Social studies teacher here. You know why we don't teach the "classical" education model anymore? Because it relies on memorization and lacks any real critical thinking or analysis. It whitewashes history and devalues the contributions of anyone outside the white, European mainstream.
Just looking at the available sample questions for the grade 8 test, there is no real analysis beyond simple textual understanding ("what it says in the text"). There are no sample questions that actually require a student to write. The writing questions are almost entirely correcting grammatical mistakes. On a complexity scale, there are generally 4 "levels" of questions, with 4 being the most complex, which typically would require an essay response. None of the questions asked go above a complexity of level 2.
And don't get me started on the inherent biases of the texts chosen. The "literature," "historical/founding documents" and "philosophy/religion" texts chosen are all by dead white men: Kipling, Plato, Cicero, Jefferson, Kempis, Eisenhower. The only author who wasn't a dead white man is a dead white woman: George Eliot.
Both science passages have to do with modern medicine, the contents of which are far from controversial: antivenom and cardiovascular health. That isn't to say that there is anything wrong with this, but again, there is nothing that even allows for critical analysis here.
So... yeah... definitely glad I'm not in Florida
and lacks any real critical thinking or analysis.
That's kind of their goal. If you can't think for yourself, they'll happily do it for you.
By classical they mean abusing children, religious grooming, and whitewashed history.
Yep. If you are an LGBT child, they don't care about you. They want to put religious grooming for Christian Nationalism in the schools. And they don't want you to know that slavery is bad. It was a free job training program.
Stop voting for Republicans. They don't care about our rights or education.
Yep. If you are an LGBT child, they don’t care about you.
That's not true at all. They care very much about making sure you're mistreated at taxpayer expense.
Uniforms, lineups, the comeback of the ruler...
Here's the thing about the ruler: it's not used to measure anything else but the students pain threshold.
Our education system has been failing for the last 20+ years. We spend much much much more per student than peer countries, and we have shit results.
I don't know the answer, but somethings gotta change, it seems like a fundamental systematic problem. What do we think a solution could be?
For starters, recognizing that most of the problems our students face cannot be solved by schools, no matter how much money we throw at them? We need our entire society to change. As a teacher, there is literally nothing I can do about the poverty, racism, access to Healthcare, or other sources of inequality outside the school. Society as a whole needs to change first.
For starters, recognizing that most of the problems our students face cannot be solved by schools
Agreed! The push for more social commentary and pushing social ideologies as the 'savior' of our students is absurd.
As a teacher, there is literally nothing I can do about the poverty, racism, access to Healthcare,
All of these metrics have gotten better over the last 60 years, yet our education system is falling being, how are these to blame?
Classical education = Assessments that if you could use Google, you can get a 100%
