One of the reasons that teachers are now able to sneak radical curriculum into the classroom is because we have ceased to focus on the basic fundamentals of education.
When kids sat in Little Red Schoolhouses, the aim--and the texts being used--were centered on Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic. Just a few years in those schoolhouses equip…
One of the reasons that teachers are now able to sneak radical curriculum into the classroom is because we have ceased to focus on the basic fundamentals of education.
When kids sat in Little Red Schoolhouses, the aim--and the texts being used--were centered on Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic. Just a few years in those schoolhouses equipped most Americans with the language and mathematics skills to get by in adult life, and the reading ability to learn as much as they wanted to on their own from books.
Now we have droves of "high school graduates" who cannot read or write or do math. Shouldn't schools be focusing on those skills instead of allowing teachers to teach Leftist ideology?
There is the idea that teachers have freedom of speech in the classroom which allows them to teach unapproved curriculum material that reflects their political beliefs. The claim is academic freedom but it is not freedom when one person (the teacher) holds the power to suppress objections and punish through grades. It is not academic freedom when the lesson is bias against an ethnic group and places those students and teachers in danger.
Despite Oakland school district having the abysmal scores of 25% of the students meeting math standards and 33% meeting English standards, the teachers believe that their need to express a political belief exceeds the need for children to achieve an education that could help lift them out of poverty and provide better opportunities. What is real social justice?
I may be wrong, but is academic freedom really an ideal in elementary and secondary education? I've always considered the goals and benefits of academic freedom to be more applicable to the university.
Understand your doubt, because it would seem that academic freedom would apply to colleges for many reasons, especially, since these are adult-to-adult interactions. To claim academic freedom when one is working with minors and are to be acting as loco parentis would appear to be contradicting ethics.
Included the video because it addresses how one group of teachers are claiming academic freedom and using the power of their union to show solidarity with the Palestinian people. The teachin which had curriculum for 4th grade on up was opposed by the superintendent, but happened due to "academic freedom" and the power of the union.
To be honest, when the state is allowing 30 kids per class and at least 5 of those kids have IEPs, it gets really hard to actually teach material so that ALL of them achieve success. For example, the time you have to spend grading in English and Social Studies classes basically reduces your pay to minimum wage. Now try to find a separate classroom and someone to supervise those classrooms for EACH of the kids with IEPs. It's hard to manage the needs of all 30 kids, multiplied by 5 (number of classes taught per teacher at my school). Then add having to call parents or grade during your free block, be on stupid school improvement committees, and coach a sport. Yup, all required. Teachers get stretched thinner every year by ever-increasing job requirements. As for math, kids will tell you they don't need to know it because they have calculators and Alexa. As for English and Social Studies, AI can write your essay. Now let's do students' attitudes and behavior. After covid, kids don't care that much about showing up or doing work. Neither do their parents. We're not allowed to fail them--unless they are chronically truant and turn in no assignments. If a student actually fails, they are required to attend summer school. Summer school is a complete joke. All they have to do is show up for class every day and it's a pass. So, the failed kids still haven't learned any material--because they don't have to. We're not allowed to send them home when they're dressed inappropriately. Discipline closely resembles our criminal justice system--no consequences. My list goes on and on. But basically the system has made teaching nearly unbearable. Morale is the lowest it's ever been--I'm in a school rated top 4 in my state--and every teacher I know would quit if they could. I guess for many teachers, it's easier just to push social justice because THAT is judged by the useful idiots as successful.
Students in my state receive all As (like Harvard students) but have abysmal test scores. Parents see the report cards and think their kids are doing awesome!
I went to school with 38 kids in a class and split between two grades, half third graders and half fourth graders, for example. Our classes were taught by one nun for 38 kids. We did not get to the next grade without passing certain skills in math and reading. It can be done. But there has to be the discipline of learning and teaching basics. The threat of flunking out is a great motivator for kids and parents.
You've hit upon the key issue: discipline. In today's schools, there is none. Students cannot be suspended or expelled, and many cases can no longer even be sent to the principal. How can teachers manage to teach those students who do want to learn when out-of-control students are creating chaos in their classrooms without any consequences?
I can tell you that one rotten apple really does spoil the whole bunch! Special Ed teachers keep wanting to mainstream kids who don't belong in gen ed classrooms. So does the government--because special ed is so expensive. It's not good for anyone.
Agree and disagree. There are children who need the resources available from special ed and can be rotated into many main stream classrooms without disruption. But too often special ed has been extended from students with learning disabilities to students with severe behavior problems due to mental illness.
