I volunteer as a tutor and for the last 3 years I've been working with the same student. Last summer I finally had enough trust from her family that I was able to pick her up on the weekends for the remedial math that I could tell from our sessions she hadn't picked up the first time around. I spent our first session giving her a basic assessment to see where she needed work - she started having trouble at subtraction of one-digit numbers, she didn't know her times tables above 5, and she didn't understand what a fraction was. Reader, she was 15. She's not stupid, she works hard, and she takes her education seriously, which was why she was willing to work with me every weekend in summertime.
In theory she is finishing up her geometry course this year. In practice I have *mostly* gotten her up to the standard her public "school" claims she is at, but if it weren't for me she would still think 1/4 > 1/3. I get the argument that parents are the ones responsible for their children at 7th and last, but surely after being forced to pay 20k/year/child for mandatory public education and being forced to send those kids there 40 hours/week for 40 weeks a year for 13 years, parents deserve to see *some* return on their investment. We shouldn't need private tutors to teach 15 year olds how to use numberlines.
I agree however parents must be involved. This child was clearly far behind for 6+ years. A parent must intercept these failures and find a way to correct it. Because the system won't.
Where else would it be acceptable to pay for a service (20k/yr/child), put in 40 hours a week, and still expect the parents to do this extra work evenings and weekends just to ensure that your child isn’t ridiculously behind? Yes, parents should notice when they are not getting what they paid for, but expecting parents to go above and beyond the mandatory cost and time of public school just to be at grade level (which is a dismally low standard) demonstrates a crippled system. This is unacceptable. Homeschooling is the answer.
Isn’t this half the problem though? Thinking of teaching as being a “service”? Of course in some sense it is (paying money in taxes so that a child can attend school), but it is completely different from other service industries to which you compare it. Teaching, done right, is far more than receiving a service for your spend; it is (or should be) a transformative, lifelong process of continual, critical involvement with reality and with our experience of this reality. That said, clearly public schools are not providing that either - and saying “it is the way it is” sounds remarkably defeatist; surely there is a middle way between schooling and home schooling?
True, but where do you go when you bring up to the teacher AND the principal that your child is not where he should be and they both deny it and/or downplay it???
I promise I'll be helping more with this very soon. I know lots of parents want to, at the very least, supplement their children's public school experience. Hopefully, what I put out will help them take that step.
When my grandchildren were in the first three years, I was told that teachers did not correct the spelling and grammar in their written work. The reason was that they wanted the students to get used to writing, and seeing so many corrections on their work would make them give up and not try to produce a better written product. I made all the corrections at home and we discussed them. The children did not cry or give up. They became better writers. So much education needs to be supplemented at home.
Horrifying, isn't it? Both of my boys' printing is atrocious. They were never taught how to properly form their letters. We are working on this now, but it takes a ton of time to undo bad habits and form new ones.
I hope grandmas everywhere will come together as a cadre of support. You have a place in this war -- take it.
That was why I left. I saw all the opportunity cost of high school front and center with kids who should’ve been brilliant, but had been turned intro drones.
Public teacher here. Agree in principle but to be fair a huge number of the students and parents (and administrators, forsooth) actively (if quasi-unknowingly) DON’T want the education anyway. Oh they THINK they do. They CLAIM they do but ultimately they do not actually want it at the cost required (thinking, learning, working, etc.).
And that part sucks too. And the fact is that our current public education system is not good at all at getting them to understand that learning is actually valuable.
They WANT a piece of paper. They don’t seem at all interested in getting the education itself. They don’t see it as ultimately valuable.
I wish we would spend more time on what I think of as meta education - we should have a deep and continuous discussion about why we are here doing what we are doing.
The only place I disagree with you is that I feel like it may always have been thus. But I go back and forth. Regardless it is definitely disheartening.
I vacillate too between "we can fix this with solid policy" and "there's no point because there are too many variables in this inherently human-based endeavor."
But a HUGE part of why parents don't value it anymore is that we have fully divorced grades from the reality of a student's knowledge and skill. Since we did that, everyone thinks they're entitled to the paper, not that the paper must be EARNED.
If we don't stop lying to the kids, parents, and ourselves (that this is all okay because trauma or systemic racism or poverty, etc.) then we will continue slouching toward Gomorrah.
Amen, amen, 1000 times amen! 15 year ago teacher me would flip out that I am about to say this but I wish we could get rid of grades entirely - only because they are now more of a distraction than they are worth.
I have the same vacillation. Though I am QUITE certain that were I to open a school and run it by the simple practice of hiring good teachers and letting them teach while backing them to the hilt then everything would go well.
And in case any might wonder what a “good” teacher is then I would say it is any teacher I watch teach and deem to be good. Because I am one and I know what it looks like.
I also couldn’t agree more about holding everyone to the same account but I do think it must be admitted that the way current schools are funded is of extreme and fundamental disadvantage to kids in poor areas and that disproportionately impacts people of color because they are disproportionately poor. But if we just start treating this as a poverty problem ONLY while making sure that EVERY child in poverty has the same opportunity as every child NOT in poverty then it will all eventually work itself out. The idea on the left today that somehow skin color qua skin color holds people back from doing well in school smacks of a type of paternalistic racism that I cannot stand.
I truly don’t know if the current system salvageable but if it is then it will need an overhaul on the level of a full frame off restoration, engine, transmission and suspension total rebuild, extensive bodywork and paint as well as a new interior. At a certain point one must ask if it wouldn’t be cheaper to buy a new one.
Regardless, thank you for your work and I’ll be following you once I finish this note.
Well said. I teach at a large private school in England and it is no different. Education has become primarily transactional, more and more is expected of the teachers to shore up cultural, familial and political failings, and it is indeed disheartening. There must be another way that is not full time home school (although clearly learning cannot and should not be confined to institutional contexts).
As a 30 year educator, I will tell you that my biggest pet peeve has always been the way that the schools blame the parents while the parents blame the schools. As long as the fingers are being pointed, the children are lost.
The system is broken. Children are not inspired to learn because school is not inspiring. To reach more students, we must focus on their actual learning style and needs.
I have a teenaged boy and every time I am on carpool duty I ask him and his friends to think about what it would take for school to become something they actually WANTED to do.
You sound like a great (might I say "old-fashioned") teacher, a rara avis these days. Your students have been lucky to have you!
I was in college in the 1970s, and even way back then, I noticed that those students who were coordinated but perhaps not the most highly intelligent, often were physical ed majors. Those of quite modest intelligence, probably the lowest intelligence in any major, and who lacked coordination were education majors. We need to attract intelligent, dynamic people to the teaching profession, people with good knowledge of subject matter. I believe that abolishing the federal Dept. Of Education is absolutely necessary. Leave education to the States and communities, where it belongs. Give education dollars directly to parents, not to school districts.
An anecdote for you: My mother graduated from a two-year teaching college in North Dakota in the 1950s and taught school in a one-room schoolhouse without indoor plumbing or central heat. She worked for about 18 months, then married and left the area. Later in life, she returned to the teaching profession as classroom aide. She was assigned to work 1:1 with a 6th-grade boy who could not read at all and exhibited disruptive, sometimes violent behavior in the classroom. She succeeded in teaching him to read, his classroom behavior improved markedly, and the boy's parents were very happy. When the school discovered that she taught him to read using the old-fashioned phonics method, rather than the district-approved method, they fired her.
I was immediately infuriated by your anecdote, but then I sighed. It totally makes sense.
I don't think anything fixes this. I worry about parents getting money from the state because that gives the state the rationale to insert itself into the family home. Niggly detail, but what might work is a tax credit but only if it's significantly less money than the local public schools receive per child or we open this up to massive graft.
Really, we need to just take responsibility, which means paying our way as we find it.
Because the standards we used to hold tightly to mean nothing now. By fully divorcing grades from demonstrated knowledge and skill, we're lying about everything important -- because your knowledge and skill MAKES YOU WHO YOU ARE.
Of course they're nihilistic; they are now what they consume, not what they produce.
I thank you might ask if they felt like they were being rage baited in a terrible way, cause they are. And if they feel bad cause they do. The ones that are ashamed have a conscience they are hurt the most. It’s an attack on them. They are the target market, know that.
FWIW, I very carefully talk to my male students about the deep harm porn can do to them in the long-run. There's only so much I can do though, since I can't police their device use out of school.
If I attack this at all, it's to urge parents to take away unlimited, unsupervised screen time. I actually have an article coming soon on that topic. <3
I think screens are a huge problem and because of unsupervised screentime, porn is definitely warping a lot of kids' minds.
That one is up to parents. But schools need to play their part in telling children the truth about their performance, who they are now and who they COULD be, and then help them get there.
(Also, I'm very sorry about the Canadian schools. My husband went through them and, once upon a time, they were very good.)
I was correcting my children’s homeschool schoolwork and making them working them through their problems until they got the correct answer when my mother-in-law chuckled and casually noted that when she was in school they never had to do corrections on their homework. Having been homeschooled myself, I had had no clue that was the modus operandi (for many decades it seems) in public school. I just looked at her in disbelief. Despite having only a formal high school education, I feel beyond qualified to give my children a quality education- though I doubt they would be able to pass the examination Laura Ingles Wilder had to pass in order to get her teachers certificate after graduating 8th grade.
Fantastic piece. Especially because any teacher anywhere in the world could have written this. A profound insight into the reality of public school life, everywhere.
I wish it wasn't the truth in the United States, but it is. Our children are suffering. They are prevented from seeing their innate greatness. I'll never do enough penance for my participation in this system. Even as an outlier, my presence lent the system legitimacy it shouldn't have.
Everywhere? Maybe you mean in the English-speaking world? My spouse is from Poland and they have much better educational outcomes than the USA still. They still have traditional education and if you don’t learn, you don’t advance.
Well, our system is more or less a communist enterprise. They pretend to learn and we pretend to teach them.
I have no doubt your husband got a better education than most people in America. Even under the old communist system that would have been true if he was gifted enough.
I know Poland too. Of course you cannot say things in general, it is a way of saying. Yes, there are great places around the world. It's today's educational themes and topics mixed with AI all over the place that is too fast for all of us. It is out of control.
I’m glad to see you posting this. Schools and parents need to hear this. As as 17-year teacher mostly at private schools in affluent communities, I see the problems you mention. I teach English, and kids are not reading. I’ll be reading more of your stuff. Thanks.
I think the headline stuff is so scary -- the comprehensive sex ed, data-mining through SEL, oppressed/oppressor binary -- people forget that the worst crime of all is that their childhood is absolutely wasted.
When "no one gets a zero" policies became de rigeur, reading became optional. We need to go hard on essay exams -- but no teacher wants to do that because the workload on that is insane if you're not a content expert, which few teachers are now. We're so far down the rabbithole I don't think public school can be saved.
It's up to parents to investigate the quality of the education being provided. If they won't do that, they get what they get.
Right now my admin and colleagues are going crazy with AI. I think I am the sole teacher resisting it. I won’t let my sixth graders use it. It won’t make them writers
Oh no. I busted a kid for stealing an essay from Chat GPT because he didn't know how to ask it questions that would get him and appropriate answer. Kids lack the foundational knowledge to ask good questions. For that reason, Chat GPT is a really, really, dangerous shortcut.
This is why I homeschool, it is hard work juggling childcare, household duties, teaching duties. Even more so when pregnant or nursing infants, but it is well worth the effort to persevere.
It's more than that. It disempowers them as citizens. They can't engage meaningfully in any level of governance; their opinions will be ASSIGNED to them.
Even local politics become a challenge when a reader can't parse new regulations, policies, and laws.
Does anyone else have their kids/grandkids in schools using the I-ready online programs in place of teaching reading and math??? It is very frustrating.
Dad of homeschooled kids * here. Just arriving to the stack/blog. Thank you. I hope you inspire a bunch of families who may still wrestle with the decision to get on with the process of educating their own kids.
My "kids" are now in their 20s. One finishing a PhD in math. One with a MS in public health, working for my state's department of epidemiology. And one who INSISTED on a BA in music from an area university who has returned to "community" college for a certification program as a medical radiology technician. (At some point late in his education, the arithmetic kicked in and he started doing numbers on pay rates...) Anyhow, success story for what inspirational value it may have.
The library of family memories includes both success stories and horror stories. Let me know if you want samples.
I'm just trying to tell them the truth. People like you are the inspiration. Please feel free to send me any stories you think are worth sharing (either that pushed you to leave the toxic K12 environment or where you've seen the enormous benefit of making the sacrifices necessary to homeschool.
I'm so glad you were able to make this happen for your children. It's a gift that I pray more parents will emulate and that the effects will ripple off into the future, the way this nation's founders intended.
