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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   27928 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023

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Is there not already an emphasis on numeracy and literacy?

The Texas standards are overly complicated, bordering on purple prose, but center on phrases like

The strands focus on academic oracy (proficiency in oral expression and comprehension), authentic reading, and reflective writing to ensure a literate Texas.

For math, by middle school, they’re already assuming basic numeracy, and

embedding statistics, probability, and finance, while focusing on computational thinking, mathematical fluency, and solid understanding

Texas is not great at this whole reading thing, but it’s clearly in spite of the strategy, not because of it. I think this is probably true for most jurisdictions. Teachers, administrators, and legislators know that literacy is important, and make policy accordingly. Then the implementation immediately runs into poor, hungry, disengaged, and/or unintelligent students. “No child left behind” was the big push in the US, but it’s not easy.

I think your curriculum changes are interesting, though I’m not sure I agree with them. Teaching history effectively is non-trivial! There’s also some value to a common cultural context, which in theory gets instilled by common English literature. Enforced fitness is a worthy outcome, but not one I’m sure can be achieved in 50 minutes of half-assed sports a day. Not without better diets, which…good, but hard to implement.

Not without better diets, which…good, but hard to implement.

And any attempt at implementing them will lead immediately be sabotaged to prop up Kellogg’s sales numbers, with the failure blamed on inadequate funding.

I hear a lot of stories about schools being overly pushed to just graduate students, or getting rid of advanced classes and basic classes and putting the smart and dumb kids together. I want to stop that. Kids who aren't literate yet should be pulled away from the advanced classes and keep being given literacy classes until they are.

50 minutes of half assed sports is a hell of a lot better than nothing in my opinion.

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