Father | English Teacher | Veteran
"I may not know anything about truth, but I know falsehood when I see it and it looks like this whole world you've made."
@flowidealism No one can dispute the fact that children develop at wildly different paces; however, that diversity in perspective and maturity is what makes a standardized curriculum different and vital for both the teacher and the student each school year. Both can be true.
@flowidealism I have a boy like this who likes to build Gundams (Japanese Robot figures). We are making our first diorama this weekend. He literally has the whole thing planned out. I'm just an extra set of hands. 😂
@DianeRavitch I think you all are missing the point. I believe the article is saying there is a history of back and forth on this issue heavily swayed by monied interest. The "science of reading" as a marketing term rather than the scientific study of reading and learning to read.
@DanaPalubiak Is this rhetorical? Public education as a whole has forgotten to what end we educate students. We should not be surprised that the means are convoluted as a result.
@clharrington024 It's pretty simple. When a student acts out they are letting you know they need something. It doesn't matter what that something is if the student doesn't respond positively to correction. At that point it's beyond the scope of an instructor trying to educate a class of 20+.
@DanaPalubiak It took me way too long to realize this. A flawed public education system is better than no system. Something is always better than nothing.
@flowidealism Well said! I know I speak for more than just myself when I say that I started teaching English for that kind of rigor not 'find an example of x in y' worksheets. We read King Midas the other day, and I only had 2 minutes to discuss it. TWO MINUTES. Then the required worksheets.
@tombennett71 Consequences = liability. Given there is no longer any consensus on what children are, who society wants them to become, or how we are going to get them there, schools that want to stay open must 'discipline' in a way that protects from litigation. That is the unfortunate answer.
Like an appreciation of progress, reading and literacy are among the things that are good but cognitively unnatural. That is, they go against our evolved nature. We didn’t evolve with print; it was a recent invention. Reading, for many of us, has become so second nature that we just assume it’s the most natural way of getting information. But what we’ve seen, especially in the last 10 years, when video has become so cheap because of the cloud computing revolution and the broadband revolution, is that a lot of people, unlike us, much prefer to listen and watch than to read. You just see this: when I go to Google and ask a basic question about how to unstick my printer or solve a problem, I get like five videos. And I just want a paragraph that would solve it. I don’t want to see Seth saying, “Hi, welcome to my show. If you like it, subscribe and give it a like.” So just help me solve the problem. But clearly there’s something unusual about me, because people are going for the video. And the massive availability of video—of TikTok, of YouTube—means that people may not be getting the practice or putting in the effort into literacy, which we have reason to believe was one of the drivers of the Flynn effect and of cognitive sophistication in general.
@HumanProgress
@flowidealism I believe you should instill values and enforce them when they are young and unable to provide that structure for themselves, but, as each child is ready, they must take upon themselves the labor of either making the values their own or discovering their own.
@flowidealism Love the analogy. To expand on it, the Orca's cage could actually be seen as a cage within a cage where the outer cage would actually be the methods (conditioned by society, academica, financial incentives) employed to assess the Orcas to begin with.
@flowidealism Although I agree with the diagnosis, I'm much more keen on reforming and revitalizing our public institutions instead of privatization. I think I just like the challenge and being mad all the time. 😂
@austin_way As always, this points to a lack of rigor in our education college and universities. Teachers trust that they are being taught how to teach well, but that hasn't been the case for a very long time now. Until teacher training changes, the system won't change.
@stevemagness I hate to break it to the "choice" advocates, but the problem is the curriculum composed of fads students are indoctrinated with at the teaching colleges. If you are hiring certified staff, that's what you are paying for. Change starts at the college level for this one.
@DanaPalubiak There is a prevailing attitude among English teachers that the amount of grading required to support that kind of curriculum merits far more compensation than they are currently receiving. This is literally hours of work outside of school.