I'll let you in on a secret. I have a doctorate in education, but the field’s basically just a 100 years old. We don’t really know what we’re doing. Our scholarly understanding of how learning happens is like astronomy 2000 years ago.
Most classroom practice is astrology.
Before the late 19th century, no human society had ever attempted to formally educate the entire populace. It was either aristocracy, meritocracy, or a blend. And always male.
We’re still smack-dab in the middle of the largest experiment on children ever done.
Most teachers perpetuate the “banking” model (Freire) used on them by their teachers, who likewise inherited it from theirs, etc.
Thus the elite “Lyceum” style of instruction continues even though it’s ineffectual with most kids.
What’s worse, the key strategies we’ve discovered, driven by cognitive science & child psychology, are quite regularly dismissed by pencil-pushing, test-driven administrators. Much like Trump ignores science, the majority of principals & superintendents I’ve known flout research.
Some definitions:
Banking model --> kids are like piggy banks: empty till you fill them with knowledge that you're the expert in.
Lyceum --> originally Aristotle's school, where the sons of land-owning citizens learned through lectures and research.
Things we (scholars) DO know:
-Homework doesn't really help, especially younger kids.
-Students don't learn a thing from testing. Most teachers don't either (it's supposed to help them tweak instruction, but that rarely happens).
-Spending too much time on weak subjects HURTS.
Do you want kids to learn? Here's something we've discovered: kids learn things that matter to them, either because the knowledge and skills are "cool," or because .... they give the kids tools to liberate themselves and their communities.
Maintaining the status quo? Nope.
Kids are acutely aware of injustice and by nature rebellious against the systems of authority that keep autonomy away from them.
If you're perpetuating those systems, teachers, you've already freaking lost.
They won't be learning much from you. Except what not to become. Sure, you can wear them down. That's what happened to most of you, isn't it? You saw the hideous flaw in the world and wanted to heal it. But year after numbing year, they made you learn their dogma by rote.
And now many of you are breaking the souls of children, too.
For what?
It's all smoke and mirrors. All the carefully crafted objectives, units and exams.
WE. DON'T. KNOW. HOW. PEOPLE. LEARN.
We barely understand the physical mechanisms behind MEMORY. But we DO know kids aren't empty piggy banks. They are BRIMMING with thought.
The last and most disgusting reality? The thing I hear in classroom after freaking classroom?
Education is all about capitalism.
"You need to learn these skills to get a good job." To be a good laborer. To help the wealthy generate more wealth, while you get scraps.
THAT is why modern education is a failure.
Its basic premise is monstrous.
"Why should I learn to read, Dr. Bowles?"
Because reading is magical. It makes life worth living. And being able to read, you can decode the strategies of your oppressors & stop them w/ their own words.
The biggest warmongering race of Aliens declare war on the local Galaxy cluster. The opposing group of peace-loving Aliens, who had befriended most Alien races, are finally forced to reveal their secret weapon, a ‘classified’ species called Humans, and their tenacity as persistence predators.
Rahn closes all six of her eyes, heart sinking into her thorax. A fine tremor starts in her vestigial wings. “So it’s true. They’ve returned to their bloodthirsty crusade.”
Undan nods miserably. The holo-pad in his hands shows the details of the crisis; six ships already attached to the planet holding their Boundary Station. A thousand V’afinog are holding the planet hostage. It’s only a matter of time before they assume complete control of the Boundary Station and can open the relay of shields between their galaxy and Rahn’s.
Rahn doesn’t bother with denial. Yes, there’s supposed to be a treaty between their Galaxies. Yes, the V’afinog are breaking that treaty and risking every trade agreement that keeps them alive in their barren corner of the universe. Yes, it’s beyond imagination, beyond comprehension.
But it’s happening.
She makes a conscious effort to hold her wings still. “The Station?”
“Still unbreached,” Undan reports. He twists the pad around so she can see the glowing red dots that mark the V’afinog troops. “However, they’re making short work of our shields. Ma’am, I don’t think we have a choice. They’re too fast.”
“On my grandmother’s wings,” Rahn whispers. This is the worst possible scenario, a scenario so awful that there is only one course of action left. “All these years holding them back wasted because those bloodthirsty lizards can’t keep a single promise.”
Undan’s wings flutter uncomfortably. He doesn’t need to ask who this new they are. “Our relations with them are quite good, ma’am. I don’t think there’s too much cause for alarm. They’ll help us.”
Rahn stares at him in horror. “Undan, you befriended one, didn’t you?”
The ‘that Vegan teacher’ that tells you it’s selfish to come out as LGBTQ+ over coming out as ‘vegan’, parodyed George floyd’s last words in her song about being vegan and compared animal meat to the holocaust - and that BLM should be protesting for veganism and animal rights over their own rights.
Let’s also not forget that she had also joked and laughed about a kid dying bc they had tried to follow a certain vegan diet SHE had brought up, and after she was called out about it she just kept making fun of them.
Don’t forget that she said that having an eating disorder was not an excuse to not go vegan, when people with eating disorders shouldn’t take any excuse to cut food out of their diets.
Her original teacher account got shadowbanned so she made another account pretending to be a completely different person: thatvegannurse, she looks and talks exactly the same but she puts her hair in pigtails and talks about how much she hates thatveganteacher, she also owns like 16 other faceless accounts pretending to be real people that she uses to comment and like her posts to boost interactions
kaledo-art
turnnoffyourmind
blakekathryn
