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Speaking of disservice to kids in school, I recently learned about the "Three-Cuing" system and how it is basically making kids less literate by having them simply guess the meaning of things they don't understand instead of teaching how to read context, subtext, and use critical thinking skills or basic phonics.. It kinda pissed me off. Especislly since I had already been noticing a trend of young people online putting words into others' mouths or defining words wildly differently than the norm and misunderstanding the entire thing they just read.

Can I have 50% of my salary for doing 0% of my work?

After following a friend who joined XHS after the initial tiktok ban a year or so ago, I started to notice this trend of Chinese people calling American education "happy education" and I bristled a bit because I didn't find it all that happy. But as I see more and more people point out things like this, how the No Child Left Behind policy was implemented, how resources are diverted away from actually educating children... I kinda get it.

To be fair, I think the Chinese also have a biased lens here since their school days are like twelve hours long, I'm sure 7 AM to 3 PM seems more like daycare in comparison. But I think there's some truth in the mockery.

This doesn't apply to doctoral programs which really just seem like abuse and trauma factories. I don't know a single happy, well adjusted doctor.

This is by design. MAGA wants kids to be stupid, only stupid people vote MAGA.

"I love the poorly educated" DJT

COVID fucked up my kids education so badly they are still trying to catch up. They were in 3rd and 4th grade in 2020, so they lost those prime reading comprehension lessons. But at the same time the schools failed to catch the students up and now they are struggling and instead of helping them they just push them along and pass the buck to the next grade.

This would've been a godsend to me tbh. I was really bad about completing buzywork homework assignments but I paid attention in class and already understood the material. In high school I'd ace every test and wind up with a C or worse because of the number of missing assignments, it wasn't even intentional, I just frequently forgot about them because they weren't interesting and probably because of some kind of undiagnosed neurodivergence. Of course, there are also kids who might struggle to complete assignments due to complicated home lives.

I don't think making an incomplete count as a 50 is really making grades meaningless. A 50 is still going to hurt you, it just doesn't drag your grade into oblivion. If a student gets 100 on three assignments and misses a fourth, is a grade of 75 really the most accurate representation of how well they understand the material? Counting the incomplete as a 50 would make that an 87.

Sprinkling in zeros can really drag your grade down and can make it feel like your grade doesn't really have much to do with your understanding of the material, and has more to do with being willing and able to work outside of school hours (or to just copy down answers from a friend five minutes before class, which I also didn't do).

I think the whole idea of grading kids like they're show dogs is pretty gross in the first place. "Welcome to the world, kiddo, the first thing you need to learn is that we're here to judge you, and if you don't bark on command you will be deemed to be a failure."

Fuck that shit.

currently have a stack of students' academic records on my desk, the state of grading in the U.S. is just insane. I hate GPA with a burning passion. Very talented kids burn themselves out over a number that might as well be set arbitrarily, because schools do some very fucky math to inflate their numbers, and they all seem to do the math differently. Why do they do this math? Well, it's because they're allergic to giving out grades lower than a C, so their entire scale would cease to function if they didn't heavily weight different classes over others. It's like a tower of self-caused problems.

Had a test graded on a curve in college. Actual score divided by two then add fifty. There were absolutely people that got a fifty. You’d think by dumb luck you’d get at least one right. It was multiple choice.

Actual conversation I had with an admin after I graded ab exam with 70/100 after a student made 2 big and 2 small mistakes on an exam

You have to grade her exam 100

But she made a bunch of mistakes

She wants the grading 100 or she'll leave

But then what is the point of grading?

The grading doesn't matter, of they pay, they get each grade 100/100

Problem is that the school-to-prison pipeline is a very real thing and kids that are held back or don't finish school are far more likely to end up in prison than those that finish. The way school systems work in most of the US, the differences in outcomes for those with and without a high school diploma are stark and depressing. Finishing is as important as the education itself.

Read: End of Policing - Alex S. Vitale

I sympathize with this.

As a kid, I'd do the homework, put it in my backpack (thanks to my Mom), yet I'd completely forget to turn it in, despite the whole class getting up to do it, and get a 0%. Turning it in later for ~50% (thanks to sympathetic and confused teachers) saved my butt.

...And yes, I'm definitely neurodivergent.

So if you didn't study and you're confident you'll get less than 50%, it's better to not show up at all than to attempt the test?

Now ask, what a student should get, who did their assignment but only got 30%!

Personally, I think a UBI-based society can do education better. Everyone should receive a UBI income by default, but working a job or being educated will replace the UBI with a larger amount of money. Grades for learning boosts income based on how good they are. An S-Grade student gets twice of what UBI brings in. 'Real' jobs start at twice the value of the S-grade student.

This means that students can go to college and get paid for it. While the prospect of the workplace can be alluring in a fiscal sense, a college student can stay in college for as long as they need to git good, to be fulfilled, or simply to pass time while waiting for a decent job opening. They aren't held hostage by debts.

Kids also get paid for their grades. This encourages them to learn, because there are material rewards for doing so.

IMO, fiscal responsibility is a skill that is learned, and in America, we don't teach kids how to handle money. Instead, they get the bulk of their fiscal learning when it is almost time to be kicked out of the nest. Which is dumb.

The purpose of a class is to instill a specific set of knowledge and skills.

The purpose of an assignment is to provide the student with sufficient pressure to study the expected knowledge, and practice the expected skills. The assignment is the pressure to learn; it is not evidence of learning.

To the student who has achieved mastery of that knowledge and skillset prior to completing the class, an assignment has no valid purpose. For such a student, the assignment is busywork, and serves only to distract the student from further study.

If your grading style does not allow for a student to demonstrate mastery and refuse busywork assignments, your grading is a problem.

A student with test scores equal or better than the class average does not deserve to fail your class for having refused assignments.

A student who ritualistically completes all of their homework assignments with excellent marks, but is entirely unable to pass a test on the subject matter, is a student who has failed your class.

I grew up in an era when they didn't pass kids to get rid of them. This is why I had a friend in the 8th grade who had two kids.

I had a math teacher that would assign 100+ long division problems every night and then give you a 0 if you skipped more than 3 of them.

Grades have always been meaningless.

People who believe in meritocracy and all that bullshit are just too privileged to notice.

edit: I didn't even realize this was "white people twitter" but makes sense 100%.