Posts by nimblelynx7

wanderingbadger44 said:I’m just sitting here waiting for someone like a local esthetician to get fired because she told a client that she can't fix everything by herself and that they actually need to see a dermatologist or follow a skincare routine at home to see results. ☕

urbantinker8 said:I mean, besides the fact that I actually work in the school system, I also happen to have two kids of my own, and I don't really feel like once they hit seven years old, my part of the "job" is finished—like I can just sort of hand them over to a teacher and expect them to handle all the upbringing and schooling entirely on their own.🙂

Kate Morgan14 said:I second all of this. You have to follow your kids through their education—support them, help them when things get rough, and be their backbone. You can't just expect teachers to carry everything; it’s impossible. In a standard American classroom with 25 to 30 students, a teacher simply cannot give every single child the one-on-one attention they might need. That’s where parents have to step up...

urbantinker8 said:

Yin&Yang;5362785
What you just wrote actually shocked me. Are you implying that only those super intelligent kids (with some supposedly superior cognitive process!?) have a right to straight A's? That they just got lucky by birth or happen to have highly educated parents said:

Just teacher ego. Sometimes I honestly think teachers hang out with their students way too much, and they've gone soft.

Karen Richardson3 said:summer: honestly, I bet parents of kids in middle school feel the exact same way when they flip through those history textbooks—they just stare at them in disbelief, totally missing the fact that you basically have to boil an entire chapter down to five tiny bullet points just to write them in a notebook.

but let’s be real for a second about what’s actually happening here: everyone is convinced their kid is some kind of genius who absolutely deserves an A, when the reality is that every single classroom follows the same pattern—you’ve got a few superstars, a few kids who struggle, and then a whole bunch of average students.

so the real issue is that the complaining mostly comes from the parents whose kids are just sitting right in that average bracket. it feels like there's this massive push to force kids, who might have been perfectly happy heading toward a trade school or a specialized vocational program, straight into elite prep schools and four-year universities.

I mean, look at how things are going lately: the curriculum has never been more intense, you've got these exhausted parents staying up late helping their kids study, and then suddenly everyone is bragging about a record-breaking number of Honor Roll students.
basically, these high grades are being manufactured. if you have to sit there and coach a kid through every single step of their middle school work just to get them an A, then that kid isn't actually hitting those marks on their own, and frankly, they haven't earned that grade.

You just insulted everyone in trade schools and anyone without a degree. What, are universities and prep schools only for the elite now? Nobody smart finishes college just because they're smart; they do it because they're persistent. Why are these A's being forced? Because schools use grades for admissions, not actual knowledge. This works for the teachers too, because otherwise, more than half of them would be fired for incompetence.

Adam Evans62 said:I don't get why you're making such a HUGE deal out of this.
Why are you freaking out about elementary schoolers having stuff tied to schoolwork that requires help from a parent or an adult? I really don't get this massive resistance. 🤷

Most kids absolutely need help from their parents or family when they first start school. Some get independent fast, others will always need a little guidance... it's nothing unusual or new. ☕ In fact, it actually strengthens the bond between parent and child. Why not go outside and show them how nature works, or build a family tree together—because let's face it, a kid probably doesn't know their great-grandparents' names or birthdays. Or watch a documentary or look at photos of the Grand Canyon. There's a ton of stuff that needs to be done with an adult so they can eventually do it on their own. That includes reading required books in first grade—most kids NEED an adult to help them through that.
Sure, you could just throw the kid in the deep end and let them sink or swim—but don't cry when they drown...☕ (obviously, I'm exaggerating here)

Because school is for the students; parents finished their job a long time ago.

urbantinker8 said:Why so many exclamation points and question marks?🤷
I guess if you don't have kids in school yet, you should probably just wait until yours start and then you'll know firsthand what's just urban legend, what's just tall tales, and what the actual truth is.
There's probably no need to get this worked up over hearsay and second-hand stories.😉

Not at all, I suppose.

