Thomas Howard

Husband, father, teacher of social studies in Millersport, OH. Love Jesus, Family, and sports in that order!

[Thomas Howard @Thoward62]

@BaldyNFL 💯

[Thomas Howard @Thoward62]

@the_det_times You left out the crippling turnovers… he’s gotta do better

[Thomas Howard @Thoward62]

It’s the only way to move forward in this age of absurdity.

[Fernando Ortega @Ferndiggity]

Amen

[Thomas Howard @Thoward62]

@KuKhahil Did Orlando just complete an entire quarter without one single personal foul called???

[Thomas Howard @Thoward62]

@itsAntWright @UM_Insiders Great block…terrible call!

[Michael Strong @flowidealism]

John Taylor Gatto was named New York State Teacher of the Year. Upon receiving the award, he quit and spent the rest of his life writing devastating critiques of the educational system he had mastered.

Gatto argued that regardless of the official curriculum, schools actually teach seven hidden lessons. The first is confusion. Students learn disconnected facts across dozens of subjects with no integration or meaning. The second is class position. Students learn their place in the social hierarchy. The third is indifference. Students learn that nothing is worth finishing because the bell always rings. The fourth is emotional dependency. Students learn to surrender their will to a chain of command. The fifth is intellectual dependency. Students learn to wait for experts to tell them what to think. The sixth is provisional self-esteem. Students learn that their worth depends on expert evaluation. The seventh is that they are always being watched and have no privacy.

These lessons, Gatto argued, are the actual function of schooling. The explicit curriculum of reading, writing, and arithmetic is almost incidental. The real purpose is to produce passive, dependent, compliant citizens who wait for authorities to tell them what to do and think.

Trad schooling amounts to thirteen years of training in being passive and dependent.

I have seen this play out with hundreds of students. When I created Montessori middle schools in the San Francisco Bay Area, about half the students came up through Montessori elementary and about half came from public schools. When we opened, the Montessori kids immediately began doing their work, taking initiative, choosing what to tackle first. The public school students were lost. They would stare at their desks until we walked over and helped them plan their morning. It took at least a semester, sometimes a full year, before they could function in an environment that asked them to direct their own learning.

These were not less intelligent children. They had simply been trained differently. For years, someone else had made all the decisions about what they would do, when they would do it, and how they would do it. When that structure was removed, they did not know how to operate.

Agency is natural to children unless we train it out of them.

When I coach parents on evaluating their children's education, I tell them to ignore grades entirely. The question is whether their children are taking initiative, being responsible, and becoming empowered moral beings. If a child is getting straight A's but has no initiative and no sense of personal responsibility, that child is being damaged by their education regardless of how it looks on paper.

[𝐁𝐫𝐚𝐝 𝐉𝐨𝐡𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐧 @DrBradJohnson]

Standardized testing is developmentally inappropriate in elementary school.
And here’s why.
According to the stages of development described by Jean Piaget, young children learn very differently than standardized tests measure.
In the early years, learning is social and relational.
Children learn through play, conversation, movement, exploration, and interaction with others.
Logical, structured thinking begins developing around age seven, but it is not consistently solid for many children until around age eleven.
Yet we start standardized testing years earlier.
Before many children are developmentally ready for it.
In the early years, the real work of learning is happening here:
Self-regulation
Social skills
Curiosity
Confidence
Learning how to focus, handle frustration, and keep trying
Those are the foundations of learning.
When we replace play, exploration, movement, and social interaction with early testing, we are not increasing rigor.
We are pushing academics before the foundation is built.
If standardized testing is used at all, it makes far more developmental sense after age eleven.
Elementary school should be where children learn how to learn.

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

As we begin our journey through #Lent, let us ask the Lord to grant us the gift of true conversion of heart, so that we may better respond to His love for us and share that love with those around us.

[Thomas Howard @Thoward62]

@bluebyninety Majority of their points are from the FT line. Can’t get buckets against this Michigan D!

[Thomas Howard @Thoward62]

@44AlanHenderson Appreciate that he is wearing #44! Go Joshua!

[Thomas Howard @Thoward62]

@TheFieldOf68 Does anybody take this guy seriously as a ball coach anymore? Who would want to play for him? I’m a little surprised he can fill out a roster, unless it’s the UCLA mystique that brings them in. He’s the biggest sourpuss complainer out there. He may need some professional help!

[Thomas Howard @Thoward62]

@Michellek4040 Did we dodge a bullet not getting DeBoer???

[Thomas Howard @Thoward62]

@OleTimeHardball Clemente or Kaline would get him out!

[Thomas Howard @Thoward62]

@Wisdom_HQ Polo

[Thomas Howard @Thoward62]

@TimMcCormick40 How may of those Lasalle offensive rebounds are 18-20 foot rebounds off bricked 3s?

[NRM84 @Mappy6984]

Hate

[Thomas Howard @Thoward62]

@woodwardsports First Buckeye I’ve seen spell out their state by himself… it usually takes teamwork to spell that 4 letter word.

[Thomas Howard @Thoward62]

@JonathanTurley She’s always been shameless. Why would one expect anything else.

[Thomas Howard @Thoward62]

@allenanalysis Tell me you don’t deeply understand macro economics
Without telling me you don’t understand macro economics. This just tells me I should buy stock in insurance companies and big Pharma and get richer as they do the same. I promise you they will NOT lower costs to consumers!

[Thomas Howard @Thoward62]

@44AlanHenderson @Costco 💯