I found this podcast from this 
post:
I subbed today for a 7th and 8th grade teacher. I’m not exaggerating when I say at least 50% of the students were at a 2nd grade reading level. The students were to spend the class time filling out an “all about me” worksheet, what’s your name, favorite color, favorite food etc. I was asked 20 times today “what is this word?”. Movie. Excited. Trait. “How do I spell race car driver?”
I’ve only listened to one episode so far, but it’s really well produced, seems well-researched and very well put together.
From what I gather so far, the ways that the American public school system “teaches” kids how to read is not only completely wrong, but actually saddles them bad habits which fundamentally hinder their reading comprehension.
A huge swath of American adults are functionally illiterate, and I think I’m starting to understand why.
“…at all. The more one read, the more one was subject to indoctrination, which is something which of course I experienced myself. This is the reason why achieving “literacy” is always the first aim of communist regimes. Elementary.”
that’s the chaser that lets you know it’s not a bit and therefore even funnier in a twisted way
A lot of people are commenting about how, so what, lots of people can read and are also stupid. Except this isn’t about being stupid. Or dumb. Reading and writing is a skill you gotta be tutored into. You won’t learn it through intuition. You won’t learn it through osmosis, guesswork or because the Holy Ghost descended from the heavens to enlighten your soul. You have to be taught, step by step, how to decode writing in order to then develop it into other skills, like different levels of reading, making annotations, making summaries, prose writing, and so on. All of these things should ideally become second nature to you through a long process of ‘scholarization’, one that is formulated with full understanding of what kids of different ages tend to need, and what kids in particular may require of their teachers.
Think about it. This isn’t like zoomers being unable to use Windows because they have phones. It’s like not having a school system in the first place. Good god, the districts that keep this scam pedagogy in place are gonna create a lost generation.
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There probably is a reasonable argument to be made about it being very difficult to make reasonable democratic decisions if a person can’t read and therefore can’t seek information and views outside their immediate social circle.
Of course, also not surprising that some people would interpret that as “Afghans stupid.”
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Yeah, there are ways to mitigate the problem but widespread illiteracy is probably one of the factors that contribute to liberal democracy along the American model being an absolute shitshow when imposed in places like Afghanistan and Iraq.
Not that American style democracy isn’t also a shitshow in America, of course.
But then you’d have to elect one of the 30% of people who can read.
But then you’d have to elect one of the 30% of people who can read.
Not the case. I worked a while ago with a couple of comrades who weren’t able to comprehend the texts we had to tackle in our union work and what they do might interest you. They did speak with people about it and were often better informed than those who read the texts but thought they understood them.
you see that with foreign workers the ones who can speak english have outsised status and influence among the others
hmmm…I definitely am on the side that a functional democratic society requires literacy at high levels. Look at all the Communist countries for which one of the very first initiatives was literacy campaigns.
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A literacy campaign could be started in Afghanistan, too. I’m not sure how that would look in Afghanistan specifically because I know nothing about their history and current context beyond US intervention and the Taliban being in power, but if a proletarian government took power I’m sure that’d be one of their first steps.
The Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA),[a] renamed the Republic of Afghanistan[b] in 1987, was the Afghan state during the one-party rule of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) from 1978 to 1992. It relied heavily on assistance from the Soviet Union for most of its existence, especially during the Soviet–Afghan War.
The PDPA came to power through the Saur Revolution, which ousted the regime of the unelected autocrat Mohammed Daoud Khan; he was succeeded by Nur Muhammad Taraki as the head of state and government on 30 April 1978.[3] Taraki and Hafizullah Amin, the organizer of the Saur Revolution, introduced several contentious reforms during their rule, such as land and marriage reforms and an enforced policy of de-Islamization alongside the promotion of socialism.[4]
Education During communist rule, the PDPA government reformed the education system; education was stressed for both sexes, and widespread literacy programmes were set up.[149] By 1988, women made up 40 percent of the doctors and 60 percent of the teachers at Kabul University; 440,000 female students were enrolled in different educational institutions and 80,000 more in literacy programs.[150] In addition to introducing mass literacy campaigns for women and men, the PDPA agenda included: massive land reform program; the abolition of bride price; and raising the marriage age to 16 for girls and to 18 for boys. [151]
if only the CIA hadn’t fucked them up so badly by funding and training all those far right religious extremistsNever let the United States run Educational Aid in your country
Thank you comrade. Any book you can recommend to learn more?
