Saturday, December 23, 2006

"Gracious as it may be, the stars above wil not succeed"

Hello Mrs. Zim,

I recently read an article about "How to build a student for the 21st century," and it was an interesting read. The article was explaining how the classrooms in America haven't changed over the last hundred years.

The main idea of the article was to show you how society hasn't changed much when it comes to classrooms. Chilren arent being prepared for the outside world and they have minimal social skills.

My opinion on this issue is that we, the children, are not being given the proper experiance to interact with the world. French and spanish, if anything, are the only languages being given in middles schools and high schools. I think that the languages should be given at a younger age, starting in elementary schools, so that the kids can learn more. Besides french and spanish, they should also teach german, italian, chinese, and japanese.

Not only should they learn these languages, they should be given the oportunity to have penpals. They can then corresepond with children in other countries. Jobs these days require people to know more than one language. While learning these new languages, I think they should also give chilren the opportunity to be in more class projects, which make them rey on others in a group o get the project done. This will help them also in the real world by giving them the experiance that most corporations give.

In your opinion, what do you think they should do in schools for the future generations to be successful in whatever they end up doing?

Well thats all for now!
hope to here from you soon.

Love,
Dana

1 comment:

Ellenita said...

Dear Dana, I am so happy that you are reading such interesting articles. Keep on doing that. It is amazing what one can learn.

I thoroughy agree that more langues should be taught to young children. I know that in Chicago there are Kindergartens where they teach Mandarin Chinese to children, and they are really learning to speak Chinese. I actually speak some Chinese myeslf. My husband and I were missionaries in China and Hong Kong for close to 20 years, and three of my four children were born overseas. It is good to know about other cultures and how children live. Maybe someday you can study some Cultural Anthropology. That would be a good subject for you, I think.

I like this idea of exchanging letters. Hope you had a good Christmas and that your New Year will be full of Joy, Love, and Peace. With love, Mrs. Zim/