Let's Fix Education / by Bruce Deitrick Price

Episode 171: Why Kids Need Multiplication Tables (Wed., October 9, 2024) What is the one method that every student knows is essential for middle and upper level math. It's a list of shortcuts that we call the multiplication tables.  What is 6 by 4?  If you don't know, you have to start over again on every question. You have to put little dots on the page, or count on your fingers and toe...

Episode 170: Critical thinking about why do zebras have stripes? (Wed., Oct. 2, 2024) Ed professors play a dangerous game, keeping students ignorant, while pretending that somehow they are being educated. No matter what people are discussing, you need a little basic information on that topic to join the discussion. Did you know that science has not explained why zebras have such contrasty stripes....

Episode 169: Make sure your child is reading in first grade. (Wed., Sept.25, 2024) -- K-12 is polluted by bad reading theories. They are killing the country. And if you let them, they will cripple your kid. Maybe you think the education professors are nice guys lost in the woods, that's why they prefer bad theories. No, it's not possible. The arguments and counter-arguments are too well-...

Episode 168: Back To School: Don’t Let Children Be Culturally Illiterate  (Wed., Sept. 18, 2024) All of education depends on starting small and building on that foundation. Our public schools have gutted the early stages where you learn the basics, also known as cultural literacy. Demand that children learn more facts and knowledge from kindergarten onward.  ---------------------------------------...

Our country is dumber each year because less and less knowledge is taught in the classroom. Don't accept this incompetence, or what I would call it, malevolence. Episode 167 offers ideas for making our schools more efficient, and our students more intelligent. ---------------------------------------------------------- Listen to PODCAST or read TRANSCRIPT. -------------------------------------...

Episode 166:  Back to school: Modern History Elevated by Iron and Steel   Wed., Sept. 4, 2024 SUMMARY: A look at the central ingredient of modern times, namely, the SKYSCRAPER. When did it appear and how and why? —————————————————————————— —————————————————————————— POSTSCRIPT:  as urgent as ever Reading is the most important thing. Our public schools are doing a criminally bad job. Don't acc...

Episode 165: Back to school:  Jump into science, e.g., electricity   (Wed.  Aug. 28, 2024) Start small. Teach the littlest amount of information possible. Over time you can give children the fundamental information they need. Kids are sometimes given no preliminary instruction and then expected to grasp sophisticated phenomena. Won’t happen without a struggle. Teach them the most basic stuff befor...

Episode 164  Back To School: Make Reading #1 Priority   (Wed.,August 21, 2024)  Super-condensed explanation of why the schools can’t teach reading. This is the single most important flaw in American culture. Don't take it anymore. The podcast is interrupted in the middle so you can watch a video called READING IS EASY. Only three minutes. If you don't get everything then watch the podcas...

Episode 163:  More Good Ideas For Going Back to School Wed., August 14, 2024 ---------------------------- Let's reclaim the classrooms and fill them with joyful learning. To understand why the schools are so bad, you have to understand that the professors in charge do not care about intellectual or academic content. Sorry, that's the tough reality. Let's turn it around by teaching c...

Episode 162;  Exploring through Typography    Wed., Aug., 7, 2024  BACK TO SCHOOL with better ways to do everything. For example, use graphics and type design to teach reading, aesthetic judgment, marketing, in short, all the things that a savvy adult should know. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Listen to PODCAST or read TRANSCRIPT. ---------------------...

Episode 61: Schools more violent!! Experts pretend to be baffled??  Wed., July 31, 2024 If sight-words and constructivism, didn't work 50 years ago, why do you think they'll work today? The schools are full of goofy ideas. Think of them as ticks on a dog, pluck them off and burn them. Episode 161 explains why the Education Establishment is so unhelpful -----------------------------------...

Episode 160: How Ideological Hacks Ruin The Schools  (Wed., July 24, 2024) Don't let the blizzard of lies confuse you. It's the same pattern over and over. They try to take you off your game. So they can order you around and make you behave the way they want. The answers themselves are just garbage. That's the thing to keep in mind. --------------------------------------------------...

Episode 159: What About the Attempted Assassination of American Children? Wed., July 17, 2024 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Really hyper ingenious conspiracy. Or just weird dumb luck. I'm talking about the Trump assassination. I'm also talking about the weird ways they teach reading in our schools. Strangely enoug...