I am not an expert I would check zerobooks or haymarket or verso books for the possibility of a non-brainwormed take. This one caught my eye - The forty year war on Afghanistan
But I dunno if it just comes down to both sideism or is there a more nuanced take on Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan.
Hopefully someone will convince the taliban people need to be taught to read to study the Quran
Could he read Persian?
also illiteracy is a humiliating thing to admit to in our society and it isn’t rich kids not being taught to read. mocking illiteracy is classism
in this case it’s also rich kids. teachers/schools bought into the hype at all levels despite governments telling them no stop. the difference is the rich kids can afford private tutors when their parents realize they can’t read.
the difference is the rich kids can afford private tutors when their parents realize they can’t read.
So in other words it’s not really also rich kids
what I mean is that rich school districts were also using this method. there’s a bit in the podcast where rich parents in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the US were going to the library to ask where they could get materials to teach their kids how to read.
Yeah my MIL used to be a public school teacher in a district that no one would ever call poor. Not the richest, but definitely not poor. For the last several years of her career all I ever heard from her was along the lines of “what the fuck am I supposed to be doing again? I have a room full of 9th graders who can’t read.” No idea what method they were using in the earlier grades, but well off suburban districts are definitely pumping out illiterate kids as well.
it’s probably the method outlined in the podcast. the people peddling the scam were “rockstars” in elementary education circles in anglophone world.
This isn’t like zoomers being unable to use Windows because they have phones.
damn is that an actual thing ?
I have heard this anecdotally. That Zoomers don’t really know how to use like actual computers that well. I think when I was in high school ('10 to '13) having like a personal lap top and using it for everything Including school was more of a thing. Smart phones weren’t quite as ubiquitous people still did a lot of social media and stuff on an actual computer. Now social media and casual internet browsing and media consumption are so accessible through a phone that kids aren’t really having to use as much computer stuff. I barely use actual computers except for gaming and photo editing. Like how many Zoomers do you think know what the Command Prompt is and does, ya know. I’d guess not a lot.
if so based
Literacy is a communist conspiracy
MILLENNIA of funny SQUIGGLES on stone tablets, papyrus, and PAPER
There are only THREE sounds in the word “EIGHT”, why are there FIVE letters???
They have played us for FOOLS
You won’t learn it through intuition.
You don’t? I taught myself how to read. How would you call that?
i would call that “I taught myself how to lie”.
Depends. If we mean “without a personal teacher” sure, but no one is looking at a book of a language the don’t know and just suddenly learning it.
you’ve used the word taught, which implies reasoning. which is by definition not intuitive. reading was never innate to you or anyone else.
How did you do it? What resources did you have, and how old were you?
I was about four or five, and I figured out that certain groups of glyphs in the book I was read to synchronized with the words I heard.
I did the same thing when I was 2 years old, though just because I could read them didn’t mean that I necessarily comprehended what they meant. I used to get particularly upset by ‘to let’ signs because I thought they were misspelling ‘toilet’. I complained to my mother about it on the way to nursery, and she realised that I could read well enough to notice an ‘incorrect’ spelling.
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People have just accepted that American public education is a failure and the parents have to do the real teaching. And yet so many parents don’t even know there’s anything wrong until way too late. Even if the schools are passing kids despite not being able to read, an engaged parent should be able to notice it very early on as long they read with their kid at home. My mom read to me nearly every night until I could read on my own. She would read a page and then have me read a page after a while. Eventually, I was reading whole books to her and I loved reading so much that when I got in trouble one time she took my bookcase away, leaving me with a TV that sat unused, while I bawled my eyes out.
when I got in trouble one time she took my bookcase away,
Giga Chad mom casually lifting up an entire book case and moving it out of your room.
No she just glared angrily at the bookcase until it left of its own accord
Even if the schools are passing kids despite not being able to read
And schools should always pass kids. The body of literature, theory and experiments in that regard for teaching education in Europe is quite extensive. If your society is structured around passing grades then the way to built up on the ability of students isn’t to force them for years in the same rooms, but to change what they experience, keep up the social links and give specific support.
Besides that even if a school isn’t able to give specific support it is better for kids to not be put in repeating classes.
