Edukayshun

general
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Prompted by a post made by @Rizak and seeing the woeful state of education, I just wanted to drop my 0.05c into the discussion.

IMHO I feel that for kids to be ready for the world, they should have :

  • basic maths
  • a good understanding on the pronouncation of words etc
  • spelling (also the stuff of you’re and your, brakes and break etc etc)
  • a basic understanding of geography (where the various countries are etc)
  • an extra language besides Afrikaans and English (especially here in South Arica)
  • skills such as woodworking, metalworking, cooking, seamstressing, and especially gardening (growing your own veggies etc) and these must not be gender-specific. If a girl want to do metalworking, she can. If a boy want to do cooking, he can.
  • health and self-care (how to take care of yourself, personal hygiene etc)
  • then the other “vanities” can be added, such as art, music, drama etc

Once the final school year have been completed, a decision can be made as to whether to go to university/college or whatever, but at this stage the child have skills that can be used to apply for a job for income.

Nowadays kids are just pumped full of book information, with absolutely no clue on how to fend for themselves should they lose their job or drop out. And most parents does not have the time to teach their children the basics.

Sadly I think that this will not happen, that it is just another dream of mine…

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Everyone should know basic things like how to cook and clean up after themselves.

There are some neighbour kids that come over to visit me regularly. I correct their grammar and tell them that if the don’t learn to speak properly, people will think they’re stupid, even if they’re not.

I can’t remember how many times I’ve told students that there is no good reason to send out an email full of spelling errors with spell check. Enable it. Use grammarly or ChatGPT or something if they can’t be bothered to learn. There are tools out there to help you sound educated.

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There are entire cultures in the US that degrade education and sounding educated can get you in trouble. Some versions of rednecks, urban, jocks, construction trades, etc… Crosses race and politics.

Changing the perception of education in the US should have been done ages ago. Part of the issue is peer promotion and fuzzy practices in education. Some people do graduate with a worthless piece of paper. And many public examples of smart people do come off as worthless pricks.

I do not understand any parent who has kids that can’t prepare simple meals and clean up after themselves, at any age above like 5. I understand having kids who don’t, but not those who can’t. Even if you work 60 hours a week as a single mom, someone is caring for those kids when you are at work, and supposedly you are when you are home. And teaching that makes your life easier as a parent, not harder.

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From Forbes…

For decades, the standard approach to teaching kids how to decipher, or “decode,” text has rested on the assumption that it’s not necessary to explicitly teach the vast majority of them how to connect sounds in words to the letters that represent them. Teachers may throw in some of that instruction, often called “phonics,” but they’re guided by their training and materials to encourage kids to guess at words, using context or pictures. Scientific evidence has clearly shown, however, that many if not most children will struggle to become fluent readers unless they get systematic instruction in phonics.

The difference between my oldest learning to read and my youngest, 15 years, is night and day. The oldest was just barely getting some of this crap, and the youngest only got a little bit of phonics. The middle kid, was somewhere inbetween. As a result, the amount of reading done for pleasure is the same. The oldest devours books, unfortunately a lot of HP fanfic, and learns by reading. The youngest, possibly the brightest, struggles absorbing via text. Doesn’t read very naturally.

We tried to counter this by teaching phonics at home, but the hammering in of “guessing” the word I believe has harmed her and her older sister for life. If she doesn’t know a word she essentially skips it, and her vocabulary is both wide and oddly narrow.

This is a method of teaching that has been proven not to work, but the speed the national standards change is so slow it’s not changing. It’s also supposed to somehow help disadvantaged kids, but doesn’t, which makes the inertia just that much harder to overcome to make a change. I believe this is worse than new math, since at least new math teaches you some method to get there. Even though it would have just been simpler to memorize simple addition and multiplication tables in elementary school instead of high school.

The new reading methods don’t actually give you tools to learn new words on their own. Given a difficult word they are left just staring at it until they give up, or use a traditional method they weren’t well taught on.

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When I was a wee lad phonics was definitely a thing when we were learning to read. It works. Not why they moved away from it.

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My mother spent hours with me with records and flash cards teaching me phonics at home. I’d say my language skills were pretty well developed at an early age. They would have been put to so much better use if only I’d applied myself.

