California is one of the most prosperous states, yet it has some of the worst and shittiest education. I went to one of the public schools and universities, and I was the top of my class many times. I’d consider myself like a fair amount above average, not super genius despite what people like to tell me. Imagine how bad the lower end of the spectrum is here. Some high schoolers can’t do middle school math, and our reading comprehension is shit. How is it that I was reading 300-500+ page novels like The Hobbit in 4th grade over 1.5 decades ago but now people literally fail to understand the lessons of books like Animal Farm in high school and embrace Communism?
I used to teach math at a small arts college. The class I taught most often was remedial. I started with addition. That was the only one most of the kids knew. Because by the time I got to multiplication, I found out many didn't know their times tables.
Last time I applied to teach at a High School, the interviewers asked me how I'd do group projects. When I said I didn't use many group projects for Math, they seemed unhappy. When I asked what they were thinking of, they said "Oh, our last Math teacher gave problem solving exercises. Like, what equipment would you bring to go camping. No right or wrong answers." ("But that's not math," I didn't say.).
Is this precise problem written somewhere in the curriculum? Going through high school, I remember being given a problem exactly like this multiple times.
I also remember history teachers often beginning with a problem relating to some investigation of a school fight (students had to determine who's a good source and stuff).
Now that I think about it, reuse of problems across classes and grade levels was really common.
I used to get so annoyed in history - all grades- when I was in school because they never managed to finish the textbook. Maybe got up to WWI or so and then just ran out of time. I never understood why the teachers didn't just divide # of chapters by weeks of class and get it done. Luckily I did a lot of reading on my own but I don't think kids do that as much now. Their lack of knowledge of history is appalling.
Well, I never had any question like that in a Math class. I'm not that old, but....
I remember back in College where they gave a scenario about responsibility by telling a story of some girl who has to trade her honor to get some guy to take her in her boat to visit her love interest. Her love interest rejects her after finding out what she did to cross the river, so she finds another guy to beat the crap out of him. That popped up more than once....
I teach special education as well. Just left a large school where I taught reading. I had kids in 9th and 10th grade reading at a 3rd grade level. And these weren’t kids with severe learning disabilities either. They just didn’t give a shit and played the system throughout the years.
English teacher here (middle school thru college 100/200 levels): why? because the majority of students come into each of the grade levels I've just described not having the vocabulary, spelling, or basic grammar skills to be able to read those.
At the schools I've taught at over the last 25+ years, there has been about a level decline in reading/writing ability for each 5 year period -- that means the average college student today, coming into my 100 level course...can barely read/write at the 9th grade level of students 30 years ago. And some are worse than that -- more like can't read at the 5th grade level of students in the 80s.
This of couse means that they can't read the texts for history or science, nor write intelligible papers in the same. And then we can talk about math skills, which I believe are going the same way (at least without calculators) -- which means the science and tech classes have to be dumbed down...and on it goes to we are all here...fml.
Oml editing people’s papers in school was the most disappointing thing. Writing ended up being like my ace subject in college whether it was persuasive or technical, though I never had to take super advanced writing beyond some specialized writing courses for accounting. People would write incoherently or have absolutely zero structure to their paragraphs. Thoughts would spill everywhere and grammar was absolutely atrocious. People need to understand as well that wordiness ≠ good. It’s actually better for things to be concise unless it’s meant to be descriptive.
Yes, welcome to my world -- aka. 'this is the reason teacher smokes and drinks when she gets off work' (well, the smoking part; I don't really drink). Yes, I realize it is the education system that has done this: they've done it to students, to parents, to society, and they've done it to me, and I've been a part of it...fml.
I'm working on that with my jr. high level kid at the moment -- content? very good, even some advanced critical thinking skills are there. Ability to coherently paragraph and syntax? Not so much.
