Zack Hill by John Deering and John Newcombe for March 12, 2023

As it happens, I just came across and old newspaper clipping that dealt with this same stupid issue of no accountability…from 1994!

Or … since we don’t want anyone to feel bad or discriminated against, we will pass everyone – no one will fail, everyone will graduate.

Zack passed gas

This doesn’t happen in charter or other schools that parents pay EXTRA for [in addition to taxes for public schools.] Of course, in these non public schools, reading, writing, and arithmetic are taught ‘as-is’ instead of 2+2=5, “Close enough, little Susie.” Non public schools also feature age appropriate sex education, and NO CRT; [Teaching white kids to hate themselves and kids of color: “you are oppressed and victims of Whites.”] Freakish teachers that would dearly love to tell the kids about their sex lives and “being trans is cool and normal,” aren’t hired.

so it’s the students’ and their parents’ problem, isn’t it?

When I was in school, parents were expected to be part of the education experience – PTA, class trips, teacher’s helper, etc. There also were Parent Teacher conferences to keep parents up to date on they classwork and parents were expected to help.

After the Russian revolution the Soviets had a new government and wanted a new form of education. They set up student directed learning with books and stuff available, with teachers available to answer their questions. → Total Failure. Did Not Work! Quickly cancelled. So, of course, we in the west did much the same thing decades later. Sadly, it was a lot harder for the west to get rid of it. Public education has, from its very start been politicized. Farming kids used to time kept by time to plow, time to plant, time to harvest etc. were forced to conform to citified time ruled by clocks. It was a fundamentally political change. We are faced with succeeding waves of edu-babble from both departments of education and helicopter parents who think they know everything and that teachers know nothing. For teachers trying to provide feedback about how badly stupid new policies (don’t) work they soon learn they’d better keep their mouths shut! The officials coming up with these ‘wonderful’ new policies are usually ex-teachers who spent barely enough time in classrooms to climb the ladder to administration. The ones allowed to do that are the ones who ‘drank the kool-aid’ from higher ups.