student loans are a hit!

[Landroval]

The pedagogy, itself, in the US, is fundamentally flawed. It's not just that the expectations are low, the curriculum itself is remedial and the approach to teaching subject matter places disproportional emphasis on tangentially related stuff that doesn't produce mastery of the parent subject at all.

[unsunghero]

Originally Posted by Landroval [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The pedagogy, itself, in the US, is fundamentally flawed. It's not just that the expectations are low, the curriculum itself is remedial and the approach to teaching subject matter places disproportional emphasis on tangentially related stuff that doesn't produce mastery of the parent subject at all.

All jokes about mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell and the solving for area under the curve aside, I felt fine when it came to being prepared for a university out of high school, and so did everyone I personally knew

Not sure where these mystery public schools that are teaching kids how to roll their own shit into little balls and eat it exist

The only downside that I see to public schools is that they are pushing the socially maladapted and slacker kids with dozens of absences through the grades and passing them to have a better quota

[Landroval]

The comment is more targeted towards the language arts field.

Post Covid, in witnessing the 8th 9th and 11th grade curriculum for English, the kids essentially had no homework whatsoever in English at any of these grades. The curriculum is designed around exposure to culturally sensitive subject matter, with the technicality of writing well taking a backseat to parrotting the ideological precepts.

I mean, it's cool that you can parrot the approved sociological positions, but if you can't articulate your viewpoint in a cogent manner, through a formal essay, you're not going to do well in pretty much any collegiate field that requires you writing referential essays, and that includes the GE social science subject matter being infused into every other subject.

[druidbob]

Originally Posted by unsunghero [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

All jokes about mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell and the solving for area under the curve aside, I felt fine when it came to being prepared for a university out of high school, and so did everyone I personally knew

Not sure where these mystery public schools that are teaching kids how to roll their own shit into little balls and eat it exist

The only downside that I see to public schools is that they are pushing the socially maladapted and slacker kids with dozens of absences through the grades and passing them to have a better quota

Eh, I went to an elementary school in what was a crap school district, though I didn't know that at the time. I was actually in the "gifted" program all the way through 6th grade, but the we moved and when I started at my new school it turned out I was below what they considered 4th grade education, so I had to spend a year in remedial class to get caught up. Point is the quality of schools vary widely from state to state or even district to district, so your experience and that of a kid the next town over can be wildly different.

[unsunghero]

Originally Posted by druidbob [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Eh, I went to an elementary school in what was a crap school district, though I didn't know that at the time. I was actually in the "gifted" program all the way through 6th grade, but the we moved and when I started at my new school it turned out I was below what they considered 4th grade education, so I had to spend a year in remedial class to get caught up. Point is the quality of schools vary widely from state to state or even district to district, so your experience and that of a kid the next town over can be wildly different.

Fair enough. One would think that with some sort of district oversight schools wouldn’t be able to get too far outta line though, but I dunno

Just from talking to kids all day at work, the ones I see failing everything are never the dumb ones, crying about how they just don’t understand the material and no one will help them. Maybe it’s because I’m there as an outsider, but the school staff are often right there with me offering up all the ways they can help the struggling kid

The kids I personally see failing, as I’ve said before, are the ones that just don’t give a shit. They’ll tell me straight out because I’m coming from a non-judgemental counseling perspective “I don’t care about school”, “I don’t see the point”, “I hate school”, whatever.

The younger kids have even realized that you can actually outsmart the entire system by just becoming dead weight and stop going, even before you can drop out. If the parent can’t physically and safely drag you there, neither the cops nor the school staff will either. And even if the parent could get the kid to school, no non-behavioral school is going to want to grab the kid and drag them by the arms into campus to keep them from running off

Nope, a kid can stop going to school for quite a while, racking up legal charges for their parent, and the schools or police won’t help AT ALL . Eventually, if the parent is lucky, a judge might place the kid into a boarding behavioral school or RTC where they live there and thus can’t escape. If they’re lucky, otherwise they just fall through the cracks


But long story short, if a kid cares, they’ll get help and learn the material. If they don’t, they won’t

[druidbob]

Germany has the right idea, I think it's at age 14 where kids there are tested and it's decided if they will continue on with formal education or transfer into vocation/trade school. I can think of a lot of kids in high school that don't give a shit about algebra and would be better off learning how to be a mechanic or something.

[unsunghero]

Originally Posted by druidbob [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Germany has the right idea, I think it's at age 14 where kids there are tested and it's decided if they will continue on with formal education or transfer into vocation/trade school. I can think of a lot of kids in high school that don't give a shit about algebra and would be better off learning how to be a mechanic or something.

Ya I agree 100%. Trade schools should be a more accessible alternative to overpriced universities

But it still begins with the parent motivating their kid to care about school enough to try. When I was a kid, it was just understood that you went to school. Unless you were really sick, you WENT to school. It was never questioned

But it’s sure as shit questioned now, and parents back down. Then they call in behavioral health to pick up the pieces and give their kids the talk they hadn’t been, like:

“Don’t you want to go to school to see your friends? What about recess, how do you feel about recess? That and lunch were always my favorite classes”

Then we go into a choice-consequence model with the parents to motivate a behavior change. Usually it’s a combination of “go to school, get this reward”, and “don’t go to school, you lose privileges”. And most parents in this position (and there’s probably tens of thousands nation-wide it feels like based on how commonly I see it occur), don’t have this working for any other positive behavior either. Not for chores at home or going to school or being home before curfew, etc

And inner city poor schools just have these behavior problems magnified in frequency. That’s it, in my opinion. It all boils down to bad parenting creating behavior problems that exist is some communities slightly more than others. If we had to isolate the one thing that is fucking kids over the most. Funding for schools or whatever would be a far distant second

[Landroval]

I suppose that's an issue you're familiar with for the drop-outs. My concern is that the "education" itself, even without the mptivationally-deficient outliers, is not producing educated kids

[unsunghero]

Originally Posted by Landroval [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I suppose that's an issue you're familiar with for the drop-outs. My concern is that the "education" itself, even without the mptivationally-deficient outliers, is not producing educated kids

I bet the statistics would show there are an unhealthily high number of drop outs from inner city public schools. And probably more than you think from other poor areas

But yes, curriculum quality can matter to some significance, and affects everyone including those that didn’t drop out. But dropping out, or not caring enough to try at an age-appropriate level we’ll say, makes curriculum quality irrelevant to those people because there is no curriculum. /shrug

[unsunghero]

To play devil’s advocate, I have heard of extreme education failures like here

But I still place heaps of blame on the parents