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Studies that show people learn different ways being blown out of proportion. Not wanting to admit some kids are faster than others, or slower. Not wanting to actually deal with learning disabilities but work around them. And crappy social science engineering.

Not to mention the garbage that happens in High School English classes. Let’s take 8 weeks to read this 300 page book and days talking about why the curtains were blue. Ripping any possible joy out of the actual reading.

Also, @Nabiki Maybe move these to Ooks new thread?

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Wut? Why?? That’s senseless.

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Reference to this.

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There are definitely many, many subcultures in the US that look down on education and don’t trust anything an educated person says even if said person has sources to back it up. It’s a weird kind of bullheadedness that I’ve never understood. As you say, it crosses race and class lines and it’s getting to be a huge problem because some of those folks now hold elected office.

As for kids for past age 5 being at least semi self sufficient, my parents definitely made sure we were. Not sure why some parents don’t these days. They’re only making more work for themselves. I was a latchkey kid from age 9. I’d come after school, make myself a snack, and then plop myself in front of the TV or play outside with my friends until one of my parents got home.

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My 19 year old renter hasn’t the slightest idea of how to prepare anything other than sandwiches and instant noodles. I’ve had to teach him how to clean the bathroom and hallway that he’s responsible for. He’s not lazy and he’s not a slob, he’s just never been taught. It can be hard to communicate with him since he gets up in the afternoon and probably goes to bed a bit before I get up, but he’s a good kid.

I rather like having an automatic snow shoveler. When it snows, he just goes out and shovels it off of the walk and driveway.

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Reading is probably the one thing I’m worried about with my two boys (5yo and 2.5yo). The oldest kid is hyperactive and has a hard time sitting still unless he’s in a public environment while the youngest appears to be enjoying books but might change in later years. Both of them do have an appreciation for books in that they’re always open to us reading to them so maybe I can be happy with that for now.

In terms of being able to care for themselves, my kids are definitely spoiled vs what I and my brothers had to go through. The 5yo can keep himself entertained and fed with snacks for several hours (even knows how to use the media laptop to watch his cartoons). Meanwhile, when I was his age, my parents already had us doing the laundry, cooking rice, sweeping the floor, taking out the trash, and getting ourselves ready for bed, which was always at 8pm sharp because we had to wake up at 4am to get ready for school at 7am. I’m not bitter about it; The way I see it, if my sons have to go through all that as well in this day and age, I’m failing as a parent.

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When I left the house, I had NFI how to cook rice… :rofl:

But I survived.

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Sounds like hes a better roomie than i was!

You also thought me how to cook rice properly and a few other things.

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If you’re worried about your kids reading but they enjoy having you read to them, you could do what my brother did to me. Start reading a book, let them get really hooked into the story, then stop. I learned to read earlier than most because I figured out that it was the only way I was going to get to finish those stories.

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In game terms, those are “everyman skills”. It still amazed me how many young adults would be completely helpless to survive on their own. Their parents did them no favours.

They don’t have to be at the level where many of my generation were, but they should be able to feed themselves without ordering out, be able to understand that they have so much money and how much things cost, and be able to look around them and not be blinded by SEP (Somebody Else’s Problem) fields.

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Hmmm, might try that with the youngest kid. Oldest kid, he tends to learn best through consistent exposure and habit so we’ll just keep at it. One important thing I’m discovering with my kids is you have to always be flexible and willing to change things.

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To be clear, my brother didn’t do it to be helpful, but because he was mean even way back then, but I was motivated to read far above what should have been my level as a result. :wink:

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We read to our kids from a pretty early age. We did bedtime stories that way. But we also always had subtitles on when watching things–first because we had volume low so the kids could sleep, and then because the kids were awake and loud.

I think reading to them inspired interest, but our firstborn learned to read primarily from subtitles on television and video games. Specifically, he wanted to play a Legend of Zelda game. At first, Mom had to read him the dialogue while he played the game. Then Mom would help him with the hard parts. Fast forward a bit and Mom was playing the game and he was reading the dialogue.

Not sure about the younger kid. He taught himself pretty early, probably by similar mechanisms, but pretended not to be able to read for quite a while.

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:laughing: :rofl: