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Monday, October 07, 2024

Commentary: Classical v. Unclassical Curricula

Chad Aldeman, a Virginia-based researcher who focuses on education-related issues, recently detailed the educational experience of his daughter, who completed sixth grade in June. He writes that her teachers didn’t use textbooks, assign homework, or expect kids to study at home for tests, didn’t teach kids to sound out words, and didn’t drill times tables. He also mentions that there were no spelling tests, students didn’t practice handwriting of any kind, cursive or otherwise, and didn’t learn the 50 states and their capitals, let alone world geography.

Aldeman is very concerned by this shift, arguing that her educational experience has “reduced instructional time devoted to science and social studies and emphasized isolated skills such as critical thinking or reading comprehension over teaching students a coherent body of knowledge and facts.”
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9 comments:

  1. All part of the plan...

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  2. We need to roll back ALL the 'improvements' from the Ed schools. Pull out the curricula from 1950. Update the content but keep the teaching methods that worked.
    New Math (from the 60s) - Failure
    Whole Language Reading (from the 70s) - Failure
    Social Studies instead of History and Geography - Failure
    Common Core curriculum - Failure with Malice Aforethought

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    Replies
    1. I recall "New Math" coming in when I was in elementary school. Cost me a year or so of math education. I did recover and got degrees in hard sciences but even now, I feel that hole in my math education. I feel real sorry for the kids that suffered from the Fauci Knows Best shit-show. (why is that guy still running around loose?)

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  3. Oh SHUTUP!
    But she does know her pronouns and is keeping up-to-date on her genders?
    That's all that matters.

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  4. In the 60's, there was a study done to evaluate educational methods. Methods where used for several years, and results taken by several measures, from self esteem to test scores and happiness.

    One of them, "Direct Instruction", topped the evaluations by ALL metrics, by a huge margin.

    Our government, being our government, immediately buried the results to make sure nobody would ever find out. They didn't want the other educational methods to "have an unfair advantage"

    And that tells you all you really need to know - like every other aspect of government, education is a jobs project, and everything is done to make sure that it doesn't produce any actual results. You think you distrust government enough, but you really don't.

    John G.

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  5. Jimmy Carter broke off the Dept. of Education from HEW in 1979. 11,000 bureaucrats sitting on their fat asses all day shuffling papers around. Is the state of education in the U.S. better or worse today than in 1979?

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  6. You wanna learn how to put on a condom or not?

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  7. The department of education, another failed attempt at serving America. But they got a teachers union....

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    Replies
    1. Randi Weingarten belongs on the same list as Fauci.

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