Look at the state of the federal government right now. You want them running education for the country?
Comment on Teachers deserve more money.
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 6 days agoFirst of all, there should be one Federal curriculum for all schools. 2+2=4, CAT spells cat in every state. There is no reason to have 50 separate curriculums. The ONLY reason that exists is so MAGA states can use the schools to indoctrinate American schoolchildren into Confederate Treason, instead of giving their children an education that allows this country to compete in the world, instead of just compete against each other.
Texas_Hangover@lemmy.radio 6 days ago
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 6 days ago
No, not the MAGA Federal government. But when they’re out, and they’ve been crushed, we are going reconfigure the new government to serve the people, and yes, I expect the government to convene a panel of educators to create a new Federal curriculum.
That curriculum would look to the future, and not worship dead old ideas from the past. In Florida, DeSatan wants to make Cursive Writing mandatory again, instead of teaching kids real history. We need a history curriculum that acknowledges and teaches about Slavery and the Native American Genocide, and how to avoid such atrocities in the future. We need two math tracks, one for those who want to go into engineering, sciences, etc., and one that emphasizes Business Math, for everyone else who mostly uses math for their personal finances, or perhaps to start a business.
But mostly, the Federal curriculum would have a strong emphasis on Critical Thinking Skills, which help people recognize and reject propaganda from both sides, and avoid dumb conspiracy theories.
Critical Thinking Skills are literally the most important think any human can learn. All the knowledge you pick up in school is right there on the phone on your pocket, you can look it up in seconds. Critical Thinking is how we are supposed to think, and it has to be taught and practiced at a Elementary/High School level, so students can flourish in college and beyond. Without Critical Thinking Skills, we substitute a chaotic ad hoc style of thinking that is easy to manipulate by bad people.
Critical Thinking Skills are what kept the Conservative scourge from rising and morphing into MAGA for so many years. That’s why Republicans deliberately suppressed the teaching of Critical Thinking Skills for decades, claiming that it teaches children to defy authority, when what it really does is teach people to think for themselves. Authoritarians don’t want to teach kids how to challenge their power.
mkwt@lemmy.world 6 days ago
There is no reason to have 50 separate curriculums. The ONLY reason that exists is so MAGA states can use the schools to indoctrinate American schoolchildren
That’s not the only reason. There are in fact principles of federalism, and there’s the 10th amendment to the constitution. Educating the public is not one of the 17 enumerated powers granted to Congress in article I. Under the 10th, powers that are not granted to the national government are reserved to the states or to the people.
This is why the national government’s regulation of education is based around carrots in the form of block grants that states apply for. Not enforcement sticks.
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 6 days ago
Sounds like that’s one of the new MAGA amendments we’re going to have to pass.
JayDee@lemmy.world 6 days ago
You’re aware no child left behind was literally that, and it’s a big reason for schools declining as they are right now, right? Because the standards it set were poorly thought out, and the execution of said standards was also terrible. And that was when the US government was still even mildly coherent.
The educators - the people who actually gave enough of a fuck to go through years of college and take a dirt poor job because they believed in teaching - should be setting the curriculum. Not some bullshitting politician on the hill.
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 6 days ago
No Child Left Behind was signed into law by George Bush, so it was a Conservative scam from the beginning. Like all Conservative scams, it’s meant to work poorly, or not work at all, so that worse corrupt partisan concepts get promoted as government solutions. And surprise, what followed was the rise of Charter Schools and School Vouchers, siphoning tax money into private and religious educational enterprises where a most of the most gets converted into profits instead of education.
I don’t mind politicians who take the issue seriously being part of the solution, as long as they are participating in good faith. Conservative/ MAGA politicians should be totally banned from the table, we’re already too familiar with their “solutions.” They don’t get any input next time, they’re too stupid and corrupt, which is exactly what education is supposed to avoid, not encourage.
AlfalFaFail@lemmy.ml 6 days ago
The bill was co-authored and championed by Senator Ted Kennedy, a stalwark Democratic, and Representative George Miller (D-CA). It passed the Senate 91–8 and the House 381–41. Just because it was passed during the Bush administration doesn’t mean it was Republican initiative.
Many small government libertarians and conservatives hated the NCLB because they saw it as government overreaching.
Charter schools are legislately introduced in the Obama era bill, Race to the Top, along with common core standards being tied to funding.
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 6 days ago
Yeah, that was the era of the one party system, when Republicans ran everything, and the Corporate Dems let them, because they believed in Lite Conservativism.
The fact that “Democratic” legislation was introduced during a Republican administration, and was voted for by most Republicans, and then signed by a Republican president, would indicate that it was probably not a very “Democratic” piece of legislation.
Back then, it was often hard to tell the difference between the parties. Those differences have widened greatly, and will continue to widen into the future. Just because Conservatives, and Conservative Lites, all backed multiple bills that were engineered to fail, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take another crack at it, but in Good Faith this time.