Texas Scorecard: Once, public schools were places where parents sent their children to get an academic education. They were taught civics, traditional math that actually required getting the correct answer, and American patriotism.
That has all changed. Under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the purpose of education is no longer academic but social and emotional learning that often is used as a cover for progressive indoctrination. Social emotional learning was originally billed as support to help children with self-management and making personal decisions, the same life skills that good teachers have been trying to instill since colonial days.
But recently, SEL purveyors, including the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, have shifted their goals to include equity, a concept of critical race theory. CASEL advocates for “Transformative SEL” to promote “justice-oriented civic engagement.” Schools see SEL as a way to address racial injustice.
SEL has exploded in public schools. Billions in federal COVID-relief money for schools are being used to purchase SEL materials and fund SEL teachers. Nationwide, sales of SEL materials shot up 45 percent in just a year and a half, to $765 million in 2021.
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita has cautioned that SEL programs shift “the role of teachers from educators to therapists.” more here
I can’t wait for the reckoning….
I sacrificed having a real vacation for about 23 years (passport expired) to send my kids to private school.
Calculus
Finance
Economics
English
Music (son- Trumpet & Baritone Daughter- Clarinet)
A mix of ALL the sports among LITERATE students
Out of school, I made Taekwondo MANDATORY.
Man, My kids will eat these useless people alive when they get into the workforce.
I am probably preaching to the choir. I believe in equity, just not what the left considers equity. I believe in equity of opportunity, not equality of outcome. Everyone gets a chance, but I will not subsidize you because you don’t work as hard because of some idiotic sense of right, or supremacy.
Just because you might think you deserve more because of your race, creed, religion, etc., does not mean you should be put above anyone who has earned it.
D@mnit, I probably just lost any chance of being hired by any company. So be it.
Kcir — So glad to meet another parent who bucked the tide to get your kids what they need. Like you, no vacations to places I can’t go to now because I refuse to let TSA feel me up and I refuse to get an experimental “drug” in order to fly.
TKD since kindergarten.
Violin from kindergarten through high school.
Neither of the above negotiable unless child could prove their time would otherwise be spent just as productively.
Private all-girls’school for middle school years.
Made to buy their own car (we picked up insurance).
Introduced to banking/savings early.
Paid all university tuition up front (no student loans).
Refused to pay for any elective university classes with the word “studies” in them.
Although we had little fear of this, we made it clear our child would not be returning home to live after university and they better get a degree in something that would support them in the lifestyle they to which they aspired.
(I am SHOCKED at the number of child’s friends who ARE living with their parents right now, and have no marketable skills despite their parents spending a fortune for their childrens’ — mostly worthless — education. Some over four years after graduating!)
All of this with warnings from some family and friends who warned we were “too hard” on our child. This, coming mostly from losers whose own children were always in scrapes with the law, drugs, and/or living off their parents, or marginally employed at low-paying, unskilled jobs.
I wouldn’t have changed anything about how we stressed education that prepares one for independence and contribution to society. Taken together with a Christian ideology and practice, our child has the ability to think and do for herself. I never hear victimspeak coming out of her mouth.
Strong work, Abigail! Attempting similar with my own.
Please explain TKD?
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tkd
Indimex — Boy, there were times when you really just want to give in and go with the flow! I remember, though, caving in to buying an iPod (remember those?) as a Christmas present, but at the last minute I sold it to a neighboring mom as a present for her own (younger) child. I didn’t want our kid hooked up to an electronics device just because her friends had one. Tip #1: don’t let your kids get lost in the world of electronics just because all their friends are. We had a “house” cell phone that sat on the counter and was used between me and our child when there was a need. Tip#2: turn off the tee vee and when you do watch, mute the commercials or, better yet, play a game of dissecting the message — it makes your kids better consumers. Tip#3: as soon as your kid asks for something extravagent that they don’t really need, let them know they’ll have to come up with the dough. Funny how quickly they lose interest in whatever it was.
Our kid has told us many times how much she appreciated our hard line on stuff — especially spending. Although at the time she said she thought it was unfair, she soon realized how proud she felt and how much confidence it gave her to earn and spend her own money, and how much more she cared for things she had to fork over her own money to buy. It also gave her more appeciation for the gifts she received from us and from others. I think one thing that really helped in this education was to work with her on school fund raisers; set goals each year, walk the neighborhood with her, etc. Projects like that instill all kinds of good values and skills.
Love and coming along side your kids to help them solve THEIR OWN PROBLEMS instead of bailing them out. It’s so hard when you doing so would have been much easier!
The fact that you even care is 89% of the solution!
…TKD = taekwondo
Public schools, particularly grade schools and especially in NYC under the de blasio and (former) cuomo-hochul sinister fiends have been found to be nothing more than pedophile child-trafficking centers. This is one reason why these schools have adopted some bogus indoctrination for the purposes o turning youngsters against their parents by brainwashing these kids and readying them for trafficking.