Private schools are the same. The AP curriculum has destroyed high school education. Parents believe they are getting an accelerated course for their smarter-than-the-average-bear child. They are not. All they are getting is very specific knowledge about the test, which is in the stupidest format in the world, made fun of by other countries, and is some cases doesn't even require the course to be taken. It does not teach mastery and the information is quickly forgotten by the students. Then there are the colleges. Parents who strive to get their child admitted to the Ivy League know children can't afford to have anything other than an A on their transcript, especially if they are white or Asian. It doesn't matter what the child learns in school or if they learn anything as long as they have the transcript to get them admitted - which requires APs if the high school offers them. The more the better. The entire high school experience and college experience is a sham. When touring recently we asked how the schools (Ivy's) were integrating technology into their curriculum to prepare the students for the world they would be entering. We received blank stares for students and admissions officer. The only thing they could regurgitate was "AI can be used as an aid is some classes." The students had been so programmed to think in terms of cheating they weren't even aware of the technological revolution taking place. It was depressing. When one girl at Columbia referred to the Inferno's circles as levels, my son laughed. This was Columbia University and it was a tour - and it cost 90,000 a year. The entire educations system is broken. DEI has taken over the system, and the teachers don't know what they are talking about. In my son's biology class they are teaching outdated science about things like chlorestorol. I have to deprogram him daily - in a 55K a year school. If you want to blame people here are the culprits - Administrators and the unions. We all know this. Beyond that - the NAIS, they "guide" curriculum choices and started the war on the Western canon, Bill Gates and his Common Core - he against deep learning, read how he actively kept teachers and parents out of the Common Core decision making process, the College Board, they make over 2 billion a year at your expense, and the government, both parties are corrupt, for allowing the Universities to become massive hedge funds, where educating kids is a byproduct, not a primary objective.
Yes to all of this. It's a huge knotted ball of nylon mesh to untangle, but at the end of the day -- and this is hard to hear -- we deserve it all for offloading our responsiblity for offshoring our children. We literally handed them our kids and said, "Teach them all the things." There was no way these mediocre bureaucrats weren't going to take advantage of that in every way they could. As far as I'm concerned, K12 is the Ring of Power. The State will either get everyone to go along with its agenda or dumb the citizenry down so hard it's damn ear impossible to mount an effective resistance.
I agree. I homeschooled by kids and started a small micro school for about twenty kids. But it is difficult to do and it does make it harder to get into college - which is a scam but also one of the only places your child can be with their peers. It is not so much parent's fault - it is the government. They took away the power for individual school districts to teach relevant skills and curriculums in the 1980s. The department of education was designed, not to help students, but to control information. Now school districts are hampered by bad, uneducated teachers, stupid admin and even stupider parent bodies.
I disagree that in public schools administration plays much if any role in the deterioration of education (perhaps different for private). In public schools I place the blame on unions for sure, but also school boards, and the programs where teachers are getting their teaching degrees. Also, the consultants who rake in big $$ on teacher conferences and trainings.
I hope it helps. I have to say, it's so obviously true that I have to say it all, but I take no pleasure in it. If you ever have questions, please don't hesitate to send them my way.
I am here for the discussion!!! I teach in Canada, and while our policy structures lend to differences between teaching in the States and here, we are also not teaching our students anything (as far as I can tell as both an educator and parent to three kids in the public system).
The issues you raise are vital but they are also the same problems that have been surfaced for many decades. There have also been many many efforts across ideologic and cultural lines to address them. I have watched these debates and complaints since the Sixties. It may be time to broaden the scope of the inquiry to examine other elements that affect student “performance” however you define it. This includes parental involvement and , electronic distractions of all sorts, the priority given to sports, funding priorities and the persistent strain of anti-intellectualism that belittles education.
I don’t have the answers but I do believe we are still focusing on the wrong issues and challenges. With AI starting to completely disrupt our economy and society more broadly, its not even clear that we are looking at the right goals for education.
I volunteer as a tutor and for the last 3 years I've been working with the same student. Last summer I finally had enough trust from her family that I was able to pick her up on the weekends for the remedial math that I could tell from our sessions she hadn't picked up the first time around. I spent our first session giving her a basic assessment to see where she needed work - she started having trouble at subtraction of one-digit numbers, she didn't know her times tables above 5, and she didn't understand what a fraction was. Reader, she was 15. She's not stupid, she works hard, and she takes her education seriously, which was why she was willing to work with me every weekend in summertime.
In theory she is finishing up her geometry course this year. In practice I have *mostly* gotten her up to the standard her public "school" claims she is at, but if it weren't for me she would still think 1/4 > 1/3. I get the argument that parents are the ones responsible for their children at 7th and last, but surely after being forced to pay 20k/year/child for mandatory public education and being forced to send those kids there 40 hours/week for 40 weeks a year for 13 years, parents deserve to see *some* return on their investment. We shouldn't need private tutors to teach 15 year olds how to use numberlines.
I agree however parents must be involved. This child was clearly far behind for 6+ years. A parent must intercept these failures and find a way to correct it. Because the system won't.
