<p>I don’t recall ever making a MN scrapbook, but that does sound nice! No, I just remember endless hours of the Red River Valley, iron ore, the Mayo Clinic, Scandinavian immigration, and the Sioux :p</p>
<p>Strange, the things that stick…</p>
<p>Student615</p>
<p>You’d remember if you’d done one. It sounds like the missions projects in CA–something that stays with you for a lifetime. Can you sell them on e-bay? Probably not.</p>
<p>Never underestimate the madness of ebay:</p>
<p>
[quote]
This model shows an approximate depiction of Mission San Antonio de Padua as it may have looked in its heyday. It’s home-made by my daughter and I and is one-of-a-kind.<a href=“%5Burl%5Dhttp://cgi.ebay.com/California-Mission-San-Antonio-de-Padua-Model_W0QQitemZ270210264083QQihZ017QQcategoryZ102957QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem%5B/url%5D”>/quote</a></p>
<p>I couldn’t help checking :p</p>
<p>OMG</p>
<p>Maybe I can sell my Minnesota scrap book too. I woodburned the cover with a loon–a major loon, I guess.</p>
<p>I no longer wonder how the offending history textbook made it into the classrooms. I received our semiannual district newsletter in the mail today. The one-page superintendent’s letter contains several errors in grammar and punctuation. I don’t know whether or not the “average” taxpayer in our district can spot the errors, but I certainly did! Four times, the superintendent wrote about “your child” and followed it with “them” as a pronoun. He wrote about how “art students … pursue their education …” He wrote that “the automotive industry has” and followed it with the pronoun “them.” Sigh …</p>
<p>Bethievt and Student615,</p>
<p>I remember making an Iowa scrapbook in 4th grade, maybe this was a midwestern thing? I actually still have mine, too, so tell me if you find a market for MN!</p>
<p>Re: horrible textbooks, I have a crop science/pest management double degree and took many, many science courses in undergrad and grad school. I cannot count the number of times I have found blatant mistakes in my kids’ science textbook editions used for elementary and middle school. I have often photocopied passages from reputable texts used in college and taken them into the teachers b/c they were just teaching what was in the assigned book, not knowing themselves the material in the textbooks was inaccurate. </p>
<p>The sad thing is that many times the teachers my kids have had have a general education degree, not in a particular field of study, and they did not know enough in that subject to even realize that what the textbook stated was in error. The great thing about NCLB is that now our state’s teachers must be certified in that field to teach it. You may have your own negative opinions concerning NCLB, but at least there is now some accountability to teaching accuracy regardless of how inadequate the chosen textbooks may be.</p>
<p>There are degrees in crop science & pest management??!! I learn something new every day.</p>
<p>This book is fun for international perspective on U.S. history: </p>
<p>[Amazon.com:</a> History Lessons: How Textbooks from Around the World Portray U.S. History: Books: Dana Lindaman,Kyle Ward](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/History-Lessons-Textbooks-Around-Portray/dp/1595580824/]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/History-Lessons-Textbooks-Around-Portray/dp/1595580824/)</p>
<p>Perhaps it will make you feel better to know that the 16-yr-old Asian exchange student currently living with us, who attends an elite boys’ school in his home country and is planning on a science career, did his FIRST experiment as a science student on his first day at our HS. Yup–nothing but rote learning there so far. (He has completed the first year there, but doesn’t have enough knowledge to join the chemistry or physics classes here mid year. In fact, as we have discovered, he also has not covered all of the material in our excellent first year class. According to all of the howlers and nay-sayers, he ought to be ahead.) They go to school from 7 am to 10 pm and eat all their meals there. (What exactly they are DOING for all those hours, other than memorizing crap I can’t say.) He says that he and all of his friends sleep in class, that they commonly sent 300 text messages per day on their ever-present cell phones. </p>
<p>All of that memorization makes for great results on those international tests, but not necessarily for great results when the subject needs to be put into practice. Which is perhaps part of the reason why scientific innovation is not pouring out of the Pacific Rim, despite all of the kids dutifully spending hours memorizing the periodic table?</p>
<p>Which country? (Or, if you don’t mind, which specific high school did the exchange student attend in the other country?)</p>
<p>Korea.
