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ORIGINAL: samboct

www.thomaslegion.net gives the average age of a civil war soldier at 26 as well.

AFAIK- the kids in Iraq aren't significantly older than the kids in Viet Nam.

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ORIGINAL: Lordandmaster

We know even less about the average age of "the kids" in Iraq because most of the fighting in Iraq is being done by private corporations who reveal as little information about their activities as possible

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ORIGINAL: CuriousLord

but if we were polled on how many pieces of printed litature, such as novels, we've read today.. it'd be zero if we spent all day reading here, right?).

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ORIGINAL: mefisto69

The downfall began in the mid-70's with the advent of Whole language learning. PHONICS was ripped out of the program, and children began to memorize short sentences and were told they could then "read", when they were able to parrot them back. There have been two major modifications in US language arts since then....not much more successful.
Students were taught to 'be creative'..........spelling, punctuation, cohesion were thrown out the window. There hasn't been much improvement since the 70's in those areas either.
There has been NO imrovement in reading comprehension because the children canot learn to read. To compound the problem, current parents and yes.....current classroom teachers went through the same dis-educational system. Parents cannot or will not sit and prepare their children for school. Teachers simply can't 'get it'. Consequently, we have hundreds of reading specialists in every school system....guess what.......they went through the same system too,,,,,,,,,,nearly all of their 'reading strategies' discount the importance of Phonics. AS an aside.........every prospective class room teacher in the US only gets 1 (one) 3 credit course in the pedagogy of Phonics and are told to do the best they can with it.

Now, when the genius' diseducation leaders finally realized American students were tragiclly behind the ball in math and science, what did they do? Turn nearly ALL math problems into word (reading) problems......guess what? All that accomplished was a slew of NEW math methods, new textbooks and new Math-edubabble terminology. This.....for an educational concept that 95% of people DO NOT USE in adulthood.

Oh yes........math helps the student with critical thinking. Well, you should all be out tarring and feathering your dis educational leaders because THEY KNOW without a doubt that the formal study of Music/ Art does a much better job of helping a student grasp oblique concepts. Uh huh..in the past 100 years, there have been nearly 3000 studies performed on the affects of music on the brain. About 80% have been realized in the US. Most of these studies have been performed by Psychologists and Neuroscientists. They still haven't figured out the 'why' , the 'how'........but the test results show 'positive'.
Dis-educators discount all these findings because they cant pidgeon hole the results (yet)..............Neuro-science is still in it's infancy and time will prove their current results.

The bureaucrats also refuse to recognise findings of ETS......the company that produces the SAT. IE: for the past 40 years, students that studied a musical instrument ( or took art classes )( with a specialized teacher) and practiced each day for at least 30 minutes, consistently scored 3 to 9 percent Higher than the math and science whizzes ( combined) on SAT tests.

No human empire has survived beyond 200 years........and we are seriously on the downward slide.

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ORIGINAL: Lordandmaster

People's WRITING abilities have clearly declined too.  I first noticed this when I heard the letters that ordinary soldiers would write home during the Civil War series by Ken Burns.  Most ordinary Americans today simply would not be able to write like that.  But you can even see a decline over the last 20-30 years.  Whip out a highbrow newspaper from the 1960's or 70's and see how journalists used to write.  But who reads highbrow newspapers in 2007?  Who still writes a real letter?  (And no, e-mail doesn't count.)  People are reading less and writing less, so it's not a huge surprise that their literacy is suffering.

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ORIGINAL: pinksugarsub

Americans have declined in recreational reading and test scores have also declined.
 
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/19/arts/19nea.html?ex=1353301200&en=c5ef1aff4461609a&ei=5089&partner=rssyahoo&emc=rss
 
pinksugarsub