Special ed teachers train to provide a sheltered and welcoming classroom where students can learn and learn to cope with their disability. Most special ed teacher do not have the tools, training, or the resources for a student who has violent outburst that result in another student or staff member being assaulted. No child able or struggling to learn needs the additional burden of being in a classroom where they can be assaulted.
The elementary school our oldest son (who had an IEP due to his ADHD) attended in Kansas was the best ever for dealing with special ed. Kids went to and from the main classroom all day, depending on what they needed extra help (or TAG units) with, so there was no stigma for any of the students; it was treated as a completely normal thing.
Compare that to the middle school he attended in Iowa (a state that is hugely proud of its "educational excellence"): only ONE special ed class for ALL special ed students (with ONE teacher!), regardless of their needs. Presumably his IEP was sent along with his school records, but the school pretended they knew nothing about it. So he started off in regular classes (with a rotating subject schedule that was massively confusing for him), and then got plopped in a classroom with mentally retarded kids, despite having high normal intelligence.
When I pulled him out in mid October to homeschool him, his special ed teacher said, "I'm not supposed to tell you this, but I think you're doing the right thing. This classroom has nothing to offer him."
Thank you for hanging in there, Litr8r. I am a substitute in public schools and do my best, albeit in small ways, to encourage hard working educators any chance I get.
In New York City, public schools took a nosedive when community control kicked it.
Undereducated parents angry about their (often school-resistant) children's getting low marks decided that teachers (mostly Jewish in those days) just didn't understand (black) students.
The Jewish teachers were transferred out of these districts, and in their place were put less experienced black teachers who "understood" black children and gave them higher marks for doing less work. This increased the students' self-esteem.
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, right about almost everything, vehemently disagreed with the new school policy.
And we have been seeing the results for over half a century. In order to fix the problem, Columbia University's Teachers College revised curricula to serve what they must have decided was an increasingly learning-challenged population.
I always wonder why blacks don't see how insulting this is! That said, black families need to start valuing education. That is the real problem. When education becomes a family value, kids will achieve.
Education is already a family value. So many amazing resources prove that. Check out Dr. Ben Carson’s autobiography for one of many. Check out the educational materials offered by The Woodson Center in DC. I wish you could meet my neighbors and the students I teach in a homeschool hybrid, etc.
Yes, education is a “family value” across all races (more prevalent in certain cultures than others, though — think Asians, regardless of economic status). As with most problems in the black community, it comes down to the stunning percentage of children being raised in single parent households (overwhelmingly with no stable male presence). The research is clear: fatherless children (especially boys) are far more likely to have behavioral problems, become criminals, and spend time in prison. This is the critical point, and schools cannot compensate for this lack.
This is such an excellent point. There needs to be more conversation about this-but alas the left will deem it racist or anti-single parent or anti-gay. It’s such common sense!
I agree -- it is such a strategic essentialist myth that Black people don't value education. It seems to be such an important cornerstone in some families.
I was really impressed when I read the article in 1776 Unites about the segregated schools (I forget the precise name) and the struggle to get a good education in a Jim Crow South. And then there are the HBCU, how they have struggled against tremendous odds to provide quality education and how even today they remain underfunded but are still delivering. Howard and Morehouse for instance.
As Khalid and Snyder (two Carleton professors who are trying to give left perspective against 'wokery') pointed out one of the downsides of desegregation was the loss of many Black educators as positions were eliminated.
I do think the public education system has not served the over all Black population of the US well and there has been so much lost potential and that the US is poorer for it.
It is truly excellent that you are trying to solve this problem with a homeschool hybrid. More power to you.
It is supremely ironic that black activists (and their Woke White Women "allies") are now *demanding* segregation--classes exclusively for black students, black proms, black graduations, and in college, black-only dorms.
It is also a myth that black children do better when they are in classes with white children.
No. Black children do better when they are not with children of any complexion who cannot or will not apply themselves to their studies. This is true of white children too.
No child benefits from a chaotic classroom. It only takes a couple of rude attention hogs (and that's putting it nicely) to disrupt lessons.
Black children did very well in segregated schools when their dedicated, determined black schoolteachers ruled kindly and firmly -- and despite substandard text books and the rest of the nonsense segregation imposed upon them.
For all that I am against segregation, it is also true that busing children 45-60 minutes away from their homes starts and ends the school day badly. Very few students benefit from long, unruly school bus rides.
