Web folks are having a big hissyfit about grade inflation this week. How will the kids ever master life if they aren’t receiving feedback about the quality of their work? It’s a genuine problem, but schools have never solved it and won’t solve it.
Grade inflation is NOT new. Grade inflation was a big hissyfit when I was in college in the 60s, then the hissyfit went away. Now it’s a hissyfit again, and it will go away again. It’s not the most important question then or now.
As long as we insist on keeping kids in school for 12 years to satisfy the teachers union, the details don’t matter. Grading doesn’t matter, affirmative action doesn’t matter, woke ideology doesn’t matter.
Before the iPhone era, structured schools were necessary for the first four years to make sure everyone could read and write and handle numbers. At that point job training should start for most people, and before 1950 it DID start for most people. Some jobs need more book learning. School-type activities are appropriate for those jobs along with practice and training.
BUT: Now that everyone is reading and writing almost from birth, the old purpose of formal schools has disappeared. Most people figured this out during the “virus” torture camp when we kept kids OUT of school for 3 years to satisfy the same teachers union that previously told us to keep kids IN school for 12 years.
A complete bottom-up rethink starts with two questions:
What facts should everyone know?
What basic skills should everyone learn in the same way?
Long before the iPhone era, schools failed to answer those questions. We memorized 12 years of false or useless crap. We DIDN’T learn the facts that adults need. All of us learned reading and writing and arithmetic, which are important skills, but only the girls learned housekeeping, self-maintenance and handling money, which are MORE important than the 3 Rs.
The 3 Rs have a different shape now, but the skills the girls learned in home ec are still the MOST important for everyone.
Polistra's Mill 