What you write is true though, having cultural attitudes at home that do sometimes center books are great. They ought to be somewhat supplemented even for kids that are praised as being smart with other things, that are beneficial for social and physical aspects. If your kid likes a certain series, try to enable the kid to visit a fan conference about it or alike.
Just like in Le Guin’s Earth Sea, one of the most important lessons for the young magician’s apprentice wasn’t to control magic. It was to chill under trees and find calm as well as connection in nature.
A special ed teacher who had been working for decades and who knew many students who had been held back told me the same. Even as adults these students would tell him that things had been going okay until they had been held back. One administration hinted at doing the same to one of our kids because he didn’t speak English at an academic level, but we worked our asses off to bring him up to speed in a matter of months, and the same special ed teacher told us that parents don’t actually need to hold their kids back if they don’t want to (something the principal failed to mention). Soon enough our kid was reading, writing, and speaking at his grade level (which he’d already been doing in his mother tongue) and the principal acted like she had never even suggested that she wanted to hold him back. And shit like this could have ruined his life! School is already difficult enough without every figure of authority telling you you’re too much of a fuckup to advance with your friends to the next grade!
And schools should always pass kids.
I’m absolutely not familiar with the literature you’re talking about here, but I have failed a lot of classes in my time, probably even a majority of them a couple years (7th and 8th grades) and I know that I would have been miserable (or more miserable I guess lol) if I’d been made to repeat things for that.
I did actually once have my French teacher try and make me start over from the beginning with French the next year instead of advancing to the next level, but I ended up unexpectedly moving to Québec the following year instead where my French was good enough within the year to join in the regular French first language classes so lmao
she took my bookcase away, leaving me with a TV that sat unused
My intuition suggests that this contravenes the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 26.
tbh i still wouldnt take away the bookcase, if anything i might swap the books out for more boring educational ones.
Parents are essential for student growth and education but that doesn’t make them responsible for all of it. The entire point of school is to take on the the major burden of teaching kids with expertise and efficiency and providing a place for children to be with other children.
While parents aren’t the people solely responsible for their childrens education, it is striking to me how things have changed recently.
The kids coming in are less well-equpped than they used to be. Not potty trained, can’t tie their shoes, can’t tell the time. Like it used to be a few kids that had an issue or two, but now it’s a bunch with a lot of issues.
Things have gotten worse recently. Parents aren’t as able to help their children as they used to be. This does increase the work load for teachers.Making everyone desperate and afraid seems to be working wonders! Capitalism is so cool
That’s why I personally don’t want to have kids. Considering the state of labor in the west, how are parents supposed to be able to spend time with their kids? Granted when I was growing up, my mom always stayed at home because she could. She didn’t have to work because my dad made more than enough to provide for a family on a single income (pre-2008 recession).
Stay at home moms have to be hella rare in this age of rampant exploitation, so I have no idea how kids are being raised. Add on the fact that there’s no guaranteed parental leave in
and I’m at a complete loss
People think school should prepare you for your future job in an amazon warehouse
We’re gonna start seeing Playskool babies’ first parcel scanner toys soon.
That exists and kids love scanning things with something that goes BEEP really loud
I guess it’s just daycare to these people…
That’s mostly what it is after a certain grade level anyways
I’ve just binged the whole podcast and Jesus Christ what a roller coaster.
You americans have had it bad before this Mary Clay cue shit was started to get outlawed.
Good thing I was taught Polish reading as a kid with phonics due to how simple it is, similar to spanish 1 character 1 sound. Except when it is a diagraph, which even then have a consistent sound to them most of the time.
“Grzecznie” and “Przenieś” would be examples of that, but nonetheless.
What a fucking shit system spearheaded by well meaning, ideology trash can eating, dumbass liberals and capitalists with money to earn by sacrificing kids… More reasons why being born in Poland maybe wasn’t so bad after all.
I think adult illiteracy is pretty high in the U.S. as well. I have had multiple middle managers who cannot write a coherent paragraph to save their lives, to the degree that I have had to go literally ask them what they mean because otherwise it would be reading tea leaves.
Even worse is people who are lifer manual laborers, they can be very smart and great with their hands, but ask them to read something above very basic text and their eyes just glaze over. Something has gone seriously wrong here.
