General complaints about American public education.

[shortylickens]

teach your kids to write cursive and read an analog clock. Rely on schools to teach relevant skills in society. Makes sense.

all of a sudden now the schools are supposed to replace parents? 😏

You haven't been paying attention.
Its not all of a sudden. Its been a slow transition since probably the early 70's. For a multitude of reasons parents value education less and slowly became accustomed to school as a building where their kids go for several hours a day. Then, slowly, the conservative propaganda machine convinced them its all a conspiracy to brainwash their kids with "liberal doctrine". This took decades, some people noticed, some did not.

 

[Zor Prime]

Why does anyone need to write cursive at all? Its harder to reader than print and most formal documents are going to be typed.

Odds are they can't read it if they can't write it since if you can write it you can read it. Only the most important document in the USA (my opinion) was written in cursive, the Constitution. Additionally, there are benefits to learning cursive -- one being brain development being which is supposedly what schools are in the business of, plus odds of having higher scores due to that extra brain development. There have been studies on this, schools not pushing the learning of cursive are doing students a disservice. Feel free to go look this up, I considered sharing links but there's so many I don't know where to start. This can get you started.

Count coins as in... pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters?

Yup!

Most clocks are digital now. It's like complaining a modern kid has no idea how to use a rotary phone. Of course they don't. It's been replaced by something else

Yeah, you're right. Most are digital, that's evident. Yet, in a lot of workplaces and government buildings there's analog clocks littered around the place and it's still something fundamentally basic and simple to do and we've got 'smart' kids that cannot even do that. Funny the rotary phone note, I was never taught that by anyone and figured that out before I was 5 and you won't catch me calling myself a genius.

 

[ch33zw1z]

You haven't been paying attention.
Its not all of a sudden. Its been a slow transition since probably the early 70's. For a multitude of reasons parents value education less and slowly became accustomed to school as a building where their kids go for several hours a day. Then, slowly, the conservative propaganda machine convinced them its all a conspiracy to brainwash their kids with "liberal doctrine". This took decades, some people noticed, some did not.

I think you missed my sarcasm, as that statement is exactly what conservatives will offer when you want the schools to do something for you. I recall zor being one of those convervatives, but maybe I'm wrong

 

[ch33zw1z]

Odds are they can't read it if they can't write it since if you can write it you can read it. Only the most important document in the USA (my opinion) was written in cursive, the Constitution. Additionally, there are benefits to learning cursive -- one being brain development being which is supposedly what schools are in the business of, plus odds of having higher scores due to that extra brain development. There have been studies on this, schools not pushing the learning of cursive are doing students a disservice. Feel free to go look this up, I considered sharing links but there's so many I don't know where to start. This can get you started.

Yup!

Yeah, you're right. Most are digital, that's evident. Yet, in a lot of workplaces and government buildings there's analog clocks littered around the place and it's still something fundamentally basic and simple to do and we've got 'smart' kids that cannot even do that. Funny the rotary phone note, I was never taught that by anyone and figured that out before I was 5 and you won't catch me calling myself a genius.

schools aren’t in the business of brain development.

if the kids were smart, reading an analog clock would be pretty simple to learn. Tell them to Google it

And while you're at it, recommend they switch to the 24 hour clock full time. 😉

 

[Captante]

Sorry but learning to write in cursive is only actually useful if you're an artist who is set on a career in calligraphy.

Since I've finished with primary-school roughly 42 years ago I've required cursive exactly ZERO times beyond my signature. (and even that would be fine printed!)

There are many FAR more useful skills schools can teach to "stimulate" young brains!


EDIT: And if you are incapable of figuring out a rotary-phone after 30 seconds of observation even if you've never seen one before BUT you CAN work one with buttons that's just sad.

One would hope the word "dial" still being commonly used to describe the act of placing a phone-call (even by voice!) would count as a hint?