Where else would it be acceptable to pay for a service (20k/yr/child), put in 40 hours a week, and still expect the parents to do this extra work evenings and weekends just to ensure that your child isn’t ridiculously behind? Yes, parents should notice when they are not getting what they paid for, but expecting parents to go above and beyond the mandatory cost and time of public school just to be at grade level (which is a dismally low standard) demonstrates a crippled system. This is unacceptable. Homeschooling is the answer.
Isn’t this half the problem though? Thinking of teaching as being a “service”? Of course in some sense it is (paying money in taxes so that a child can attend school), but it is completely different from other service industries to which you compare it. Teaching, done right, is far more than receiving a service for your spend; it is (or should be) a transformative, lifelong process of continual, critical involvement with reality and with our experience of this reality. That said, clearly public schools are not providing that either - and saying “it is the way it is” sounds remarkably defeatist; surely there is a middle way between schooling and home schooling?
I didn't say it was acceptable. But it is the way it is.
True, but where do you go when you bring up to the teacher AND the principal that your child is not where he should be and they both deny it and/or downplay it???
You homeschool.
I promise I'll be helping more with this very soon. I know lots of parents want to, at the very least, supplement their children's public school experience. Hopefully, what I put out will help them take that step.
You do it yourself.
When my grandchildren were in the first three years, I was told that teachers did not correct the spelling and grammar in their written work. The reason was that they wanted the students to get used to writing, and seeing so many corrections on their work would make them give up and not try to produce a better written product. I made all the corrections at home and we discussed them. The children did not cry or give up. They became better writers. So much education needs to be supplemented at home.
Horrifying, isn't it? Both of my boys' printing is atrocious. They were never taught how to properly form their letters. We are working on this now, but it takes a ton of time to undo bad habits and form new ones.
I hope grandmas everywhere will come together as a cadre of support. You have a place in this war -- take it.
If much education needs supplementing at home, it makes you wonder why our kids have to sit in a classroom all day, doesn't it???
That was why I left. I saw all the opportunity cost of high school front and center with kids who should’ve been brilliant, but had been turned intro drones.
Public teacher here. Agree in principle but to be fair a huge number of the students and parents (and administrators, forsooth) actively (if quasi-unknowingly) DON’T want the education anyway. Oh they THINK they do. They CLAIM they do but ultimately they do not actually want it at the cost required (thinking, learning, working, etc.).
And that part sucks too. And the fact is that our current public education system is not good at all at getting them to understand that learning is actually valuable.
They WANT a piece of paper. They don’t seem at all interested in getting the education itself. They don’t see it as ultimately valuable.
I wish we would spend more time on what I think of as meta education - we should have a deep and continuous discussion about why we are here doing what we are doing.
The only place I disagree with you is that I feel like it may always have been thus. But I go back and forth. Regardless it is definitely disheartening.
I vacillate too between "we can fix this with solid policy" and "there's no point because there are too many variables in this inherently human-based endeavor."
But a HUGE part of why parents don't value it anymore is that we have fully divorced grades from the reality of a student's knowledge and skill. Since we did that, everyone thinks they're entitled to the paper, not that the paper must be EARNED.
If we don't stop lying to the kids, parents, and ourselves (that this is all okay because trauma or systemic racism or poverty, etc.) then we will continue slouching toward Gomorrah.
Amen, amen, 1000 times amen! 15 year ago teacher me would flip out that I am about to say this but I wish we could get rid of grades entirely - only because they are now more of a distraction than they are worth.
I have the same vacillation. Though I am QUITE certain that were I to open a school and run it by the simple practice of hiring good teachers and letting them teach while backing them to the hilt then everything would go well.
And in case any might wonder what a “good” teacher is then I would say it is any teacher I watch teach and deem to be good. Because I am one and I know what it looks like.
I also couldn’t agree more about holding everyone to the same account but I do think it must be admitted that the way current schools are funded is of extreme and fundamental disadvantage to kids in poor areas and that disproportionately impacts people of color because they are disproportionately poor. But if we just start treating this as a poverty problem ONLY while making sure that EVERY child in poverty has the same opportunity as every child NOT in poverty then it will all eventually work itself out. The idea on the left today that somehow skin color qua skin color holds people back from doing well in school smacks of a type of paternalistic racism that I cannot stand.
I truly don’t know if the current system salvageable but if it is then it will need an overhaul on the level of a full frame off restoration, engine, transmission and suspension total rebuild, extensive bodywork and paint as well as a new interior. At a certain point one must ask if it wouldn’t be cheaper to buy a new one.
Regardless, thank you for your work and I’ll be following you once I finish this note.