79% of American adults are literate. When I learned that recently I thought that had to be some kind of mistake. It can’t be that fucking low, right? But it is.
Honestly, with my personal experience I am surprised it is even that high. I would personally guess more around 70% - 75%, with some rural areas dipping as low as 65% - 70%.
Insert Parenti Cuban literacy quote here
this one?
You can look at any existing socialist country— if you don’t want to call them socialist, call them whatever you want. Post capitalist— whatever, I don’t care. Call them camels or window shades, it doesn’t matter as long as we know the countries we’re talking about. If you look at any one of those countries, you can evaluate them in several ways. One is comparing them to what they had before, and that to me is what’s very compelling. That’s what so compelling about Cuba, for instance. When I was in Cuba I was up in the Escambia, which is like the Appalachia of Cuba, very rugged mountains with people who were poor, or they were. And I said to this campesino, I said, “Do you like Fidel?” and he said “Si si, with all my soul.” I remember this gesture, with all our souls. I said “Why?” and he pointed to this clinic right up on the hill which we had visited. He said, “Look at that.” He said “Before the revolution, we never saw a doctor. If someone was seriously ill, it would take twenty people to carry that person, it’d go day and night. It would take two days to get to the hospital. First because it was far away and second because you couldn’t go straight, you couldn’t cross the latifundia lands, the boss would kill you. So, you had to go like this, and often when we got to the hospital, the person might be dead by the time we got there. Now we have this clinic up here with a full-time doctor. And today in Cuba when you become a doctor you got to spend two years out in the country, that’s your dedication to the people. And a dentist that comes one day a week. And for serious things, we’re not more than 20 minutes away from a larger hospital. That’s in the Escambia. So that’s freedom. We’re freer today, we have more life.” And I talked to a guy in Havana who says to me “All I used to see here in Havana, you call this drab and dull, we see it as a cleaner city. It’s true, the paint is peeling off the walls, but you don’t see kids begging in the streets anymore and you don’t see prostitutes.” Prostitution used to be one of the biggest industries. And today this man is going to night school. He said “I could read! I can read, do you know what it means to be able to read? Do you know what it means to be able not to read?” I remember when I gave my book to my father. I dedicated a book of mine to him, “Power and the Powerless” to my father, I said “To my father with my love,” I gave him a copy of the book, he opened it up and looked at it. He had only gone to the seventh grade, he was the son of an immigrant, a working-class Italian. He opens the book and he starts looking through it, and he gets misty-eyed, very misty-eyed. And I thought it was because he was so touched that his son had dedicated a book to him. That wasn’t the reason. He looks up to me and he says ‘I can’t read this, kid” I said “That’s okay dad, neither can the students, don’t worry about that. I mean I wrote it for you, it’s your book and you don’t have to read it. It’s a very complicated book, an academic book. He says, “I can’t read this book.” And the defeat. The defeat that man felt. That’s what illiteracy is about, that’s what the joy of literacy programs is. That’s why you have people in Nicaragua walking proud now for the first time. They were treated like animals before, they weren’t allowed to read, they weren’t taught to read. So, you compare a country from what it came from, with all it’s imperfections. And those who demand instant perfection the day after the revolution, they go up and say “Are there civil liberties for the fascists? Are they gonna be allowed their newspapers and their radio programs, are they gonna be able to keep all their farms? The passion that some of our liberals feel, the day after the revolution, the passion and concern they feel for the fascists, the civil rights and civil liberties of those fascists who are dumping and destroying and murdering people before. Now the revolution has gotta be perfect, it’s gotta be flawless. Well that isn’t my criteria, my criteria is what happens to those people who couldn’t read? What happens to those babies that couldn’t eat, that died of hunger? And that’s why I support revolution. The revolution that feeds the children gets my support. Not blindly, not unqualified. And the Reaganite government that tries to stop that kind of process, that tries to keep those people in poverty and illiteracy and hunger, that gets my undiluted animosity and opposition.
—Michael Parenti
lmao dam these days I can’t read Parenti without tearing up
That part about his father is straight up my grandmother, she can’t read, not even her native language, because the French colonialists never taught her
Fuck any liberal who stands in the way of global revolution
Always gets me teary eyed
saved this as an image for ez redeployment
leftist meme
so tru besti
Highlighted in Yellow for historical accuracy.