 

[hal2kilo]

Odds are they can't read it if they can't write it since if you can write it you can read it. Only the most important document in the USA (my opinion) was written in cursive, the Constitution. Additionally, there are benefits to learning cursive -- one being brain development being which is supposedly what schools are in the business of, plus odds of having higher scores due to that extra brain development. There have been studies on this, schools not pushing the learning of cursive are doing students a disservice. Feel free to go look this up, I considered sharing links but there's so many I don't know where to start. This can get you started.

Yup!

Yeah, you're right. Most are digital, that's evident. Yet, in a lot of workplaces and government buildings there's analog clocks littered around the place and it's still something fundamentally basic and simple to do and we've got 'smart' kids that cannot even do that. Funny the rotary phone note, I was never taught that by anyone and figured that out before I was 5 and you won't catch me calling myself a genius.

Yep. All over government installations, made by the blind I might add.

 

[pmv]

Why does anyone need to write cursive at all? Its harder to reader than print and most formal documents are going to be typed.

Somehow I never learned to write in cursive. Somehow missed that lesson in school. Always painstakingly wrote in 'print' (a.k.a. not joined up). It was seriously exhausting when writing long essays, hence taught myself to type at the earliest opportunity - then computers came along and cursive seemed to be redundant anyway.

Still feel a twinge of envy at people with genuinely elegant hand-writing, though.

 

[fskimospy]

Somehow I never learned to write in cursive. Somehow missed that lesson in school. Always painstakingly wrote in 'print' (a.k.a. not joined up). It was seriously exhausting when writing long essays, hence taught myself to type at the earliest opportunity - then computers came along and cursive seemed to be redundant anyway.

Still feel a twinge of envy at people with genuinely elegant hand-writing, though.

Yeah as it exists my handwriting already looks as if I've been taken hostage and have had to write the note using a pen held in my mouth so I type everything anyway.

They did try and teach me cursive in school (it didn't stick) but I remember even then being confused as to why they would teach us to write one way and then teach us an entirely different way to write the same thing. What a waste.

 

[pmv]

I really don't know what I think about merit-based pay for teachers. All I have to go on are my own memories of school, which were that all the teachers were crap. Though in retrospect, now I'm as old or older than they were, I am aware I'd be absolutely no better, and that maybe it's just an impossible job.

The children that are motivated will do fine regardless of the teacher, and those who aren't are usually unreachable by any mere mortal with the resources available in most (non-elite-private) schools.

The biggest problem with merit-based pay would seem to be how you evaluate results. Because obviously it depends massively on the human material you have to work with. Anyone can get good results from motivated, disiplined, psychologically-stable, students. Ideally you need the best teachers in the schools with the most troubled intake, but I don't really know how you accomplish that.

 

[hal2kilo]

Somehow I never learned to write in cursive. Somehow missed that lesson in school. Always painstakingly wrote in 'print' (a.k.a. not joined up). It was seriously exhausting when writing long essays, hence taught myself to type at the earliest opportunity - then computers came along and cursive seemed to be redundant anyway.

Still feel a twinge of envy at people with genuinely elegant hand-writing, though.

I was in remedial hand writing in the 7th grade. Sometimes I can't even read my own printing. Thank the stars for typewriters, word processors, and the PC.

 

[VashHT]

I haven't used cursive since middle school, they stopped requiring us to use it after like 4th or 5th grade. We learned how to read an analog clock in kindergarten in one day so not sure that's really a useful metric for how good schools are.

 

[fskimospy]

I really don't know what I think about merit-based pay for teachers. All I have to go on are my own memories of school, which were that all the teachers were crap. Though in retrospect, now I'm as old or older than they were, I am aware I'd be absolutely no better, and that maybe it's just an impossible job.

The children that are motivated will do fine regardless of the teacher, and those who aren't are usually unreachable by any mere mortal with the resources available in most (non-elite-private) schools.

I don’t think that’s true, there are plenty of kids in various shades of motivation and the quality of a teacher can matter a lot. I can’t speak for you but I know certain teachers were able to get a lot more out of me than others and I was about as unmotivated as you can get. (I never finished high school)

The biggest problem with merit-based pay would seem to be how you evaluate results. Because obviously it depends massively on the human material you have to work with. Anyone can get good results from motivated, disiplined, psychologically-stable, students. Ideally you need the best teachers in the schools with the most troubled intake, but I don't really know how you accomplish that.

