Older millennial here. Feeling pretty worried about my end-of-life care at the moment. I have visions of a troop of clowns trying to take care of me as my body slowly shuts down.
For years, schools taught reading using approaches that de-emphasized phonics and encouraged strategies such as guessing words based on context clues. As reading scores tumbled over the past decade, parents, scholars and literacy advocates pushed for teaching methods that align with decades of research about how kids learn to read — largely by sounding out words.
Yeah that was a huge fuck up.
https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/ goes into detail.
But also our society doesn’t value education very much. Teachers don’t make good money, so many people who would be good at it go into other jobs. One of my recent jobs had like 3 ex-teachers in software. They were making like double for half the work. That’s great for them, but do we really need more tech setups that much?
Just sound it out was one of my least favorite things to be told as a child. That’s not how English works. Take Pacific Ocean for instance, literally every C in those two words is pronounced differently. And more importantly knowing how a word is pronounced is not going to give you any fucking understanding of what it means.
It’s certainly better than “look at the pictures and guess”.
Go read (or listen to) the article. People who have studied this more than either of us have weighed in.
Until the answer is “every student learns differently“ the answer will always be wrong.
That’s an amazing degree of hubris. Get out of here lol
How is it hubris to say that not every student learns the same way? For real? No it’s hubris to say that everybody should have to learn the same way and you’re fucked if you don’t learn well.
It’s not just kids…
I don’t know if people are relying on AI and losing critical thinking, long term COVID, micro plastics in the brain, or with the lack of reward for labor everyone just stopped giving a shit.
But something has fucking happened in the last 5 years.
Way too many people are just incapable of incredibly basic thinking.
This is societal burn out. Everyone hates it and is done if you dont have 7 or 8 figures in the bank.
We need a fucking worldwide revolution
It’s like a slow slide into civilization oblivion. Everything all at once seems to be getting worse. Housing costs are up, teaching salaries are down, kids aren’t learning as fast. Food prices, obesity, falling health standards. Oversized cars, suburban sprawl, lack of investment in public transportation. A.I. constantly giving wrong answers, doubling work.
I think a big factor is effort isn’t rewarded.
The only people I see giving a fuck these days are veterans, or others who are used to doing shit because no one else will do it. In any military organization at least 20% are pulling a Marshawn Lynch every day they put a uniform on.
Why bust your ass instead of doing the absolute bare minimum to not get yelled at?
It’s like running from a bear versuses running after a rabbit. Fear motivates you to not be slowest, pursuit of rewards motivates you to be the fastest.
There’s no reasonable expectations of rewards, were all just avoiding getting eaten
Even just driving, people drive like morons compared to just 5 or 10 years ago and it wasn’t exactly great 5 or 10 years ago.
I’ve noticed things like no more cursive being taught, schools dumb down grading systems to inflate test scores to keep gov funding vs tackling the challenges of waning attention spans, and many others.
The other day I saw an ad for Sketcher’s “slip in shoes” for no more tying necessary. It’s not just YouTube or TikTok that’s adopted these quick play video styles that kids doom scroll, now it’s on Disney + and I’m sure other platforms.
It’s a huge technological effort to slowly remove critical thinking skills, independency skills, and just overall more obedient. Legit Idiocracy.
It’s been 23 years and I still view my move from Velcro shoes to laces to be a complete and utter downgrade. And cursive is archaic.
Everyone else seems to be focusing on the slip on shoes, but I just wanted to say cursive sucks and time spent on it is IMO wasted. Should teach/practice legible printing instead, though even bad printing is often more readable than most cursive.
I think that brand of shoes is at least somewhat designed for the elderly to use. I didn’t know they had ‘no-tie’ shoes but the pair of ordinary Sketcher’s sneakers I have (w/laces), which are great, have this fabric loop thing behind the heels that I think is supposed to help people who might struggle to get them on their feet. You can put a finger in the loop and haul them on if you need/want to.
Loafers (no laces) have been a thing forever. I often wear “boat shoes” or “docksiders” which come with leather laces that you pretty much never tie/untie. These shoes are effectively loafers for most people and are super comfortable.
Alright fight me the sketchers slip-in shoes are amazing. Tying both shoes to take out the garbage is 50 seconds of my life I’ll never get back. It’s like having a pair of semi-formal crocs.
My wife is highly intelligent and prefers to wear ballet flats, I don’t think you’re going to be able to convince anybody of a relationship between tying shoes and intelligence.
Gonna have to call bullshit on the going against slipon shoes. That doesnt necessarily have to involve intelligence, some people just like to be able to come and go without needing to lace up/delace every time or constantly. It arguably makes way more sense than having to deal with laces 2x for every single excursion.
I know its probably an Idiocracy thing but you couldnt pay me to rely on tied shoes, I want to slip in and out and get going. If im going running/rollerblading/skating ofc ill lace up but otherwise why if you have a comfortable aesthetic pair of slipons?
Usually those shoes are for old people who physically can’t tie laces
Or people who like to come and go seamlessly
“US kids”.
Other countries still care about education. Stupid people are easier to control, hence why the US has been purposely abandoning their children. They import smart people from other countries as it’s easy to also rort the system if you’re looking for funding from wealthy investors, abusing staff due to the poor employee protections, weak environmental protections and easy access to corruption.
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Sadly not only US I follow the education news of Quebec and Ontario. It’s not that great
Excessive Technology for students to use in the classroom is directly linked to lower test scores.
Reasons:
School work like any job has boring and monotonous tasks: Chromebooks etc offer endless opportunity for kids to avoid doing their work. Games, videos, or just random browsing.
Different learning methods of different students: For many students the physical act of writing letters etc on paper or reading from a physical book helps, them retain information better than a screen.
Slower speed - When learning something going slower improves retention and accuracy. It forces the brain to process the information more completely rather than skimming.
I know of a kindergarten teacher who can’t spell basic words like “minute” nor differentiate between homophones (e.g. “weather” vs “whether” and you’re/your).
She is also coincidentally deep into TikTok and AI. It’s really sad.
