Trump is obviously untrustworthy because he is an idiot.
The rest of the government obfuscates untrustworthiness and loves to drag the public as the source of moral decay in our society.
But my anecdotal experience working with younger employees / interns has been an uptick in situations where they become “paralyzed” by a fear of making a mistake, coupled with the inability to ask questions / seek out help.
They’ll google, or use ai, but if that doesn’t deliver an answer instead of asking a co worker, they will sit on an issue until someone follows up with them.
There also seems to be a huge fear of submitting “something” that’s not good enough where the preference seems to be “nothing” if they’re worried it’s not good enough.
I notice this in organizations I’ve been in leadership roles, but also have had this expressed to me by a half dozen peers in other organizations.
And, I wish they were using real computers! Unfortunately, they're on tablets.
The video version landed differently for me than the written testimony (it's the same person authoring both). I felt when speaking he emphasized the impact better than it came through in writing.
1. A laugh track
2. An inset with a sign language interpreter
3. An imaginary friendship with a low budget meta commentator, like Mystery Science Theater 3000
Standardized education is failing and doesn't fit the modern world. We need radically individualized education. By 2050 no student in the school system should speak the same language. There is no "correct" way to learn. We need, now more than ever, diversity of thought.
I suspect teachers are caught in a catch-22 of only being able to teach what's on the curriculum and nothing else, so they have no room for flexibility to engage students, while also being under pressure to produce high grades; but when the curriculum is garbage and the students aren't interested...grading standards tend to be what's compromised. The schools and parents are happy their kid has A's, teachers get to keep their jobs, and students may graduate highschool without having ever read a book cover to cover. [2]
1: https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-education/the-rise-...
2: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/11/the-eli...
The reality is there’s no single way to learn, but there’s plenty of good-enough ways.
The standards have also plummeted overall, along with expectations. This also seems to translate into parenting and home life as well for many. A neglectful parent likely is far more impactful on performance these days since the kid isn’t out roaming the neighborhood getting into trouble and learning how to get out of it - they are sitting in front of a screen of some sort simply consuming.
It certainly is not an unbiased opinion but I am totally unsurprised at the reduction in academic performance. The writing has been on the wall for an extremely long time. You can only reduce standards and game the numbers for so long before the real world impact is impossible to hide.
That's a hard cap a ~7000 students world wide unless we start inventing new languages.
I can't tell if this comment is sarcasm
I don't know if you've seen curriculums recently but they are totally about individualized education. Between IEPs and 504s, accommodations are made for nearly anything now. Students are put all into one large class, no more AP, Advanced, Standard because this caused hurt feelings for kids that could not make the advanced class. Students are pooled and the rationale is the more advanced students will help the less advanced students (!).
What this means in the classroom is teachers can not go as fast, advanced students get bored, every person has their own INDIVIDUALIZED test (3 instead of 4 questions, no write in questions, landscape instead of portrait, etc). This drives teachers absolutely insane and they cannot teach at any efficient level. Grading is so bad, teachers structure their course to have less exams because grading ten different quizzes and exams cannot be optimized.
A lot of this is parents disbelief that their little Johnny is not the next einstein so they torment teachers via policy hacks to give their children advantages. Admin doesn't care because they'll just fire "low performers" lol.
There is the above problem, and then there are the revisionist math ideas that common core and friends produce better outcomes instead of "rote" math. Well, math has been taught via rote for decades, possibly centuries, and people under that scheme learned math in a way that they became draughtsman and scientists, so maybe there is some proof in the pudding. My friends who did common core are barely math literate, can't calculate a tip even if you give them the hack: move decimal left by one place and times by two.
Before you come at me for being ableist, remember that this means even with these accommodations people are doing worse.
Also, no phonics?! Wtf?
People <25 in normal jobs (retail) cannot do simple fractions of 1/2 and 1/4.
Something is wrong. I'm not saying these guys are right but don't blame standardized education which was systematized in the 70s-90s just yet. I would posit that hostile admins/policy, dumb revisionist ideas that have no basis in history, and NO NATIONAL CURRICULUM. Why we do not have a national curriculum seems crazy to me, but there must be some reason. Surely we can agree on that at least.
I agree with you that right now is the best time for individual augmentation for education, and we should wield that power for good. But I do think it can be in service of a system.
EDIT: just realized this is a blog post length, sorry. It is one of my pet issues, n=3, mom works with people at deli that cannot do fractions (they get fired, up to 20 so far), teacher friend 15y in history has to make custom exams, and publisher friend who sees young writers (<25, n=??) can't sound out words.
At worst, it would become a cudgel to be used by federal governments sympathetic to the over-represented and under-educated states against the ones that actually provide value to the nation and an education to their residents.
The rise of charters has probably hurt areas with marginal public schooling, but it does give parents an option.
I don't think there's anything suspicious or sinister about it, considering how administrations appear to be running absolutely out of control in schools now which seems pretty bad. You are likely right about the federal govt getting this wrong and screwing up the current good thing which is public schools in areas that work :D.
I would counter with things like, calculus is not a regional bias. If we expect to compete internationally we have to raise the bar up, not create a generation of people who can't do fractions. I'll def have to think about how the fed would misuse this. Thanks for the insight.
My bias: I am a product of DoDDS schools, which is as close to a national curriculum as we've ever had and the numbers seem to be off the charts: https://archive.is/OpZnr
For me, my parents are both from poor backgrounds. My dad joined the Marines and apparently got me access to the best academy in the USA, the DoDDS System. I am the only person in my family to ever make more than 100k or have degrees.
There's also the little unspoken part of this article that if your kid misbehaves bad enough it becomes your parent's problem via their commanding officer.
It is entirely possible I'm some kind of outlier. (I doubt it.)
How to solve that short of charging people with neglect, I've got no idea.
You see it explained as the result of everything. Be it microplastics, mobile phones, immigrants, long covid, climate change (, stress about), social media, AI, glyphosate, 5G, the elders of zion, the end of the Bretton Woods system in 1971, something to do with late stage capitalism... everyone seems to have their personal landscape of theories as to why this is happening.
You can probably ask someone to enumerate what they think causes this dip, and use it as a pretty reliable embedding for their entire political worldview.