Conversation

Notices

1. sim@shitposter.club's status on Friday, 03-Feb-2023 08:57:59 JST sim

   • sim
   "Many parents may dismiss my message because their kids are getting As, enjoy going to school, and are learning basic skills like multiplication. In general, parents acknowledge that modern education is in crisis, but few believe that their children attend a school with real problems. My response is that our standards of even basic literacy are too low. I had one parent email me that I was lying when I said schools no longer taught the multiplication tables. I responded that I’m sure some are teaching the multiplication tables, but I doubted any were teaching them through 20 × 20 or making the students memorize fractional tables. It’s not that teachers aren’t trying; it’s that the standards aren’t rigorous."
   
   I can agree with this. I think as far as we went in school would be the 12 times tables. I can't imagine going to 20 x 20!
   • sim@shitposter.club's status on Friday, 03-Feb-2023 08:58:31 JST sim

     in reply to
     "A gentleman at my gym approached me one day and said, “Do you know how we make fun of the employees at McDonald’s because they don’t know how to make change without the register telling them what to do? Well, my daughter just got a job running a cash register. She came home crying from work the first day because she realized she doesn’t know how to make change. She is a straight-A senior at the local high school. How did this happen?” We had never spoken before and he had no idea who I was. He told me his children went to an elite, private school in the Bahamas until they attended their local high school in the United States. This caring, engaged father discovered that getting good grades in school no longer means a child is educated. He voiced regret that he and his wife had trusted the school system—both public and private—and we discussed how too often an A means the student behaved and was pleasant to the teacher."