School Reform: Thoughts?

My kid stumbled onto a solid site last year when he was online, so he uses it to test himself before finals to see if he actually knows his stuff...

rowdypanther12 and driftingranger2, if you're just memorizing everything without actually grasping the concept, you're making a huge 🙂 mistake—it's been the same problem today as it was thirty years ago. I’ve dealt with plenty of teachers like that myself, including the ones who just dictate the 😱 verbatim. Trust me, that is definitely not how anyone should be learning.

I mean, I get it, but what else are we supposed to do when the professors don't explain things?
How are you meant to grasp high and low pressure systems? If they aren't allowed to explain it, why didn't they just run an experiment instead?
Why does my kid, who isn't interested in rote memorization, have to turn to YouTube videos to make sense of it all?
I hope you see where I'm coming from. Honestly, I don't care how it's taught—whether it's a lecture or a hands-on experiment. An experiment would definitely be better.
But they aren't doing either.
Just read it in the textbook.
Look, I'm 44 years old. I don't think I'm quite dim enough to be unable to understand a textbook.

It’s already a lost cause.
He’s way too stubborn to change his ways; he just guns it and hopes for the best.
I’ve pretty much given up trying to nudge him to use any common sense, but it's like talking to a brick wall.

The only saving grace is that he’s a math whiz, otherwise we'd be in real trouble..
He just grinds through the homework without ever actually studying or even knowing what he's supposed to be learning from her.

rowdypanther12 said:So now they're learning about those ancient eras and how the land compares to what it used to be.
Luckily, there are tons of great YouTube videos out there because when I read the book, I honestly couldn't wrap my head around why the seasons switched from winter to summer like that. 😂

Honestly, that was my favorite part of the whole year! I had such a blast drawing everything out and walking them through it. We kept things totally straightforward, of course. 🎉 It’s one of those rare subjects where you can’t just memorize facts; you actually have to *get* it. She picked up the rest on her own.

To my eyes, every single word in that textbook was perfectly clear and logical, but I noticed even my aunt struggled to follow along. It also seems to me that their foundational knowledge isn't quite where it needs to be.

If I had my way, I’d push for more project-based learning—but specifically individual projects rather than group work. Project-based learning is great because it teaches kids how to organize information systematically, especially when they have to put together a PowerPoint for a presentation. Group work, on the other hand, mostly just teaches a kid how to advocate for themselves so they don't end up doing all the heavy lifting for the lazy or uninterested members of the team. Though, I suppose that's a valuable life lesson in its own right.

It’s funny how things I used to grasp easily don't seem quite so baffling until I try to explain them like I'm eleven again.
But now, thanks to this whole high-pressure system situation, I'm looking at it with zero prior knowledge.
Honestly, it might as well be written in hieroglyphics.

Michelle Nelson4, it’s not a 1:1 ratio—you’re the one talking, while most people are just sitting there listening.

And regarding those project assignments—kids aren't stupid enough to let themselves be dragged down by someone else's laziness. I definitely get it when they complain that a teammate isn't pulling their weight, but honestly, I don't buy those excuses if they were the ones who picked the group in the first place. Look, if you already knew this person was unreliable and flaky, why on earth would you choose to partner up with them?

I don't know, things always just end in total frustration on my end because "she wants five, yet nobody's putting in enough effort and everyone gets offended too easily."
I guess they aren't really cut out for teamwork 😂

It isn't really a choice they get to make; the professor just assigns them to groups. My daughter actually managed to negotiate a more balanced workload this last time around. I even told her, "Listen, if you end up with one of those heavy lifting roles, you have my total support—just please don't let them slack off and dump everything on your shoulders..."

Hey, if that’s how it goes, then I definitely have a right to vent! 😁 Look, I sometimes do the same thing where I mix people up into groups or pairs, usually putting some of the less experienced folks with the heavy hitters—mostly because I figure the newer guys can pick up a ton just by watching the pros in action. But when I do that, I’m incredibly hands-on with every single stage of the project. I make sure they hand over a solid roadmap and a clear breakdown of who is doing what. Then, I require individual check-ins from everyone so I can track their specific progress. I also make it a point to ask for feedback on how the teamwork is actually going, especially from those top performers.

In elementary school, it basically boils down to, "You four make a poster about this topic by Friday."
Then, for the first four days, everyone just argues over who’s doing what and how. In the end, one person actually shows up with all the materials ready to go, and while they do all the heavy lifting, the others might at most toss in a photo or two to look helpful.😂

Did I ever mention how I dealt with a few freeloaders back in the day?
So, basically, I grouped them based on their personalities and skill sets—it was just a practice assignment, after all. I paired some students with peers who actually had the patience and ability to walk them through things, but then there were these two... let's just say I paired them with an incredibly ambitious student who really knows how to hold her own, hoping she’d be able to push them to actually pull their weight.
The deadline was two weeks.
Fast forward one week, and this girl reaches out via Microsoft Teams. She’s explaining how those two are completely ignoring her and boycotting every single attempt she makes to split up the workload. She’s stuck—she refuses to be their sucker and do the whole thing herself, but she also doesn't want to fail if the project isn't turned in on time.
Here’s what I did: I told her she was officially a "one-person show" now. I instructed her to just complete one-third of the assignment by herself and told her not to say a word about the others—unless, of course, they specifically asked why she wasn't working with them. Honestly, I was just curious to see how long it would take them to realize that in a virtual workspace, nothing happens if you just sit there.
They didn't realize anything was up until the very last night. They'd spent the whole time assuming she’d eventually cave and choose between getting a grade or doing all the work themselves, so when they realized she hadn't done anything for them, it was too late. They didn't get credit; they just got a note in their progress report and lost a percentage point on the final project, which this was part of.
And they learned a pretty vital lesson: freeloading works—right up until the moment it stops working. My only regret is that they were eighth graders at the time, so I didn't get the chance to see if that lesson actually stuck with them the following year.

