Let's Fix Education / by Bruce Deitrick Price

Many public schools insist on teaching sight-words, which guarantees a long slow process. Until the 1930s, our schools taught phonics and we had more than 90% literacy. Then American educators were bamboozled by the clever Marxists, progressives, etc. This had two huge consequences. America's reading level dropped to one of the lowest in the industrialized world. And the children suffer hugel...

There's a lot of sadness in K-12 but there's also a lot of kinky, this-gang-can’t-shoot-straight humor . All these overpaid, self-anointed experts but they can't teach children to read. Nor count. Nor know very much about the country they live in, never mind the world. All we need now are clever comics eager to take advantage of the Comedy Zone we know as K-12. I always thought Lewi...

The big theme here is that our K-12 schools are a mess because basically the Education Establishment wants them that way. The main tactic is to teach reading in an inefficient way so that kids don't actually learn to read. Chaos and confusion are the norm. Teachers suffer a lot of stress. It would be easy to fix these problems. FYI: Why teachers are leaving at such an alarming rate ----------...

If you rely on the newspapers you might get the impression the public schools are a jungle. A combat zone. An irrational place no rational person would want to be. Clearly, our schools are out of control and need all the help they can get. We should call on the people at the top, the highly educated and successful people, the movers and shakers, the executive-types who run our society, all of them...

When Senator McCarthy told Americans there were lots of Communists in Hollywood and throughout Washington DC, pundits shrieked. That's sick. There are no Communists and if you say otherwise, you're crazy. This whole experience is much like when you study American K-12 and find there are scores of badly designed, counterintuitive programs and methods at work. If you accuse the Education E...

Traditionally, Americans believed in competition, knowledge, learning, grades, ability, mastery, truth, logic, all those good things going all the way back to the Greeks. John Dewey and his socialist cartel rejected all those practices. They want cooperation, fairness, equality, equity, inclusion. Everybody's the same, that's the general idea. But why? Because if people are all the same...

40 years ago, a congressional commission concluded that our public schools are so bad they might as well be an act of war by an unfriendly foreign power. The congressional report was titled A Nation at Risk . This is a big deal. It's not some scholar’s opinion. It's not a reconstruction of something far away. It's what the  best people in 1983 thought had happened to us. Namely,  th...

With phonics, most children learn to read by the second grade. With sight-words, the majority of child hardly learn to read at all. Consider the vast difference between the two outcomes. ---------------------------------------- SUPPLEMENTAL ARTICLES:  K-12: SIGHT-WORDS ARE A SICK JOKE K-12: PHONICS IS  WINNING: ============================= Episodes Are Not In Any Order. Start Reading Anywhere. Wo...

Here's what children need to be told about school, and why they need to be told. K-12 is like Bernie Madoff's Ponzi. Many thousands of customers thought their money was safe, and making more money every day. Until one day they were told they had no money. All gone. All a sham. And these were sophisticated people, rich people, smart people, successful people. And they have to face the fac...

There's a war against our children. Have you read anything about it in the media? The public schools are dumber each year. Can you explain this? Our Education Establishment should be called the Anti-Education Establishment. Their great genius is to develop theories and methods that stifle the acquisition and use of knowledge. Why do they want to do this? --------------------------------------...

Everyone feels the difference. Stapleton’s anthem is more serious, somehow more muted but more beautiful. It's the one that people like, because it’s respectful of the history behind the song. There are many reaction videos; here's a good one because of expert commentary. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip5WdqbWK4E Ronald Reagan narrates what happened at Fort McHenry, 1812. https://www.y...

Episode 85:  Weird Al  vs.  Professors-Run-Wild   (Wed.,  Feb. 15, 2023) Professors like to say you can only describe, you can’t prescribe . Of course they are talking about you.  They can prescribe all day long . They can tell you to do this, and not to do that, and every variation in between. Besides, there really is near-unanimity between your local newspapers, your favorite TV shows, and your...

Parents, teachers, and children are equally victims of the K-12 educational system. Let's not blame them for very much. Let's blame the people at the top, the dangerous desperados which I call the Education Establishment.  The United States spends vastly more per capita than any other country.  But our public schools end up in 20th place or worse in almost every category. When large busi...

