A friend tipped me off to this - here's the new reading requirement for the Book of Mormon:

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/si/seminary/changes-to-seminary-credit-requirements?lang=eng#learning-assessments

>The new Seminary Scripture Passages include roughly 60 pages from the book of scripture for the course (30 pages per traditional term/semester). These pages have been carefully selected because of their doctrinal depth and richness.

Here's all the passages for the Book of Mormon:
https://assets.churchofjesuschrist.org/2f/d2/2fd2951fc29c11edbe0deeeeac1eec2933970c92/pd80014868_000_seminaryscripturepassages_web.pdf
* 1 Nephi 1, 8, 11
* 2 Nephi 9:1–29
* Mosiah 2–5
* Alma 5, 7
* Alma 32–34
* 3 Nephi 11, 15–21
* Moroni 10

so that's what they're reducing the "Most Correct Book" to? That's the emphasis they're now placing on the "book that will get a man nearer to God than any other book"? Just a weekend worth of reading? This is going to bring their youth closer to Christ? Maybe the church DOES believe in miracles, lol.

wow. Hey, kids are busy these days, “ain’t no body got time for dat.”

Even back in the mid nineties I was the only kid in seminary to read all the scriptures. I also won the stake scripture chase without the tricks. A lot of kids showed up with crinkled pages and baby powder in pages to help the find what they had not learned. So weird.

On a more serious note, my wife and I were talking about this new curriculum as well as the “life skills” and emphasis on missions and temple prep. Kids these days are often ill-prepared for life’s challenges. Video games, a comfortable life provided by parents, reliance on infrastructure AND religions/churches, among other things, have led to a society that will not fare well during the more difficult days that seem to be emerging in front of us.

They don't seem to be reading 2 Nephi 28. I wonder why?

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/2-ne/28?lang=eng

It can be a challenge to get kids to read. I used to teach middle school ELA. I couldn't trust my students to get their novels home and back again each day, much less read them. So I devised a solution. Either I, or a rotating selection of students, would read a chapter aloud to the class each day as the students followed along. During lunch, I had madly highlighted the essentials of each chapter, cutting it down by about half. So we would only read about half the chapter, and then do the follow-up activity.

One of the novels in our curriculum was highly engaging and popular with that age group (The Lightning Thief.) It didn't matter. Most of the kids still would not have read it given the choice. Something as dull and dry as the BoM doesn't stand a chance unless it is read aloud to them in small chunks. Even then, the kids might be zoning out.

My son has read maybe two books of fiction in his life. Not counting the golden books type books.

He just finds no pleasure in recreational reading.

He does read technical manuals and some non fiction, but is turning more and more to videos that show how to do something rather than just reading.

There is such a wealth of multi media out there that words on paper have less and less appeal to younger kids in my experience.

Biggest complaint my grandkids have is that the teacher "talks too much" and "repeats too much” and they'd rather have demonstrations and videos showing them what to do.

I wonder if our modern technology has reduced the ability to "see things in our head" versus just giving us the picture without needing to visualize it on our own.

There are a lot of very successful YA authors and book series. If kids are willing to plow their way through Hunger Games or Wheel of Time then they are capable of reading the Book of Mormon.

No. The BoM is not remotely as interesting. Not all fiction is equally readable.

Even though the BoM is fantasy pseudo historical fiction, it's poorly written. It's more boring than a text book. On a teen's reading list, the BoM is the broccoli on a plate of cookies.

During my many years of mormondumb, I read all of the standard works several times (well, TBH, I only read the Old Testament all the way through once). Much of the time, it felt like a chore, so I approached it like I would an unpleasant task in the house or the yard-I just plowed through it. I mean, does anyone actually enjoy reading 2 Nephi?

When you read out of a perceived obligation, rather than real interest, your mind tends to wander. I really believe that this is why so few Mormons get appalled by section 132-they’re so close to actually finishing the D&C that they’ve stopped paying attention.

"wife and I were talking about this new curriculum as well as the “life skills”"

Lying is a life skill.

Summer, you more than most must realize how academic standards are slipping nation-wide. Maybe there's a scientific term for pandemic mediocrity. 91% of Harvard students graduate cum laude or higher. Participation trophies all around.

This could explain the recent upsurge of peer-reviewed plagiarism, article "corrections" and outright retractions.