I agree.
I work in a school, about 90% of my friends work in schools, and plenty of kids in my own family go through the system... and nowhere except here on this forum (and in the media, to be honest) do I hear people complaining about how impossibly hard the curriculum is.🙂

I wonder why nobody talks about how ridiculously easy the questions on the SATs have become? And despite those questions being so simple, the passing threshold gets lowered to like 20-30% just so everyone can pass?
Is it our fault again, like we just didn't teach them well enough? 🙄

😁
I totally hear you!

🙂

No, it’s that solar eclipse today. It's all the eclipse's fault.

Karen Richardson3 said:You know, I’ve been wondering what the professors would say about this: how do American students actually stack up against the rest of the world in international competitions these days?

I mean, given how many brilliant, diamond-in-the-rough kids we have and just how intense our school curriculum is—which so many people seem to breeze through with top marks—I can't help but assume we're absolutely crushing it on the global stage, right?

Check this thread: PISA test results and the Shanghai leaf.
Every two years we slide further down the rankings. At this rate, we’ll be crawling under the feet of the Chinese soon. Our universities drop on the list every single year—though that's only because their metrics are garbage, not because our quality has dipped.

urbantinker8 said:Yeah, we're probably going to screw up everything else that still matters, too.
Why?

It's all because of this constant pressure to just cave to whatever the kids—and, you know, the parents—want.
We're heading straight toward the American model.🙂
The curriculum gets watered down, the coursework becomes increasingly ridiculous, there's this push to cut the number of subjects, which leads to trimming class hours, and textbooks get worse and worse in this desperate attempt to be "modern," while grading standards just keep sliding...
Right now, we're drowning in students getting perfect marks, but tomorrow, we'll just have a bunch of people who don't know anything.

International competitions...?🤣
I mean, why would anyone even bother showing up to something like that anymore?😕

And I absolutely agree with tanita.

All this spitting on incompetent Americans. They don't even have 400,000 unemployed. It won't matter anyway, because they're just ignorant and uneducated, unlike us Americans.

Richard Perez3 said:Yeah, exactly. 😕

We aren't doing homeschooling, so thanks a lot for thinking someone else is gonna step in and do the heavy lifting. 🤷

placidrider48 said:Unfortunately, not everyone is lucky enough to live in a house with soundproofing.

Kimberly Smith6 said:It isn't actually about the firecrackers themselves, but rather the absolute moron behind them. You see kids running around with explosives because their parents are being negligent and frankly, just plain foolish. Whenever you run into a kid acting out or causing trouble, you can bet your life that's just a direct reflection of how they were raised at home.
Children are essentially just a mirror held up to their parents' upbringing.

As for me, I didn't set off a single firecracker this New Year's Eve, but I'm still not advocating for a ban on them; I think people should be allowed to have some fun during that one day of the year when there's almost nothing else to celebrate, especially since everything in this country feels like it's falling apart right now.

Andrew Sanchez3 said:One user once condemned every single veteran in America just because one drunk guy caused trouble on a subway train.

Look, I agree that this specific person isn't the spokesperson for all gay people, but let's at least try to apply the same logic across the board...

Jonathan Ortiz2 said:It’s not like a kid is studying some hyper-exact science. I mean, people should be able to chime in if they’ve actually lived through the same school system as students themselves.

Honestly, the moment a bunch of unqualified people start meddling in the exact same system you're talking about, it just means the system itself is what failed in the first place.

In our current situation, though, I doubt anyone actually gives a damn.

It's not just a "us" thing, either... even in Germany, they pour millions into trying to make trades and manual labor look useful and prestigious.

The bigger issue here is that the peak achievement for most parents was threatening, "either you study or you'll be digging ditches," without ever actually sitting down to help the kid learn... because at the end of the day, they either don't know the material anymore or, even if they do, they're too exhausted to care and just expect the teacher to handle everything.

I frequently get reports from the school saying my kid lacks work ethic (alongside a whole list of other behavioral issues).
And yeah, the kid doesn't have the habit of rote memorization. They don't have the habit of coming home and doing homework, reading assigned books, or doing extra reading.
Meanwhile, among these kids, you've got some who are just lost in front of a computer or a TV or wandering the streets, but you also find kids who love tearing computers apart or getting really into car mechanics (I could sell them anything if I showed a bit of mechanical knowledge, but those kids usually have someone they follow, like a relative they watch working away in a garage)....

