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What I am proposing on my "Readin', 'Ritin', 'Rithmatic" plan is that no child learns ANYTHING else from the school until they've got those three down.
No history.
No chemistry (you need math for this, so...)
No social studies.
No history and moral philosophy.
I think I'd add that once we have them up to speed with 3R the next mandatory steps are critical thinking and economics.
If you don't think our darlings can handle this, purchase you a copy of "Literature Reader, Sixth Year" by Leroy E Armstrong. I have the kindle version that Jerry Pournelle annotated.
Kids are a lot more capable of learning than we often give them credit for.
We're not demanding they learn to their capacity any more.
A decent proof of this comes from "The Civil War Diaries," which consists of letters written by soldiers during the Civil War. Modern colleges don't have people who can write so well and the one-room school house is where these authors learned.
A one room school, paid for and staffed by the local community. Often on a per student basis.
A teacher would want more students because more pay!
The older kids were expected to help the younger (or slower) kids in learning their lessons and that helped cement the lessons in the older kids minds. It was a good system, really.
The problem is that it doesn't scale up well. Even so, dividing the kids into similar sized classes by advancement worked just fine for years until someone decided that local districts couldn't decide for themselves what to teach and an ever expanding raft of things pushed the 3R's to the side as if the 3R's weren't important to understanding the rest of the dross.
I will never say that the kids can't understand it, but they need to be properly equipped to do so before being exposed to it.
That will mean reverting to harsher standards. That will mean honest grading and holding kids where they're at rather than letting them advance to stay the same age as the ones who learned.
Even if little Johnny never leaves the 2nd grade.
I agree completely. Without basic reading and writing skills nothing else matters. You can't really teach anything else useful without that. Then math is probably the next thing, because there are a whole lot of other things you really can't teach without that. Unfortunately right now our schools appear to be failing to get these things right with a lot of kids. And then are unsurprisingly failing to get anything beyond this. And then these kids are clogging up the system and keeping the kids that did learn the skills from making progress to other things.
ReplyDeleteWe need to leave kids behind until if/when they are able to succeed at the next level. Trying to push them forward when they aren't ready for it just doesn't work, and it isn't fair to the kids who are getting dragged down and not able to move ahead to their potential.
Yeah... it sucks. And maybe it's unfair in some ways. But what is happening now is unfair in many other ways. Life isn't fair. Life has never been fair. Life will never be fair. Things are what they are. Trying to pretend they are something else doesn't and can't ever work. And they're no magic solutions to any hard problems. Hard problems require hard work and may never end up with perfect and equitable outcomes. The best that can be hoped for is that everyone's outcome is as good as it could be given what there was to work with and the effort made. But right now that isn't happening. And a lot of it is stupid libtard policies that make things worse rather than better.
actually attended a 3 room school house years ago in bumfuck nebraska...little town called ringgold...it's a just a blip on the map now...nothing left there...they don't want our kids to know how to do anything...makes them dependent on big brother...sad but true...panzer guy
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