Another thought -- one only has to look at the education in some majority black countries such as Jamaica or Nigeria which now have higher literacy rates than California (which equals Rwanda) to clearly demonstrate that black children do just fine in classes which are all black. It is the quality of the teaching and the conditions of the classroom which make a difference.
The fact of the matter was that desegregation was not the magic bullet that it was portrayed to be.
Instead of putting the money into ensuring that substandard classrooms were brought up to the highest standard and that all children benefited from the same high level resources in which ever classroom, they went down a route which did not work and doomed many -- something which I believe is now quietly acknowledged.
As an aside -- my parents sent me to a private school which was a long bus journey from my home. For the last few years of high school I took the train. In the end I very much appreciated the education but the bus rides were hell on earth at times. There are reasons why even though the state high school near us had problems (really low rate of going on to higher education etc) , I wanted my children there including to be able to walk to school. In the end, they appreciated their education and have all done well.
It is the basics but you have always had ideology seeping in. Look at the McGuffey Readers and the huge influence they had. Among other thing they helped to popularize certain speeches and rhymes including Mary had a little lamb.
I believe at one point the temperance movement used public school books as a way to get their message across (of course you then had the complete back lash...so one could argue that sometimes these ideologically driven lessons backfire spectacularly -- actually one of my big concerns about CRT)
The whole problem of ideology infused schooling really became apparent in the 1930s and 40s with the experiences of Nazi Germany and the USSR. It is part of the reason why the Declaration of Human Rights says that parents have the right to educate their children in their own particular philosophy (how can you have freedom of religion if the state instils different moral values?)
But an increased emphasis the actual nuts and bolts of an education -- reading, writing and the arithmetic as the building blocks for a successful society would be good. And that will only happen when parents take an active role in their children's education and start questioning why their children are being taught certain things and being prepared to escalate it up.
My daughter has not forgotten when I made her use Jung Chang's biography of Mao as a counterweight in an essay to the material her history teacher gave out about 'the Great Leap forward'. The teacher and I then had a discussion about biased sources.
Any instructional reading material is inevitable going to demonstrate a bias of some kind, even if it is only toward the cultural norms of the society in which it was produced. But anything that could be classed as propaganda should never be used as instructional reading material.
One of the reasons that teachers are now able to sneak radical curriculum into the classroom is because we have ceased to focus on the basic fundamentals of education.
When kids sat in Little Red Schoolhouses, the aim--and the texts being used--were centered on Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic. Just a few years in those schoolhouses equipped most Americans with the language and mathematics skills to get by in adult life, and the reading ability to learn as much as they wanted to on their own from books.
Now we have droves of "high school graduates" who cannot read or write or do math. Shouldn't schools be focusing on those skills instead of allowing teachers to teach Leftist ideology?
There is the idea that teachers have freedom of speech in the classroom which allows them to teach unapproved curriculum material that reflects their political beliefs. The claim is academic freedom but it is not freedom when one person (the teacher) holds the power to suppress objections and punish through grades. It is not academic freedom when the lesson is bias against an ethnic group and places those students and teachers in danger.
Despite Oakland school district having the abysmal scores of 25% of the students meeting math standards and 33% meeting English standards, the teachers believe that their need to express a political belief exceeds the need for children to achieve an education that could help lift them out of poverty and provide better opportunities. What is real social justice?
Here is Oakland teachers at their lowest, placing themselves and their beliefs before their students. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10lphHtPRcE
I may be wrong, but is academic freedom really an ideal in elementary and secondary education? I've always considered the goals and benefits of academic freedom to be more applicable to the university.
Understand your doubt, because it would seem that academic freedom would apply to colleges for many reasons, especially, since these are adult-to-adult interactions. To claim academic freedom when one is working with minors and are to be acting as loco parentis would appear to be contradicting ethics.
Included the video because it addresses how one group of teachers are claiming academic freedom and using the power of their union to show solidarity with the Palestinian people. The teachin which had curriculum for 4th grade on up was opposed by the superintendent, but happened due to "academic freedom" and the power of the union.