Not like the old days. For my B.A. (Bachelor of Alcoholism), I earned my D's and C-'s the old fashioned way, by sleeping through any class scheduled before 10:00AM and turning in my papers a week late.

Returning this to the thread, LaMonita: do you have the Bible assignments? I suspect they are more Christ-centric.

That's what happens when funding for education is attacked and teachers are paid peanuts and given only lip service at best. Add in that no restraints have been put in place to combat all the forces that disparage education in general. Money is being spent to dumb down the populace.

It's unfortunate that the internet, which can educate people, also manages to combat education (shorter attention spans, no checks or critical thinking for claims of facts, etc.).

There's plenty of blame to go around. That's all I'd better say.

How many American students value the schooling they didn't pay a dime for?

How many American students judge their peers solely on their GPAs?

How many American 16-year-old males chose studying over "having a good time"?

Which is the more important statistic, 4.0 or 36D?



I'm not judging; I'm just explaining the trajectory of my life...

It's strange that you're boasting about being a 36D.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/12/2024 04:45PM by Lot's Wife.

Regarding the 36D, I was using trajectory as a verb...

Education has been attacked on multiple fronts. Funding has been misallocated to dubious sociological notions which are presented as proven fact. Critical thinking and freedom of choices are attacked. Students are told that they barely have free will, and anything they believe or choose is the result of belonging to the [placeholder] community. Children leave school barely able to read or write, but with an inbuilt pessimism instilled in them by those who should know better. Not only are teachers being underpaid, but those with totalitarian viewpoints are allowed to pass them on to succeeding generations. Being told you will never succeed and should not be allowed to own personal property are toxic views indeed.

>Critical thinking and freedom of choices are attacked.

Banning books is certainly not conducive to developing critical thinking.

Preventing teaching about things like slavery, the holocaust, and the civil rights movement does not promote critical thinking.

Banning discussions about racism, sexism or other forms of bigotry does not engender critical thinking.

>those with totalitarian viewpoints are allowed to pass them on to succeeding generations

Witness Florida and Idaho for example.

> Critical thinking and freedom of choices are
> attacked.

Just the other day you argued that the state should overrule elected school boards and parents and decide what books would be allowed in school libraries. Is that "freedom of choice?"


--------------
> Students are told that they barely have
> free will, and anything they believe or choose is
> the result of belonging to the community.

Who tells students "they barely have free will?" Can you source that claim?


--------------
> . . . those with
> totalitarian viewpoints are allowed to pass them
> on to succeeding generations.

That's ironic given that you want the state to overrule local governments and school districts to ensure they only carry books of which you approve.


-------------
> Being told you will
> never succeed . . .

Can you document that contention?


---------------
>. . . and should not be allowed to own
> personal property . . .

Who has said that to students? Can you document it?

We teach the kids that are sent to us. If parents don't do anything with their kids except park them in front of a TV with a PlayStation, that's who we have to teach. Lots of parents don't read to their kids, or take them to the library, or to any place that is educational. That puts the schools well behind.

Plus, most parents want their kids to walk the stage at graduation, and don't much care how they get there. Hence the low standards for grading.

Exactly. Even worse, a lot of the parents have no interest in learning anything themselves. They don't teach many skills that are needed at home so schools can build on success.

I feel so bad for teachers who have to deal with dumb parents and unmotivated kids. I wish I had some answers.

summer Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> We teach the kids that are sent to us. If parents
> don't do anything with their kids except park them
> in front of a TV with a PlayStation, that's who we
> have to teach. Lots of parents don't read to their
> kids, or take them to the library, or to any place
> that is educational. That puts the schools well
> behind.
>
> Plus, most parents want their kids to walk the
> stage at graduation, and don't much care how they
> get there. Hence the low standards for grading.

You are a formative influence upon them. Children used to be raised in a community or family, now they are farmed out to strangers. I've lost count of the number of grown adults who tell me how well/badly teachers have affected them decades down the line. These can make or break people. We see many broken people nowadays.

Yeah, blame it on the teachers. It couldn't possibly be examples from leaders, church, media or parents.

We fight for decent schools and childcare which gets constant pushback and nowadays both parents have to work. There is plenty of blame to go around.

The 91% honors rate *was* true, about 20 years ago. Looking around the internet, the last year of that was about 2004. So you're using very old and obsolete data to mock.

