> Off Topic Discussions

Ancient Discoveries

<< < (4/6) > >>

hillsbororiver:
Hi jerreye,

The article does doesn't say definitively that it is a hoax but that it does not prove education standards have declined (my own experience with interviewing young prospects confirms this though).

They do make a good point about the difference in being taught the specific subjects before looking at this test versus looking at it cold. We all have our areas of expertise and when we are familiar with a subject or a process we can look rather brilliant when in fact we are quite ordinary but very experienced. (I am living proof of this statement).  ;)

When I discuss the building process rattling off specs and codes, load bearing joists, trusses, walls, structure envelope, etc. I can sound like a Physical Engineer (for a while) when in fact I have become so familiar with the process and the potential problems if certain criteria is not met that even I have developed a bit of expertise, just a bit.

As with just about anything outside the scriptures I take many man made conclusions and statements with a giant grain of salt, virtually both sides of any issue has me a little skeptical.  ??? I am always trying to look beneath the surface for the true motivation of the proponants of anything and everything.

His Peace to you,

Joe   

hillsbororiver:

--- Quote from: jerreye on February 19, 2008, 02:18:45 AM ---Hey Joe, are you suggesting that the ancient Egyptians may have flown around in ancient helicopters or some other form(s) of aircraft?

I like history too :)

Cheers,
Jeremy

--- End quote ---

Hello again jerreye,

No sir I would not be that presumptuous, but is it possible they could have had gliders or other crafts we are not aware of as yet. I am not even 100% sure they even built the pyramids or the Sphinx. Could these structures have been built by the antediluvian (people before The Flood) or the first generations after The Flood?

I enjoy speculating and meditating on the mysteries of past civilizations, they certainly left behind many strange and wonderful things to examine as well as histories of incredible brutality, which I do not particularly enjoy thinking too deeply about.

Peace,

Joe

jerreye:
Hey Joe, ok, I was just curious :)

I suppose there is a very slight possibility that they had gliders, that would indeed be an amazing discovery!

I did locate a website speaking about those Egyptian carvings that look like they "could" be ancient drawings of helicopters and other aircraft...I believe it gives a good case against the idea.

http://www.catchpenny.org/abydos.html

I know a lot of people think that men are getting "dumber". I personally do not buy into the idea. I believe that what may have been vitally important in ancient times is not as vitally important to US, NOW. Education, I believe has simply shifted to other areas, if you will. I mean, back in the 1800's for example, they wouldn't have access to calculators, which would mean their basic math skills would have to be very sharp in order to do even basic tasks. Today, all we have to do is punch in a few numbers on a computer to get the same results. Does this mean that we are now "dumber"? I wouldn't think so (I might fit into that group, however :) . We have simply shifted our thoughts to areas that are more important to our modern era, such as building super-computers and space-stations. That doesn't sound "dumb" to me :) After all, "knowledge shall be INCREASED...".

Cheers,
Jeremy

hillsbororiver:
Hi jerreye,

You raise valid points to be sure, but (always a but)  :D as I believe there certainly is truth to "knowledge shall be increased" both physically and spiritually I do believe that our individual knowledge may be more specialized and linear. Yes, our "experts" in most if not all fields (there is no way of knowing about people before The Flood) have access to more information than ever before and the speed of technological advances is incredible to contemplate.

I was alive (although not aware) of the first manned spaceflight, Sputnik in 1957. I was very aware of John Glenn's Mercury capsule's orbit as we were able to watch the launch on TV in my second grade class back in 1962, it was a huge event, the whole country seemed riveted by it, even though the flight was barely outside the earth's atmosphere. The space shuttle flights now are so common that they seem to draw a collective yawn from the public.

Growing up we had 2 then 3 channels for most of my childhood, one 4 party phone in the kitchen, no cable or computer or Internet or MP3's to entertain us so we were much more connected to our natural environment in regard to knowing our neighborhoods, the surrounding woods, parks and being creative enough to entertain ourselves. Some of us even had our own backyard vegetable gardens because growing stuff was "fun."

Going to the library was a treat, organizing pick up baseball, basketball, skating on frozen ponds, all this with little adult supervision, we had to work through difficult situations, arguments, setting up rules and parameters as best we could. Sometimes fights ensued, we learned to not only defend ourselves but also to size up potential dangers and becoming savvy enough to avoid them, well most of the time anyway.

The problem is we have become more and more dependent on the technology, what do we do if and when the plug is pulled, when the batteries run out on our calculators? No one had cell phones in the early 90's (I should say very few, I actually had a company issued one with a huge battery and antennae, when taking it from my car into the office it was like lugging a car battery around) but now most people feel lost without this appliance attached somewhere to their body.

You know I do not look forward to the anarchy that would ensue a few days after the loss of electricity, while no one would care about where their cell phone was after a couple days they certainly would be very aware of where their gun might be or where they might be able to procure one.

Wow, I am really going all over the place here, sorry about that!  :P

Right now I am able to access a computer that is at least 50 times faster and more powerful than the one that guided the first moon landing, I can carry it in a briefcase rather than that huge behemoth that was used back then, if I want to find out about the life of some historical figure his story is a few clicks away, no painstaking searches in libraries, actually having to read through books to find the information, a few keywords is all that is needed.