(Not so) fun fact: The FBI specifically made ‘creative writing’ workshops back in the 1950s and 60s to kneecap media literacy and implant anti-communist propaganda into graduate programs so that those who went on to teaching would instill that same ideology into their students.
Aw yeah, the only reason we would ever fund the arts is either for para-military parades or anti-communusm.
This is really fascinating stuff. It explains a lot of things I’ve noticed about other people in my life I’ve known who are poor readers. I’ve always been a great reader for as long as I can remember, had parents who helped teach me to read and read with me and all that which can help a lot. The “incorrect” way that school are teaching to kids is to basically guess what words means instead of trying to memorize the phonetic pronunciation of individual words to commit them to memory. I remember in high school there being activities where we would go around the room and different students would read different parts of like a book or textbook out loud. And as someone lucky enough to have learned how to read well, I was always flabbergasted when I would hear some people read. I’d be reading along in the book and thinking “what the fuck, they’re saying words that aren’t even on this page. How is this even possible to mess up this badly that you’re not just mispronouncing words you’re literally inserting words out of nowhere” and the research would suggest that’s its because they were literally just reading the first part of the word and guessing the rest of it. Zero, like, base line understanding of what letter combinations make what sounds. No wonder some people hate reading it’s basically playing a guessing game 😳
Thanks for the recommendation–will definitely be checking this out.
edit: I just listened to the first episode and WTF, the people responsible for getting this new curriculum into schools should be in prison. It’s a crime of unfathomable proportions against children who have no way to defend themselves.
The “reading recovery/whole language” people are literally a cult. There are so many quotes that boil down to, “Teaching phonics and having kids actually figure out words just felt so traditional. Reading recovery was so refreshing and Lucy Calkins is my hero!”
There was an audio clip of a worm-brained lib going to a Lucy seminar and she could not stop gushing. “I get to see Lucy! This is the best day of my life!” and so on. These fuckers get the wall. This shit is still happening because of all the acolytes that refuse to accept the dogma of actually fucking reading to learn how to read. The Soviets, Cubans, and Chinese figured this out decades ago. America is going to become a client state of China in our lifetimes because no one knows how to do anything.
America is going to become a client state of China
I’m all aboard as long as we get some belt and road over here.
America is going to become a client state of China in our lifetimes because no one knows how to do anything.
Anecdotal story, and I mean no offence to Americans. I was once day-drinking on the rooftop of an airport hotel with a mate, and struck up a conversation with a chubby Danish fellow. He said he was a business owner. He noted that neither of us were Americans so he felt comfortable talking a bit of shit.
He said his company does business with quite a few European countries, but also Americans. He said he hates dealing with Americans because every single time he had a question for them they always had to put him on hold and ask their supervisor because nobody ever seemed to know how to make a decision.
“WHY? WHY do you have to ask your supervisor? This is a simple yes or no question!”
And then he sighed and said “I honestly have no idea how these people made it to the moon and back”.
There is a deep fear of responsibility and being wrong that is beaten into Americans from childhood. No one wants to be the one at fault, so they always defer to authority. It makes them into very compliant workers who also need constant supervision. People are so poorly educated they are often incapable of doing anything without direct instruction, including answering simple questions. It’s real fucked up here and this podcast made me shake with rage at how much more fucked up it is for kids now. I’m just thankful my mom took an active role in my education and taught me phonics, reading, and basic math before kindergarten.
In our defense, if we fuck up, we could lose our jobs, and then we’re really fucked.
Wait, what would the alternative to phonics be?
Either read through some of the linked thread or listen to the first episode of the podcast. It’s so dumb it’s unbelievable. There’s a “system” that is literally “just guess lol”.
Yeah I’m seeing it now, but I just couldn’t believe it - Thought I must’ve misunderstood something. They just make kids memorize whole words instead of learning how letters funtion? It’s wild. The us is apparently just full of illiterate youths now?