I think we can evaluate teachers the same way we evaluate zillions of other jobs - the professional estimation of their supervisor. No need to overthink it.

 

[Vic]

like no child left behind?

Arguably the worst thing ever to happen to American public education.

 

[fskimospy]

Arguably the worst thing ever to happen to American public education.

It really was awful and what sucks is it sounds so reasonable on its face because education is one of those things where everyone ‘just knows’ what is good or bad. Nearly everyone I’ve spoken to this issue about has this moment of realization when I ask them what the goal or goals of education are and how to quantify them.

The reason we landed on math and ELA test scores is partly because they are genuinely important but also in large part because that’s what we decided we could measure and gave up on the rest.

 

[Vic]

It really was awful and what sucks is it sounds so reasonable on its face because education is one of those things where everyone ‘just knows’ what is good or bad. Nearly everyone I’ve spoken to this issue about has this moment of realization when I ask them what the goal or goals of education are and how to quantify them.

The reason we landed on math and ELA test scores is partly because they are genuinely important but also in large part because that’s what we decided we could measure and gave up on the rest.

The standardized testing is just part of the problem. It's the the special education requirements of NCLB that have harmed the public schools so much. And IMO it was deliberate. Public schools are forced to spend many times more on special needs children than on regular students, and teachers are made to focus their attention on under-performing students, at the expense of high-performing students. The result was to send parents with higher-performing students to the private schools, if they could afford it. Which the Republicans have eagerly exploited. This is just yet another way that the Republicans have intentionally widened the gap between rich and poor in this country, while lining their pockets and blaming the Democrats at the same time.

 

[Vic]

I don't have an opinion on this matter but I can relay what I have recently discovered.

I knew that learning cursive was being phased out for some reason that I can only imagine as being a bad idea, but I've gotten to know well a 3.9 student that's currently attending high school that doesn't know how to:

1) Write cursive (outside of signing their name, maybe.)
2) Count coins
3) Read an analog clock

And this kid is a 3.9 student in CA. Probability alone would have it this is not an isolated thing.

I went to school in hillbilly central and I learned that shit in elementary school. If I or my classmates somehow made it to middle school and it got found out we couldn't do those basic things we'd been ridiculed by peers.

How in the actual fuck, I don't even know.

I'm surprised you didn't blame the public schools because the kid can't tie his shoes, ride a bike, or know how to swim.
People like you are the problem. You bitch about govt while expecting it to do everything for you, including raise your children.

 

[Indus]

It's incredible but using our brain is a lost art now for the majority.

Where have the people gone who could simply stuff so that kids could understand?

For example:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1550506415718121473

 

[shortylickens]

I think you missed my sarcasm, as that statement is exactly what conservatives will offer when you want the schools to do something for you. I recall zor being one of those convervatives, but maybe I'm wrong

oops

 

[Zor Prime]

I'm surprised you didn't blame the public schools because the kid can't tie his shoes, ride a bike, or know how to swim.
People like you are the problem. You bitch about govt while expecting it to do everything for you, including raise your children.

You're right, I didn't blame the public schools. I also didn't bitch about the government. I raised multiple kids who know how to do these things I've mentioned. I've taught in the school system but at a higher level. The things I mentioned, myself and all of my class mates were required to learn out in some remote BFE school. I find it unusual that some kid in CA was basically left behind yet somehow maintains a very respectable GPA and that was my point and not much more.

 

[pmv]

The standardized testing is just part of the problem. It's the the special education requirements of NCLB that have harmed the public schools so much. And IMO it was deliberate. Public schools are forced to spend many times more on special needs children than on regular students, and teachers are made to focus their attention on under-performing students, at the expense of high-performing students. The result was to send parents with higher-performing students to the private schools, if they could afford it. Which the Republicans have eagerly exploited. This is just yet another way that the Republicans have intentionally widened the gap between rich and poor in this country, while lining their pockets and blaming the Democrats at the same time.

