“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
—Carl Sagan
Again, Who has won?
Working diligently to enlarge my group size.
Originally Posted by entropy
I was talking with a kindergarten teacher last night. She saw the "achievement gap" open at an accelerated rate during the "remote learning" time, as you'd expect. A kindergartener basically needs someone to sit them down in front of the device and make them pay attention. Many kids were simply never logged on. The systems for distributing information (What's the URL for the Zoom today?) were imperfect, and a lot of families simply didn't get those or perhaps slightly more difficult tech problems solved.
What she didn't expect is that, most of the way through a year of being back at in-person school, the batch of kids she has now are collectively way behind what was normal, and there are more than usual who are simply non-functional as kids. They are kindergarteners and haven't even had school to fall behind in, but their cognitive and social development has still been dramatically impacted. With regard to one little girl, the speech pathologist said, "There's nothing for me to do, she can speak fine. She needs a counselor."
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Not another dime.
During the height of this, there were local folks with both toddler and K thru 3rd grade+ ages that got together with their kids to be social. They took whatever risk was involved, and weighed it against a good dose of common sense. Along with that, they made it a point to spend time with their kids (many of whom were at home themselves) using whatever academic tools they had available. There were local teachers that provided parents guidance and curriculum material as well. Those kids now, while I wouldn’t call them “thriving” are certainly far ahead of those who were locked away due to parental ignorance and fear.
Again, ask yourself who the benefactor is in all of this 5, 10, 30 years down the road. It certainly isn’t the kids. Think back in history a bit and ponder about where you have seen stuff like this (societal) before. What was the tactic, what was the goal, and what was the outcome?
I admit I am biased however. Whenever I have a question for a person who has spent most of their adult life working with developmentally and socially disabled kids, I just look across the table and ask her.
Working diligently to enlarge my group size.
We’re all in this together.
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During these unprecedented times.
Wazzu here in WA state had to create a new grade last year, due to 40 percent of the turned in grades at the height of the zoom era being Fs. They came up with some sort of “FC” or similar grade—F due to never logging in—that doesn’t count on a student’s cumulative GPA record.
They are not alone: my understanding is that whole 2ndary school districts, eg. St Paul, MN, et al., had the same sorts of issues.
I can tell you that the attendance and motivation—in aggregate—of my students during the return to in-person is so much worse than I’ve ever seen that it’s a completely different experience. By “in aggregate,” I mean that about half the kids are adjusting to being back, and about half aren’t. I have *never* had attendance issues like I’m having right now in just over 2 decades of classroom instruction. The best of the students (best supported, most motivated, best background, whatever) are back to doing fine. The kids who had weak links going into the last 2 years are eating shit. JMO.
”But in the end all of these ideas just manufacture new criminals when the problem isn't a lack of criminals.” -JRB
We started Homeschooling 20 some years ago. We had finished before the Great Bamboozle started. Families with children still in the Homeschooling group from what I've seen and heard mostly ignored and were immune to the hype.
The deeper you get in bed with the system the more control you cede to the system. Complaining about it? Well, what did you expect?
Looks like we’ve just created another dependent class eh? You will now probably have a large percentage of that generation(+) that’s going to be dependent on the social system to one degree or down the road. Depending on how the whole long term vax thing plays out (another multi page thread in itself no doubt) you could have yet another group dependent for health reasons.
Like I stated...Who’s “won” here?
There’s a quote from LBJ which should ring true here. Everyone can look that one up on their own.
Last edited by entropy; 04-10-2022 at 01:26 PM.
Working diligently to enlarge my group size.
Thought # 1: When you put pressure on a person or a relationship or a system, the things that are strong get stronger and the things that are weak get weaker. My experience is that the weaknesses get magnified much faster than any positive development of the strengths. Watch what happens when a spouse gets sick, or your 15 year old daughter gets pregnant, or the factory in town closes or whatever. The pandemic has magnified things in our civilization that were already problematic, but were bubbling below the visible surface, namely a lack of resiliency. They're worse and out in the open now. The lack of attention to social impact in the decision making is stunning. But when we choose state or national executives based on whose best at riling up the base, we get what we asked for.
Thought # 2: we desperately need to redefine emergency powers, especially with regard to how long they last. A chief executive certainly needs to be able to declare an emergency so that rapid response can start immediately. But that declaration needs to be ratified by a legislative authority reasonably quickly. Two weeks? A month? I'm not sure. But when a state is working under a declared state of emergency 2 years after the pandemic started, something is badly wrong.
A rapid review or ratification has two effects: it keeps one pol from running a fiefdom to their own advantage, and it forces the legislative peanut gallery to have some skin in the game for outcomes. Wanna torpedo the gov's orders? OK, put your name on it so we know who to kick out when your version of the response kills a thousand grandparents or wrecks the development of a cohort of kids.
The ramifications of the lockdowns have only begun to manifest.
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