To understand what too much sugar and not enough sleep might mean for a student’s ability to learn, I turned to the ehow.com: “According to a study published in the Food Nutrition Bulletin, children suffering from poor prenatal nutrition also showed reduced cognitive and motor skills, starting at about 6 months of age. The gap was noticeable at 12 months and began to widen as the children aged. This group of children eventually included an increased number of dropouts.”
Then the CDC reports: “Teenagers and young adults consume more sugar drinks than other age groups.
1. Non-Hispanic black children and adolescents consume more sugar drinks in relation to their overall diet than their Mexican-American counterparts. The high school dropout rate for blacks in 2010 was 8%. The percentages of black adults lacking basic literacy was 24%.
2. Mexican-American adults consume more than non-Hispanic white adults. The high school dropout rate for Hispanics/Latinos was 15.1%. The percentages of adults lacking basic literacy was 44%.
3. For non-Hispanic Whites the high school dropout rate was 5.1%, and the percentage of adults lacking basic literacy was 7%.
4. Low-income persons consume more sugar drinks in relation to their overall diet than those with higher income.
5. The worse years of sugar consumption were ages 12 to 19.
6. Among boys aged 2–19, 70% consume sugar drinks on any given day
Conclusion: If we compare literacy levels and dropout rates to sugar consumption, we find a link. Yet, who is blamed for illiteracy and the dropout rate?
ANSWER: The public schools, teachers and the teacher unions. The parents are seldom if ever blamed and the sugar industry keeps denying the science.
It is obvious that until most children eat a healthy diet and sleep at last nine hours a night, how can any honest, moral person accuse the schools and teachers of failing at their job?
Until America solves this problem so its children eat and drink healthy foods and fluids (think water), teachers cannot be held accountable for children learning. Of course, diet is not the only factor but it is a crucial factor. Sleep plays a factor. Watching too much TV is another link. In addition, being raised by a parent that does not or cannot read also has a big impact.
Meanwhile, too many parents, the media and politicians keep making schools and teachers the scapegoats by preaching the wrong conclusions.
Feeding children and teens processed sugar is child abuse and should be a crime punishable by life in prison with no parole.
Did you know that eating white bread is similar to drinking a soda, or eating a sugar rich candy bar or consuming a piece of pie or cake? White bread, along with potatoes, corn, carrots, white flour, cane sugar, and white rice, is a STARCH, which effectively converts into (more) sugar upon digestion.
And too much sugar damages the brain while not enough sleep slows brain development. According to the National Sleep Foundation, “Sleep is food for the brain. During sleep, important body functions and brain activity occur. Skipping sleep can be harmful — even deadly … Not getting enough sleep limits your ability to learn, concentrate and solve problems. You may even forget important information like names, numbers, your homework …” (There’s more. I suggest you click on the link to find out.)
It isn’t as if I did not know all this. Like Sherlock Holmes, I deduced what was causing “accelerated cognitive decline” in my students long before The New Junk Food Danger—Dementia? was published September 13, 2012.
In fact, long ago, I was convinced that “Americans are literally eating a ‘diabetes diet’ that’s very toxic to the brain and other vital organs,” says Dr. Joel Zonszein, medical director of the diabetes clinic at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City. “And the one of the most terrible complications—brain damage—is occurring in younger and younger patients.”
I left the classroom as a teacher in August 2005 (after thirty years in education). For about 20 of those years, I asked my students what they ate and learned that most kids do not eat breakfast and often drank a Coke or Pepsi before reaching class in addition to a bag of greasy French fries or a slice of cheese pizza before eating anything healthy if they ate anything healthy at all.
In a class with thirty-four students (on average), maybe two or three ate breakfast, but they were not eating a healthy breakfast. The cereal was usually coated in sugar and drenched in milk and milk that is not organic is high in the wrong kind of fats that studies show turn the brain rancid (literally rots the brain).
The high school where I taught installed soda machines a few years before I left. One early morning I ran into the soda distributor and asked him how many cases he delivered to the school each week. His answer was two-thousand cases—enough so each student could drink three a day, and the campus snack bar sold 64 ounce servings of Coke for about one dollar. After lunch, too many students walked in my classroom with glassy eyes and dull looks.
Feeding children and teens processed sugar is child abuse and should be a crime.
It would be great if teachers did rule over the education system in the US as they do in Finland where the public schools are considered the best in Europe and one of the best in the world. However, sad to say, in the US politics decides the fate of schools and teachers have little or no control. Thank you for this post.
Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire – William Butler Yeats
I have been feeling teary all day today. Yesterday the Principal at my son’s school (who was also his infants teacher for his first three years at school) announced that she will be retiring at the end of the year. I must have looked stricken because she rang me last night and left a message asking if I was ok, and came over to my house this morning to have a chat with me before school started. See? I’m getting teary again.
Not only has she been a fabulous teacher and a dedicated, capable Principal, she has also been a seemingly never ending font of patience, kindness, wisdom and humour for me personally, as well as the staff, members of the P&C and school community. To say she will be sorely missed is an understatement.
There is a lot of good information on the Internet about future, good paying jobs. For example, “The Best Paying Jobs of the Future: Knowing which jobs will be in high demand and pay the most is a good place to start.”
The jobs listed were: Biomedical Engineers, Diagnostic Medical Sonographers, Market Research Analysts and Marketing Specialists, Physical Therapists, Dental Hygienists, Audiologists, Medical Scientists (Except Epidemiologists), Veterinarians, Occupational Therapists, and Optometrists.
Of course, this means the young person must be a lifelong learner and literate and that means about twenty-four percent of adult Americans may be locked out of these jobs, because they were poor students, for whatever reason (usually due to environment, lifestyle and parents–not teachers), and are doomed to face a higher risk of unemployment and/or low pay.
Whose fault was that?
A. teachers that are responsible to teach
B. students are responsible to learn by doing the class
and homework and reading daily seven days a week
C. Parents are responsible to make sure his or her student reads daily at home,
studies and does the homework.
For example, when I was still teaching (1975 – 2005), I assigned a half hour of reading (or longer) a night, because if young people do not read outside of school, the odds of achieving an adequate level of literacy are small. For that daily half hour, my students could read anything they wanted: books, magazines, newspapers, but the students had to keep a log and summarize how much time they read and what it was about. About five percent of my students bothered to do this.
Some never brought the textbook, paper or a pencil and/or pen to class—these students often felt that just showing up and warming a seat was enough to earn a passing grade so he or she could graduate. I don’t know how they thought the teachers were going to get those skills and knowledge in their brains—maybe with a toilet plunger placed over the nose, eyes and mouth?
However, an old friend of mine believes college is a waste of time and feels that if an adult cannot read, it was a teacher’s fault. I do not agree. Instead, I believe it is all about the choices young people make such as avoiding reading and studying while in school as a child and teen. No matter how great a teacher is, he or she cannot force students to learn.
The equation is simple: teachers teach + students learn + parents support both = education and literacy.
This is a bit off topic, but I attended a meeting once where we learned that sixty-percent of college freshman (all high school graduates) did not read and write at the level needed to start college and had to take remedial English/writing classes (this university had five levels of what is known as bone-head English) before being allowed to take real college classes. This may explain why half of students that start college drop out before earning a degree. It gets frustrating when you cannot understand what you are reading and professors keep writing FAIL grades on essays/papers.
Over the last few years, this old friend and I have argued about this topic often via e-mail. For proof that I am right about making choices, I refer you to these two articles from Kiplinger (click on the links for details).
WORST College Majors for Your Career: Anthropology, Fine Arts, Film and Photography, Philosophy and Religious Studies, Graphic Design, Studio Arts, Liberal Arts, Drama and Theater Arts, Sociology, and English (my BA was in journalism but I ended up teaching English and reading for thirty years).
BEST College Majors for Your Career: Medical Assisting Services, Managing Information Systems, Construction Services, Medical Technologies, Electrical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Treatment Therapy Professions, Transportation Sciences and Technology, Nursing, and Pharmacy and Pharmacology.
Why doesn’t anyone ever tell us how many people fail when chasing frivolous dead-end dreams?
In conclusion, if you learned how to be a life-long learner and you are literate because you did the reading and work your teachers assigned K – 12, then you may be in college or a college graduate with a BA in one of those WORST college majors. If so, you may remember that your parents, friends and some teachers/school counselors encouraged you to follow your dreams and do what you wanted to do—this usually means having fun and chasing after a dream. When chasing dreams, a few succeed but many do not.
If your dreams did not materialize, are you still having fun? I want to know.
A Literacy at Work study, published by the Northeast Institute in 2001, found that business losses attributed to basic skill deficiencies run into billions of dollars a year due to low productivity, errors, and accidents attributed to functional illiteracy. Source: Functional Lieracy.Wiki.org
In Conclusion: I taught in California’s public schools (1975 – 2005) and was teaching English and reading when the educational system was changed dramatically from the top down (ignoring the protests of classroom teachers at every step—teachers were not part of the decision making process) starting in Washington D.C. in 1983 with the publication of A Nation at Risk. The next step was the 1989 education summit that involved all fifty state governors and President George H. W. Bush followed more than a decade later with the adoption of national education goals in the year 2000 under his son, President G. W. Bush.