We take a few items out of the freezer pop them in the microwave press a few buttons and voila! supper is ready. Want entertainment click on one of the hundreds of channels available on cable TV or pop in a DVD, no need to be bothered by opening up and reading a book.

I am not disparaging this, I really love gadgets and appreciate all the things they do in making us all a bit more comfortable, perhaps too much so.

Our daughter is very close to her Ph.D. (hopefully this summer) and is an accomplished (National Cable Award Special Ed. Teacher of the Year for 2006) special education teacher, she has been very proficient earned state and national recognition for teaching gifted and special needs kids, she says the interest in reading even with the gifted is very limited for the most part and it reflects in their writing abilities as well, not only spelling and grammar but really getting points across through the written word.

She is also very tech savvy but ask her the last time she read a book herself, ask her a few history or science questions and you will get a sheepish look and a response something like "you know I really need to something about that."

The following are things she has related to me when we discuss education today;

History class? Virtually non existent, except of course for the politically correct swill that is mind numbing and either ignores important historical events or spins them into not much more than fairy tales.

Math, try taking away their calculators.

English? Check reading above.

Self esteem used to be earned, it is now a "right" it seems every dumb thing that is thought or said has to be respected, you have to take into consideration ethnicity, race, background, immigration status, everything but learning and playing by a standard set of rules, the rules change depending on how high up you are in the all important victim status category.

She feels teacher's hands are being tied tighter and tighter behind their backs in regard to actually pushing the class to their full potential, there is that political correctness and the ever present threat of lawsuits to put front and center.

No things were not perfect back in the old days, I am sure though that as a society and as individuals we are more attached to our appliances even to the point of dependence, they think for us, they work for us, they keep us cool in the summer and warm in the winter, I am thankful for that but we are less independant now and critical thinking with raw brain power has suffered as well.

This is even more profound for many minorities who have really been given the short stick in regard to lower expectations by those who feign compassion for them.

From Thomas Sowell's;

 THE EDUCATION OF MINORITY CHILDREN

Will Rogers once said that it was not ignorance that was so bad but, as he put it, "all the things we know that ain't so." Nowhere is that more true than in American education today, where fashions prevail and evidence is seldom asked or given. And nowhere does this do more harm than in the education of minority children.
      The quest for esoteric methods of trying to educate these children proceeds as if such children had never been successfully educated before, when in fact there are concrete examples, both from history and from our own times, of schools that have been sucessful in educating children from low-income families and from minority families.  Yet the educational dogma of the day is that you simply cannot expect children who are not middle-class to do well on standardized tests, for all sorts of sociological and psychological reasons.
      Those who think this way are undeterred by the fact that there are schools where low-income and minority students do in fact score well on standardized tests.  These students are like the bumblebees who supposedly should not be able to fly, according to the theories of aerodynamics, but who fly anyway, in disregard of those theories.
      While there are examples of schools where this happens in our own time-- both public and private, secular and religious-- we can also go back nearly a hundred years and find the same phenomenon.  Back in 1899, in Washington, D. C., there were four academic public high schools-- one black and three white.1  In standardized tests given that year, students in the black high school averaged higher test scores than students in two of the three white high schools.2
      This was not a fluke.  It so happens that I have followed 85 years of the history of this black high school-- from 1870 to 1955 --and found it repeatedly equalling or exceeding national norms on standardized tests.3  In the 1890s, it was called The M Street School and after 1916 it was renamed Dunbar High School but its academic performances on standardized tests remained good on into the mid-1950s.

Read the entire article here; http://www.tsowell.com/speducat.html

For some real eye opening information on education, economics, etc. visit his website @ http://www.tsowell.com/

Peace,

Joe

joyful1:
Joe--
You may recall how strongly I feel about education in the United States....so much so that I was determined to change the system (single handed if need be) back in the mid 80's-- but at one point I realized that change would probably never come-- that the UN had more to say about curriculum in our schools than the teachers that taught in them-- and so realizing that even if change COULD come at all, it would take many years....and then I knew that my own children would be grown by then and it would be too late for them...so I homeschooled them. Still, I feel great compassion for the parents that have their little ones today....not knowing how to swim against the tide and make a difference and either not in a position to homeschool or not sure that it's God's will for their lives....

You see, I see everyone here is passionate about SOMETHING....home, family, education, medicine, law, whatever......everyone is passionate for the RIGHT thing to be done......it's EVERYWHERE.....and we go on with our lives the best that we can, making whatever changes in the status quot that we can....concentrating mostly on our families immediate needs and our Bible studies....but still, being passionate about SOMETHING! My question to you today is this:
do you believe that our sense of RIGHT and WRONG on various aspects of life; education, medicine, law, whatever....will be utilized in the age to come? Do you believe that there will even be a need for these things in the age to come? And if so, can you explain your answer?

I'm starting to sound like a drill Sargent....good grief, charlie brown! Please don't take it that way, Joe...its just that I am so stirred up by these things...and I can see many others here in the same boat! Just trying to make sense of WHY this is so! :)

Joyce

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page