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.
I'm all for classical education, personally. Might I suggest the poem by master Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus as an intro?
Pēdīcābō ego vōs et irrumābō
Aurēlī pathice et cinaede Fūrī,
quī mē ex versiculīs meīs putāstis
quod sunt molliculī, parum pudīcum.
Nam castum esse decet pium poētam
ipsum, versiculōs nihil necesse est
quī tum dēnique habent salem ac lepōrem
Sī sint molliculī ac parum pudīcī
et quod prūriat incitāre possint
nōn dīcō puerīs sed hīs pilōsīs
quī dūrōs nequeunt movēre lumbōs.
Vōs quod mīlia multa bāsiōrum
lēgistis male mē marem putātis?
Pēdīcābō ego vōs et irrumābō.Directly translated:
I will sodomize you and face-fuck you,
cocksucker Aurelius and butt-boy Furius,
who think, from my little verses,
because they're a little soft, that I have no shame.
For it is right for the devoted poet to be chaste
himself, but it's not necessary for his verses to be so.
[Verses] which then indeed have taste and charm,
If they are delicate and have no shame,
And because they can incite an itch,
And I don't mean in boys, but in
Those hairy men who can't move their loins.
You, because [about] my many thousands of kisses
You've read, you think me less of a man?
I will sodomize you and face-fuck you.I'd really appreciate the opportunity to eliminate all that woke gay shit from our education system, which, as we all now, was only developed 20 years ago and definitely did not exist in the Classical era at all.
They don't want that obscene sort of thing. When they say 'classical,' they mean the Bible, which has such family-friendly passages as-
There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.
-- Ezekiel 23:20
Your breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle.
-- Song of Solomon 7:3
Classical education = Assessments that if you could use Google, you can get a 100%
How "classical" are we talking here? Is heliocentrism gonna be too woke?
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?