Before these changes, most of the public schools identified students that were falling behind in literacy (mostly because the parents of these students were not part of the education process of learning to read and write) and were then moved into learning tracks and different classes with goals designed to deal with the challenge of parents not reading at home.
In the early 1990s, when the English/Reading department at the high school where I taught was told that tracking was going to be abolished and all students, no matter his or her reading abilities, would be placed in grade level classes working out of grade level textbooks (this meant students reading at second or third grade would be reading out of textbooks written at ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth grade), the English and reading teachers protested and managed to hold off these changes for about three years before the politicians (elected school boards and the adminstrators hired to work for the school board to run the district) forced the end of tracking.
About the same time, a program called The Whole Language Approach to Reading and Writing was implemented and again the teachers protested but were forced to comply or else.
The foundation of this program was reading for fun outside of the schools with parent support (you may already have guessed how this worked out). Student and parents were told that children had to read a minimum of thirty minutes or more a day outside of school hours, seven days a week besides doing the school work and homework assigned by teachers. A decade later, it proved to be a total failure and was cancelled. California, where I taught, had ranked near the top in literacy when this program was launched. A decade later, California was almost dead last compared to all other states.
Parents make the difference – mine did, and I learned to enjoy reading at home.
The average functional illiteracy rate as reported by the UNDP of the six dominate English speaking countries that were once part of the British Empire and have Caucasian majorities with roots mostly to the United Kingdom was 19%.
Adjusted for errors and/or under reporting, the average percentage changes to 30.7%, more than 10% higher than the United States. It doesn’t matter which average we use in this comparison of cultures that are fundametally the same. The Untied States is one percent above the average reported by the UNDP but 10.7% lower than the corrected average.
The US is either ranked fourth in literacy according to the UNDP or first after we adjust for errors and/or under reporting.
Does that sound as if the public education system in America is broken?
In Not Broken, a five-part series, I pointed out a number of comparisons to show that America’s public school are not broken. In Part 5, I provided evidence that culture (Asian/Pacific; White; American Indian/Alaska Native; Hispanic/Latina, and Black—the US may be one country but it has subcultures and each subculture has its own unique characteristics) influences a child’s ability to achieve functional literacy.
After Part 5 appeared, it took a few days before I realized I missed an important comparison: the English speaking nations that were all colonized and ruled by the British Empire establishing links to a common culture.
The majority in each of these countries is White. The influence of that White dominated culture has much to do with the structure of the schools in those countries today and the way teachers are treated.
Note (to establish the dominant ethnic group and/or culture of each country):
In 2009, the census in Australia reported that 92% of its citizens were identified as White.
In 2006, the census in Canada reported that 67.32% of its citizens were identified with links to the UK, France and Ireland
In 2006, the census in Ireland reported that 94.9% of its citizens were White.
In 2009, the census in New Zealand reported that 56.8% of its citizens were identified as European.
In 2001, the census in the United Kingdom reported that 92.1% of its citizens were White.
In 2007, the estimate in the United States was 79.96% of its citizens were White.
For this comparison of literacy, I focused on six of the thirty-six English speaking countries that were once ruled by the British Empire.
The following information comes from a report published for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 1994–2003. According to this report, we may discover the number of people in each of these countries lacking functional literacy skills (% aged 16–65).
Note: In addition, I researched each country to discover any reports that confirmed the reported percentages and in several countries, the percentage of adults that were functionally illiterate may be higher.
1. Australia = 17% (the actual number may be much higher)
However, it may be much worse in Australia than the UNDP report says. Brendan Nelson, Education Minister said, “About 30 percent of Australian children who are leaving the school system in Australia are functionally illiterate.” Source: ABC.net.au
2. Canada = 14.6%(the actual number may be much higher)
According to the two following quotes, the functional illiteracy rate in Canada may be much higher than what the UNDP reported: “About 42% of young adults age 16 to 65 scored below level 3 in prose literacy, which is considered the threshold for coping in society. Source: Vivele Canada
In addition, CBC reported on Canada’s shame: “Nearly 15 percent of Candains can’t understand the writing on simple medicine labels such as on an Aspirin bottle and an additional 27% can’t figure out simple information like the warnings on a hazardous materials sheet.”