The university was justifiably embarrassed and changed its honors requirements. Harvard now caps its honors at 50% of the graduating class. Try to keep up.

https://csadvising.seas.harvard.edu/concentration/honors/

"Latin Honors"

"No more than 50% of graduating class can receive summa, magna, or cum"

And according to your source summa is only granted to 5% of the student body while magna is only 20%.

But of course, caffiend won't let the facts get in the way.

It's true, the standards for *designating* cum laude, magna cum laude, and summa cum laude have tightened, so I stand corrected. This Harvard Crimson article (2019) shows an ascending graph of GPAs which, I'll assume, have continued to current classes.

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/4/30/rising-GPA-cutoffs-honors/

However: although fewer Harvard grads may get to put "laude" on their once-prestigious resumes, they will still get to wow HR officers with impressive GPAs: The top 5 cohorts of GPAs for the Class of 23 were 3.6 and above, and constituted 89% of the entire class. Just think: an overwhelming majority get to brag about their B++ or better GPA!

https://features.thecrimson.com/2023/senior-survey/academics/

Silly me, I thought Summa was 3.9-4.0, Magna was 3.7-3.8, and lousy old Laude was 3.5-3.6. But Harvard grades on a curve, it seems. Well, what do I know? I'm the guy who envies The Big Guy with his 1.9 GPA and 10th percentile in grad school. I had to make up credits after I was scheduled to graduate. I was in college so long they had to either graduate me or give me tenure! They mailed me my diploma bookrate in a plain brown wrapper.

> It's true, the standards for *designating* cum
> laude, magna cum laude, and summa cum laude have
> tightened, so I stand corrected. This Harvard
> Crimson article (2019) shows an ascending graph of
> GPAs which, I'll assume, have continued to current
> classes.
>
> https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/4/30/risin
> g-GPA-cutoffs-honors/

Sure, there's been grade inflation. Over a ten-year period the cutoff for summa has risen from a GPA of 3.72 to 3.84, which doesn't seem like very much. And it's the standards for Latin honors that are rising, which means that the university is maintaining constant percentages for those distinctions over time and hence that a cum laude or magna or summa is no easier to get now than in the past.

It's also worth remembering that, as your source states, the GPA is only one of the preconditions for those honors: theses, superior performances in other departments, etc., are also required.


---------------
> However: although fewer Harvard grads may get to
> put "laude" on their once-prestigious resumes . . .

Untrue. As your source states, the percentage of the student body who receives those honors has remained constant over time.

Summa = 5% of the student body
Magna = the next 15%
Cum laude in department = the next 30%
Cum laude for the non-departmental performance = the next 10%


-----------------
> However: although fewer Harvard grads may get to
> put "laude" on their once-prestigious resumes,
> they will still get to wow HR officers with
> impressive GPAs: The top 5 cohorts of GPAs for the
> Class of 23 were 3.6 and above, and constituted
> 89% of the entire class.

Your sources do not say that. What they say (see above figures) is that 60% of students graduate with some form of honors, which has been constant for a very long time. I suspect your error stems from misreading the chart entitled "concentration divisions," which only describes what students majored in and says nothing about honors.


----------------
> . . . they will still get to wow HR officers with
> impressive GPAs: The top 5 cohorts of GPAs for the
> Class of 23 were 3.6 and above, and constituted
> 89% of the entire class. Just think: an
> overwhelming majority get to brag about their B++
> or better GPA!
>
> https://features.thecrimson.com/2023/senior-survey
> /academics/

Really? Employers aren't smart enough to know how the grades at Harvard (or wherever) work?

I guess law firms must blanche in horror when a Yale Law School graduate appears with only pass/fail grades on his transcript--the school does not use letter grades and hasn't for decades. But who knows? Do you think Bret Kavanagh, Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas were the beneficiaries of grade inflation and benighted HR departments who couldn't read a Yale transcript and do not merit their positions on the supreme court?


------------------
> Silly me, I thought Summa was 3.9-4.0, Magna was
> 3.7-3.8, and lousy old Laude was 3.5-3.6.

The GPA per se does not matter. What matters is the percentile of the person within her graduating class and, as you have demonstrated above, those standards have not changed. A magna today is no less prestigious than a magna fifty years ago.