To be honest, when the state is allowing 30 kids per class and at least 5 of those kids have IEPs, it gets really hard to actually teach material so that ALL of them achieve success. For example, the time you have to spend grading in English and Social Studies classes basically reduces your pay to minimum wage. Now try to find a separate classroom and someone to supervise those classrooms for EACH of the kids with IEPs. It's hard to manage the needs of all 30 kids, multiplied by 5 (number of classes taught per teacher at my school). Then add having to call parents or grade during your free block, be on stupid school improvement committees, and coach a sport. Yup, all required. Teachers get stretched thinner every year by ever-increasing job requirements. As for math, kids will tell you they don't need to know it because they have calculators and Alexa. As for English and Social Studies, AI can write your essay. Now let's do students' attitudes and behavior. After covid, kids don't care that much about showing up or doing work. Neither do their parents. We're not allowed to fail them--unless they are chronically truant and turn in no assignments. If a student actually fails, they are required to attend summer school. Summer school is a complete joke. All they have to do is show up for class every day and it's a pass. So, the failed kids still haven't learned any material--because they don't have to. We're not allowed to send them home when they're dressed inappropriately. Discipline closely resembles our criminal justice system--no consequences. My list goes on and on. But basically the system has made teaching nearly unbearable. Morale is the lowest it's ever been--I'm in a school rated top 4 in my state--and every teacher I know would quit if they could. I guess for many teachers, it's easier just to push social justice because THAT is judged by the useful idiots as successful.
"....I'm in a school rated top 4 in my state..."
Top 4 of your state's public schools?
Students in my state receive all As (like Harvard students) but have abysmal test scores. Parents see the report cards and think their kids are doing awesome!
High school social studies teacher here. This is exactly right. I keep as much “woke” out of my room as possible, and feel accomplished when doing so.
I went to school with 38 kids in a class and split between two grades, half third graders and half fourth graders, for example. Our classes were taught by one nun for 38 kids. We did not get to the next grade without passing certain skills in math and reading. It can be done. But there has to be the discipline of learning and teaching basics. The threat of flunking out is a great motivator for kids and parents.
You've hit upon the key issue: discipline. In today's schools, there is none. Students cannot be suspended or expelled, and many cases can no longer even be sent to the principal. How can teachers manage to teach those students who do want to learn when out-of-control students are creating chaos in their classrooms without any consequences?
I can tell you that one rotten apple really does spoil the whole bunch! Special Ed teachers keep wanting to mainstream kids who don't belong in gen ed classrooms. So does the government--because special ed is so expensive. It's not good for anyone.
Agree and disagree. There are children who need the resources available from special ed and can be rotated into many main stream classrooms without disruption. But too often special ed has been extended from students with learning disabilities to students with severe behavior problems due to mental illness.
Special ed teachers train to provide a sheltered and welcoming classroom where students can learn and learn to cope with their disability. Most special ed teacher do not have the tools, training, or the resources for a student who has violent outburst that result in another student or staff member being assaulted. No child able or struggling to learn needs the additional burden of being in a classroom where they can be assaulted.
The elementary school our oldest son (who had an IEP due to his ADHD) attended in Kansas was the best ever for dealing with special ed. Kids went to and from the main classroom all day, depending on what they needed extra help (or TAG units) with, so there was no stigma for any of the students; it was treated as a completely normal thing.
Compare that to the middle school he attended in Iowa (a state that is hugely proud of its "educational excellence"): only ONE special ed class for ALL special ed students (with ONE teacher!), regardless of their needs. Presumably his IEP was sent along with his school records, but the school pretended they knew nothing about it. So he started off in regular classes (with a rotating subject schedule that was massively confusing for him), and then got plopped in a classroom with mentally retarded kids, despite having high normal intelligence.
When I pulled him out in mid October to homeschool him, his special ed teacher said, "I'm not supposed to tell you this, but I think you're doing the right thing. This classroom has nothing to offer him."
Tell it like it is!
Thank you for hanging in there, Litr8r. I am a substitute in public schools and do my best, albeit in small ways, to encourage hard working educators any chance I get.
Thanks, Beverly! I know the teachers in my school are very grateful for our wonderful subs!
In New York City, public schools took a nosedive when community control kicked it.
Undereducated parents angry about their (often school-resistant) children's getting low marks decided that teachers (mostly Jewish in those days) just didn't understand (black) students.
The Jewish teachers were transferred out of these districts, and in their place were put less experienced black teachers who "understood" black children and gave them higher marks for doing less work. This increased the students' self-esteem.
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, right about almost everything, vehemently disagreed with the new school policy.
And we have been seeing the results for over half a century. In order to fix the problem, Columbia University's Teachers College revised curricula to serve what they must have decided was an increasingly learning-challenged population.
I always wonder why blacks don't see how insulting this is! That said, black families need to start valuing education. That is the real problem. When education becomes a family value, kids will achieve.
Education is already a family value. So many amazing resources prove that. Check out Dr. Ben Carson’s autobiography for one of many. Check out the educational materials offered by The Woodson Center in DC. I wish you could meet my neighbors and the students I teach in a homeschool hybrid, etc.
