Let's Fix Education / by Bruce Deitrick Price
Savvy, practical insights on where our Education Establishment went wrong and how most schools can be improved.LET'S FIX EDUCATION explains the many dysfunctional theories and methods operating within our schools. This podcast is intended for parents, teachers, and community leaders who want education reform.
Each week, LET'S FIX EDUCATION examines another problem in our public schools, such as: Constructivism. Learning styles. Sight-words. No memorization. Cooperative learning. Prior knowledge. Reform math. The dilution of knowledge. Common Core. Project-based learning. Student-centered, etc. In fact, there are DOZENS of counterproductive learning and teaching theories, all made worse by ideological motives.
Bio: Bruce Deitrick Price is a novelist, artist, and education reformer. He has analyzed the problems in education for more than 30 years. Price is the author of "Saving K-12: What happened to our public schools? How do we fix them?" (190 pages) His main education site is Improve-Education.org. For more information about book and author, visit Lit4u.com. Newest novels are "Frankie" (about a harmless robot) and "The Boy Who Saves The World" (about a boy who saves the world).
"Bruce Price’s SAVING K-12 is a MUST read! It is precise, concise and powerful. Action is required…for the sake of our children, our grandchildren and the future of the American Republic!” Robert W. Sweet, Jr., long-time President of The National Right to Read Foundation
Let's Fix Education / by Bruce Deitrick Price
Episode 110: What is STEM? Something the Department of Education loves to talk about while making sure nobody can do it.
Our Department of Education recently launched a bold initiative called: Raise the Bar: STEM Excellence for All Students initiative.
QED: Many noble sentiments. But there seems to be little effort at creating the foundation which would make them possible.
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Teaching basic science quickly is major requirement
for success in STEM but rarely seen. See 6-minute video.
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Good background article: The War on STEM
This article is five years old; nothing STEM-related has improved.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/09/k12_the_war_on_stem.html
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Podcasts are always available as transcripts.
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The best way to understand problems in public schools
is to read this book: Saving K-12
Available on Amazon.
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Word-Wise Education
757-455-5020
Bruce Deitrick Price
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New novel: Art and Beauty.
Crime fiction. Set in Manhattan.
Dangerously well written.
Published by Web-E-Books.com /// Editor says: “Bruce Deitrick Price puts
a new spin on the all-American, sexy, fast-talking detective story by creating
a truly fresh crime-fighter personality and placing his original P.I. character, Jon Dak, among movers and shakers in the NYC art and fashion world.”
< Enjoy Chapter 1. ONE BIG HAPPY FAMILY >
< Enjoy Chapter 2. MISS BABBAGE >
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Let's Fix Education explains to Americans why their schools are so bad. The people in charge prefer mediocrity because they are socialists of one kind or another. If people work together to promote real education, we'll have it.
LET'S FIX EDUCATION -- by -- Bruce Deitrick Price
Episode 110 --- August 9, 2023
What is STEM? Something the Department of Education loves to talk about while making sure nobody can do it.
A huge and gushing press release declares: “Research shows how a sense of belonging in rich and rigorous classrooms is directly correlated to students’ long-term academic success….Today, we are saying unequivocally to all students and educators that they belong in STEM and that they deserve to have rigorous and relevant educational experiences that inspire and empower them to reach their full potential as productive, contributing members of our nation’s workforce.”
Wait, there’s more, much more: “With the support of $120 billion dollars dedicated to K-12 education in the American Rescue Plan (ARP) and all other federal education funds, the Department is galvanizing the broader education ecosystem to prioritize three goals for STEM education: ensure all students from Pre-K to higher education excel in rigorous, relevant, and joyful STEM learning.” Joyful?? Do the Education bureaucrats believe their own PR? Additionally, over 90 public and private sector organizations from across the country have made specific commitments to enhance STEM education. These commitments range from local grassroots efforts to initiatives that are national in scope. Several excerpts of example commitments include: Data Science for Everyone will assist 100+ school districts to leverage ARP and other funds for piloting and scaling data science education programs, impacting approximately 200,000 students…”
The gushing continues: "The YOU Belong in STEM National Coordinating Conference will welcome more than 200 STEM stakeholders from 30 states and territories in the Department’s Lyndon B. Johnson building in Washington, D.C. Participants will collaborate and learn about the importance of belonging in STEM, connect with students and educators about their experiences in STEM education, and develop new partnerships and commitments.”
Sounds seriously ambitions, which I applaud. The problem is that everything discussed is sabotaged from the very beginning because the children don't learn to read confidently, don't master basic arithmetic, and don't learn fundamental knowledge.
K-12 in America pretends to value education even as it ignores the building blocks of education, the things you should learn in the first grades. You must learn how to count, the names of the letters, and the sounds of the letters. If you can't read and you can't count and you don't know any geography or science, how can you do STEM?
If you follow the news about K-12 you know that only a third of children learn to read. Another third stumbles along. And then there's a third group that might as well be from another world. All this failure is obscene, stupid and unnecessary. It is grimly strange for me to write articles on this stuff because the answer is right in front of everybody. And yet the Education Establishment is so hard and cold as only the Hard Left can be. My conclusion is that they merely pretend to care about basic academic skills, as you see in this long press release, but they actually make sure there is little progress.
Notice in first sentence of the podcast, the students are promised “rich and rigorous classrooms.” Seriously, folks, our K-12 is not noted for any of that.
Here's the test that will help you gauge the seriousness of your local schools. Are children encouraged to memorize basic facts in scientific knowledge? If not, the elite educators are not serious people. They are the problem. Children have to know basic information.
Here's another litmus test. Do the schools insist that children learn everything on their own, according to the foolish dictates of Constructivism and the discovery method. If so, you can sneer at your school officials for being phonies.
What our education system does is to strangle the students in the womb, so to speak. The first weeks, months and years are so unpleasant and unprofitable that many children will just drop out. That's why so many students disappear during the pandemic. They never came back. Where did they go? They went somewhere they didn't feel like they are wasting their time and learning nothing.
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HOW TO TEACH SCIENCE
Video, six minutes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usDInJOn15A
Brief video shows you the basic knowledge that STEM students need. Fast, efficient, and fun. The Education Establishment should learn how to do this.
It's a safe bet that the great majority of American students in middle school and even high school do not know this basic information. But it can all be taught in elementary school.
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If you credit Bruce Deitrick Price / Let's Fix Education, you can reprint in whole or part these podcasts or transcriptions. If you want an interview or article, call Word-Wise 757-455-5020 (USA).