My daughter sat down to review her papers and stuff brought home from school today. That's when she showed me this.



Notice anything wrong with this picture? My daughter, age 6, did. She said, "Dad, that looks like papa's elk". A 6 yr old can tell the difference but appartenly those who work at Scholastic don't. I was so P.o.'d I shot off an email to them through ther website.

Anyway, felt I had to vent and share this with others. If you would like to send them an email as well, their web address is www.scholastic.com

Brad

It's your tax dollar @ work. What do you expect?

And I have been putting elk tags on those caribou for years.

Some non hunting lib who doesn't know anything. Any anti hunting statements in the rag.

Nothing anti hunting within - the focus was on what groups were called (herd, pack, etc..) and where they traveled.

Fredj - Is scholastic taxpayer funded like NPR? I was doing some digging but haven't found anything yet. While I know the schools are taxpayer funded, I am not sure if the groups which supply the textbooks and learning materials are.

Stubblejumper, are you going to report yourself for tagging the wrong animal?

Nice picture from the "National Caribou Refuge" in Jackson, Wyoming.

When there one year we took a float trip down the Snake river and had a cool guide. He was telling some questions he got asked. Two I never forgot were:
"how many eggs does a beaver lay?"
"When does an elk turn into a moose?"

I laughed a lot about the second one until we were at one of the visitor centers and heard someone telling the person behind the counter that they just saw four nice moose by the Jackson Hole Airport. We had just come from that direction so I was sure there were no moose up there but thought it might be so even though I have never seen any there. I had to settle my curiosity and so went back by there. Sure enough, there stood four elk. I then realized that elk do turn into moose.

I didn't realize they turned into caribou though.
Shows to go me that there is always something new to learn.

Idared,

That's about what I said in my email. I told them it looked like these were Jackson Hole or Gardner, MT elk.

My problem with the whole scenario was that most liberal, democrat, teachers won't even question what they are told. I got into a huge arguement one time with a teacher in IL on one of my son's tests because there were 2 correct answers for a question listed, something like "The cat ____ in the house", where the answers include left, was, went, and something else. "The answer guide" said the correct answer was "went" and therefore my son's response of "was" was deemed incorrect. I just wish they would think for themselves. Hell, what is the purpose of having a brain if not to learn.

Brad

Hi,
I know your pain, I was watching a tv show that claimed there were roughly 100 bongo left in the wild???? So sport hunters kill half the population every two years?!? And this was UK ntational tv (the BBC)

More liberal nitwits that know nothing of what they are talking about. They are the ones who are teaching the kids in school.

Scholastic is a publishing company - fully private - that publishes books for young readers.

Arty - I'm a school principal who takes a lot of pride in the job that I do. I have a lot of very good teachers on my staff who spend countless hours (two that I am thinking of are there every weekday until at least 9 o'clock at night and in on weekends, too) and create minor miracles for children whose parents:
(a) don't give a shit about them,
(b) mistreat them, or
(c) never discipline them.
In spite of the hard work and nonsupportive parents, they love the job that they have and wouldn't trade it for any other career.

Secondly, almost all of them are politically conservative. Your broad generalizations don't hold true in my little corner of the world, and I think you need to do some rethinking.

[ 11-09-2003, 20:42: Message edited by: John G ]

SnakeLover

Yes, that is a picture of the winter feedgrounds at the National Elk Refuge in Jackson, Wyoming. I wish every child in the U.S. could ride the sleds or wagons around them and observe these magnificent animals closeup. It is an awesome sight to see thousands of them in one place. It would also be a good exercise for the person who let that paper get published without making the proper corrections to learn of their ignorance.

That said, I think that what you are seeing is plain ignorance on a publisher's part more than any other agenda. I can't believe that something like this can actually get published without someone catching it, but obviously it can.

It reminds me of something else the river guide said on the float trip I spoke of above. He mentioned how refreshing it was to see several families and their children so well aqquainted with nature and its various species. He told of zoos which had cows, horses, pigs, chickens, and other domestic animals in them because that is the only way some children will actually see one. My son and his cousins did not believe him, but he assured them it was true. He also said they should be thankful that their parents and grand-parents had sought to teach them about nature and how wonderful it was that they had been able to observe so much already in their young years. He also mentioned how disheartening it is to hear a question like "When does an elk turn into a moose" and not have anyone laugh or even snicker. Many didn't even roll their eyes. This conversation has stayed with me for over twenty-five years.