Yes, education is a “family value” across all races (more prevalent in certain cultures than others, though — think Asians, regardless of economic status). As with most problems in the black community, it comes down to the stunning percentage of children being raised in single parent households (overwhelmingly with no stable male presence). The research is clear: fatherless children (especially boys) are far more likely to have behavioral problems, become criminals, and spend time in prison. This is the critical point, and schools cannot compensate for this lack.
This is such an excellent point. There needs to be more conversation about this-but alas the left will deem it racist or anti-single parent or anti-gay. It’s such common sense!
I agree -- it is such a strategic essentialist myth that Black people don't value education. It seems to be such an important cornerstone in some families.
I was really impressed when I read the article in 1776 Unites about the segregated schools (I forget the precise name) and the struggle to get a good education in a Jim Crow South. And then there are the HBCU, how they have struggled against tremendous odds to provide quality education and how even today they remain underfunded but are still delivering. Howard and Morehouse for instance.
As Khalid and Snyder (two Carleton professors who are trying to give left perspective against 'wokery') pointed out one of the downsides of desegregation was the loss of many Black educators as positions were eliminated.
I do think the public education system has not served the over all Black population of the US well and there has been so much lost potential and that the US is poorer for it.
It is truly excellent that you are trying to solve this problem with a homeschool hybrid. More power to you.
It is supremely ironic that black activists (and their Woke White Women "allies") are now *demanding* segregation--classes exclusively for black students, black proms, black graduations, and in college, black-only dorms.
It is also a myth that black children do better when they are in classes with white children.
No. Black children do better when they are not with children of any complexion who cannot or will not apply themselves to their studies. This is true of white children too.
No child benefits from a chaotic classroom. It only takes a couple of rude attention hogs (and that's putting it nicely) to disrupt lessons.
Black children did very well in segregated schools when their dedicated, determined black schoolteachers ruled kindly and firmly -- and despite substandard text books and the rest of the nonsense segregation imposed upon them.
For all that I am against segregation, it is also true that busing children 45-60 minutes away from their homes starts and ends the school day badly. Very few students benefit from long, unruly school bus rides.
Another thought -- one only has to look at the education in some majority black countries such as Jamaica or Nigeria which now have higher literacy rates than California (which equals Rwanda) to clearly demonstrate that black children do just fine in classes which are all black. It is the quality of the teaching and the conditions of the classroom which make a difference.
Also note that education can be conducted quite well with simple chalkboards and books rather than fancy smartboards and tablets.
Amazing that, isn't it?
The fact of the matter was that desegregation was not the magic bullet that it was portrayed to be.
Instead of putting the money into ensuring that substandard classrooms were brought up to the highest standard and that all children benefited from the same high level resources in which ever classroom, they went down a route which did not work and doomed many -- something which I believe is now quietly acknowledged.
As an aside -- my parents sent me to a private school which was a long bus journey from my home. For the last few years of high school I took the train. In the end I very much appreciated the education but the bus rides were hell on earth at times. There are reasons why even though the state high school near us had problems (really low rate of going on to higher education etc) , I wanted my children there including to be able to walk to school. In the end, they appreciated their education and have all done well.
It is the basics but you have always had ideology seeping in. Look at the McGuffey Readers and the huge influence they had. Among other thing they helped to popularize certain speeches and rhymes including Mary had a little lamb.
I believe at one point the temperance movement used public school books as a way to get their message across (of course you then had the complete back lash...so one could argue that sometimes these ideologically driven lessons backfire spectacularly -- actually one of my big concerns about CRT)
The whole problem of ideology infused schooling really became apparent in the 1930s and 40s with the experiences of Nazi Germany and the USSR. It is part of the reason why the Declaration of Human Rights says that parents have the right to educate their children in their own particular philosophy (how can you have freedom of religion if the state instils different moral values?)
But an increased emphasis the actual nuts and bolts of an education -- reading, writing and the arithmetic as the building blocks for a successful society would be good. And that will only happen when parents take an active role in their children's education and start questioning why their children are being taught certain things and being prepared to escalate it up.
My daughter has not forgotten when I made her use Jung Chang's biography of Mao as a counterweight in an essay to the material her history teacher gave out about 'the Great Leap forward'. The teacher and I then had a discussion about biased sources.
Any instructional reading material is inevitable going to demonstrate a bias of some kind, even if it is only toward the cultural norms of the society in which it was produced. But anything that could be classed as propaganda should never be used as instructional reading material.