Episode 73: Best Gift For Smart People—Saving K-12 (Wednesday, Nov. 23, 2022)
Most books about education are boring. So let's announce emphatically: this is a well-written, lively book, and fun to read. I think of K-12 as a crime scene and my job is to describe who did what to whom.
K-12 classrooms are full of pedagogical nonsense. Saving K-12 explains how this blight occurred and how we can fix it.
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For more info about book and author, see link:
https://www.lit4u.com/saving-k-12/
See reviews and testimonials here:
https://www.amazon.com/SAVING-K-12-Happened-Public-Schools/dp/1681143615#customerReviews
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Saving K-12 by Bruce Deitrick Price is available in paperback and ebook.
For info on Bruce's other books, see Lit4u.com
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LET'S FIX EDUCATION: OVERVIEW
Recurring themes. Big ideas. Unifying concepts.
Support the Show.
Welcome to Episode 73 of Let's Fix Education by Bruce Deitrick Price
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Best Gift For Smart People—Saving K-12!
Ladies and gentlemen…
Saving K-12, a 188-page book, remains the best guide for understanding why the public schools are bad and how to fix them.
Do you like succinctness? A single page summarizes the 10 worst ideas now sabotaging the public schools:
Bad idea 1) Math is chaotically taught (children don’t master even simple arithmetic).
Bad idea 2) Flawed reading instruction is used (only one-third of children read “proficiently”).
Bad iIdea 3) Basic facts and skills are not taught.
Bad idea 4) Guessing is encouraged in all subjects (this is especially devastating in reading as real readers don’t guess, they read).
Bad idea 5) Constructivism is injected into every course (children must “reinvent the wheel”).
Bad idea 6) Group learning is everywhere enforced (children don’t learn to think independently).
Bad idea 7) Memorization is scorned.
Bad idea 8) Self-esteem is relentlessly pushed in all situations.
Bad idea 9) Handwriting is not taught even though this skill helps with reading, writing, vocabulary, etc.
Bad idea 10) Standards are kept low (fuzziness praised, precision disdained, sloppiness tolerated, ignorance accepted).
Our Education Establishment is more focused on indoctrination than on intellectual engineering. They favor bogus classroom methods, apparently because they have found that real education gets in the way of their social engineering schemes.
Bottom line, if you want to understand K-12, read my book. I’ve been writing about education for 35 years. It’s a murky, dishonest field. The education professors don’t want you to understand what they’re doing to your children. You need to understand this.
Summing up: the best, simplest way for anyone to help American education is to order copies of this book and give them to your smart friends.
Thank you.