Let's Fix Education / by Bruce Deitrick Price

Episode 46:  Best Way To Teach Critical Thinking   (Wed., May 18, 2022) Here is just one of many hundreds of entertaining videos that might be used to engage children in spirited discussion and debate. The Streets of Manhattan in 1911 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyL6wWOHxUM ---------------------------- Frankie, a novel, is published this week. See Frankie.zone for info. Question :  how  will y...

Episode 45:  Let's Look at the Broader Patterns  (May 11, 2022) As the brainy physicists say, let's try some thought experiments. Think of the way our schools are run and how the students are treated. And then think of the way Biden and the Democrats treat the American public. Both groups treat everybody under their control as if they are peasants. ---------------------------------------...

Episode 44:  Don't believe me. Trust your common sense. (Wednesday, May 4, 2022) Truth is, the Education Establishment is great at one thing, sophistry. They can tie the average citizen in knots. Bamboozle is the perfect word for what these pretenders do. Now and then ignore everything they say, and trust instead your own good sense. ----------------- Complementary article from American Think...

Episode 43: There are always better ways to teach everything .  (April 27, 2022) Students are crippled and discouraged by dreadful pedagogy about boring and useless topics. You, a typical adult, probably know exactly what children will find fascinating. This ain’t rocket science. Or Just imagine an old folks home. Whatever they would like is probably perfect for children. (PS: I think i underestim...

Episode 42:  Please, people, stop being pushovers  (April 20 2022) My theory is that the Education Establishment is dumbing down the country and schools. But that's only half the problem. The other half is that the American public is making the whole thing way too easy. Let's try a new strategy. Play hard to get. Whatever these people say, challenge them for an explanation. -------------...

Episode 41: K-12: Education:  “Hello, dumbness, my old friend”   (Wednesday, April 13, 2022) A short presentation of the idea that our public schools are devoted to dumbing down the population. There is just too much ignorance and illiteracy. The thing  — I.e., the problem — speaks for itself. That's a legal doctrine that is very useful in any discussion of education. ------------------------...

Episode 40:  Keep It Fast, Fool  (Wednesday, April 6, 2022) I'm trying to lead a rebellion against slow, tedious, boring, and otherwise stultifying schools. We live in a highly energetic and creative culture. Everywhere except classrooms. Do not be deceived by empty busyness, that's a fake product that your kids don't need. -----------------------------------------------------------...

Episode 39:  Priority One is Basic Knowledge (Wednesday, March 30, 2022) Everything we learn enables us to learn still more things. Keep a child ignorant and you stunt that child’s capacity for learning. In many respects, our public schools are running a scam. They pretend to educate children but keep them uneducated. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sho...

Episode 38: Mutilating Math  (March 23, 2022) New Math in 1964, Reform Math circa 1984, Common Core Math by 2010—arguably these are all the same thing. A long drawn-out attempt to make sure that average Americans do not know much math. It doesn't matter whether we are talking about the curricula or the books and articles intended to promote the curricula. You encounter the same dense and unfr...

Episode 37:  Constructivism is the answer to everything. Oh, really?!    (Wed., March 16, 2022) The claims for Constructivism are pie in the sky. It's hard to realize that our experts are talking about letting seven-year-olds decide what their own education should consist of.  Sure, that makes sense for food so why not do it with intellectual nourishment? -------------------------------------...

Episode 36:  Do you care that public schools have  been dumbed down?  ( March 9, 2022) Our professors of education spend their careers trying to hide the damage they have done. It's a wonder these days that children learn to spell their names. Check for yourself and you will find that they know very little beyond that. It's a war, and ignorance is winning. Related article:  "The War...

Episode 35:  K-12, Hope and Hopelessness  (March 1, 2022) Short but very important analysis. Truth is, every teacher should listen to this  podcast at least twice . Instead of making children suffer and therefore learn nothing, we need to make children have a good time so they will learn a lot. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Saving K-12 remains go-to guide for re...

Episode 34:  How schools get away with teaching next to nothing. (They lie.)  Feb. 23, 2022 A lot of people write about "the deliberate dumbing down of America." The basic reason for this phenomenon is that our Education Establishment has a very low opinion of knowledge. But they don't say that. They say that the knowledge is inappropriate, it's dated, it's boring, it&apos...