rowdypanther12 said:As for the textbook, I’m pretty lost on this part—specifically the section about
high and low pressure systems. All I really get is that high pressure means nice weather and low pressure means it's miserable outside.
I didn't grasp much from the reading. Honestly, I could probably repeat the definitions exactly as they're written, but I don't actually understand what's happening.
It wasn't until I watched some YouTube videos that things finally started to click for me. It was a bit of an embarrassing moment, to be honest.
What's the point of her just memorizing definitions and processes if she doesn't actually comprehend the underlying mechanics?

I'm not sure which specific textbook you guys are looking at, but if it's the one from Google, it's an absolute nightmare. You can't separate the essential info from the fluff; it's just a disaster of a book.
Just wait until you hit the climate chapters. I had no idea there were even that many types. They might as well be drawing mental maps just to keep them all straight.

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mellowskipper said:I'm not sure which specific textbook you guys are looking at, but if it's the one from Google, it's an absolute nightmare. You can't separate the essential info from the fluff; it's just a disaster of a book.
Just wait until you hit the climate chapters. I had no idea there were even that many types. They might as well be drawing mental maps just to keep them all straight.

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So, I just asked my kid which textbooks they're actually using in class, and he said it's the Google one. He hasn't complained much yet—says it's "fine"—but hey, that's just a student's perspective.

Drop some links here if you’ve found any decent websites your kids actually use to help with studying.
Specifically for school subjects...

urbantinker8 said:I mean, in my experience, I’ve rarely relied on heavy lecturing; if I am explaining something, it usually doesn't drag on for more than maybe fifteen or twenty minutes, but ninety percent of the time it’s really just discussion or some sort of listening and reading comprehension exercises, or perhaps a project or having them present their own research.
I only really lecture when introducing new grammar rules, though that doesn't happen all that often.
With foreign language studies, things haven't actually changed much compared to the "old school" methods.
Though, I have to admit, whenever I try to imagine students in a math, chemistry, or physics class constantly conducting their own independent investigations and arriving at every single conclusion and realization entirely on their own—all while receiving "teacher support" but without any actual direct instruction—I can't help but chuckle.
Luckily, I guess those teachers are laughing too, since they still end up explaining things the traditional way.🙏

Not everyone is laughing, though. For some, it’s actually nice to take a breather while the kids dive into the texts themselves. If they don't get something, honestly, it's often on them—they're either being lazy, disinterested, or struggling to focus because they've been glued to their phones at home.
Any excuse that shifts the responsibility onto the kid is a convenient one.
And then you shouldn't be surprised by a flood of IP Corp complaints.

One of the silver linings (if you can call it that) during the pandemic era was the return to in-person learning where students weren't allowed to sit in little groups of four (where half the class ends up with their backs to the board) or cluster together by neighborhood to work on group projects.
Suddenly, the same people who had to start looking students in the eye again (and now doing it through masks, which makes eye contact even more vital) are yelling that infection rates are too high and we need to switch back to online learning. And since recording sessions isn't always an option for various reasons, they just send instructions to parents or students telling them which page of the textbook to cover independently.

And that's the "education reform" that parents supposedly asked for.

Of course, there are things kids simply need explained, demonstrated, or told through a story. It's not just limited to math or language grammar; it applies to history through anecdotes, biology, geography, technical skills... you name it.

This whole group research/project-based/collaborative learning thing—whatever they're calling it these days—is actually fantastic for interdisciplinary topics and connecting what's already been learned across different subjects. Language classes are probably the best place for this; you can practice grammar and expand vocabulary while simultaneously reviewing science or history, tossing in some civic education and real-world life skills... plus, it helps build a sense of community in the classroom through actual communication.

From what I saw last year, Google studies and science curricula overlap quite a bit in many places. If a topic has already been covered in science, you can assign a project for them to tackle during geography. But if it hasn't, then you're basically just dumping extra homework on a student that the teacher should have handled.

Google is, yeah.
Look, it’s not like her history textbook is anything revolutionary, but she really knows how to teach. She talks through everything with them and guides them toward the answers themselves, so the books are just a resource rather than the whole lesson like they are in geography.

Suddenly, everyone thinks they’re an expert educator.

Look, I get it. Divjakica and her crew can be incredibly grating because they try to flip everything upside down without actually having a solid plan. But let’s be real: this whole "life skills" approach isn't some revolutionary discovery. What they’re pushing is just standard modern pedagogy used in top-tier international systems—think Scandinavia—where actual experts designed and rolled out these methodologies.

Sure, a teacher needs to explain certain concepts to kids. But if a classroom consists of a teacher lecturing for forty minutes while students just sit there, nodding and scribbling notes every single day? That’s just bad teaching.

The truth is, that kind of lecture-style teaching is the lazy way out. Honestly, you don't even really have to prepare for it. If you've been in the classroom long enough, you’ve got all the facts stored in your head already. You can just show up, stand at the front, and talk at them.

It’s always easy for them to just say, "go read the book and finish the workbook."
I get what the ideal process should look like, but honestly, that's rarely how things actually play out in practice.

I totally get where you're coming from. Look, mediocre teaching is still better than a complete disaster in the classroom. If a teacher is at least talking and trying to cover the material, that's a win compared to someone just sitting there painting their nails while the kids stare at the wall. 🙂