Many parents saw America’s public education system crumble under the weight of the pandemic. Stringent policies—including school closures that went on far too long, and ineffective Zoom school for kindergarteners—had devastating effects that we are only just beginning to understand.
But, as with so many problems during the pandemic, COVID didn’t necessarily cause these structural breakdowns as much as it exposed just how broken the system was to begin with.
How broken? Consider the shocking fact that 65 percent of American fourth-grade kids can barely read.
American Public Media’s Emily Hanford uncovers this sad truth with her podcast, Sold a Story. She investigates the influential education authors who have promoted a bunk idea and a flawed method for teaching reading to American kids. She exposes how educators across the country came to believe in a system that didn’t work, and are now reckoning with the consequences: Children harmed. Tons of money wasted. An education system upended.
Guest host Katie Herzog talks to Emily about her groundbreaking reporting to ask how it all went wrong—and what we can do to make things right.
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This is like other "learning styles" stuff which tends to be much flimsier on the evidence than its advocates hoped.
There was a real postwar shift on educational ideas that cast everything that would have been in your grandparents classroom as bad. (Drills, rote learning, dunce caps, canes). Strong case obviously that the latter 2 are bad, but the baby was thrown out with the bath water in getting rid of the rest of the "discipline" bundle.
Yes children are creative and isn't that nice? But Timmy needs to actually know how to count and spell non-creatively to be an operative adult. A century ago there were people who left school at 11 who could read and write and knew basic mathematics. Now we are warehousing kids to 18 without giving them these skills.
Nice quote in the NY Post by Mike Pompeo: ‘Who’s the most dangerous person in the world? Is it Chairman Kim, is it Xi Jinping?'” Pompeo said.
“The most dangerous person in the world is Randi Weingarten. It’s not a close call.
“If you ask, ‘Who’s the most likely to take this republic down?’ It would be the teachers unions, and the filth that they’re teaching our kids, and the fact that they don’t know math and reading or writing.”
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I served on a local school board for several years in the very district where I had attended grade school, middle school, and high school. The defining moment was when my own niece - a grade-school teacher - and I were discussing her use of "git" and "fer" and "sich," "he done this," and "he done that." I said "Holly, you can't talk like that; the students look to you for the correct way to speak."
Her response? "Oh, Uncle Jim, it's no problem. The school board told us not to correct the kids' speech because THAT'S HOW THEIR PARENTS TALK." She really said that.
Congress' refusal to protect American automakers from Japanese competition in the 'seventies completely turned around the American auto industry, which at that time was making cars that were fortunate to last 100,000 miles - in fact had odometers of only five digits. My truck is eighteen years old, just turned 180,000 miles, and I expect at least another 180K. There is no fixing the education system unless we bring in real competition, and that cannot happen with forced taxing to fund failing public schools. Parents must be able to choose, and of course the teachers' unions and their acolytes in Congress howl at the prospect like broke-d*ck dogs. We need to ask ourselves whether we want to solve the problem or not and what are the likely results if we don't. The answer will be self-evident.