I don't know what the answer is. My experience was that a critical-mass of 'under-performing' students can reduce a school to near-chaos. Where if you are motivated to study the only way to do it is to skip school and find somewhere less noisy and less prone to outbreaks of violence in which to do it.

The trouble is, either middle-class parents opt-out and go private, or you get people playing the 'school catchment area' game, where schools are effectively segregated by house-prices, or you have 'selection by ability' at a very young age, which just ends up in practice as another form of class-based apartheid. Seems like nothing works.

Now they seem to have decided to just privatise the whole system by stealth, via the "academy" system (which I think is the same thing as "charter schools" over there). Which seems to lead to the creation of a Russian-syle Oligarch class, where chains of schools are owned by wealthy businessmen, who pay themselves huge salaries while being funded from tax money, with no democratic control over the allocation of school places.

 

[pmv]

I don’t think that’s true, there are plenty of kids in various shades of motivation and the quality of a teacher can matter a lot. I can’t speak for you but I know certain teachers were able to get a lot more out of me than others and I was about as unmotivated as you can get. (I never finished high school)

I'm just over-influenced by my own experience. Back then school was just a place you were forced to attend to experience random outbreaks of violence (and end up in hospital, as I did twice). It was far too chaotic and noisy to allow any actual learning to happen.

But I have no expert knowledge of the topic of 'education' - now I'm old enough to have friends and family who are teachers themselves I'm far less judgemental of those I had (barring the two who were, decades later, convicted of serial sexual offenses against their pupils - one of whom actually tried to 'groom' me back then, but I freaked out so badly the first time he got touchy-feely he gave up - for decades I just assumed I'd misinterpreted some hippy-ish attempt at being 'supportive', till I saw his - distinctive - name in a legal report on-line)

I think we can evaluate teachers the same way we evaluate zillions of other jobs - the professional estimation of their supervisor. No need to overthink it.

I mean, I suppose that's the least-bad option. There's a bad tendency when comparing performance to look at pure results without taking into account the intake of a school. But having their supervisor make the call does seem to carry the risk of giving excessive power to head-teachers. Some of whom, I hear, behave rather despotically.

 

[digiram]

I don't have an opinion on this matter but I can relay what I have recently discovered.

I knew that learning cursive was being phased out for some reason that I can only imagine as being a bad idea, but I've gotten to know well a 3.9 student that's currently attending high school that doesn't know how to:

1) Write cursive (outside of signing their name, maybe.)
2) Count coins
3) Read an analog clock

And this kid is a 3.9 student in CA. Probability alone would have it this is not an isolated thing.

I went to school in hillbilly central and I learned that shit in elementary school. If I or my classmates somehow made it to middle school and it got found out we couldn't do those basic things we'd been ridiculed by peers.

How in the actual fuck, I don't even know.

You knew 1 person so it must be true of everyone. My 3rd grader can most certainly read an analog clock and count coins which were taught in school as she would come home and show me what she learned. They still teach cursive as well, but I honestly can barely write it myself. I much rather they teach grammar, sentence structure, etc.

Coming from a 3rd world nation myself. I can’t stress enough on the importance of having a free accessible public education. Invest in your future.

 

[HomerJS]

One of my complaints about education is the attempted takeover by the right. They want to completely whitewash this countries history.

I have a young niece who is just getting into teaching. Family had dinner this past Thanksgiving and I asked her how is Columbus taught? She said basically agenda still teaches Columbus discovered America. Also said they don't discuss the atrocities Columbus inflicted upon the native Americans.

We will be together this Christmas and I need to follow-up. Want to ask if they teach Columbus's "blood moon" trick he inflicted on the natives.

 

[Greenman]

Do we really need to be worried about what an Italian explorer did 500 years ago?
The guy was an immigrant who took advantage of a bunch of hunter gatherers. In the grand scheme of world history, that's pretty tame.

 

[HomerJS]

Do we really need to be worried about what an Italian explorer did 500 years ago?
The guy was an immigrant who took advantage of a bunch of hunter gatherers. In the grand scheme of world history, that's pretty tame.

Columbus is taught in school. Shouldn't the entire truth be taught?