Same goes for math: she gets more advanced geometry and some basic physics theories and formulas (she understand how to do them, why we do them, and where she can get the information to do them)...but she's getting caught up by not being as solid with basic freaking math skills. I've had her start helping her autistic sister with math and grammar, because the autistic sister, whom the school basically has considered incapable of advanced learning, has had those basic skills drilled into her, so she's better than her older, normal sister at them. Hey, whatever works is my game.
I read a paper that a student dictated to his phone and printed out. He didn't correct anything including the misspelling of his own name!!!!! There was no punctuation so the whole page was one long sentance.
College athletes are even worse than English language learners. I guess because grammar is racist? Which believing that grammar is racist in itself is racist because people of color cannot learn basic grammar....? 🤔 I digress.
I taught both -- a lot of the ESL at college is taught by private companies (that's a whole other shady business but...). The international students have to reach a certain standard of English before they can get into the university. Sometimes the companies hire shit (although this tends to start a problem when said students' gov'ts. who paid for this start getting failed students back -- so sometimes the shit gets weeded out); often they get English teachers who have ran afoul of PC university or public schools -- many of them are very good at what they do...teaching actual English. Secondly, the incoming students have to learn grammar, vocabulary, spelling, reading/listening comprehension, and speaking/writing skills...to they get a lot of fundamentals that American students just don't get anymore. I've taught in the elementary schools as well: we don't teach basic grammar really: we don't teach sentence writing, we don't teach paragraph writing...it's straight to essays (7 year olds who can't spell that well; can't really compose a good sentence...writing 'essays"...fml). Use the computer, use grammar and spell check and yes, dictate to your phone...that's what a lot of teachers tell these kids to do (probably because some of the younger teachers can't do it either; and that's in the SBoE's curriculum guidelines: look them up, they're a trip!).
The college athletes are there to play a sport -- for that matter, non-athletes are there to fill chairs and give the college money. The colleges don't give a rat's ass if they learn anything or even graduate. Athletes just get to stay in school...if they're any good.
I know there has also been a debate for many years about not graduating, or moving to the next grade, students that don't pass. That really seems to be something that needs to be re-instituted.
What went wrong?
We let socialists march through the institution -- some of these pedagogies had their formation nearly 100 years ago; they were just allowed to take hold and thrive. That does, however, tell you just how strong the institution of public education was (and American society as well): it has taken 100 years to bring it down...but, they did. I'd say it really picked up ramming speed in the late 90s/early 00s: the gov't. really let the floodgates loose at that time; at least for me, there was a marked uptick in oversight (prior I was allowed some latitude in creating my own syllabi) as well as a marked downtick in student abilities (we went from what I would consider a pretty basic, easily comprehended English 101 text to a text more suited for high school during that time frame; now, it's even worse -- students today cannot read the basic text that we had in 1998 -- they can't read it; their vocabulary skills and ability to read more than simple sentences isn't enough!). So the 20 somethings you see today are the first products of full blast education on socialism.
I work with people who graduated from universities in CA who can't construct a simple sentence. And, worse, don't think it's a problem they're functionally illiterate.
Half the people in college pay other people to do their work, outright plagiarize someone else's essay, or collaborate and copy each other. As someone who graduated college with honors, I'll be the first to say California colleges don't promote learning. Or at least, many classes do not. The best thing it provides is structure, a mandatory schedule and grading system that forces you to be there. But they do not encourage independent thought. I actually ended up basically being an informal tutor cause I had to teach classmates stuff without doing their work for them. I could not stand how it was more about kissing the right ass instead of learning. The only reason I'm not with a huge company right now is cause it was unbearable schmoozing up to the damn corporate elites that went there to recruit. Maybe I'm not making as much money as I could have but working in a California corporation would make me kill myself. It'd be like plugging yourself straight into the leftist hive mind.