I mean, you can't really expect them to develop any work ethic when there's zero motivation to begin with...

http://www.nytimes.com/news/education/agreement-reached-on-curriculum-standards/99460/

http://www.latimes.com/news/california/how-schools-are-handling-core-subjects/12

Talk about motivation... you show a kid how to actually do their homework... If they don't nail it in class, they have to finish it at home... or they're stuck staying late at school the next day until that same assignment is done right.

so I think we shouldn't wait until they're 15 to start career guidance, we should start way earlier.
and/or maybe just cut down the hours spent on history, geography, literature, and biology (honestly, I remember most of us just rehashed the same stuff through high school, so it feels logical that most of that stuff isn't truly learned until you hit a prep school or college).
but physics, chemistry, technical stuff... that needs to be strictly hands-on in middle school.
(mixed in with some theoretical guidelines, but definitely different from what we have now)

Geography is pretty light anyway... it would be better if they could just integrate it into other subjects.

Kids aren't interested in books that much, they aren't going to sit there reading them, they'll just cheat whenever they get the chance, and they won't ever pick up a reading habit...

Literature could just be its own thing. Ruining a kid's life just because they didn't read a specific book for English class is kind of tacky (regardless of how rare it is for a kid to actually know the material perfectly without having read the assigned book).

And those same subjects—those required readings—are being used all wrong. I think there's plenty of room to find actual motivation there too.

A good example of connecting subjects would be making them read someone like Ernest Hemingway for a book report before you even touch World War II in history class.
Why that writer, specifically?

Because books are like movies... forcing a kid to read a boring book is like forcing a kid to watch a boring movie... Honestly, it's hard enough to get an adult to sit through a bad movie, so how are you supposed to force a kid to read a dull book? Even with a decent movie, it's tough if you're just not in the mood for that genre at the moment.

The goal should be to pick genres and themes that kids actually care about and find fascinating... that way they actually build a reading habit... and Hemingway is a solid example. At the same time, kids would actually feel motivated to study history later on. Because it's not the same thing to just read about thousands of people fighting versus actually feeling the weight of it through a story.

As for the rest, I'm not sure what the best move would be.

Sure... but I was talking about motivation and passive learning.

I've seen a whole generation of average kids where their grade in a foreign language depended entirely on whether they had German Pokemon cards at home... or if they listened to foreign music or whatever...

And I'm mostly talking about middle schoolers here..

Jonathan Ortiz2 said:It’s not like a kid is studying some hyper-exact science. I mean, people should be able to chime in if they’ve actually lived through the same school system as students themselves.

Honestly, the moment a bunch of unqualified people start meddling in the exact same system you're talking about, it just means the system itself is what failed in the first place.

In our current situation, though, I doubt anyone actually gives a damn.

It's not just a "us" thing, either... even in Germany, they pour millions into trying to make trades and manual labor look useful and prestigious.

The bigger issue here is that the peak achievement for most parents was threatening, "either you study or you'll be digging ditches," without ever actually sitting down to help the kid learn... because at the end of the day, they either don't know the material anymore or, even if they do, they're too exhausted to care and just expect the teacher to handle everything.

I frequently get reports from the school saying my kid lacks work ethic (alongside a whole list of other behavioral issues).
And yeah, the kid doesn't have the habit of rote memorization. They don't have the habit of coming home and doing homework, reading assigned books, or doing extra reading.
Meanwhile, among these kids, you've got some who are just lost in front of a computer or a TV or wandering the streets, but you also find kids who love tearing computers apart or getting really into car mechanics (I could sell them anything if I showed a bit of mechanical knowledge, but those kids usually have someone they follow, like a relative they watch working away in a garage)....

