LET'S FIX EDUCATION -- by -- Bruce Deitrick Price
Episode 128 -- (Wed., Dec., 13, 2023)
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Don’t Engage In Child Abuse
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QED: You cannot talk honestly about education reform if you do not try to eliminate all those practices which make children less than they might be.
Did you assume child abuse means sexual abuse? In fact, a lot of the methods used in public schools constitute, not sexual, but cognitive abuse. (Siegfried Engelmann called it “academic child abuse.” That’s where your brain and your personality are scrambled.)
Here’s the point; if you teach children in ways that don’t work very well, you are abusing that child. For example, if after years of reading instruction, students still can’t read, they have been robbed of their time and their future. Are these not criminal offenses? Yes.
Cognitive abuse can be seen in reading, math, and all content subjects such as history, science, geography. Some methods get much better results. If the school uses the inefficient ways, that’s an abusive relationship. Here’s the bad news: this sort of abuse – academic and intellectual— is commonplace.
Sexual abuse is more traumatic and dramatic, more of a violation. On the other hand, cognitive abuse affects tens of millions of Americans, often for many years. It’s a vast silent plague.
Progressive education has, for 100 years, tried to mess with the brains of children. They are supposed to have certain attitudes, specific feelings, and a passion for being cooperative. Progressive educators, no matter how they are dressed, tend to be meddlers in white lab coats. They think it’s their prerogative to rewire children in order to reach ideological goals.
A lot of drugs are prescribed in public schools. Exercise is often limited. Cumbersome, hard-to-learn methods infect every classroom, especially in Common Core. Character is undermined in many ways.
Find a class that’s underperforming and you will probably find “academic child abuse.”
The people in charge of our public schools are con artists. Don't help them. Don’t give them more money.
Now let’s play WHO’S AN ACCOMPLICE?
If you are a leader in a cultural institution of any kind and you’re not using your institution to fight for better practices in our schools, you are an accomplice.
If you are a politician who accepts Common Core, you are an accomplice.
If you are an editor in the media and you don’t investigate the dysfunctional practices at the local schools, you are an accomplice.
if you are part of the Chamber of Commerce and you’re not pushing the local schools to do better, you are an accomplice.
If you are a teacher and you let sight-words and other ineffective methods be used in your classroom, you are an accomplice.
If you are a community leader and you don’t take a close look at all the weak methods embedded in the local schools, you are an accomplice.
The Education Establishment can’t do a mediocre job by itself. It needs your support, especially if you are a wealthy, successful, or powerful person. If you support bad practices in schools, or look the other way, you are part of the problem. I.e., an accomplice.
John Dewey and his successors up to this day are engaged in an ideological quest. Millions of children are being damaged, future citizens are being stunted. No American should put up with this. Don’t be an accomplice.
If you keep giving these people more money without asking for concrete progress, then you are an accomplice.
Take the time to understand these issues at least a little. Why don't sight-words work? Why is direct instruction so much more efficient than constructivism? Why are memorization and practice so casually dismissed?
We can't magically save the school system overnight. But we can systematically eliminate the bad ideas. We can support the best methods.
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K-12 CAN BE SAVED BUT ONLY IF THE PUBLIC DEMANDS IT.
https://www.issuewire.com/k-12-can-be-saved-but-only-if-the-public-demands-it-1648962455695063
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