now this is depressing

[tygerwilde]

you ever notice that kids can make anyone feel old and stupid? no matter how smart you actually are.

I\'ve been good at reading most of my life, but Homer\'s Illiad is still troubling me. However, My three year old, Nicky made his first steps to reading Homer today. I had my copy out on the desk and he said \"H...O...M...E...R\"


I don\'t know about all of you, but I didn\'t start reading untill I was almost 5. tell me, besides proud, how would you feel in my shoes???


oh, and to push matters further... he also surfs the internet. his favorite site is Nickjr.com. and he does it by himself.(with help of desktop icons

[Davis]

You are old and stupid. Accept it.

On a more serious note, I know I do that to my parents all the time. It\'s so much fun.

[tygerwilde]

*wimpers about feeling the onset of premature senility.*

[rumblebelly]

ahh but as ye get\'s old ladd ye get\'s much better skill\'s fer life then when ye was young.
i\'ll take wisdom over inteligent\'s any day.
i have met many inteligent people in me life  but alot of them weren\'t very smart.  

[Monketh]

As a fundamental rule of thumb, most western schools are teaching kids younger and younger these days.  Don\'t feel so bad about it.

[Davis]

Once upon a time, children were having philisophical bible discussions and knew Latin at age 4. Standards have gone down, not up.

[tygerwilde]

I don\'t know man, when I was young I was always smart for my age, but I was nowhere near like what I see in todays youths, I mean, at three I didn\'t know nearly as much as my son does, he can describe objects that he\'s never seen, he speaks spanish as well as he does english (dora the explorer works miracles huh?) and he\'s not only counting to twenty, but he can add and subtract when he puts his mind to it.

I personally think it\'s the advantages he has in this decade, in the eighties, we only had one educational channel, hell, only one channel for kids. now, nicky can watch educational cartoons all day if we were to let him, he has dozens of toys that teach the fundamentals, his abc\'s, mathematics. all of the basics can be found in online games that are more interesting than they are in standard format, like interactive puzzles that talk, giving basic reward responses.

[kyp14]

It really depends on alot of variables, just because you say have a slow start to life doesn\'t mean that by say 18 years old your still gonna be slow.

Also kids today do have more opportunity to learn and are more exposed to the world then we ever were alowing them to learn quicker.

The difference between now and fifty years ago, Is that poor people are able to get a good education just like the rich kids are atleast in most western countrys.

[tygerwilde]

hehe, man, it don\'t matter when I learned to say those kinds of words. I was well into marriage before I dared try to say them in front of my mother... I was smart enough to know what my dad would do if I did... course it helped that I had an older brother to observe in that kind of situation.

[cmhitman]

poor kids getting a good education
isn\'t always true...education maybe
Learning the drug trade is education.
so poor education being the same as
 rich kids is far off...
poverty is a bit*ch to get out of...period.
I\'m still not out...I\'m jus lucky that I read alot.
We get education...the quality of witch is severely lacking...I live in a monetarily segregated area where rich schools are built for the rich nieborhoods and out of district transfers...nearly impossible to get. I go to the best school (educational wise) and we still have disparity in minority test scores...I\'m a fu*cking pheonomenon...one of the few kids who actualy passed the high school exit exam, witch is really just a test of middle school skill. Poverty puts people through a different lifestyle than rich people. Poor people can study hard and have some resources to get into college but the lifestyle of a poor person is much more\"raw\". A rich person can live life without the worries of drive bys, the slave (minimum)wage jobs, lack of stability in the household. the scravaging for money month to month. Waiting for measely ebt card recharge (modern equivalent to food stamps).and to top it off, colleges have just got more strict on college entrance requirments due to the failing economy and bushs \"trickle down\" theory on supply side economics...you\'d think the dick would have learned from regonomics... in short dont paint a picture witch is contrary to the facts...I know the fact of life in poverty...I\'ve lived and survived its razor sharp edge, please...speack with wisedom.

[tygerwilde]

man, I lived that lifestyle myself, my dad was disabled by the time I was 8, and we\'ve lived off of welfare and disability checks most of my life. and it\'s not like we were wealthy beforehand either; he was a trucker before his accident. however, I was well educated, as were my brothers. My wife lived in homeless shelters more than half of her life, and the other half she spent moving from place to place in the back of a car, yet she\'s a college student as well. You can complain about any part of america you want to, but don\'t complain about difficulty getting an education here, because it\'s just not true. nowhere else in the world can such low birthclass people attain a passable education. sure it\'s not the best education available in the world, there are countries like japan that have higher standards. but ANYONE can get it if they willingly put forth an effort, and that\'s just not true anywhere else.

[rumblebelly]

i agree with tygerwylde i have been on my own since i was 13 and i lived on the street but i still stayed in school recieved a good education and now i make a good living it took alot of struggling year\'s but in the end it worked for me  

[tygerwilde]

and the best part is, in America...


IT\'S FREE!!!

all you have to do is fill out some extra paperwork and most people can get a college education absolutely free, if you can\'t, that means you can afford it on your own.

[Ghostslayer]

Originally posted by Davis
Once upon a time, children were having philisophical bible discussions and knew Latin at age 4. Standards have gone down, not up.

That\'s not necessarily true, if we look fairly recently, say to my parents generation to my own, the amount that we have learned in school has increased.  (I noticed this particularly when i was in high school, since whenever my dad saw what we were taking in math, he mentioned he learned it in university).

[TheTaintedSoul]

Originally posted by Davis
Once upon a time, children were having philisophical bible discussions and knew Latin at age 4. Standards have gone down, not up.

You think that having philosopical bible discussions and latin are usefull? I rather have children working with computer.
Standards have gone up i think, people used to learn facts like when was the historical battle of ..... While nowadays people learn to understand what the information meand, why was the battle raged, what were the consequences etc.
And at least children in Holland tend to be more smart ass then my generation was at that age (or perhaps it looks that way since i see it now from a different viewpoint)