It does explain quite a few encounters I’ve had on here and twitter, where users misunderstood basic stuff. A lot of people just reiterating what I write as if it was an argument against me and the like. Seems like reading comprehension is non-existent.no no, it’s even worse. read the whole word is an older idea. they’re teaching kids to guess the word without even looking at it. they’re taught to check if they have the word right by looking at the first couple of letters. like they’re teaching kids by literally covering up the word and only showing it after they guess.
i can’t really believe what i’m reading. i’m a teacher in the global south. i don’t even teach formative years, but this feels like the Three Dimensional Chess fantasy applied to pedagogy.
yeah, it’s less teaching kids how to read and more purposefully sabotaging their ability to read, based on a fantasy of teaching them to love reading. it’s cult woo shit.
But how can they check if they don’t know what the letters say? This seems like such an odd idea.
It’s always good with several different ways of learning something, but this doesn’t seem to be teaching the subject at all? Like it’s just guesswork, and it’s guesswork that still requires the ability to parse letters, which at that point just teach 'em to read.context, syntax, and the first couple of letters. they teach them phonics but prevent them from using it to sound out words.
Thats actually how i used to read a while back. I was taugth the normal way letter by letter. But then somtime in middle school i realised i read way too slow so i started experimenting trying to get rid of vocalization wich was the biggest inefficiency. And the solution was to grasp the meaning of the word without reading it compleatly. If its some set of consonants i cant even pronounce i cant suvvocalize them can i? Until eventually i no longer needed to do that.
Granted i cant spell for shit. But its actually more efficient to read like that.
It took me over a decade of trying really hard to stop my subvocalizing. If i had been taugth like you descrive from the begining i would not have had to spend so much effort to get rid of bad reading habits.
It took me over a decade of trying really hard to stop my subvocalizing.
I’ve never heard this term and I’m losing my mind because I’m a very slow reader and, based on what I’m seeing, more-literate people don’t hear the text in their head? I literally never considered that this would be absent from reading aside from recognizing a familiar term (like the name of a store, “ambulance,” whatever). God damn it . . .
I mean I don’t think this method of education has ever been widespread enough to entirely explain low literacy rates in the US. There are other factors at play here.
My best friend is a literacy specialist and the stories she tells me are absolute doomer fuel. Lesson plans written by text book companies that do the exact opposite of what the scientific literature states is effective. White boomer teachers screeching at ELL 5 year olds about their inability to speak English and shaming them for speaking in their own tongue, even when other students can also speak it. Kids getting pushed into special ed referrals because teachers just don’t know the basic skills of differentiated instruction. School administrators pushing boxed assessment programs that aren’t rigorous, aren’t research-based, or aren’t appropriate for what they’re being used for.
The saddest part is that the traditional view of some kids being inherently worse at reading is almost always just wrong. The number of kids who actually have a learning disability that will permanently stop them from reaching parity with their peers is extremely low. Anyone else who struggles has been failed by the educational system. Period. They could have caught up and stayed caught up with just a little extra attention. The literature is all there. We know how to teach people to read. We can do it efficiently and without causing stress or trauma. And the system seems hell bent on preventing that from happening.
I remember reading about how some 1st/2nd gen young immigrants (like under 10) not really being able to speak any language cause their parents didn’t speak their language at home with the hope of helping the kids get a leg up - except they weren’t stellar at English and could’ve used a lot of adult ESL classes. So those kids never really got their parents first language and they couldn’t really speak English, and they were kind of a mess at school for a bit. The official guidance was, just speak to them in your most proficient language and the school system will catch them up in Kindergarten and Grade 1.
I’m not a teacher, but I had a job where I had to manage younger adults and a significant portion of communication was done in text. When I started the job I wondered why so many used weird short hand and what I thought was purposeful misspelling. I later learned that it wasn’t shorthand, but that many were just barely literate.
This is from the
thread. So, essentially, we have a whole generation of Charlies from Always Sunny. America is fucked.I am legitimately sick to my stomach from anger after learning about this. A bunch of snake oil peddling cultists have scammed the American and other Anglo school systems, from the sound of it, for decades. And tens of millions, if not a hundred million kids have suffered for it.
I remember there was a opinion piece saying that Education in the Eastern Bloc and China is a tool for the government to control people.
I guess not able to read is a way to not turn red
it’s even more nonsensical than that. governments have been trying and failing to stamp this out for 20 years. the people behind it built a cult following in elementary education circles and rebranded their curriculum so they could keep peddling their nonsense, changing the description to avoid falling afoul of the law but without changing the content. it’s literally that the publishing company had a much larger marketing budget than any of the researchers saying “no, stop”. so until public media started running the story, there was no meaningful education for teachers telling them " this theory of reading education is wrong".
it’s capitalism eating itself.
