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E-PrinceAmerica needs to revamp her public schools. American public education in the K-12 range led the world for the first half of the Cold War; now our public school system is — with a few exceptions — an international joke. Most prominent ...
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If I had a nickel for every time Brendan Carroll devoted a column to the benefits of learning Latin, I'd be pretty rich by now. We get the point - you know Latin and you're proud of it.
whats with the classics fetish?
and just because you could comprehend multivariable calculus by jr yr doesnt mean every 16/17 yr old in america can
I kinda feel like you're trying to show off (in a subtle way) how much you had already learned at different stages of your life. You're pushing it too far man. The education you described is like... an education that I'd be willing to bet no more than 1% of Princetonians (who already go well above American norms) had finished/attained by the time they entered Princeton. And most of us still won't have learned a LOT of the things you mentioned by the time we graduate. Srsly, your cirriculum sounds like that of a liberal arts college with a massively cumbersome core cirrculum.
To Brendan Carroll
Evidently, you consider yourself a particularly intelligent person.
You are not.
Your ignorance is visible in many of your outrageous claims and expectations, including but emphatically not limited to:
1. "...the entirety of Western Civilization is predicated on the Latin language." -- Really? I never knew that Beethoven's symphonies, Picasso's paintings, and Einstein's equations were PREDICATED on the Latin language. And don't give me this shit about Latin roots of some of these words. It's one thing for certain words to have their etymology rooted in Latin. It's something totally different to claim that the things that these words mean were predicated on it.
2. "Third Grade: ... read Cicero... Fourth Grade: ... Vergil..." -- Are you actually serious? Do you honestly expect the average third and fourth graders to read Cicero and Vergil in Latin? How much do you think they'll get out of these works with which many intelligent Princetonians –– at least as intelligent as you are -- struggle to comprehend and interpret?
If you say that even if they can't initially appreciate them, they will continue to revisit these works throughout their lifetime and be able to get more out of them in the long run, you clearly do not have much experience with teaching. No, the average student is not going to continually revisit Cicero and Vergil, Descartes and Nietzsche, Augustine and Aquinas, Euler and Gauss, Boltzmann and Maxwell, world history and literature, economic theory and computer science and all these great things you want to teach him. He is not going to have any capacity to comprehend these works in any nontrivial way and he will be turned away from them for reasons of discouragement or boredom. If this doesn't make sense to you, one, you're an idiot, and two, you should consult your favourite Augustine's influence on education. In particular, read about his stress on the difference between having words and having understanding, and also about the restrained style of teaching which focuses on sound understanding instead of bombarding the student with too much material. You are an excellent example of what happens to a student taught by some eager son of a B: a lot of words, no understanding.
3. In general, your writing drips of arrogance: "History should proceed from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance", "finish Western history"? -- Oh, because you're such an authority on history education? What does it even mean to "finish" Western history?
Brendan, your ignorance is particularly glaring in the way you want to teach mathematics and science. If you wanted to design your "ideal" curriculum, you would not teach algebra one year, geometry next year, functions the following year, trigonometry the year after, then calculus. You would want to teach bits of each subfield every year and progress in difficulty. You cannot realistically expect the average student in fifth grade to learn all the necessary algebra to begin calculus and retain it until ninth grade, which is when you want to teach them calculus. It is obvious that you don't know what you're talking about here. If you don't, don't think or pretend you do, or worse yet, tell more knowledgeable people how to teach it.
But your stupidity is not limited to your moronic proposal but your two-dimensional thinking that this is so self-evidently desirable as to require no justification. What your closed mind fails to comprehend is that other people's needs and preferences and values are different to yours. And if you didn't shit out all your readings philosophy, you're going to know that, at least in the current postmodern intellectual climate of moral relativism and epistemological skepticism, you're going to have a hell of a hard time convincing people that yours are somehow superior to theirs.
Your essential dismissal of physical education, art, and music only serve to highlight the limitations of your mind and worldview.
Last, if you got anything out reading the ancients, and in particular your beloved Cicero's De Oratore, you should know the master principle of persuasion: to use whatever technique is necessary to appeal to and manipulate your audience's prior knowledge, experiences, predispositions, prejudices, etc. to win them to your side. Using a title which is incomprehensible to the vast majority of your audience in a language that to them signals arrogant elitism breaks that principle. On behalf of Cicero, shame on you!
guys, this is not all that unrealistic--it is actually similar to the education system in former soviet bloc countries (where I attended elementary school). we were doing long division by the end of first grade, algebra in 5th grade, 3 languages starting in first grade (russian, english, and local language) with a 4th language added in 5th grade (choice between german and french), and multiple natural sciences, starting in 5th grade.
I learned Algebra I in 7th grade, Geometry in 8th, Algebra II in 9th, Trigonometry in 10th, and Calculus in 11th. I don't really see anything wrong with that.
Some kids might be able to handle this sort of curriculum, but I guarantee most won't. The problem is that talented, curious students are held back by their peers -- most people are upset to think that half of students are below average, but it's a fact. Many school systems, even in relatively prosperous communities, barely have the resources to teach the current material, much less divide classes into advanced sections. Also, there would be resistance to dividing the kids up and hurting the self esteem of the non-honors group.
haha I thought this was a joke.
Here was my curriculum when I attended a public school:
kindergarten: penmanship, count to 100
1st grade: learn to read, add positive 2 digit numbers
2nd grade: study whales, dinosaurs, native americans
3rd grade: learn about nouns and verbs. read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, multiplication tables
4th grade: columbus, the solar system, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
I had dedicated, experienced teachers, but many of my classmates found the work quite challenging.
O Brendan, can your entitle your next column: "Latin is good and I am really brilliant (especially because I know Latin)?" I love Latin, but these columns come across as though they are the development of terribly arrogant college essays. It's probably a sign when every time I read your columns, I keep thinking of what Catullus would say...