So when I went through school you’d have two types of struggling kids:
Kid A would struggle to pass tests, but work hard and get every assignment done so they can keep their average in check. Teachers like this kid. Not that there’s anything wrong with this kid, but teachers project virtue on them sometimes just to shame kid B when kid B asks for consideration.
Kid B is who I assume many people here were and who I was. Kid B struggled to get from start to finish of all of the assignments that kept popping up and per haps couldn’t do the same task for very long. Kid B, however, could get high grades on most tests. If Kid B asks for some consideration to pass the class as they’ve gotten the information but weren’t able to finish all of the assignments and are told no, because Kid A exists and “I can stand someone who struggles with the tests but does the work, but I’ll never tolerate someone who is lazy”.
I have cptsd from years spent as kid B, but I’m pretty sure that’s a generic thing that happened to others as well. I had that quote shoved down my throat by a double digit number of adults. And the too-radical thought is this: I believe the teaching approach that holds kid A as a paragon of virtue and kid B as a lazy snot is quite discriminatory and maybe those are just two differently struggling kids. And maybe some consideration should be given to both. And maybe PTSD causing trauma should be withheld from both groups
Okay well they thought that staying home and learning on the internet at their own self-directed pace was also fucking abuse and now nobody knows anything anymore , so what the fuck do we just not educate children?
I think that sort of learning was rushed through during the pandemic and has never been given a real shot.
The pandemic whipsawed its de-facto function the other direction: before the pandemic, public education grew to become more of a form of subsidized childcare with added politics of mandatory curricula and mandatory testing. During the pandemic, the system forced already strained parents previously reliant on subsidized childcare to become teachers and were required to be on-camera attendants for their children to complete timed assessments to “prove there was learning and not cheating”, which was even more problematic when you had more than one child-- because then you had to teach and assess N-child-different things during the day where previously each child was cohorted in grades with N-concurrent teachers.
The current system treats everyone like children because it never had the plot for effective education, “compulsory education” was for the poor and it was oriented to inculcating values for adherents of religion, loyal subjects of monarchy, soldiers for state, and drones for industry. If your family had money, your education was not from the compulsory design.
Sorry just to clarify, I wasn’t involved in education at that time, but given that the only solution that’s ever worked for my task management (asynchronous, self directed) was rushed through during a life or death emergency, then that example used to prove it can’t happen is pretty rough for potential future me like people out there.
I don’t really know what you’re saying. I used to think as a child that learning online would just fix all my problems… I was pissed when the pandemic started and all these children could just go to school at home… but then I thought about it… I have every ability in the world right now to start my own business and to work at my own self-directed pace to make my own kind of money on free will alone… nobody tells me what to do or how to do it… do you know what I do with all of my free time? Absolutely fucking nothing I lay in bed all day because I don’t have to do anything.
As much as I hated it, being forced to do things like go to school or brush my teeth or get out of my bed in the morning or clean my room or eat food everyday… being forced to do those things actually made me a small bit better as a fucking human being… now that it’s all self-directed and free, I do nothing… and I was kid B all day all the way.
I have learned over my years that sometimes what we want isn’t what’s good for us in the long run. And sometimes you just got to suck it the fuck up, join the class, stop playing with bugs or reading books or whatever the fuck we both were doing to distract ourselves from terrible classes and awful teachers and shitty kids and abusive parents… and just do the fucking assignment. Get something done for once in our lives.