California is one of the most prosperous states, yet it has some of the worst and shittiest education. I went to one of the public schools and universities, and I was the top of my class many times. I’d consider myself like a fair amount above average, not super genius despite what people like to tell me. Imagine how bad the lower end of the spectrum is here. Some high schoolers can’t do middle school math, and our reading comprehension is shit. How is it that I was reading 300-500+ page novels like The Hobbit in 4th grade over 1.5 decades ago but now people literally fail to understand the lessons of books like Animal Farm in high school and embrace Communism?
I am a special education math teacher. I get kids coming to me with pre-k level math skills. Yeah its bad.
Edit: Middle school math.
I used to teach math at a small arts college. The class I taught most often was remedial. I started with addition. That was the only one most of the kids knew. Because by the time I got to multiplication, I found out many didn't know their times tables.
Last time I applied to teach at a High School, the interviewers asked me how I'd do group projects. When I said I didn't use many group projects for Math, they seemed unhappy. When I asked what they were thinking of, they said "Oh, our last Math teacher gave problem solving exercises. Like, what equipment would you bring to go camping. No right or wrong answers." ("But that's not math," I didn't say.).
Oh, did I mention this was all in California?
Is this precise problem written somewhere in the curriculum? Going through high school, I remember being given a problem exactly like this multiple times.
I also remember history teachers often beginning with a problem relating to some investigation of a school fight (students had to determine who's a good source and stuff).
Now that I think about it, reuse of problems across classes and grade levels was really common.
I used to get so annoyed in history - all grades- when I was in school because they never managed to finish the textbook. Maybe got up to WWI or so and then just ran out of time. I never understood why the teachers didn't just divide # of chapters by weeks of class and get it done. Luckily I did a lot of reading on my own but I don't think kids do that as much now. Their lack of knowledge of history is appalling.
Well, I never had any question like that in a Math class. I'm not that old, but....
I remember back in College where they gave a scenario about responsibility by telling a story of some girl who has to trade her honor to get some guy to take her in her boat to visit her love interest. Her love interest rejects her after finding out what she did to cross the river, so she finds another guy to beat the crap out of him. That popped up more than once....
So... Did you get the job though?
Nope. Got into something else where I don't have to pretend to be an idiot.
I teach special education as well. Just left a large school where I taught reading. I had kids in 9th and 10th grade reading at a 3rd grade level. And these weren’t kids with severe learning disabilities either. They just didn’t give a shit and played the system throughout the years.
English teacher here (middle school thru college 100/200 levels): why? because the majority of students come into each of the grade levels I've just described not having the vocabulary, spelling, or basic grammar skills to be able to read those.
At the schools I've taught at over the last 25+ years, there has been about a level decline in reading/writing ability for each 5 year period -- that means the average college student today, coming into my 100 level course...can barely read/write at the 9th grade level of students 30 years ago. And some are worse than that -- more like can't read at the 5th grade level of students in the 80s.
This of couse means that they can't read the texts for history or science, nor write intelligible papers in the same. And then we can talk about math skills, which I believe are going the same way (at least without calculators) -- which means the science and tech classes have to be dumbed down...and on it goes to we are all here...fml.
Oml editing people’s papers in school was the most disappointing thing. Writing ended up being like my ace subject in college whether it was persuasive or technical, though I never had to take super advanced writing beyond some specialized writing courses for accounting. People would write incoherently or have absolutely zero structure to their paragraphs. Thoughts would spill everywhere and grammar was absolutely atrocious. People need to understand as well that wordiness ≠ good. It’s actually better for things to be concise unless it’s meant to be descriptive.
Yes, welcome to my world -- aka. 'this is the reason teacher smokes and drinks when she gets off work' (well, the smoking part; I don't really drink). Yes, I realize it is the education system that has done this: they've done it to students, to parents, to society, and they've done it to me, and I've been a part of it...fml.