Well said. I teach at a large private school in England and it is no different. Education has become primarily transactional, more and more is expected of the teachers to shore up cultural, familial and political failings, and it is indeed disheartening. There must be another way that is not full time home school (although clearly learning cannot and should not be confined to institutional contexts).
As a 30 year educator, I will tell you that my biggest pet peeve has always been the way that the schools blame the parents while the parents blame the schools. As long as the fingers are being pointed, the children are lost.
The system is broken. Children are not inspired to learn because school is not inspiring. To reach more students, we must focus on their actual learning style and needs.
I have a teenaged boy and every time I am on carpool duty I ask him and his friends to think about what it would take for school to become something they actually WANTED to do.
You sound like a great (might I say "old-fashioned") teacher, a rara avis these days. Your students have been lucky to have you!
I was in college in the 1970s, and even way back then, I noticed that those students who were coordinated but perhaps not the most highly intelligent, often were physical ed majors. Those of quite modest intelligence, probably the lowest intelligence in any major, and who lacked coordination were education majors. We need to attract intelligent, dynamic people to the teaching profession, people with good knowledge of subject matter. I believe that abolishing the federal Dept. Of Education is absolutely necessary. Leave education to the States and communities, where it belongs. Give education dollars directly to parents, not to school districts.
An anecdote for you: My mother graduated from a two-year teaching college in North Dakota in the 1950s and taught school in a one-room schoolhouse without indoor plumbing or central heat. She worked for about 18 months, then married and left the area. Later in life, she returned to the teaching profession as classroom aide. She was assigned to work 1:1 with a 6th-grade boy who could not read at all and exhibited disruptive, sometimes violent behavior in the classroom. She succeeded in teaching him to read, his classroom behavior improved markedly, and the boy's parents were very happy. When the school discovered that she taught him to read using the old-fashioned phonics method, rather than the district-approved method, they fired her.
I was immediately infuriated by your anecdote, but then I sighed. It totally makes sense.
I don't think anything fixes this. I worry about parents getting money from the state because that gives the state the rationale to insert itself into the family home. Niggly detail, but what might work is a tax credit but only if it's significantly less money than the local public schools receive per child or we open this up to massive graft.
Really, we need to just take responsibility, which means paying our way as we find it.
Well nihilism reigns in the culture. That won’t help motivate kids.
And why does it?
Because the standards we used to hold tightly to mean nothing now. By fully divorcing grades from demonstrated knowledge and skill, we're lying about everything important -- because your knowledge and skill MAKES YOU WHO YOU ARE.
Of course they're nihilistic; they are now what they consume, not what they produce.
Tragic.
“Porn” hits teen boys different than anyone else. Believe that to your core.
As a mother of boys, I am deeply aware.
Have you seen this? It might be something you want to share around to people you want to shake out of their stupor.
https://youtu.be/5tdY_ct0qlo?si=0YNXrjlyuB3dxBRg
This pisses me off. Too little too late. How do people think its ok for decades? and no big deal? I am BAFFLED
https://open.substack.com/pub/boriquagato/p/the-case-against-porn?r=1izj1g&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Here’s a link to in-school faq for grade nine sex ed in Canada. Gleefull nihilism.
https://thirstyforthetalk.org/
Oh wow. I clicked on your link and was truly startled. I immediately closed out of it because it’s too early in the morning to digest that perversion.
Ya. For your grade nine kids. Globe and Mail’s Robyn Urback wrote an article attacking Blaine Higgs and defending this woman on this issue.
I thank you might ask if they felt like they were being rage baited in a terrible way, cause they are. And if they feel bad cause they do. The ones that are ashamed have a conscience they are hurt the most. It’s an attack on them. They are the target market, know that.
Honest question: if you believe that porn is an issue why not say so publicly along with your other concerns?
Because I can only fight one war. K12 is big enough.
Right on. Everyone’s got a different reason to ignore this, but everyone’s got a reason. God bless teachers.
FWIW, I very carefully talk to my male students about the deep harm porn can do to them in the long-run. There's only so much I can do though, since I can't police their device use out of school.
If I attack this at all, it's to urge parents to take away unlimited, unsupervised screen time. I actually have an article coming soon on that topic. <3
Any parent who thinks they’re doing that is in total delusion. I think that’s the heart of the problem
Oh and the gaslighting of all these kids telling them not to feel any kind of way about it, it’s just healthy “adult entertainment “.
No. Nihilism reigns because the rite of passage into puberty is terrifying pornography and the equally upsetting realization of its “popularity”.
I think screens are a huge problem and because of unsupervised screentime, porn is definitely warping a lot of kids' minds.