I mean, you can't really expect them to develop any work ethic when there's zero motivation to begin with...

http://www.nytimes.com/news/education/agreement-reached-on-curriculum-standards/99460/

http://www.latimes.com/news/california/how-schools-are-handling-core-subjects/12

Talk about motivation... you show a kid how to actually do their homework... If they don't nail it in class, they have to finish it at home... or they're stuck staying late at school the next day until that same assignment is done right.

so I think we shouldn't wait until they're 15 to start career guidance, we should start way earlier.
and/or maybe just cut down the hours spent on history, geography, literature, and biology (honestly, I remember most of us just rehashed the same stuff through high school, so it feels logical that most of that stuff isn't truly learned until you hit a prep school or college).
but physics, chemistry, technical stuff... that needs to be strictly hands-on in middle school.
(mixed in with some theoretical guidelines, but definitely different from what we have now)

Geography is pretty light anyway... it would be better if they could just integrate it into other subjects.

Kids aren't interested in books that much, they aren't going to sit there reading them, they'll just cheat whenever they get the chance, and they won't ever pick up a reading habit...

Literature could just be its own thing. Ruining a kid's life just because they didn't read a specific book for English class is kind of tacky (regardless of how rare it is for a kid to actually know the material perfectly without having read the assigned book).

And those same subjects—those required readings—are being used all wrong. I think there's plenty of room to find actual motivation there too.

A good example of connecting subjects would be making them read someone like Ernest Hemingway for a book report before you even touch World War II in history class.
Why that writer, specifically?

Because books are like movies... forcing a kid to read a boring book is like forcing a kid to watch a boring movie... Honestly, it's hard enough to get an adult to sit through a bad movie, so how are you supposed to force a kid to read a dull book? Even with a decent movie, it's tough if you're just not in the mood for that genre at the moment.

The goal should be to pick genres and themes that kids actually care about and find fascinating... that way they actually build a reading habit... and Hemingway is a solid example. At the same time, kids would actually feel motivated to study history later on. Because it's not the same thing to just read about thousands of people fighting versus actually feeling the weight of it through a story.

As for the rest, I'm not sure what the best move would be.

Sure... but I was talking about motivation and passive learning.

I've seen a whole generation of average kids where their grade in a foreign language depended entirely on whether they had German Pokemon cards at home... or if they listened to foreign music or whatever...

And I'm mostly talking about middle schoolers here..

Jonathan Ortiz2 said:It’s not like a kid is studying some hyper-exact science. I mean, people should be able to chime in if they’ve actually lived through the same school system as students themselves.

Honestly, the moment a bunch of unqualified people start meddling in the exact same system you're talking about, it just means the system itself is what failed in the first place.

In our current situation, though, I doubt anyone actually gives a damn.

It's not just a "us" thing, either... even in Germany, they pour millions into trying to make trades and manual labor look useful and prestigious.

The bigger issue here is that the peak achievement for most parents was threatening, "either you study or you'll be digging ditches," without ever actually sitting down to help the kid learn... because at the end of the day, they either don't know the material anymore or, even if they do, they're too exhausted to care and just expect the teacher to handle everything.

I frequently get reports from the school saying my kid lacks work ethic (alongside a whole list of other behavioral issues).
And yeah, the kid doesn't have the habit of rote memorization. They don't have the habit of coming home and doing homework, reading assigned books, or doing extra reading.
Meanwhile, among these kids, you've got some who are just lost in front of a computer or a TV or wandering the streets, but you also find kids who love tearing computers apart or getting really into car mechanics (I could sell them anything if I showed a bit of mechanical knowledge, but those kids usually have someone they follow, like a relative they watch working away in a garage)....

I mean, you can't really expect them to develop any work ethic when there's zero motivation to begin with...

http://www.nytimes.com/news/education/agreement-reached-on-curriculum-standards/99460/

http://www.latimes.com/news/california/how-schools-are-handling-core-subjects/12

Talk about motivation... you show a kid how to actually do their homework... If they don't nail it in class, they have to finish it at home... or they're stuck staying late at school the next day until that same assignment is done right.

so I think we shouldn't wait until they're 15 to start career guidance, we should start way earlier.
and/or maybe just cut down the hours spent on history, geography, literature, and biology (honestly, I remember most of us just rehashed the same stuff through high school, so it feels logical that most of that stuff isn't truly learned until you hit a prep school or college).
but physics, chemistry, technical stuff... that needs to be strictly hands-on in middle school.
(mixed in with some theoretical guidelines, but definitely different from what we have now)

Geography is pretty light anyway... it would be better if they could just integrate it into other subjects.

