I work part time as an online standardized test tutor. It is impossible to overstate the damage that these ridiculous government policies have done. The kids who were already on the ball haven’t suffered too much, but anyone average or below average has taken several huge steps backwards. Basic algebra, fractions, percents, decimals, triangles, and circles all have to be relearned essentially from scratch.
The refrain is — “I kind of remember doing this, but it was during the pandemic so…”
I always fill in the next part — “so you didn’t really learn anything, right?”
Sheepish grin — “Yeah. We really didn’t do anything in that class when we went online.”
The kids get it, but they’re afraid to say it out loud. But once you give them permission, it all comes out.
Institutions are dead. They have failed so conclusively that it seems silly to try to revive them. The individual is the way forward. A free market education system utilizing thousands of private tutors should be the new model. If we subject education to free market forces, the overall quality will go up and the overall price will come down. Covid may be the force that finally breaks the government monopoly.
Everything you advocate here would be a big step in the right direction, but having the government involved in any way in education is a mistake, I think. He who pays the piper calls the tune, and when the government is doling out money, it is inevitably going to want to stick its nose into how the money is spent. Arizona's new law looks pretty good, but I'd bet a dollar that, over time, more and more strings will be attached to picking up that $7000. And where did the money come from? Stolen from taxpayers. The entire system is rotten. Whoever chooses to have children should be prepared to pick up the cost of bringing those children up, and should not demand to rip off someone else for help.
I've seen some libertarians vehemently oppose school choice as an endorsement state responsibility for K-12 education. I'm more prone to seeing at as moving the needle in the direction of liberty and diminishing that state role, but you're right that we should all be watching how it plays out in Arizona and, perhaps next, in Texas.
School choice just means sending blacks to destroy private schools. ..... but wait, that's a good thing.... make the elite trash who are the future politicians have to be around them and learn what they are.
I like the idea of pods. Better still get government completely out of Education and return the role to its rightful place, the parents of the child. Schools are a little more than indoctrination centers to train a standardized society and put down d i s s e n t, to paraphrase the great HL Mencken. John Taylor Gatto and other choice in education advocates have proposed much better alternatives. Stop torturing the children in school
Thanks, I hadn't heard the Mencken quote before. For others, here it is in its entirety:
“The most erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else.”
One of my favorite quotes, thank you.
I work part time as an online standardized test tutor. It is impossible to overstate the damage that these ridiculous government policies have done. The kids who were already on the ball haven’t suffered too much, but anyone average or below average has taken several huge steps backwards. Basic algebra, fractions, percents, decimals, triangles, and circles all have to be relearned essentially from scratch.
The refrain is — “I kind of remember doing this, but it was during the pandemic so…”
I always fill in the next part — “so you didn’t really learn anything, right?”
Sheepish grin — “Yeah. We really didn’t do anything in that class when we went online.”
The kids get it, but they’re afraid to say it out loud. But once you give them permission, it all comes out.
Institutions are dead. They have failed so conclusively that it seems silly to try to revive them. The individual is the way forward. A free market education system utilizing thousands of private tutors should be the new model. If we subject education to free market forces, the overall quality will go up and the overall price will come down. Covid may be the force that finally breaks the government monopoly.
Thank you...very interesting to hear your first-hand observations from the front lines.
Everything you advocate here would be a big step in the right direction, but having the government involved in any way in education is a mistake, I think. He who pays the piper calls the tune, and when the government is doling out money, it is inevitably going to want to stick its nose into how the money is spent. Arizona's new law looks pretty good, but I'd bet a dollar that, over time, more and more strings will be attached to picking up that $7000. And where did the money come from? Stolen from taxpayers. The entire system is rotten. Whoever chooses to have children should be prepared to pick up the cost of bringing those children up, and should not demand to rip off someone else for help.
I've seen some libertarians vehemently oppose school choice as an endorsement state responsibility for K-12 education. I'm more prone to seeing at as moving the needle in the direction of liberty and diminishing that state role, but you're right that we should all be watching how it plays out in Arizona and, perhaps next, in Texas.
School choice just means sending blacks to destroy private schools. ..... but wait, that's a good thing.... make the elite trash who are the future politicians have to be around them and learn what they are.
I like the idea of pods. Better still get government completely out of Education and return the role to its rightful place, the parents of the child. Schools are a little more than indoctrination centers to train a standardized society and put down d i s s e n t, to paraphrase the great HL Mencken. John Taylor Gatto and other choice in education advocates have proposed much better alternatives. Stop torturing the children in school
Thanks, I hadn't heard the Mencken quote before. For others, here it is in its entirety:
“The most erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else.”
via https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/435449-the-most-erroneous-assumption-is-to-the-effect-that-the