That one is up to parents. But schools need to play their part in telling children the truth about their performance, who they are now and who they COULD be, and then help them get there.
(Also, I'm very sorry about the Canadian schools. My husband went through them and, once upon a time, they were very good.)
It’s not up to parents that’s crazy. It’s mission impossible We’ve been abandoned by idiot courts.
I was correcting my children’s homeschool schoolwork and making them working them through their problems until they got the correct answer when my mother-in-law chuckled and casually noted that when she was in school they never had to do corrections on their homework. Having been homeschooled myself, I had had no clue that was the modus operandi (for many decades it seems) in public school. I just looked at her in disbelief. Despite having only a formal high school education, I feel beyond qualified to give my children a quality education- though I doubt they would be able to pass the examination Laura Ingles Wilder had to pass in order to get her teachers certificate after graduating 8th grade.
That test is WILD isn't it?
I'm so happy for your children. You're starting to see it, but you're definitely more than qualified.
Fantastic piece. Especially because any teacher anywhere in the world could have written this. A profound insight into the reality of public school life, everywhere.
I wish it wasn't the truth in the United States, but it is. Our children are suffering. They are prevented from seeing their innate greatness. I'll never do enough penance for my participation in this system. Even as an outlier, my presence lent the system legitimacy it shouldn't have.
It is everywhere. It needs to be seen and said. There is hope, as millions of parents and teachers see. It is a new beginning.
Everywhere? Maybe you mean in the English-speaking world? My spouse is from Poland and they have much better educational outcomes than the USA still. They still have traditional education and if you don’t learn, you don’t advance.
Well, our system is more or less a communist enterprise. They pretend to learn and we pretend to teach them.
I have no doubt your husband got a better education than most people in America. Even under the old communist system that would have been true if he was gifted enough.
I know Poland too. Of course you cannot say things in general, it is a way of saying. Yes, there are great places around the world. It's today's educational themes and topics mixed with AI all over the place that is too fast for all of us. It is out of control.
I’m glad to see you posting this. Schools and parents need to hear this. As as 17-year teacher mostly at private schools in affluent communities, I see the problems you mention. I teach English, and kids are not reading. I’ll be reading more of your stuff. Thanks.
I think the headline stuff is so scary -- the comprehensive sex ed, data-mining through SEL, oppressed/oppressor binary -- people forget that the worst crime of all is that their childhood is absolutely wasted.
When "no one gets a zero" policies became de rigeur, reading became optional. We need to go hard on essay exams -- but no teacher wants to do that because the workload on that is insane if you're not a content expert, which few teachers are now. We're so far down the rabbithole I don't think public school can be saved.
It's up to parents to investigate the quality of the education being provided. If they won't do that, they get what they get.
Right now my admin and colleagues are going crazy with AI. I think I am the sole teacher resisting it. I won’t let my sixth graders use it. It won’t make them writers
Oh no. I busted a kid for stealing an essay from Chat GPT because he didn't know how to ask it questions that would get him and appropriate answer. Kids lack the foundational knowledge to ask good questions. For that reason, Chat GPT is a really, really, dangerous shortcut.
This is why I homeschool, it is hard work juggling childcare, household duties, teaching duties. Even more so when pregnant or nursing infants, but it is well worth the effort to persevere.
I'm so glad there are moms out there like you. Whether or not you ever recommend it to others, they see you and your kids. <3
I think that most of us over ~40, already knew this; We see it everyday, in every conversation, with young people.
Such a crime to paralyze multiple generations with gross ignorance.
It's more than that. It disempowers them as citizens. They can't engage meaningfully in any level of governance; their opinions will be ASSIGNED to them.
Even local politics become a challenge when a reader can't parse new regulations, policies, and laws.
Oh, I 100% agree, and my concern is THAT was the entire plan all along!
Me too. And that's why I have this Substack and plan to help any parent who wants to homeschool as much as I can.
Does anyone else have their kids/grandkids in schools using the I-ready online programs in place of teaching reading and math??? It is very frustrating.
Dad of homeschooled kids * here. Just arriving to the stack/blog. Thank you. I hope you inspire a bunch of families who may still wrestle with the decision to get on with the process of educating their own kids.
My "kids" are now in their 20s. One finishing a PhD in math. One with a MS in public health, working for my state's department of epidemiology. And one who INSISTED on a BA in music from an area university who has returned to "community" college for a certification program as a medical radiology technician. (At some point late in his education, the arithmetic kicked in and he started doing numbers on pay rates...) Anyhow, success story for what inspirational value it may have.