-------------
> But
> Harvard grades on a curve, it seems.

Do you have any evidence to support that assertion? I ask because your sources say nothing of the kind.


-------------------
> I was in college so long they had to
> either graduate me or give me tenure! They mailed
> me my diploma bookrate in a plain brown wrapper.

Lots of people don't make it through in four years: particularly engineers for whom a bachelor's degree often takes five years, and of course dyslexics and others with learning difficulties. Surely what matters is not how long one takes to get an education but what she does with it afterwards.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/12/2024 11:01PM by Lot's Wife.

The fact is, it's easier to graduate from Harvard (and most institutions of "higher" learning) with an impressive GPA. Grade inflation is real, and I think Summer, if pressed hard enough, will concede that students graduate with reduced academic rigor.

Within the workboot conservative group is a growing distrust of the "expert class." You are apparently quite credulous, which I understand. But I do think our techno-academic leadership is in serious decline.

Allow me a few observations from ground level. As you know, I live in a student neighborhood (upper-tier, but not elite, colleges), intensely so these last 20 years, and see a lot.

Students are more serious, especially since 9/11 and the Great Recession of 2008. Much less weekday partying, and weekend partying is significantly less wild--all very good. But they do tell me that the need for remedial work is fairly common for freshmen. I've read that this is also true of the military service academies.

The area schools are getting extremely pricey, and apartment rents have recently skyrocketed. Good for us landlords, but how are they paying for all this?

A huge influx of foreign students, especially Indian. Colleges covet them because they pay full freight. Cars on the street are quality, not clunkers.

Door Dash & other delivery services do A LOT of business here.

I'm seeing a very disturbing increase in Nitrous oxide tanks in the gutters and trash. These are 1->3.5l tanks--very big. Snarfing RediWhip is a thing of the past.

College students neither believe or care about "global warming." They make very little effort to separate out their recyclables. In conversations, I find them very uninformed about politics and the news. Predictably, most are in some sort of STEM program; very few in social sciences or humanities.

On clean-out week, I wander the neighborhood looking for good salvage. You'd be shocked at the good food they discard. I typically bring home boxes of shelf-stable foodstocks and cleaning supplies. Don't get me going on good furniture which hits the dumpsters.

Also, old textbooks and academic stuff is discarded (but rarely in the blue recycle bins the city puts out) in quantity. I can't appraise math and science stuff, but I have read student work in the humanities and social sciences, out of curiosity. I went to a good, but not prestigious, private (high) school in Fairfield County, not far from NY. In my opinion, the stuff I've read which was graded A's and B's would have gotten me C- to B- in high school in the early to mid 1960s. Equally disturbing (to me, anyway) is that the content is decidedly "woke," which I'm sure you would approve.

There you have it. I hereby attest that no part of this post was plagiarized.

Pointing out that your sources do not say what you claim is "picky?" I disagree. Your misinterpretations led to inaccurate conclusions.

Truth matters.


-------------------------------------------------------
> The fact is, it's easier to graduate from Harvard
> (and most institutions of "higher" learning) with
> an impressive GPA.

You have provided no evidence for that assertion. The only way you could prove that is by showing that the percentage of students who failed to graduate has increased as a proportion of the student body.


------------------
> Grade inflation is real, and I
> think Summer, if pressed hard enough, will concede
> that students graduate with reduced academic
> rigor.

Correlation is not causation. Financial devastation after 2008 and then a global pandemic will inevitably lower students' performances and necessitate all sorts of remedial efforts.


-------------
> Within the workboot conservative group is a
> growing distrust of the "expert class." You are
> apparently quite credulous, which I understand.
> But I do think our techno-academic leadership is
> in serious decline.

How is a "picky" insistence on facts "credulity?" Perhaps you have a different word in mind. As for the decline in techno-academic leadership (whatever that neologism means), I would probably agree with you on the trend but not on the causes--or at least not all the causes.


-------------
> Students are more serious, especially since 9/11
> and the Great Recession of 2008. Much less weekday
> partying, and weekend partying is significantly
> less wild--all very good.

All to the good.


--------------
> But they do tell me that
> the need for remedial work is fairly common for
> freshmen. I've read that this is also true of the
> military service academies.

I don't doubt it. What is remarkable, though, is that you can discuss the Great Recession and the deterioration in academics in the same paragraph without intuiting the causal connection.


