We seriously need to completely ban both phones and AI use in grade school. Back to pencil and paper, and “show your work”. The kids coming out of high school now can barely read, beyond texting. It’s frightening.
If you give a fuck about your kids, you’ll make sure they can read and write, because the schools don’t give a fuck about your kids.
One thing to promote literacy might be calm down about the sex, drugs and violence in books. I didn’t have a single interesting assigned reading until Red Dragon in highschool.
A Time to Kill, great. Wish I read that instead of to kill a mockingbird.
why is there not an expectation that coursework should be interesting and compelling for students?
As you said, you had the executive function of a teenage boy. The works still get taught because they are interesting and relevant. but it’s hard to see that as a kid, as you’re developing vocabulary and literacy and also lacking life experiences to relate.
Schools try to compromise by giving a list of choices and letting students choose from those on what is most interesting. But curriculums only flex so much.
Public schools are. For high school, I went to a free online charter school. I received a substantially better education than my friends in the magnet public high school.
I get there are other problems with the whole ‘school choice’ debate, but my family was broke and I was still able to get a better education. That’s a plus imo and I’d recommend it to anyone.
If we forced rich people to send their children to public schools, public schools would get a lot better. By allowing them to have a choice, they choose to defund the public school.
If we forced rich people to send their children to public schools, they would all move to public school districts in areas with housing too expensive for poor families to afford. That’s not a hypothetical, that’s just current reality.
The problem is rich people, not what options they do or do not have.
That’s solvable with bussing, unless rich people all want to live out in the middle of nowhere in compounds or something.
The problem is rich people, which is why we should take away their options. They currently have the option to make rich-only school districts and we could take that away from them too. Point is, we have to force them to use the same school as everyone else.
I went to one of the worst schools in my state. The education was fine, schools are judged by their student body, not the teachers.
Graduated undergrad with a 4.0 in my engineering field, then got a doctorate from one of the most prestigious programs in the world. Now I’m a depressed techie waiting to FIRE, but I wouldn’t blame my public high school for that.
They weren’t left behind; they were trampled by the machine pushing them forward.
And, in retrospect, the reality of “No Child Left Behind” fits the MO of US governance: they are catering to the optics of “a child being held back in grade” and not to the actual issues that are preventing the child from learning.
…just put signal jammers in each class in easy to reach spot for a teacher, sheesh. AI requires net, FB and Insta too. Nowadays kids don’t do offline so that should solve the problem.
You can go read on r/teachers (https://redlib.catsarch.com/r/Teachers) just how bad this shit is getting--both phone use, and AI use for assignments.
We seriously need to completely ban both phones and AI use in grade school. Back to pencil and paper, and “show your work”. The kids coming out of high school now can barely read, beyond texting. It’s frightening.
If you give a fuck about your kids, you’ll make sure they can read and write, because the schools don’t give a fuck about your kids.
Teachers give a fuck. Unfortunately we refuse to adequately fund schools and don’t give teachers the latitude to teach.
They sneaking in those dummy phones too?
One thing to promote literacy might be calm down about the sex, drugs and violence in books. I didn’t have a single interesting assigned reading until Red Dragon in highschool.
A Time to Kill, great. Wish I read that instead of to kill a mockingbird.
Bad take, Mockingbird is great. Compelling and depressingly relevant to this day.
It’s a good book, yes, but I was not interested in it and I had the executive function of a teenage boy.
If we catered education to only the things that appeal to the most distracted teenage boys it would just be tits and explosions.
Actually I’d like to argue the reflective point: why is there not an expectation that coursework should be interesting and compelling for students?
As you said, you had the executive function of a teenage boy. The works still get taught because they are interesting and relevant. but it’s hard to see that as a kid, as you’re developing vocabulary and literacy and also lacking life experiences to relate.
Schools try to compromise by giving a list of choices and letting students choose from those on what is most interesting. But curriculums only flex so much.
Yeah so there’s this projection of, this is good and valuable to you, regardless what your circumstances and abilities are.
If it gets them writing essays and participating who cares?
Because analyzing themes and connecting it to history and sociology are important media literacy skills that high schoolers should be learning.
A Time to Kill won’t fulfill that?
I think maybe “retributive vigilantism is good actually” isn’t a school-appropriate message.
The parents, apparently.
Schools are warehouses to hold children while parents are at work.
Public schools are. For high school, I went to a free online charter school. I received a substantially better education than my friends in the magnet public high school.
I get there are other problems with the whole ‘school choice’ debate, but my family was broke and I was still able to get a better education. That’s a plus imo and I’d recommend it to anyone.
If we forced rich people to send their children to public schools, public schools would get a lot better. By allowing them to have a choice, they choose to defund the public school.
If we forced rich people to send their children to public schools, they would all move to public school districts in areas with housing too expensive for poor families to afford. That’s not a hypothetical, that’s just current reality.
The problem is rich people, not what options they do or do not have.
That’s solvable with bussing, unless rich people all want to live out in the middle of nowhere in compounds or something.
The problem is rich people, which is why we should take away their options. They currently have the option to make rich-only school districts and we could take that away from them too. Point is, we have to force them to use the same school as everyone else.
Agree.
It’s an illusion either way. Public schools are funded by property taxes. property taxes are based on the home’s worth. So you see how this snowballs.
Property taxes keep getting cut and capped by people who don’t use public schools, because they don’t see the personal benefit to it.
This would have an effect.
Although pooling property taxes across entire states makes more sense than the weird school district thing we have going on.
I went to one of the worst schools in my state. The education was fine, schools are judged by their student body, not the teachers.
Graduated undergrad with a 4.0 in my engineering field, then got a doctorate from one of the most prestigious programs in the world. Now I’m a depressed techie waiting to FIRE, but I wouldn’t blame my public high school for that.
“FIRE”?
Financial Independence Retire Early
Ah, “paradise.” Good luck with that, genuinely.
“No child left behind” turned into “more children left behind.”
They weren’t left behind; they were trampled by the machine pushing them forward.
And, in retrospect, the reality of “No Child Left Behind” fits the MO of US governance: they are catering to the optics of “a child being held back in grade” and not to the actual issues that are preventing the child from learning.
Totally freeking agree. My family are all teachers and wow. The protocol for cellphones is you put them away at your cubby.
But now they’re bringing their real phones AND a dummy one to put in the pouches instead.
nd yes. AI destroying critical thinking skills. This generation is fucked. iPad parents as well.
Shortening attention spans with those “shorts” on YouTube and other places.
…just put signal jammers in each class in easy to reach spot for a teacher, sheesh. AI requires net, FB and Insta too. Nowadays kids don’t do offline so that should solve the problem.
News flash: it’s not just the schools, unfortunately.