What Everyone Needs To Know About Education

RenewAmerica ^ | August 15, 2015 | Bruce Deitrick Price

[Some Fat Guy in L.A.]

I know a lady that has been substituting in various elementary schools this year. Wanna know what goes on in the schools? Get your sub card and go see.

She speaks of subbing in 2nd grade classes where the kids don’t know the most basic facts such as their address or phone number (My kids knew their address and phone number before they went to Pre-K). They can neither add nor subtract, when they should be learning multiplication tables at that age. The can’t read a lick, and the teacher reads everything to them, including their tests. When they do poorly on a test they are allowed to correct their mistakes until everyone has 100. She happened to be there when report cards were given out in this class - surprisingly all of these dullards are pulling A’s and B’s.

How can kids be expected to learn if they are not required to read? These kids are set up for failure later on in school because they are not being taught the fundamentals in the lower grades. And their parents likely think they are doing great because their grades are good.

[Calm_Cool_and_Elected]

Phonics and reading were the reasons I began looking into homeschooling my children. I taught my kids to read and never looked back.

Public schools teach to the test and they still can’t pass them.

[proxy_user]

But, nevertheless, a surprising number of people turn out to be very sharp, and make a very good living by fooling all the dummies.

[shanover]

Textbooks have already been written stating President Trump is insane and illegitimate.

[nicollo]

When I took over as Dept. Chair for high school history department, I reached out to the History chairs at the colleges and universities to which my high school typically sent kids to ask what skills/ knowledge sets incoming students lacked, especially in U.S. History.

Universally, those professors told me that incoming students just didn’t know enough historical facts, including basic things like the dates of the Civil War or names of presidents in different periods.

High school teachers pride themselves on teaching kids to think, but they forget that underlying knowledge is requisite for higher level thought.

[ClearCase_guy]

High school teachers pride themselves on teaching kids to think, but they forget that underlying knowledge is requisite for higher level thought.

Your basic point is spot on. I'll just quibble with the first part -- I think a lot of teachers are not at all interested in teaching students to think; they want to teach students which opinions the students ought to hold.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

... incoming freshmen often do not know, for example, what 7×8 is.

Why should they need to know the dimensions of a sheet of plywood?

[KC_for_Freedom]

Yes, the concept of teaching reasoning skills is given lip service and some students figure this out on their own but the schools do not go out of their way to teach concepts as important as thinking. The students are quickly satisfied if the kids grasp the politics of the left. Extra points if you go to a democrat candidate rally, super extra points if you hold a sign.

[KC_for_Freedom]

Yes, the concept of teaching reasoning skills is given lip service and some students figure this out on their own but the schools do not go out of their way to teach concepts as important as thinking. The students are quickly satisfied if the kids grasp the politics of the left. Extra points if you go to a democrat candidate rally, super extra points if you hold a sign.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

...basic things like the dates of the Civil War

From what I've read, most high school kids cannot tell you the CENTURY of the Civil War.

[nathanbedford]

Here are my views, similar to yours, written in April, 2016:

Five years after I graduated from high school in 1960 the immigration policy in America was radically altered by the Hart-Cellar immigration act of 1965 which opened the floodgates to immigrants which utterly altered the character and culture of the United States. Succeeding "reforms" notably done to us by Teddy Kennedy in 1985 accelerated the process changing not only our culture but our color. Not incidentally, alteration and increases in legal immigration were accompanied by accelerating increases in the count of illegal immigrants. All of these millions and millions of immigrant children were inserted into our education system.

Of equal importance to the nature the educational experience in America was a new demographic element initiated in 1954 by the decision of the Supreme Court in Board of Education vs. Topeka Kansas requiring the integration of American schools, "with all deliberate speed." Over the course of the ensuing decades the educational system took on black children with very mixed results and much resistance from white suburban parents in places like Boston.

If the Supreme Court's decision represented a fulfillment of the promise of the Declaration of Independence and an overdue reaffirmation of the goals of the Civil War, it also brought with it a leftist mentality associated with the civil rights movement which regarded merit as a code word or dog whistle for discrimination. This was true in hiring for employment and, of course, true for education. If the left seeks "equality" in income, housing, employment, union benefits, and regards merit as the enemy of that goal, it will naturally oppose a merit-based system in education.

If discrimination based on merit in any statistical respect parallels discrimination associated with skin color or national origin, the left will oppose it even though no causal connection can be demonstrated. We see the same phenomenon today in the oversight of local police forces by our leftist Attorneys General.

We have seen from K through postgraduate university levels the phenomenon of grade inflation. We have seen our undergraduate colleges resort to remedial tutoring because the high schools have failed to produce literate candidates for college. Our high schools are passing failing children on to the next level in order to secure federal monies. Inflation is not limited, unfortunately, to grading but extends to tuition costs as the interference by the federal and state governments has inevitably detached our universities from a system of supply and demand and turned them into subsidized industries like solar power. Not surprisingly, the process has politicized our educational system even as it has debased it.

John Dewey and The Frankfurt School have succeeded in taking the American educational system hostage to their worldview which requires equality and abhors merit. This process is inherent in the soul of an educator but it has been accelerated by politics and the politics of immigration and integration. The aphorism, culture trumps politics, is true and tells us that the remedy for a failed educational system comes from a culture but it is the job of of education to shape that culture.

Therein lies our dilemma.

[northislander]

Keeping up on the K-12 lobotomy?

[Yaelle]

I’m in a crunchy granola 1st grade class 2-3x a week. This school is big on whole child and not shoving the kids into academics too soon. But guess what? Slow as they are with the stuffing the kid full of info, not a single worksheet in sight, those little cuties are all learning to read and doing VERY WELL. They are happy and proud of their new abilities and they are counting and doing arithmetic as well. I’m not worried about these kids, but indeed they have good teachers and parents who care.

We should be worried about all the kids who came to this world accidentally when their parents briefly met and messed up, who are daycare-housed in schools, and don’t have either teachers or parents who are able to give a damn.

[metmom]

That’s not unusual from what I hear.

I hear the same things from what are supposed to be good schools, IOW, not inner city hell holes, but small town America, family values, small school districts.

[metmom]

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[metmom]

LOL!!!

[metmom]

Let me guess.....

They come from families with parents who care.

Right?

[FrdmLvr]

An American classroom not immersed in common core? It sounds like you’re talking about a homeschool or private/parochial school not taking federal funding.

[FrdmLvr]

An American classroom not immersed in common core? It sounds like you’re talking about a homeschool or private/parochial school not taking federal funding.