Episode 158: Public Schools gone to hell?? Who you gonna call?? Wed., July 10, 2024  Basically all education, in all times and places, can be described as incremental mastery. You learn a little today and then a little more tomorrow and then still a little more the next day. Just as if you want to build a high brick wall, you start with one row of bricks. Nowadays, the normal instinctive way to do...

Episode 157: why do Public Schools hate Geography?  (Wed., July 3rd, 2024) There are no good ideas in our public schools, only garbage expressed in protective sauce. Instead of telling you how to reach your destination, the schools will lay out a program of scuba diving, mah Jong, and fashion tips. You won't get to where you wanted to go. After a while, you won't remember you wanted to g...

Episode 156: The Waste of Systemic Ignorance   (Wed., June 26, 2024) The situation is simple. The professional educators, as they deceptively call themselves, don't believe in education. They like ignorance. Learn, baby, learn. That should be the chant and the cheer of all educated people. Good School, Bad School. How to tell the difference-- see short video ----------------------------------...

Reality One, we have to get rid of sight-words, so that literacy will have a chance. Reality Two requires explaining the subject to lots of people. That's done most easily, according to author Linda Goudsmit, with the following one-page method. This explanation requires navigating the chaos of print, like what a child has to deal with. It's better to go directly to  TRANSCRIPT. ——————---...

Episode 154      -     Wednesday, June 12, 2024 "‘How did our institutes of higher learning turn into Marxist reeducation camps?” (Question on Quora.) ----- A pivotal question which every American should try to answer. Here's my short answer: a vast army of saboteurs has been working in the shadows for more than a century.  Here is the chronology, starting in 1883. Marx died. Many people...

Episode 153:: What your students need to know about Socialism.   (Wed., June 5, 2024) Perfect short summary of Socialism and Communism, 5 minutes, for all classes American schools are full of covert Communists and Socialists. They pretend to explain things in long convoluted ways that don't explain very much.  Socialism can be a life-and-death choice. So everyone needs to be informed --------...

Episode 152:  Curriculum Planning, max speed   (Wed., May 29, 2024) Stop teaching nothing all day.  Teach all the wonderful things children need to know and want to know. Not to mention, you'll have more fun. Here are about 50 ideas  you can use this year.  Deliberate Dumbing Down is not an ethical approach. Nor is keeping children in a vacuum so they never grow up. Smart Content Makes Kids S...

Episode 151: How Can We Motivate Underachieving Children Who Don't Want to Learn? ( question on Quora; first answered on my Substack ) Wed.,  May 22, 2024 NB: the public schools are probably much worse than you suspect. But people don't want to deal with that information, so the Education Establishment gets away with doing a lousy job. I'm trying to persuade everybody to be more jud...

Episode 150:   K-12 --  S.N.A.F.U.  (Wed., May 15, 2024) --- Welcome to K-12 where education goes to die. Come on, people, get involved. Kids are dumbed down every day. There's no excuse for it. Every sane idea has been sabotaged and sent into exile.  Now we see nothing but counterproductive ideas. Naturally, we have epidemics of illiteracy and ignorance. (S.N.A.F.U. is military slang for Sit...

Episode 149: YOU should be an education reformer.  (Wed., May 8, 2024) Join the good guys, against the duplicitous professors of education who have devised so much sneaky nonsense. I've been calling K-12 a crime scene for 20 years. This is a very liberating notion. Education is a bad part of town. Adults will be robbed, children will be stunted. QED: you should get involved with improving K-1...

Episode 148:    Latin Lives On… and On Wednesday, May 1, 2024 ------------ Latin Lives On:  333 common words letter for letter identical in Latin and English. Each word is a mnemonic device providing extra texture, extra connections. My list illustrates a general principle: there's always a better, quicker, cheaper way to teach a lot. The Education Establishment should focus on this. Instead...

Episode 147: The Great Betrayal: Top Experts Make Millions by Promoting Worst Methods  (Wed, April 24, 2024) —————————————————————— First published as “42: Who Ruined Reading” on Improve-Education.org. Site is now unavailable due to incompetence of hosting company. I’m working on recovery.  Our Education Establishment is also incompetent. We have 50 million functional illiterates. Please stop putt...