-------------
> The area schools are getting extremely pricey, and
> apartment rents have recently skyrocketed. Good
> for us landlords, but how are they paying for all
> this?

So you go from complaining about the need for remedial education to insinuating--you have stated as much overtly in the past--that people should not pay for collegiate and post-graduate education?


-------------
> A huge influx of foreign students, especially
> Indian. Colleges covet them because they pay full
> freight. Cars on the street are quality, not
> clunkers.

I'm not sure what the connection is supposed to be. Does that imply worse academic performance by native Americans? Are you suggesting that foreign students--rather than the general polarization in the distribution of wealth and income--are responsible for higher rental expenses?


--------------
> College students neither believe or care about
> "global warming." They make very little effort to
> separate out their recyclables. In conversations,
> I find them very uninformed about politics and the
> news. Predictably, most are in some sort of STEM
> program; very few in social sciences or
> humanities.

Well, I'm sure what you observe in your neighborhood is true of the country in general.


------------
> On clean-out week, I wander the neighborhood
> looking for good salvage. You'd be shocked at the
> good food they discard. I typically bring home
> boxes of shelf-stable foodstocks and cleaning
> supplies. Don't get me going on good furniture
> which hits the dumpsters.

I'm not going to ask.


--------------
> In my opinion, the stuff I've read which
> was graded A's and B's would have gotten me C- to
> B- in high school in the early to mid 1960s.

I suspect that may be true. On the other hand, as your sources above indicate, the best institutions--including pass-fail joints like Yale Law--have somehow managed to retain their reputations as the best schools in the world. Isn't that why your Indian neighbors are studying in your city rather than staying at home or moving to China or Europe?


-------------
> Equally disturbing (to me, anyway) is that the
> content is decidedly "woke," which I'm sure you
> would approve.

I don't like the word "woke," which you and your fellow travelers have never succeeded in defining beyond "something we don't like," but I am confident there are lots of areas in which our concerns overlap. Do I disapprove of the leadership of some prominent universities? Absolutely, particularly when they are incapable of condemning advocacy of genocide.


--------------
> There you have it. I hereby attest that no part of
> this post was plagiarized.

I am appalled that university presidents are excused from violating ethical standards that freshman students are expected to honor. The same is true of a lot of my friends and colleagues who studied at what you would call "woke" universities suffering from grade inflation.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/13/2024 02:49AM by Lot's Wife.

>> I think Summer, if pressed hard enough, will concede that students graduate with reduced academic rigor.

Why would I be pressed? Of course academic rigor in K-12 has been reduced over the years. Parents put pressure on school boards for their children to graduate. The school boards put pressure on the district CEOs, the CEOs put pressure on the principals, and the principals put pressure on the teachers. That's how it works. A principal who does not have a good graduation rate will not last long. So the school systems and the principals do what they need to do to get most students to pass, whether those students deserve to pass or not.

I'll say it again more bluntly: Parents get the school systems that they deserve. If you want academic rigor across the board, you can have that. But your precious child might fail a grade or two. Can you live with that, or will you be the parent making a fuss at the school board? There is only so much that individual teachers can do to try to hold the line.

My understanding is that post-secondary ed suffers from some of the same issues. But at least the professors can tell the parents to go take a hike.

Sooner or later these students get out in the working world, and get a dose of reality. Teachers do worry about that. But again, our hands are largely tied.

My church transcript had F's and I was reported as a CES dropout.

Yet, somehow I was accepted as a church missionary. I expected to be rejected because I didn't know much about the BoM.

I read the BoM for the first time. I was the only missionary within my assigned district at the MTC who admitted to never reading the BoM all the way through.

Boy it (the BoM) was and still is a pile of rubbish.

After reading so may of your shenanigans, you must have been quite a trial for all the church geezers trying to make you conform!

They probably tell stories to this day about that kid, messygoop, who couldn't fight Satan and fell away. LOL.

dagny Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> After reading so may of your shenanigans, you must
> have been quite a trial for all the church geezers
> trying to make you conform!
>
> They probably tell stories to this day about that
> kid, messygoop, who couldn't fight Satan and fell
> away. LOL.

Yeah, I was always there for a good guilt trip. I'm still amazed that some leaders suggested that I was making God unhappy and cry because I made poor choices.