What is it like being an alumni of a school that’s underfunded or neglected? Even if the school is “good” (as in well funded or private), does the learning environment reflect that? Also, the dark side of American schools (shootings) dampens peace of mind for parents since at any given moment some gun wielding individual can storm in murdering those inside (students, teachers, custodians, etc.)
Kind of…
92% of American k-12 use the same textbooks published by McGraw-Hill, and they’ve always played to the lowest common denominator. Which is often Texas.
If Texas says they won’t buy a history/science/whatever textbook that says _____ then the rest of the 92% who learned from McGraw-Hill books also never learned it from their textbooks.
With the rise of standardized testing, nothing is taught except what’s on the text. If a student gets that done they’re “done” and the focus is on the kids who can’t pass it yet.
Shits fucked and it’s 100% an institutional problem.
And that’s not even getting into how involved Ghislene Maxwell’s dad was with it in the 80s, and his connection to all the spy work and child rape during the same time.
To think people haven’t been manipulating the American education system to get the result (idiots) that they want for generations would be woefully naive.
It’s not about teaching kids to think, it’s teaching them not to question authority.
That doesn’t mean we stop educating, it means we start actually educating instead of indoctrinating.
Quick edit:
This is why things like:
Is ingrained in multiple US generations.
It was in all the same textbooks, all the same homework, all the same quizs, and tests, even the annual standardized tests.
We all got the same information presented in the same way with the same context/interpretations and exact phrasing.
The American education is incredibly homogeneous, even if states could technically do different things.
The real difference is private schools who usually make up the 8% not being served up the same slop.
Only in things that are objective, like 2+2=4, or CAT spells cat. That’s going to be same in every school.
Things start to get different when you get to subjects with a subjective perspective like history. Then we end up with 50 different curriculums, being taught from a substandard Texas history book. So teachers in some states like to “supplement” their personal course curriculum with their personal research, and we end up with 150 years of many kids being taught that the Civil War was a war of northern aggression who wanted to take away States Rights, and Slavery had nothing to do with it, blunting the effects of the Civil War, and preserving that same systemic racism that has finally broken free and is rampaging across our nation.
You had me until you got to a private school, which is largely affiliated with a religion. Those cess pools preach mumbo jumbo to impressionable minds and pretend it’s factual.
Me:
You:
Strong argument for public education…
I like to think I got the benefit of said private school, while thankfully the religion didn’t stick past the age of forming critical thinking skills.
Further helped that I pursued a degree in science afterwards.
I did have a number of instances throughout my college career where I realized how many others, likely from public schools previously, struggled in classes that I saw as review from high school, so I’m also thankful for the quality of education it provided. It also gave me more perspective on christianity having read a decent chunk of the Bible over those k-12 years… More well rounded perspective is never a bad thing. Now I’m just better equipped to recognize the bullshit.
I don’t take exception to learning about religions and their histories. I took an Eastern religion class in college and quite enjoyed it. The difference is that it wasn’t presented as factual but as an explanation for cultural and societal behaviors.
I don’t know how other school systems did things, but for me not every class every year was 100% straight out of the textbooks. Some certainly were, usually math subjects or science could be.
It’s anecdotal but I often find the “why weren’t we taught x” type of statements, I remember learning whatever thing in school. I know people will forget stuff and just say they never learned it (I mean, kids do that all the time IN school let alone a decade later) but there’s got to be bigger differences than just public vs private. (I was public)
I don’t know what though.
You may have been lucky enough to learn a few things not from the text or on a standardized test…
But the kids who do, what they learn isn’t always right, and when it is, no one else believes them.
Example:
The civil war was about states rights.
Most kids who learn that, learn it as the South was fighting for states rights.
A very very small subset learn that it was the North on the side of states rights, because the South wanted to force northern free states to deport all Black citizens to the South so they could be enslaved.
The northern states refused because they had outlawed slavery.
The southern states wanted Lincoln to do it with the Fed.
Lincoln said he would try to outlaw it in the South, or force Free states to comply.
And that refusal is why the South started the war.
But even when it type the whole thing out, someone will eventually chime in to say “it was slavery” which is reductionist and 200+ year old propaganda that still makes it into our text books to frame the Fed and North as the aggressors. When the South started it to force slavery on the whole country.
Just like trump is using ICE in blue states, we literally fought and won a civil war over if he could be doing this
I mean teachers can always print their own worksheets or like make slides… you can deviate from textbooks…