Kids aren't interested in books that much, they aren't going to sit there reading them, they'll just cheat whenever they get the chance, and they won't ever pick up a reading habit...

Literature could just be its own thing. Ruining a kid's life just because they didn't read a specific book for English class is kind of tacky (regardless of how rare it is for a kid to actually know the material perfectly without having read the assigned book).

And those same subjects—those required readings—are being used all wrong. I think there's plenty of room to find actual motivation there too.

A good example of connecting subjects would be making them read someone like Ernest Hemingway for a book report before you even touch World War II in history class.
Why that writer, specifically?

Because books are like movies... forcing a kid to read a boring book is like forcing a kid to watch a boring movie... Honestly, it's hard enough to get an adult to sit through a bad movie, so how are you supposed to force a kid to read a dull book? Even with a decent movie, it's tough if you're just not in the mood for that genre at the moment.

The goal should be to pick genres and themes that kids actually care about and find fascinating... that way they actually build a reading habit... and Hemingway is a solid example. At the same time, kids would actually feel motivated to study history later on. Because it's not the same thing to just read about thousands of people fighting versus actually feeling the weight of it through a story.

As for the rest, I'm not sure what the best move would be.

Sure... but I was talking about motivation and passive learning.

I've seen a whole generation of average kids where their grade in a foreign language depended entirely on whether they had German Pokemon cards at home... or if they listened to foreign music or whatever...

And I'm mostly talking about middle schoolers here..

David Palmer5 said:I'm sorry, but I don't see the logic in what you just wrote.
Quality education actually does the exact opposite: it keeps kids off the streets by giving them real options and the chance to actually build a future for themselves.

So, the issue in America isn't that we value education too much; it's quite the contrary—we tend to undervalue it and downplay its importance.
And one thing I can't wrap my head around is the idea that learning isn't just "rote memorization."

That's a fair point, but it actually reinforces my argument: in certain countries, knowledge and education are truly valued, regardless of whether people were born there or moved in.
If experts were actually appreciated here, they wouldn't be leaving. It’s pretty obvious they go wherever they are treated with more respect.

Susan James said:True, but when you look at those high graduation rates in places like Canada, the UK, or Scandinavia, you have to account for the huge influx of bright immigrants moving there from all over the world.😍

As for how high schoolers behave... hmm. Looking at a large prep school with maybe 500 students, you might actually run into more disciplinary issues there than you would in an entire district of vocational schools combined.🤣

urbantinker8 said:...but not nearly as much as the teachers, is that what you were getting at?

I mean, kids can certainly pick up basic functional skills at school without much trouble, but if they aren't being taught any actual work ethic from an early age, or if all they hear at home is constant negativity about school, or if they end up enrolling in whatever school is cool or just where all their neighborhood friends go rather than the one that actually matches their abilities, then even the best school isn't going to be a magic fix.
You just can't teach someone anything if they aren't willing to learn. Not even basic arithmetic or abstract reasoning.

It's probably just easier to blame everything on some sort of "pointless failure."

My kid is apparently incapable of making rational decisions because they were forced to memorize every single US state and major European capitals, when the real issue isn't the curriculum, but the fact that we don't engage with them at home, and instead they spend all day hypnotized by the TV, phone, tablet, or laptop.

urbantinker8 said:...but not nearly as much as the teachers, is that what you were getting at?

I mean, kids can certainly pick up basic functional skills at school without much trouble, but if they aren't being taught any actual work ethic from an early age, or if all they hear at home is constant negativity about school, or if they end up enrolling in whatever school is cool or just where all their neighborhood friends go rather than the one that actually matches their abilities, then even the best school isn't going to be a magic fix.
You just can't teach someone anything if they aren't willing to learn. Not even basic arithmetic or abstract reasoning.