Episode 33:  Why is school based on memorization? (Feb. 16) There are hundreds of small, easy facts that children should know.  Remembering these makes it simpler to understand and retain more complicated facts. Children are cheated and handicapped when schools deprive them of academic memories. That is, knowledge. Don't blame the kids. Blame irresponsible schools. ---------------------------...

Episode 32:  Education Elite are Imperialists and Colonialists   (Feb. 9, 2022 The Left likes to vilify colonialism and colonialists, people who take over other people’s territory. But what else is our Education Establishment but a bunch of modern-day conquistadors? Turns out they're entitled to rule over your school. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------...

Episode 31:  Why Don't Our Schools Know How To Teach Reading????  (Feb. 2, 2022) Starting about 1930, American K-12 education was devastated by the witless adoption of a fraud, that is, sight-words instead of phonics. In their widespread assault on American society, this was the most successful attack made by our far-left enemies.  Good background article on American Thinker :  Whatever Happe...

Episode 30:  How The Deep State Weakens Education in Order to Control the Country In fairness, maybe it's just a cult. Maybe it's a strange collection of reckless fanatics. Or maybe it is correctly called the Deep State. Point is, these manipulative people feel compelled to create empty-headed schools and ignorant students. All the people calling themselves Socialists and Communists seem...

Episode 29:   Memo To Teachers: Please Come Back To Real Reading   (Jan 19, 2022) In this podcast I mention three reading reformers who specialize in helping teachers. Pick one and let that person’s ideas be your guide for a few weeks. If you think the advice is not perfect, go to the next person.  Remember that the advice you will get in the school from official experts is probably worthless. But...

Episode 28:  Why did Elon Musk say it's easier to land a person on Mars than to change the education system in America? (Jan. 12, 2022) Our professors of education want to assure us that money and race can explain everything. I suspect that is a shallow argument. If rats live in your water supply, you can expect strange illnesses. In the case of education, if you have illogical and sophistica...

Episode 27: Cheating should be eliminated   (Jan. 5, 2022) Episode 27: Cheating, which our public schools tend to enable, is a threat not just to the quality of the schools but to the success of the society. Cheaters might very well  obtain jobs and responsibilities that they are not qualified to fulfill. Even simple jobs require specific competencies. Cheating throughout the system makes it diffi...

Episode 26:  Normal people don't want absolute power   (Dec. 22, 2021)  Socialism/Communism has two tricks: promise everything good, and then be willing to do anything bad. Ruthless schemers make elaborate promises to gain favor with the people, and then they abuse that power any way you can imagine, as history shows. That's how some really ruthless people were able to kill so many milli...

Episode 25: The Case Against Whole Word  (Dec. 15, 2021) Reading is so crucial for young students. Non-phonetic approaches will cripple children before they even start. Don't be misled. All research going back a hundred years overwhelmingly supports phonics over sight-words. I think it's very important that every adult understand this fundamental choice. It's as basic as red pill ve...

Episode 24:    Communism Is For Haters        (Dec. 8, 2021)                  The challenge to our society is to distinguish benevolent do-gooders from people promoting destructive transformation. Everything will be destroyed but somehow the world is supposed to be a better place? Is that even possible? Even worse I suspect that our Socialists and Communists don't want it to be a better place...

Episode 23:  American Business—and Everyone Else—Needs Better Schools   (Dec. 1, 2021) Our public schools are sickly from top to bottom. America is dragged down by this infirmity. Media don't help; indeed they lie to a less-and-less informed public and that's a big danger. Remember the four years when the media described how Trump was working with the Russians. This was, day after day, a...

Episode 22: The Ugly Truth About K-12  (Nov. 24, 2021) Our top educators have blabbed almost continuously for a century about all the wonderful reforms they wanted to implement. At bottom, what did they all add up to? Dumbing down, deliberately and continuously. That's the ugly truth. As a practical matter, everyone has to confront the massive amount of inefficiency and mediocrity in our publ...