It is obvious your daughter has been exposed to people who want her to know about these things also. Be glad for what she has learned already at a young age and for being able to think for herself. Give her a hug for me and let her know I am proud of her for knowing something that a publisher of student newspapers evidently doesn't. You are blessed and so is she.

[ 11-10-2003, 03:16: Message edited by: Idared ]

Arty,
As a teacher I feel your pain. Sometimes we have no choice but to teach for a test, something I fight as much as I can. Some communities pride themselves on the scores of the tests compared to neighboring schools. This puts pressure on the district and the result is the teachers are ordered to have the kids perform better or else.
It's interesting that when our school scores well on tests, we teachers are told that the scores aren't significant, but when we drop a little we're told we better buckle down.
Many of my fellow teachers are hunters and strive to instill the importance of hunting to our students, something that's become increasingly difficult in the 31 years I've been teaching! We do what we can.
The biggest change I've found in students is their attitude. They expect things to be handed to them. Heaven forbid they actually have to work to get a good grade. It's very frustrating. If we could all work together the school system would work. Too many parents think that they're experts in education just because they went to school!
Enough of my venting. Hunting season is here and I can get out in the wild and unwind and enjoy myself. I hope you can do the same.

Bob257

You know, I've been through different school systems, public, private, high stakes testing, and no testing. It all really makes very little difference. Kids are kids, some will learn, some won't. I've been in both the US public school system, and a European one (as well as private schools).

I'll take the US high school system before all of them. They are ACADEMICALLY worse than the "college prep" versions, but they prepare the kids for the real world much, MUCH better. Ironically, they are also MUCH better at keeping mediocre and low ability kids involved, compared to their European counterparts.

In my opinion, a school needs to teach a kid three things:

* reading and other general language skills such as public speaking, debate, etc.;
* mathematics, including the knowledge of how math works in computing and engineering;
* the realization they don't know squat yet, their teachers don't either, and a curiosity to want to learn what they don't know yet.

That's all a kid needs to succeed in college. One semester in college is worth more than 4 years of high-school anyway. In the words of the immortal Mark Twain: "a young man should not let his schooling interfere with his education". JMO, Dutch.

I think kids education is supposed to be a joint effort between parents and teachers. The system usually breaks down when the parents take no interest in their childs education. That is not the case with our school district. They rejected our thoughts on what they should learn-academics- and told us they must learn more social oriented "life" subjects. How to prepare for life as a "community". Billary's "It takes a village" comes to mind.

[ 11-11-2003, 06:37: Message edited by: arty ]

Then to top it off, after we removed the kids from public school, they asked us to at least have our kids in school for the national head count day. That proved to me the district has less interest in educating our children than promoting the system itself.
I hope that made some kind of sense.

Well, now that the good folks are Scholastic are back in the office, I received an email reply to the one I sent. In it, they advised me they would be referring this to their marketing group located at their NY office to look into. Well that should solve it!! I replied and asked that they provide some sort of timeline within which I should expect to hear from NY and/or when they will run a notice in a future paper appologizing for the mistake. I'll let you all know what if anythign further develops.

Idared, I agree with you 100% and wil continue to hug her each night after prayers.

Arty, my wife and I have discussed the home schooling option and while I am for it, she is not yet. To be honest, the VA schools are a HECK of alot better that what we had in Illinois. Glad the homeschooling is working for you and yours.

Brad

John G:
You sir are have no real dog in this fight. I don't believe this was aimed at you. The school system in Canada is much better (I had the good fortune to go to school for three years in Canada). The crap they feed to our kids in the US by the NEA is a crime. Thank God for Catholic school.

Snakelover,

My wife teaches and like the school administrator, she sometimes gets a bit peeved at people who complain about teachers BUT she complains about some of them, too.

In our part of the state, that is in the county, you'll still find teachers who hunt, farm and are generally intelligent. My wife asks her kids to share their hunting stories AND affirms the correctness of hunting. It took two tries, but I'm glad I kept trying!