The library of family memories includes both success stories and horror stories. Let me know if you want samples.
I'm just trying to tell them the truth. People like you are the inspiration. Please feel free to send me any stories you think are worth sharing (either that pushed you to leave the toxic K12 environment or where you've seen the enormous benefit of making the sacrifices necessary to homeschool.
I'm so glad you were able to make this happen for your children. It's a gift that I pray more parents will emulate and that the effects will ripple off into the future, the way this nation's founders intended.
Private schools are the same. The AP curriculum has destroyed high school education. Parents believe they are getting an accelerated course for their smarter-than-the-average-bear child. They are not. All they are getting is very specific knowledge about the test, which is in the stupidest format in the world, made fun of by other countries, and is some cases doesn't even require the course to be taken. It does not teach mastery and the information is quickly forgotten by the students. Then there are the colleges. Parents who strive to get their child admitted to the Ivy League know children can't afford to have anything other than an A on their transcript, especially if they are white or Asian. It doesn't matter what the child learns in school or if they learn anything as long as they have the transcript to get them admitted - which requires APs if the high school offers them. The more the better. The entire high school experience and college experience is a sham. When touring recently we asked how the schools (Ivy's) were integrating technology into their curriculum to prepare the students for the world they would be entering. We received blank stares for students and admissions officer. The only thing they could regurgitate was "AI can be used as an aid is some classes." The students had been so programmed to think in terms of cheating they weren't even aware of the technological revolution taking place. It was depressing. When one girl at Columbia referred to the Inferno's circles as levels, my son laughed. This was Columbia University and it was a tour - and it cost 90,000 a year. The entire educations system is broken. DEI has taken over the system, and the teachers don't know what they are talking about. In my son's biology class they are teaching outdated science about things like chlorestorol. I have to deprogram him daily - in a 55K a year school. If you want to blame people here are the culprits - Administrators and the unions. We all know this. Beyond that - the NAIS, they "guide" curriculum choices and started the war on the Western canon, Bill Gates and his Common Core - he against deep learning, read how he actively kept teachers and parents out of the Common Core decision making process, the College Board, they make over 2 billion a year at your expense, and the government, both parties are corrupt, for allowing the Universities to become massive hedge funds, where educating kids is a byproduct, not a primary objective.
Yes to all of this. It's a huge knotted ball of nylon mesh to untangle, but at the end of the day -- and this is hard to hear -- we deserve it all for offloading our responsiblity for offshoring our children. We literally handed them our kids and said, "Teach them all the things." There was no way these mediocre bureaucrats weren't going to take advantage of that in every way they could. As far as I'm concerned, K12 is the Ring of Power. The State will either get everyone to go along with its agenda or dumb the citizenry down so hard it's damn ear impossible to mount an effective resistance.
I agree. I homeschooled by kids and started a small micro school for about twenty kids. But it is difficult to do and it does make it harder to get into college - which is a scam but also one of the only places your child can be with their peers. It is not so much parent's fault - it is the government. They took away the power for individual school districts to teach relevant skills and curriculums in the 1980s. The department of education was designed, not to help students, but to control information. Now school districts are hampered by bad, uneducated teachers, stupid admin and even stupider parent bodies.
I disagree that in public schools administration plays much if any role in the deterioration of education (perhaps different for private). In public schools I place the blame on unions for sure, but also school boards, and the programs where teachers are getting their teaching degrees. Also, the consultants who rake in big $$ on teacher conferences and trainings.
Just discovered your work and you put to words what so many have noticed: kids aren't learning and here's why.
I have to keep exploring what you've put together especially as it relates to reading.
I hope it helps. I have to say, it's so obviously true that I have to say it all, but I take no pleasure in it. If you ever have questions, please don't hesitate to send them my way.
I am here for the discussion!!! I teach in Canada, and while our policy structures lend to differences between teaching in the States and here, we are also not teaching our students anything (as far as I can tell as both an educator and parent to three kids in the public system).
The issues you raise are vital but they are also the same problems that have been surfaced for many decades. There have also been many many efforts across ideologic and cultural lines to address them. I have watched these debates and complaints since the Sixties. It may be time to broaden the scope of the inquiry to examine other elements that affect student “performance” however you define it. This includes parental involvement and , electronic distractions of all sorts, the priority given to sports, funding priorities and the persistent strain of anti-intellectualism that belittles education.
I don’t have the answers but I do believe we are still focusing on the wrong issues and challenges. With AI starting to completely disrupt our economy and society more broadly, its not even clear that we are looking at the right goals for education.