Doug, I enjoyed your impassioned article, and kind of chuckled at your Hunger Games Scenario in rewarding schools for the highest failure rate. Sounds like it would make a good dystopian movie (maybe 50 years ago I would have said novel), and maybe someone twenty years younger than me would say make it a TV series. And someone 30 years younger than me would say, make it a series of Tic-Toc Videos, for people to see in bite-size morsels.
But I also think you are presenting your own type of straw-man argument, as Bono as your boogey-man. For one thing, the dismantling of USAID was cruel and inhumane. As a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (Zambia 2008-2010), there were many debates among Peace Corps Volunteers and among host country nationals (especially the more educated ones) about the usefulness of AID or the futility of it in developing countries.
But, like any drug-addict, cutting something off cold turkey has unintended consequences. For example, these Malaria plagued Countries in Africa in particular (a Country such as Zambia) already had difficulty distributing needed resources like, mosquito nets. As dysfunctional as USAID might have been, at least they were able to distribute resources for people in some capacity. Now all that stuff is sitting in storage, never to be used, or worse, sold even more ruthlessly on the black market.
For every action there is an opposite reaction. And everything Trump is doing in the name or routing out corruption, leads to corruption in other areas. Needless to say, I have enjoyed some of your other arguments against the "Deep State", yet you appear to have a blind spot when calling out Trump and his rank corruption.
As for fostering an innate curiosity in children, I think as experienced teachers, we have a bit of a responsibility to younger teachers (especially not just in lacking experience in the classroom, but life) to provide them guidance, and help temper their expectations in the difference they make. Teaching as you know is a craft, that takes years to hone-in-on. (You certainly know this better than me as you do have at least a decade of experience more than me).
Of course, we have challenges with children that have always been there, from unstable home-lives to personal tragedies (to you name it) that students are dealing with. And to add the addiction of screens, phones and tablets on top of that, makes our task even harder. But that's not a reason to feed the narrative of young teachers turned off by teaching. That in my view just appears to feed the cycle of cynicism that is crippling to any society.
I personally would like to interview this teacher you mention (among others) who are so quick to leave a field that, they "supposedly" entered with eyes wide open about the challenges, and the uphill battle we teachers all face.
Perhaps the Tick-talkers (loquacious bloodsuckers) are being paid to spread a sense of helplessness and hopelessness. It’s much more difficult to pull oneself up by the bootstraps if one is told over and over that there’s no point to it. The whole you’ll own nothing and be happy eventually sinks in and eats away at your ambition and self confidence so you figure what’s the point? Why even try to learn anything? I’m never going to own anything, and the gubmint’s gonna take of me.
What you talk about has been very effective in the inner cities. When you're 14 years old, and your version of American History is: the country was founded by slaveowners, then slavery, then Martin Luther King, then George Floyd, then yesterday ... a young teen feels that there are no opportunities, and it's all pointless. How are you supposed to fight such intense forces?
What many adults don't understand is that this has been done to young people. A lot of it isn't the students' fault. A shocking statement coming from someone like me, but that's how I see it.
What I forgot to mention in the podcast is the incredible opportunity to teenagers who can break the cycle and do the basic things that we were shown and taught back in the olden days. We have some students at MVHS who will be fantastically successful, simply by having the right attitude and mindset. One student deleted TikTok from her phone. I thought the earth was going to hurtle into the void when I heard that one.
Unfortunately, the wreckage in the wake of the past 30 years of public "education" is vast, and the profession is hemorrhaging teaching talent.
Doug, I enjoyed your impassioned article, and kind of chuckled at your Hunger Games Scenario in rewarding schools for the highest failure rate. Sounds like it would make a good dystopian movie (maybe 50 years ago I would have said novel), and maybe someone twenty years younger than me would say make it a TV series. And someone 30 years younger than me would say, make it a series of Tic-Toc Videos, for people to see in bite-size morsels.
But I also think you are presenting your own type of straw-man argument, as Bono as your boogey-man. For one thing, the dismantling of USAID was cruel and inhumane. As a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (Zambia 2008-2010), there were many debates among Peace Corps Volunteers and among host country nationals (especially the more educated ones) about the usefulness of AID or the futility of it in developing countries.
But, like any drug-addict, cutting something off cold turkey has unintended consequences. For example, these Malaria plagued Countries in Africa in particular (a Country such as Zambia) already had difficulty distributing needed resources like, mosquito nets. As dysfunctional as USAID might have been, at least they were able to distribute resources for people in some capacity. Now all that stuff is sitting in storage, never to be used, or worse, sold even more ruthlessly on the black market.
For every action there is an opposite reaction. And everything Trump is doing in the name or routing out corruption, leads to corruption in other areas. Needless to say, I have enjoyed some of your other arguments against the "Deep State", yet you appear to have a blind spot when calling out Trump and his rank corruption.
As for fostering an innate curiosity in children, I think as experienced teachers, we have a bit of a responsibility to younger teachers (especially not just in lacking experience in the classroom, but life) to provide them guidance, and help temper their expectations in the difference they make. Teaching as you know is a craft, that takes years to hone-in-on. (You certainly know this better than me as you do have at least a decade of experience more than me).
Of course, we have challenges with children that have always been there, from unstable home-lives to personal tragedies (to you name it) that students are dealing with. And to add the addiction of screens, phones and tablets on top of that, makes our task even harder. But that's not a reason to feed the narrative of young teachers turned off by teaching. That in my view just appears to feed the cycle of cynicism that is crippling to any society.
I personally would like to interview this teacher you mention (among others) who are so quick to leave a field that, they "supposedly" entered with eyes wide open about the challenges, and the uphill battle we teachers all face.
Perhaps the Tick-talkers (loquacious bloodsuckers) are being paid to spread a sense of helplessness and hopelessness. It’s much more difficult to pull oneself up by the bootstraps if one is told over and over that there’s no point to it. The whole you’ll own nothing and be happy eventually sinks in and eats away at your ambition and self confidence so you figure what’s the point? Why even try to learn anything? I’m never going to own anything, and the gubmint’s gonna take of me.
What you talk about has been very effective in the inner cities. When you're 14 years old, and your version of American History is: the country was founded by slaveowners, then slavery, then Martin Luther King, then George Floyd, then yesterday ... a young teen feels that there are no opportunities, and it's all pointless. How are you supposed to fight such intense forces?
What many adults don't understand is that this has been done to young people. A lot of it isn't the students' fault. A shocking statement coming from someone like me, but that's how I see it.
What I forgot to mention in the podcast is the incredible opportunity to teenagers who can break the cycle and do the basic things that we were shown and taught back in the olden days. We have some students at MVHS who will be fantastically successful, simply by having the right attitude and mindset. One student deleted TikTok from her phone. I thought the earth was going to hurtle into the void when I heard that one.
Unfortunately, the wreckage in the wake of the past 30 years of public "education" is vast, and the profession is hemorrhaging teaching talent.
God bless you for staying in the profession and helping the ones who want to be helped.