3. Ireland = 22.6% (the actual number may be a bit higher)
In addition, Irish Central.com reported, “The dumbing down of Ireland – 23 percent of males are illiterate. A Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study has shown that one in six Irish students has significant reading problems while 23 percent of Irish males have lower than “functional literacy.”
Then Independent.ie reported, “The horrifying figure of 24 per cent adult illiteracy was first published in an OECD survey in 1996, and put us close to the bottom of the international league. (In Europe, only Poland scored worse than we did.)
“But in the months prior to the publishing of the survey results, government ministers were at pains to deny the figures which were already filtering through.”
4. United States = 20% (this percentage appears accurate)
The Caliteracy.org report of the National Assessment of Adult Literacy in the United States says: “After completion, this massive assessment revealed that only thirteen percent of American adults are proficiently literate, most of whom hold a college degree, while the majority merely have intermediate literacy skills. However, the population of adults with basic or below basic skills total forty-three percent according to NAAL research, which is far higher than those with proficient skills.
“In fact, the term “functionally illiterate” is frequently used to describe the estimated twenty percent of adults in the US who cannot perform basic tasks involving printed materials. Functional illiterates may have trouble filling out a job application, using a computer, understanding written instructions, reading a contract, and many other related tasks. Many of these citizens are not able to hold a job, and those who do work regularly have difficulty with occupational tasks and career advancement.”
5. United Kingdom = 21.8% (this percentage appears accurate)
6. New Zealand = 18.4% (the actual percentage may be much higher)
Education Counts.govt.nz reported that levels three and above on the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) indicate “functional literacy” while Levels 1 and 2 indicate “functional illiteracy”. The survey found that 45% of adult New Zealanders were in levels 1 and 2 for prose literacy, 50% for document literacy and 49% for quantities literacy (the average of the three is 48%).
If Josh Harden can read to his young children as he is dying, what is your excuse?
You may want to skip this page if you prefer opinions without facts used as support (this is known as hot air or natural gas). I tend to support my opinions, some say, with too many facts (what I consider to be six cups of coffee).
There are more comparisons we should look at, and the first is comparing literacy in America with its northern and southern neighbors in addition to the top-ten countries with the highest reported high-school graduation rates.
In fact, there is another measurement that may be more meaningful than a country’s reported high school graduation rate. That measurement is functional illiteracy.
The United States and many other countries claim high literacy rates because the definition of literacy says, “The adult literacy rate is the percentage of people age 15 and above who can, with understanding, read and write a short, simple statement on their everyday life.”
However, functional illiteracy means that reading and writing skills are inadequate “to manage daily living and employment tasks that require reading skills beyond a basic level.”
Functional illiteracy is contrasted with illiteracy in the strict sense, meaning the inability to read or write simple sentences in any language.
For example, my older brother, (died age 64 in 1999) graduated from high school in the United States in 1953 and was considered literate due to the definition of literacy, because he could write and read at a second grade level. However, he was functionally illiterate and never read a newspaper, magazine or book in his life. In fact, he could not fill out an employment application.
Now, let’s cast serious doubt on comparing high school graduation rates in America with other countries.
According to the United Nations Human Development Report, the United Kingdom, that reported the highest secondary (high school) graduation rate in the world, has 21.8% of its adult population age 16 – 65 considered functionally illiterate.
Switzerland, in second place for high school graduation rates has a functional illiteracy rate among adults of 15.9%.
Norway, in third place, has a 7.9% functional illiteracy rate among adults.
I could find no information on functional illiteracy in South Korea, fourth place, and Japan, fifth place.
Italy, in sixth place for high school graduation rates, has a functional illiteracy rate of 46% among adults
Seventh place Ireland has a 22.6% functional illiteracy rate.
Eighth place Germany has a functional illiteracy rate is 14.4%
Ninth place Finland’s functional illiteracy rate is 10.4%
Tenth place Denmark’s functional illiteracy rate is 9.6%
America’s functional illiteracy rate was reported as 20% among adults.
However, for a better comparison with a similar culture that has similar values and similar problems, I looked north to Canada and discovered that among adults aged 16 to 65, about 42 per cent scored below Level 3 in prose literacy, which is considered the threshold needed for coping in society. Source: Vivele Canada
In addition, the CBC reported on Canada’s shame, saying that nearly 15 percent of Canadians can’t understand the writing on simple medicine labels such as on an Aspirin bottle and an additional 27% can’t figure out simple information like the warnings on a hazardous materials sheet.
For further proof that comparing high-school graduation rates between countries as a way to judge America’s public education system was and is wrong, in 2009, Canada’s high school graduation rate was reported as 78% but the country has a functionally illiterate adult population ages 16 – 65 of forty-two percent (more than twice that of the United States). Even comparing literacy rates is not a fair comparison between countries, for example, because in Finland most parents teach his or her child/children to read before they start school at age seven showing us that culture has a lot to do with literacy too.
However, in America studies show that 80% of parents never attend a parent-teacher conference.
What about Mexico—just south of the US. According to Mexico’s 2010 census 93.7% of Mexican males aged 15 and older were literate compared to only 91.1% of females, but what about functional illiteracy? Mexico comes close to Canada with 43.2% of its adult population aged 16 – 65 functionally illiterate as my brother was.
Compared to America’s closest neighbors, the public-education system in the US is doing a fantastic job. Is there room for improvement? Of course, but the overall evidence shows that America’s public schools do not deserve to be condemned as broken. Instead, the facts say that most of America’s public school teachers are doing the job they were hired to do while it is politicians that are telling them what to teach.
Another factor to consider is High School graduation rates by race/ethnicity in the United States
For the 2007-08 school year, 91.4% of Asian/Pacific Islanders graduated from high school (156,687); 81% of Whites (1,853,476); 64.2% of American Indian/Alaska Native (31.707); 63.5% of Hispanic (443,238), and 61.5% of Blacks (415,111). Source: U.S. Department of Education
Most schools have all five races/ethnicities represented in the same classrooms (the schools I taught in for thirty years did) with the same teachers. However, when the numbers are averaged, critics of public education blame the teachers.
When averaged, the graduation rate in 2008 was 74.9%, which makes the public schools seem to be earning a C while they are earning an A- for the Asian/Pacific Islanders and a B- for Whites.
Really? How can the same teacher be so successful with Asian/Pacific Islanders and Whites and not with the other ethnic groups?
This is the advise I told our daughter when she was in grade school: “The only excuse to fail and not learn in school is when students do not pay attention, ask questions, read, do homework, class work, etc. There is no excuse. Even if the teacher is incompetent, a motivated student will still learn.” And she did.
In addition, the graduation rates increase when the GED is included with traditional high-school degrees. In 2009, the completion rates of 18-through 24-year-olds was: 88.3% white, 87.1% black, and 76.8% Hispanic. Source: U.S. Department of Education
If an Asian or White student is successful with a teacher, why can’t the Hispanic or Black student have the same success with the same teacher? After all, the teacher is responsible to teach and the student is responsible to learn (or has this been forgotten). If the teacher wasn’t doing his or her job, then the Asians and Whites should have graduation rates similar to Hispanics and Blacks.
In conclusion, when do we see these types of global education comparisons from the media or critics of public education?
Never!
The reason for that NEVER answer is because four US presidents (two democrats and two republicans) along with forty-four US governors and 50 CEOs made a huge mistake starting in the 1980s when they left out vocational training as part of educational reform.
Instead of admitting the mistake, politicians and many Americans continue to use teachers and teacher unions as the scapegoat claiming that public education is broken. If you need proof, today, America has a high unemployment rate at the same time that millions of high-skilled, high-paying blue-collar jobs that do not require a college education but do require skilled vocational training go unfilled.
Recommendation: The US should seriously consider starting vocational programs, similar to Europe, that leads to graduation from its secondary schools—this means two programs that result in high-school graduation: academic and vocational. In my opinion, it is ridiculous to treat every student as if he or she is college material.
Mike Rowe testifies before the US Senate about the need for people that can fill jobs that require skilled trades. He is the host of a TV show called Dirty Jobs about the hard work done by tradesmen and skilled workers.
All we need to do is look at information from the US Census to see the truth.
In the United States by age 24, almost 90% of young adults have a high-school degree or its equivalent, a GED.
However, only 30.44% (72.56 million) of those young adults went on to earn a Bachelor’s degree, and of those that earned a BA degree, 7.94% (18.95 million) earned a Master’s degree and 3% (7.2 million) a Doctorate or professional degree.
In addition, according to the US Census, 76% of the population is age 19 or older. That means 165.7 million (70%) adult Americans did not move from the high school academic program to a college academic program.
Many of these adults may have benefited from a vocational program leading to high-school graduation and a high skilled, high paying blue-collar job, and unemployment in America today would be much lower while the economy would benefit from more Americans working, consuming and paying taxes.
Instead, those that did not go to college were tossed into the world of work, most with only an academic high-school degree, and no guidance or support from the public education system that was designed by Washington D.C.
Crazy Normal - the Classroom Exposé 