course, it worked. This assignment was given to all 8th graders--in all 8th grade science class. Only two groups had cars that worked! Another example of setting high performance standards without teaching kids anything about how to do the task. Those that have parents who can show them how to do it and where to buy the extra parts will suceed and "set the standard" thereby "proving" that it can be accomplished by a "well taught" 8th grader. Everyone else will fail. Just like asking 1st graders to write 9 words in alphabetical order their 2nd week of homework. New Standards expects 4th graders to design a bicycle trailer with 3-view and perspective drawing and complete parts list and assembly instructions. Why not ask the kids to build a complete client-server accounting system on windows NT? Original topic was "group grading", I was wondering why they were asking 8th graders to design and build a solar car. At MIT, they have a 2.70 project where at least they give you enough key parts to build the gadget in question. This is of course a 99th percentile engineering college, mechanical engineering, not all 8th graders. I visited private Evergreen Academy, yes they did Spalding reading with Orton phongram, but they also expected 1st graders to do revisions of their first drafts, homework and reading every evening, and incorporated some whole language skills ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date sent: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 05:53:40 -0500 From: Unikorn Send reply to: sumanski@erols.com To: arthurhu@halcyon.com Subject: Re: [education-consumers] [Fwd: Re: Self-esteem in Public Education] They EXPECTED students to know how! They handed students a motor, and a solar pannel and told students, "Go to it." No discussion on scientific principals--such as the influence of drag; how the size of wheels will influence rotation time, etc. After I took the two girls to a specialty store--for building models, they purchased wheels, and axel, etc. Their first car was a flop. I had to walk the girls through to get them to figure out why. The wood they had chosen to build the car was too heavy for the motor to pull. Once I made them realize this, we purchased some balsam wood--which is very light. The girls had taken shop so they designed, measured, sawed, and put together another solar car. This time, of course, it worked. This assignment was given to all 8th graders--in all 8th grade science class. Only two groups had cars that worked! My daughter has had mostly a Catholic school education. She is the only one of my three children that attended public schools. She did so only three years 6-8th grade. My feelings about it are very mixed. While public schools offered languages, and advanced classes in science and math in middle schools, I saw too much OBE. My son is a senior at a Catholic high school and attended a Catholic elementary school K-8. Yet he was placed in the same advanced courses as my daughter in science and math--without ever having taken any in 6-8. Our Catholic elementary school cannot afford to offer advance courses. But he must have learned just as much--because he tested high enough to qualify for advance placement. Unfortunately, with my youngest child (a 5th grader) who attends the same Catholic elementary school, I am seeing far too many changes. Text books have been updated thus have brought in a lot of this watered-down academics. The new text books are full of OBE principals. As the older teachers retire--newer ones are brought in. There is most definately a change in teaching styles. In other words, no place is safe any more. BTW, congrats on bringing up your girls to be so conversant in traditionally male science and shop skills. They should be a shoo in to get into MIT if they pulled this thing off. I take it their math is pretty good too? Have they started algebra yet, or will they get rainforest "algebra for all"? I wonder how the hell we would have put a man on the moon or cranked out the P-51, F-86, F-4 phantom, the IBM PC or the Ford Taurus with "science and math for all"??? When you build real stuff ,you either do it the right way, or you get killed by the competition. (And when the competion are the Nazis or the Communists, you really, really don't want to lose) Date sent: Sat, 19 Dec 1998 09:10:53 -0500 From: Unikorn Send reply to: sumanski@erols.com To: arthurhu@halcyon.com Subject: Re: Higher standards from hell - 8th grade solar car given motor, solar cell Yup. You're right again. It didn't hurt any that one of my majors just happened to be science. But again, these girls would have learned nothing--and I mean nothing--if I had not supervised their work. I think anyone who has their kid in public school--better be prepared to home school. At least if they want their child to learn anything. If the curriculum is not supplemented at home--another generation will be lost.