Episode 175: Millions of Children Suffer from Schoolitis Wed., Nov. 6, 2024

Episode 175: Millions of Children Suffer from Schoolitis   

Here is a dirty little secret. Experts create  clouds of confusion around our schools. Parents do not know what's going on in the schools. Or whether anything good is happening.

Here are some tips for evaluating the damage

----------------------------------------------------------
Listen to PODCAST or read TRANSCRIPT.
-----------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------

For a 2-page explanation
of how everyone can help,
visit  Education Reform 

When you need a smart gift,
give Saving K-12 .

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Word-Wise Education
757-455-5020
Bruce Deitrick Price

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bio: Bruce Deitrick Price is a novelist, artist, poet, 
and education reformer. 

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 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.

Transcript

LET'S FIX EDUCATION      by      Bruce Deitrick Price

Episode 175      Wed., Nov. 6, 2024

--------

Millions of Children Suffer from Schoolitis

Observe your child carefully. Does he have trouble reading even simple materials? Does she struggle with elementary arithmetic? Does your child seem to be learning very little basic knowledge? Is your child anxious and unhappy? Is he reluctant to go to school? 0h oh, your child has it bad. Schoolitis.

 Remember that excitement and optimism when you child first went off to school. Everyone just assumed that children can quickly learn to read, write, and the rest. Then, one by one, the lights went out. Bizarrely enough, our public schools seem designed to make learning impossible.

Here is a checklist to determine how bad a case of schoolitis your child has:

1) Children should learn to read in the first grade, and be selecting their own books to read by the second grade. Anything less means that your school has neglected phonics. You need to get very involved. Whole Language and Balanced Literacy all by themselves can give a child a dreadful case of schoolitis. To head off these problems, start teaching reading early.

2) Children should learn to add and subtract in the first few grades. They should be multiplying and dividing by the fourth grade. They should understand fractions and decimals by the sixth grades. Anything less means you’re watching educational malpractice take place before your eyes. Reform Math, in all its variations, tends to confuse children and kill off any interest in math. Reform Math is a carrier of schoolitis.

3) Your child should be memorizing basic information such as the days of the week, how many feet in a yard, how many quarts in a gallon, how many weeks in a year, and multiplication tables. Has your child memorized even a single fact? If not, you can expect schoolitis. Learning simple facts prepares a child to learn more complex information. This process gives confidence and satisfaction. But if a child never memorizes anything, never knows what’s up and what is down, so to speak, that child will always be perplexed and lacking in confidence. 

 4) You child should be learning the basic details of geography and history. This is so easy to test. Show your child a map of the world and say, “Point to Europe...the Pacific Ocean...North Pole.” Ask the simplest questions. If your child does not know the answers, that means the child has learned nothing. Quite often these days, schools use a method called Constructivism or Discovery. Teachers are called facilitators which means they stand aside. Children are somehow supposed to know which important information to learn. Of course, they don’t. And their education stalls. Schoolitis sets in.

5) Your child should be learning general science. It’s easy to find out if a child knows the simplest things. What is a planet? What is snow made of? What is the equator? Not having any foundational knowledge freezes everything. There is no progress, no development, no building one stone upon another. That feeling of standing still, of accomplishing absolutely nothing week after week, that’s the essential cause of schoolitis.

 6) Your child should be learning to think, act, and create independently. Many schools force children to work continuously with a group. They get used to being part of a lump, a blob. Their own personalities, interests, and discoveries become blurred and lost. If you don’t have a sense of yourself, how can you have a sense of yourself becoming a better self? Without that sense of improvement, you invariably will feel seized by schoolitis.

Periodically, grade your child according to this checklist. Stop schoolitis before it becomes permanent. Stop settling for mediocrity. Ask the teacher what's reasonable to expect? Say, oh we were expecting a little more than that. Advocate for your child. You can consider asking for an IEP (Individualized Education Program).

 Finally, read Saving K-12, which explains the weird ideas that have deformed K-12 for the last century.

------