You’ll think that people look at public services like education as a product are stupid but we all know deep inside that the commodification of education has the end goal of making more divisive with premium private education for the elite and the bare minimal for the ‘‘public’’ education (which can be run by religious institution just like the good olde days).
Ultimately this is just a way to stratify society with more defined castes
I’m flashing back to my middle school days when most of the kids in “accelerated programs” came from wealthy families
That rhetoric perfectly tracks with the charter school push to turn education into job training programs for K-8 students
History will be provided by a for-profit coloration, so no need to worry about that bit. If you go into school knowing how to read, then great. We’ll group you in with the kids who will be of use to any of the Fortune 500 companies. Otherwise, we’ll group you with the “other” low-skilled kids. The only critical thinking skills that will be used will be the ones that teach you how to solve business problems
Charter schools are stupid because it’s never about education. We all know what they do with ‘‘problematic’’ students.
This is just a last filter before dumping the leftover into military school in this shitty Folgers coffee called the privatized education system
Something something Parenti talk Literacy being abhorred by the right because it leads them to read which leads them to the left
It’s almost ironic because literacy is what created a caste of liberals within the USSR and China that turns up to be more pro-western post 80s.
Don’t you love how ‘’‘totalitarian’‘’ regimes just like to sabotage themselves
Found it! It’s just some schmuck on twitter tho https://twitter.com/akoz33/status/1232052025514496002
And yeah the intelligentsia in the east block is an interesting thing to look at. On the other hand, theres too far and you get pol pot
British & Polish citizen, perm. resident of Japan. Reaganite, Thatcherite, Zionist, anti-“Green Utopia”
1989 incarnate. The blackest reaction personified. A cautionary tale for any left leaning person. Fucking dumbass.
You got any more ways to describe him?
I was thinking about this in the context of the UK the other day, and it makes sense to wear down the educational system as much as possible, mainly for two reasons.
Quality isn’t necessary. The education system up to 14-ish years old serves essentially as free(ish) daycare so parents don’t have an excuse not to work. This then allows rent/house prices to inflate up to what a couple can pay, rather than a single parent.
The uneducated masses are easy to control. I work/live in a very well-educated environment, but have regular contact with less educated people. It’s insane the things they’ll believe in.
I think education-as-daycare became really apparent during the first year of the pandemic. Businesses and the gov were really pushing for kids to go back to school so they could send their parents back to work.
When our kids were 7th and 8th grade my wife subbed at the school for a while. She worked a number of days at their grade level and a grade or 2 higher.
What she saw was very similar.
Our kids were getting straight As. No exaggeration. Yet they were having trouble doing homework consisting of math problems they struggled with 2 years prior.
They weren’t being taught anything, they were being prepped for the standardized tests given at the end of the year. Also, any tests and quizzes throughout the year they were given multiple tries to retake, and that explains the straight As.
That’s when we pulled them out and began homeschooling. No regerts.
We’ve been homeschooling since the pandemic started but my kids said they want to go back to school this year, so we’re letting them go back. I’ve told them that I’ll be with them, though, if they change their minds. I have years of experience as a teacher overseas and I’ve also subbed in local school districts. I didn’t encounter issues with reading pre-pandemic but I’m pretty sure now that after three years of doing commie homeschool, my kids are the ones who should be teaching social studies rather than learning from the white liberals whose only job is to obscure the past and confuse the young. We also tutored the fuck out of our older kid who was having issues with math. Thanks to doing that with khan academy, he no longer has those issues, and both of our kids are now interested in coding (which isn’t offered for kids their age at their school).
The rapid gutting of the education system is a understated yet horrifying thing.
Well yeah. The average reading level for American adults is 7th grade level. The system hasn’t worked for a long time.
I was admitted to college as a secondary Ed major, and switched to CS and became a STEM lord because of what I saw when I did my first observation in a classroom. I realized that America does not give a fuck about the next generation, and that I would have to do education as a second career after I was financially established, because it’s incredibly difficult to be a good teacher and be there for all your students when you’re financially struggling yourself.
The school administrators don’t care, the textbook industry does not care, and sometimes the parents don’t care. It’s very difficult