10char</p>
<p>The description doesn’t sound like the students I knew when I was last in Taiwan, but I’ve read that there is a rise in slacker culture in all the newly industrializing countries. I can’t imagine a student from east Asia (but I have never been to Korea) not getting lots of science experiments in elementary school, some done by the teacher for the whole class, and some done by small groups of pupils.</p>
<p>Well, it’s a fact in this case. And the kid’s parent is a professor in a scientific field, who has done graduate/fellowship work in the US and prefers the US education system. (There’s a limit to what I want to say here, for confidentiality reasons.)</p>
<p>I would point out that these kids are not slackers. In fact, they got into a competitive school by competitive examination, and are now engaged in a battle to be in the top X% of students nationwide in order to get into a top university. But they’ve got to sleep sometime, and apparently the norm is going to bed at 2 or 3 AM and being back at school at 7 AM. (Perhaps they sleep in school because what is important is memorizing the textbook, rather than participating in classroom discussions. Perhaps there are few of the latter. Just speculating… <g>)</g></p>
<p>Do note that Japan has recently gone into a state of panic about their kids doing less well on international tests, and that their response is to look to the Indian model, which features yet more rote memorization.</p>
<p>Anecdotal evidence from other quarters indicates that things are not necessarily the same in China, and therefore possibly not in Taiwan, either.</p>
<p>I remember a lot more history, especially world history, when i was in grade school. I know we did NJ history, but definitely not a whole year (think my kids did it in 4th grade, too.) But world history and geography is just so much fun! If you want to interest kids, these are the things that stood out to me, and that i remember 40ish years later:</p>
<p>Egypt–pyramids, mummies!!! A classroom full of projedts, half of which were sugar cube pyramids, the other half Barbie dolls wrapped up in torn up sheets.</p>
<p>Middle ages–Castles!!! More sugar cube projects.</p>
<p>Greeks and Romans!–cool stories about all those gods and goddesses.</p>
<p>Don’t know why they don’t teach that stuff in grade school anymore–it made me love learning!</p>
<p>DH has sat on a lot of textbook committees - state history texts are some of the worst, because if you are from a relatively small state with mandated state history, then the market is so small that there is only one book produced by the company as an afterthought becauce there is absolutely no profit in it.</p>
<p>Kelsmom, </p>
<p>Yup, there truly is such a degree program! (Mostly at the Land Grant Universities). Scientifically, crop science is “Agronomy” which includes the fields of Crop Science, Soil Science, and Meteorological Sciences. In today’s world this program includes a lot of biotechnology and bioengineering. Think plant science, with emphasis on solving issues of growing enough food for the world’s population. Soil Science is lots of chemistry, believe it or not. And now that we are thinking biofuels, agronomists are doing lots of research on crops that might be turned into ethanol.</p>
<p>Pest Management is in this case related to the crop production: Weed Science (so you know what herbicides to use to not kill your crop but get rid of the pesky weeds), Plant Pathology (preventing plant diseases, molds, fungal infections), and Entomology (Bugs/Insectides). Actually, a highly technical scientific field, but I LOVE it!! :)</p>
<p>dude, ok this is random but my sister’s middle school science teacher is horrible. she teaches them wrong things all the time and makes up answers to questions she doesn’t know the answers to. I tell my sister to correct her by pointing out stuff online, and she says that everything online is wrong even if every single source says the same thing. granted, the internet could be wrong, so i pointed to her mistakes in a few textbooks (including campbell biology–GOD) and she still says that she’s right. gosh no wonder America is so stupid.</p>
<p>Living in NJ (Crossraods of the Revolution) lends itself to a really interesting state history curriculum. It segues nicely into American history, and H & I (lifelong Jersey residents) learned a great deal as our kids completed the curriculum. Great class trips, too.</p>
<p>I think state history serves a useful purpose: It takes a fairly managable subject & teaches kids how to study that subject. It employs original documents, up close & personal observation. (Here’s a Lene Lanape village. Right at this very spot is where Washington crossed the Delaware. You are now standing in Edison’s actual lab, and there’s his equipment.) And then kids are asked to absorb it all & digest it & make sense of it. If it’s done correctly, of course.</p>
<p>Our town even teaches town history to the 2nd graders. I think it makes them feel more connected to future history study.</p>
<p>Stickershock, our 3rd graders do local history. My kids had an amazing teacher that year, and even I enjoyed learning right along with the kids!</p>
<p>Anonagron, your degrees sound very cool! I always used to laugh at MI State’s animal husbandry degree. Before I knew what it really was, I had a rather humorous picture in my young head of girls in pretty white dresses marrying bulls!</p>
<p>Narcissa, I feel sorry for your sister. Where the heck are the parents of all these students who are learning a pack of lies?</p>
<p>Narcissa’s comments reminded me of my D’s 6th grade teacher, who wasn’t as bad as his sister’s teacher … but she told the kids that the moon landing was faked. I thought that was a weird thing for a science teacher to believe (and she WAS certified in science).</p>
<p>Woah, I thought Texas was just about the only state with the regional history fetish. But apparently we’re notorious for being self-absorbed, so I would think that…</p>
<p>Random stuff:
I remember my AP World History textbook had an entire section on why Ethnocentrism Is Bad.</p>
<p>And my eighth grade geometry class caught a mistake in our science textbook. Like, the 24th digit of pi was wrong or something. That makes us sound like huge nerds.</p>
<p>My APUSH teacher is convinced we stole the Bessemer steel process from England, even though the textbook said it was “independently invented”. Idk… Maybe it could be controversial. Or maybe she was thinking of the Lowell thing.</p>