Richard Erlacher wrote: [Stuff deleted] > I think the reason our kids don't learn languages well is because the

[more stuff deleted] I recently had the sad task of judging science fair projects from three

high schools. It was pathetic. Since this thread is about language skills I'll ignore for the moment the more or less complete lack of understanding of the scientific method and the extensive use of crayons in constructing the presentations and focus on the stellar language skills that were almost uniformly present across all of the entries. The short form summary is that if I'd written in the fashion of these high school students when I was in second grade I'd have been taken out and

Certainly there were large collections of words, some of them polysyllabic, but in general they were not arranged into anything that was parsable as an english sentence. Written materials depended on spelling correctors to eliminate spelling errors, sometimes with frightening yet amusing consequences ("...our science fairy teacher..."). There were a few entries which were clever, well constructed, well executed and innovative. Talking with the instructors I learned that these were from the bright but bored students who twiddle their thumbs while their neanderthal classmates struggled with basic coursework (in California the instructional system is geared to address the needs of the lowest common denominator; resources are generally not available for exceptional students). The entry judged Best of Show was constructed by one such student in a few hours on the day immediately preceding the judging. It's beyond sad. It's criminal. FWIW, California is now going to start imposing financial penalties upon high schools whose students do not perform at some minimal level. The problem, of course, is that the students are already lacking fundamental skills that they should have received at the elementary level, thus penalizing the high schools is not going to fix the problem. Rather, it will cause even more resources to be diverted to already unsalvageable students while penalizing those who actually have a chance to do something useful with their lives. *Grumble*, Chris -- Chris Kennedy chris(a)mainecoon.com http://www.mainecoon.com PGP fingerprint: 4E99 10B6 7253 B048 6685 6CBC 55E1 20A3 108D AB97