It's probably just easier to blame everything on some sort of "pointless failure."

My kid is apparently incapable of making rational decisions because they were forced to memorize every single US state and major European capitals, when the real issue isn't the curriculum, but the fact that we don't engage with them at home, and instead they spend all day hypnotized by the TV, phone, tablet, or laptop.

David Jackson2 said:It’s not like the American education system doesn't need a serious overhaul or anything. It absolutely does—but we should probably start with how we hire teachers, the way they’re trained, and making sure there's actual continuous professional development instead of just... whatever currently exists. We also desperately need a standardized grading system. And I don't necessarily mean just slapping a number on everything, though if we do go the numerical route, it really needs to be rooted in actual written exams and projects with clear, objective rubrics.

As for the curriculum itself? Yeah, it needs some tweaking too, but honestly, things aren't quite the total catastrophe people seem to think they are.

If there's one thing that really gets me about a lot of the posts above, it's this mindset that education is just a tool to land a job or pick up specific technical skills you'll use at the office. That's only one tiny slice of what learning is supposed to do. Those "useless" details we were all forced to memorize back in school? They actually helped build critical thinking skills. Even pure rote memorization has its place in developing cognitive abilities—it’s not all wasted time.

A solid general culture is vital—and let's be real, for many people, it's what actually puts food on the table. Plus, someone with a broad, well-rounded education is much less likely to end up as a mindless political puppet without an ounce of their own opinion. It feels like that's becoming a bigger problem everywhere in the world lately.

David Jackson2 said:It’s not like the American education system doesn't need a serious overhaul or anything. It absolutely does—but we should probably start with how we hire teachers, the way they’re trained, and making sure there's actual continuous professional development instead of just... whatever currently exists. We also desperately need a standardized grading system. And I don't necessarily mean just slapping a number on everything, though if we do go the numerical route, it really needs to be rooted in actual written exams and projects with clear, objective rubrics.

As for the curriculum itself? Yeah, it needs some tweaking too, but honestly, things aren't quite the total catastrophe people seem to think they are.

If there's one thing that really gets me about a lot of the posts above, it's this mindset that education is just a tool to land a job or pick up specific technical skills you'll use at the office. That's only one tiny slice of what learning is supposed to do. Those "useless" details we were all forced to memorize back in school? They actually helped build critical thinking skills. Even pure rote memorization has its place in developing cognitive abilities—it’s not all wasted time.

A solid general culture is vital—and let's be real, for many people, it's what actually puts food on the table. Plus, someone with a broad, well-rounded education is much less likely to end up as a mindless political puppet without an ounce of their own opinion. It feels like that's becoming a bigger problem everywhere in the world lately.

urbantinker8 said:I think you might be grouping too many things together and generalizing a bit too much, if I may say so.
It’s a given that kids in a standard American high school will be taught about T.S. Eliot and the Revolutionary War.
Because part of the point of a preparatory high school is to provide a broader education than, say, a vocational school for chimney sweeps, and I suppose T.S. Eliot and historical conflicts are definitely part of that broader knowledge and general culture.
Still, most high schoolers are expected to go to college, so it would be rather awkward if they had no idea who T.S. Eliot was.
I guess you could forgive the chimney sweep for that.😁

The ones who are cheating, copying, and just sliding through the system are usually the students who chose a prep school simply because it sounds more prestigious than enrolling in an HVAC technician program. Even parents feel a certain shame if their child, heaven forbid, ends up in a three-year trade school.

As for derivatives and integrals, they aren't taught everywhere—it’s generally expected that if high schoolers have mastered those, they should also be able to handle basic interest calculations.
But butchers or pastry chefs aren't exactly being bothered with calculus.

You seem to be speaking somewhat off the cuff, I suppose.

The curriculum itself isn't the same, nor is the volume of material; there's a big difference between a prep school where you take history for two hours a week over four years or math for three or four hours, compared to a vocational school where you might only have history for one or two years at an hour or two a week, and math for two hours over three years.