I'm working on that with my jr. high level kid at the moment -- content? very good, even some advanced critical thinking skills are there. Ability to coherently paragraph and syntax? Not so much. Same goes for math: she gets more advanced geometry and some basic physics theories and formulas (she understand how to do them, why we do them, and where she can get the information to do them)...but she's getting caught up by not being as solid with basic freaking math skills. I've had her start helping her autistic sister with math and grammar, because the autistic sister, whom the school basically has considered incapable of advanced learning, has had those basic skills drilled into her, so she's better than her older, normal sister at them. Hey, whatever works is my game.
Brevity and clarity.
I read a paper that a student dictated to his phone and printed out. He didn't correct anything including the misspelling of his own name!!!!! There was no punctuation so the whole page was one long sentance.
College athletes are even worse than English language learners. I guess because grammar is racist? Which believing that grammar is racist in itself is racist because people of color cannot learn basic grammar....? 🤔 I digress.
I taught both -- a lot of the ESL at college is taught by private companies (that's a whole other shady business but...). The international students have to reach a certain standard of English before they can get into the university. Sometimes the companies hire shit (although this tends to start a problem when said students' gov'ts. who paid for this start getting failed students back -- so sometimes the shit gets weeded out); often they get English teachers who have ran afoul of PC university or public schools -- many of them are very good at what they do...teaching actual English. Secondly, the incoming students have to learn grammar, vocabulary, spelling, reading/listening comprehension, and speaking/writing skills...to they get a lot of fundamentals that American students just don't get anymore. I've taught in the elementary schools as well: we don't teach basic grammar really: we don't teach sentence writing, we don't teach paragraph writing...it's straight to essays (7 year olds who can't spell that well; can't really compose a good sentence...writing 'essays"...fml). Use the computer, use grammar and spell check and yes, dictate to your phone...that's what a lot of teachers tell these kids to do (probably because some of the younger teachers can't do it either; and that's in the SBoE's curriculum guidelines: look them up, they're a trip!).
The college athletes are there to play a sport -- for that matter, non-athletes are there to fill chairs and give the college money. The colleges don't give a rat's ass if they learn anything or even graduate. Athletes just get to stay in school...if they're any good.
I know there has also been a debate for many years about not graduating, or moving to the next grade, students that don't pass. That really seems to be something that needs to be re-instituted.
I noticed the same trend too. What had went wrong in your opinion?
It's kinda sad isn't it?
What went wrong? We let socialists march through the institution -- some of these pedagogies had their formation nearly 100 years ago; they were just allowed to take hold and thrive. That does, however, tell you just how strong the institution of public education was (and American society as well): it has taken 100 years to bring it down...but, they did. I'd say it really picked up ramming speed in the late 90s/early 00s: the gov't. really let the floodgates loose at that time; at least for me, there was a marked uptick in oversight (prior I was allowed some latitude in creating my own syllabi) as well as a marked downtick in student abilities (we went from what I would consider a pretty basic, easily comprehended English 101 text to a text more suited for high school during that time frame; now, it's even worse -- students today cannot read the basic text that we had in 1998 -- they can't read it; their vocabulary skills and ability to read more than simple sentences isn't enough!). So the 20 somethings you see today are the first products of full blast education on socialism.
I work with people who graduated from universities in CA who can't construct a simple sentence. And, worse, don't think it's a problem they're functionally illiterate.
Half the people in college pay other people to do their work, outright plagiarize someone else's essay, or collaborate and copy each other. As someone who graduated college with honors, I'll be the first to say California colleges don't promote learning. Or at least, many classes do not. The best thing it provides is structure, a mandatory schedule and grading system that forces you to be there. But they do not encourage independent thought. I actually ended up basically being an informal tutor cause I had to teach classmates stuff without doing their work for them. I could not stand how it was more about kissing the right ass instead of learning. The only reason I'm not with a huge company right now is cause it was unbearable schmoozing up to the damn corporate elites that went there to recruit. Maybe I'm not making as much money as I could have but working in a California corporation would make me kill myself. It'd be like plugging yourself straight into the leftist hive mind.