Posted on 08/19/2019 8:26:06 PM PDT by BruceDeitrickPrice
Few people have the opportunity to create bold new fake pedagogy. This is an elite, exclusive world. Fake means something guaranteed not to work. You say you teach reading but the kids are illiterate. You say you teach history but your kids don’t know Ben Franklin from Ben Affleck. You say you teach general knowledge but your students can’t find Washington DC on a map of the US. Who can get away with swindles like these? Well, of course, members of our very own Education Establishment can get away with anything. But not ordinary people.
Fair warning, this fake-pedagogy business requires skills at the genius level. You must have a PhD in dishonesty. You need the steady nerves of a supreme con artist like Bernie Madoff. You’ll require the compassion of a snake.
The closest most people can get to this dream job is something like phony dieting plans. Follow instructions for a month, you tell people, and they will lose 40 pounds. And you don’t know one thing about medicine or nutrition. That’s the spirit. Good effort. But this is still beginner level.
Fake pedagogy at the Hall of Fame level not only doesn’t work, it knocks the brains right out of you. People get dumber. They have cognitive deficits. These poor saps start first grade full of excitement, hope, and mental clarity. But at the end of the year they’re actually going backwards.
Now let’s examine the secret inner mechanisms of three of the most successful frauds in American history. (To repeat, criminal genius is required to devise these things. Amateurs should not attempt such projects at home.)
NO MATH GUARANTEED
The main gimmick used in New Math, Reform Math, and Common Core Math is very simple. For elementary school kids, mix in things that a sixth or eighth-grader would have problems with. Now you’ve got total paralysis of the brain. You’ve got tears and vomit. Why would you mix different levels of material if you wanted them to learn math? But you don’t! So you swirl together some of this and a lot of that. Anyone for Base 8? Teach it all quickly. Spiral around from one fragment to another. No mastery allowed. Kids can’t guess what you’re doing. All they know for sure if they hate math. Mission accomplished! You’re a genius. Parents might sense what you’re doing but you laugh at them so they feel pathetic. Twenty years later, everybody you touch will still be suffering from your genius.
NO READING GUARANTEED
For thousands of years, people learned all phonetic languages the same way. You memorize the letters (i.e., the alphabet), and then the sounds of letters, and then the blends of those sounds. Children typically learn to read the first year of school.
The geniuses in our Education Establishment came up with a crazy new proposal. Don’t bother with the letters and sounds. Instead memorize the shapes. You see a graphic design like this: gxG. You’re told that this word is pronounced “school.” Nobody can explain why those scratches are pronounced “school.” It’s all arbitrary. No logic, no history, no mnemonic prompts. You see gxG, you say “school.” If you can remember it. Memorizing 500 sight-words is very difficult. Most people can not reach 1000 and this process takes years. Surprise. That’s when you find out, for all practical purposes, you’re illiterate. You’ll never read a book.
NO KNOWLEDGE GUARANTEED
The trick here is so simple, only a genius could think of it. You tell teachers, in every subject, in every grade, they can no longer teach. Zip it! Traditional classroom activities are gone forever. Students do their own research, construct their own knowledge, thus the jargon Constructivism. And then everyone pretends that students learn as much not being instructed as they do being instructed. You can’t have bogus pedagogy without a stupid lie at the center. No teaching equals better teaching. Sure it does.
GOOD NEWS
We are not discussing imaginary futures here. All of these fantastical confections have been operational for decades.
It’s as if you designed a driving school. Not only do your students not learn to drive, they have accidents and kill pedestrians. That’s genius.
If you have the talent required for human potential abatement, consider enjoying this exciting frontier. People will never be so simple that we can’t make them simpler. That’s our faith.
GLobal warming and things like common core have the same origin in mind: dumbing down the plebes so the kids of the elites can shine somewhat above them.
A friend of mine knows a couple billionaires. One of them complained that his daughter had to compete with , basically, peasants, in order to get a degree and what not. HE wanted a special school for her for the rich, but, nevertheless, she never made it as good as the others on entrance exams for high institutions, and so he was pi$$ed about that.
I realized this is why the like of Bill GAtes push common core, though he admits that the big failure of America is of having poured so much money in education for so little results. I am not sure, maybe the corporates want kiosk to teach kids instead of teachers, and not have to pay anyone for the nurturing of the mind - not that education is a right either and they prove it with their common coreless OBamacareducation for the plebes
Same thing with global warming. One of the billionaires complained to him that the peasants blocked traffic and that he could not enjoy driving and had to take a helicopter...
When we say CP or cheese pizza is Instagram code word for child pedophile, we are conspiracists.
But dare you not do the OK sign, that is the WP of white power sign right there...
These people pick and choose what is conspiracy paranoia and what triggers, from the Trump collusion hoax vs global warming and what not. Funny, they believe in Trump collusion not being conspiracy theory, but if you question that , it is conspiracy theory to say they did a witch hunt.
THe kids intuitively know they are screwed and feel inadequate and are at a loss about what to do with their lives now. They were promised a pink garden of do what makes you happy and they stare now at the abyss of demoralization.
THey are prime for the picking to whore themselves in the streets as gays or become suicide bombers for ISIS, the way Islamic madrassas do it... the left in Seattle loves that sht Madrassa they call “at least in Pakistan they have free education”.
Stalinist Sausage Factories (or prisons).
I come down about 2/3 nature in the nature vs nurture debate.
True low-IQ individuals, like geniuses, are born, not made.
But education can help the rest or harm them. And the balance is shifting towards harm.
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My students loved it when I called it “Practice Prison”.
Most of the “elite” kids are taught IB. I assure you they get global warming ramned up there arse just as much as the “plebs”.
Only in Asia are students generaly schooled in a classical way.
Our daughter’s Sunday school teacher is from China. She has the kindergarten and first graders looking up verses in their bibles on their own. I think she assumes that 5 year olds can read the Old Testament. It seems the kids work to find the book, chapter and verse; then they follow along with her. Her expectations are far higher than what the rest of us and the kids are rising to the occasion.
She is hands down my daughter’s favorite teacher.
All kids probably can easily do this by the end of first grade, but she has kids who will be going into kindergarten and first grade. My mom says she taught me to read before kindergarten, my kids (those who are over the age of six) were competent readers about midway through first grade. Everyone learns at a different pace; the important thing is that they learn phonics and that parents read quality literature to them from a young age and continue to read to them often.
Stupid people are much easier to control.
JoMa
Thanks for the many smart, sensible comments, such as this one.
Just a few small paragraphs but they fully illuminate why Progressive education has wrecked the schools.
The right way, the traditional way, is high expectations. Get the kids involved, assume they can do things, show them how, and expect them to keep going. Momentum and confidence are vital.
John Saxon, one of our few real educators, apparently taught school the same way most people naturally coach a football team. You push, you may even push them hard. But they will thank you for it.
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