Some of the goofiest educators that ever lived want to eliminate facts and knowledge from our school system. These pretenders seek to teach only feelings, attitudes, and pain. Our schools are being transformed into rooms full of nothing . If you want to save K-12, you must stop these nihilists, and restore our enjoyment of the smart side of life. NOTE: this podcast is also available as TRANSCRIPT....

Episode 82: The Internet wants to know: What are Chinese schools doing that Americans should adopt? (Wed., January 25, 2023) Do you want a quick fix for our public schools? Do what the Chinese do. Hint: that’s everything we did 100 years ago. They are not dummies. They copied us because we did what works. Used to. --------------------------------------------------------- Background article: “K-12:...

Episode 81: Teacher reveals how dysfunctional K-12 really is (Wed., Jan. 18, 2023) Teachers typically have 18 years of education, but little education takes place. Thus this tragic summary: “Our ‘educators’ are not educated.” This situation is not merely ironic. It is preposterous. Shameful. Criminal. We pay hundreds of billions and we get ignorance. Practical suggestion. Ignore the Education Esta...

Episode 80:  George Carlin and The Truth about American Education (Wed., Jan. 11) Are vastly rich industrialists mainly greedy?  That's the common assumption, as  Karl Marx explained. George Carlin seems to echo the same vision. The people running our society, or ruining it, are propelled by greed. Even with the very successful people, I don't think greed is the whole answer.  Probably i...

Episode 79:  Critical Thinking — how to teach it to children (Wed., Jan. 4, 2023) Teaching something, anything , is the first order of business and the sacred obligation of every school. What we have instead in America is tens of thousands of schools where students spend millions of hours each year but at the end of the year they know hardly  one bit more than they did at the beginning. The common...

Episode 78: In 2023, Reasons to be Cheerful — ONE, TWO, THREE   (Wed., Dec. 28, 2022)  Short podcast concludes that Biden has exceeded all expectations for worst possible president. Here's the good news. The  weirdness of Biden's judgement and behavior should frighten most average citizens into wanting a return to normalcy.  Normal will start to look real good. Share, subscribe, discuss...

Episode 77: What every teacher needs to know (Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2022) K-12 is full of uninformed teachers and bad techniques. Let's focus on how things should be done. As simply as possible, that's what the master does. Amateurs love confusion and extraneous matter.  In the middle of the wedding, let's talk about the history of South America. I was joking, that's exactly what...

Episode 76: Dyslexia is a Fancy Word for Sabotage ( Wednesday, December 14, 2022 Here's the bottom line: phonics is essential, because it’s a mnemonic device for dealing with a huge language like English. If you don't have the phonics sounds to remind you how to pronounce the words, you will struggle and stall. College students need more than 100,000 words. A computer might master that m...

Episode 75:  Grammar Nazis Needed  (Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2022) As part of the general dumbing-down and brain-scrubbing, today’s students learn little grammar. The Education Establishment believes it's important that everybody be equally uneducated. This is destructive nonsense. Language and all of its aspects have always been a major part of K-12 education. Let’s get back to phonics in the firs...

Episode 74: Good-old-boy comic knows more about teaching math than the professors do  (Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2022) Zach Rushing agrees to help a nephew with homework. A good way to bond. But the teacher gives the boy an F even though all the answers are correct. Rushing is enraged and eager to confront the teacher. Yes, his language is sometimes crude; you’re warned. But I think he perfectly articul...

Episode 73: Best Gift For Smart People— Saving K-12   (Wednesday, Nov. 23, 2022) Most books about education are boring. So let's announce emphatically: this is a well-written, lively book, and fun to read. I think of K-12 as a crime scene and my job is to describe who did what to whom. K-12 classrooms are full of pedagogical nonsense. Saving K-12 explains how this blight occurred and how we c...

Episode 72: Systematic education is good (as we see in the field of music) Wednesday., Nov. 16,  Start small and build, that's the rule in just about every human activity. ———————————— Please subscribe and share. Let’s Fix Education is a podcast for connoisseurs of educational success.  Each episode is a standalone, not in any particular order, because American K-12 does not change much. The...