#public school system

[moonbean117]

You prefer a private education? YOU pay for it!

[fru1typunch]

Here's a little post ranting about the Floridian education system and how it fucked over public school librarians this year, from the adult child of one who spent his whole summer helping his poor mom try and keep up with Desantis's ridiculous requests.

Every school year, the librarian always gets a couple weeks with a "closed" library to take inventory of the school's stock at the end. Normal stuff, y'know, if a bit tedious and boring. Scan every. Single. Thing. See what you have and figure out who last checked out what you should have, that sort of thing.

Well, Ron Desantis, in his genius, decided that concept had to be applied to all the books in the entire school to determine if they're "appropriate" (by his batshit conservative standards).

My mom didn't JUST have to do the usual inventory thing for her own library. She ALSO had to do something similar but far WORSE for her entire school's personal classroom libraries.

The objective of this SCHOOL WIDE requirement was to "approve" every book in the school as "appropriate". Every. Single. Book. In. The. School. Not the school library, no, the SCHOOL. All classrooms.

My mom's an elementary school librarian. There's around 1000 students at her school, give or take, and around 50 or so classroom libraries to sort through. And this was supposed to be done over summer, before the kids came back in the fall. Entirely unpaid.

She had to personally approve around 25,000-30,000 books school wide based on whether or not they're "appropriate for kids" (again, by Desantis standards), entirely unpaid, in about 2 months. Keep in mind these classroom libraries had been pre-existing for many years or even decades in most cases, so it's kinda useless to just now care about whether the books are "appropriate".

Mind you, you can't read that many individual books in under two months and then approve them in the system if you tried, even if most were children's books. She spent every single day of her summer, her only real time off each year, logging into the online portal and manually approving books from 8 in the morning to 8 at night, looking them up and trying to determine if they might be okay by the new standards since she couldn't possibly have the time to read them all and check, and again, entirely unpaid on her own. Teachers were scanning in their classroom's books to the system to be approved by her in real time, so she really never could get very far ahead. At most she'd knock out a few hundred a day, which I think is wildly impressive given the circumstances.

Even with all that work, she couldn't open her library for nearly a month into the new school year this August because she spent every school day finishing that approval thing for the classroom libraries for teachers. At least by that point she got paid for it. She was also way behind on getting her library ready for the school year, she really hadn't had time to prepare like normal. It was a crazy stressful time for her all around, moreso than back-to-school time normally is each year.

I helped as much as I knew how to, which mostly just meant looking books up for her or texting back and forth with my friends that work at Barnes and Noble or Books A Million asking if they could skim through certain books that might pose a threat at times, and coming up to the school with her sometimes while she worked on approving books and I worked on preparing her library for "business" again.

My mom was upset because she didn't have time for a real summer vacation, the most she got to do was occasionally visit the beach a few hours away for a day trip. (On one of the beach days, she even took her blessed laptop with her to work on it in the car ride over.) She was in the thick of it neck deep all on her own for months with hardly any time off and no pay to show for it.

It's frustrating because if she were to have approved a book that a parent later complains about, it could mean bad news for her. Again, no way in hell would she have been able to both read every single book, determine if she thought it was okay by Desantis's standards, and then approve every single book within the system. She did her best, but she's still nervous someone will complain.

All this conservative bullshit around books is hurting so many kinds of librarians and educators in so many ways, so just take a moment sometime soon to appreciate your local librarians and public school teachers putting up with this crap. They could use the love. Maybe some strong alcohol. And a big wad of cash, they do a lot of shit unpaid.

And do vote these assholes out of office that are making these poor librarians' and teachers' jobs harder with no additional support or pay.

[radmalenia]

If anyone on radblr has interacted with this "taythewhom" account, I would advise just try not to engage with them; because it likely won't be possible to have a productive conversation and will just piss you off.

Caution: this post is a lengthy breakdown/rant about the horrible reading abilities and the critical thought-killing mentalities of so many "TRA's", and the dangerous and tragic ramifications of being taught next to no reading and thinking skills.

TLDR: this person is a prime example of it. And the problem they have is a disturbing sign of how the education system is fundamentally failing to teach youth to read, to critically think, to stay out of echo chambers, and to know enough to articulate their stances - this is also why so many fall for trans ideology, too; and why they are more easily manipulated away from genuine feminism.

~ This is not a usual type of post for me but it brought up a couple of key things I think people need to be discussing more overall; so here goes.

So this "taythewhom" clown has bought the bullshit about radical feminists not being feminists and also about them being transphobic, and (surprise surprise) are apparently not willing to read more than one sentence at once that has been spoken by someone whom they've been told is "the enemy".

No better way to keep someone in an echo chamber, to make sure they never question or analyze their beliefs or those of anyone else; than convincing them not to read anything that a person outside of their own ideology says! Convincing them that "well this person is wrong no matter what, so you shouldn't even care to read their words"! What an unbelievably thought-killing and sheep-creating form of manipulation. Very cultish, too.

Anyway, this person suddenly DM'd me. I've seen them before in comment sections; contributing nothing and generally being shockingly dumb. I was a bit harsher overall than I maybe could have been, but it deeply frustrates me to encounter someone who has so thoroughly bought these types of thought-stopping cliches.

In this instance, they were on a "this person's apparently transphobic so don't listen to a thing they say...but yet engage with them anyway to tell them off ." (??) As it continued I got more confused by that; by why they were even in my dms at all while not willing to have an actual conversation... And wondering what do they think they get out of it. What do they think they're doing?? (I wish I'd manged to ask that!!) But the gist is that they kept insisting they didn't care to read what I was saying...yet they still kept messaging. At least for a few minutes.

And then a block? Too cowardly and/or egotistical to consider they could be wrong. To even discuss it. Notice of course how they never explained anything about what they're claiming. Never said why they say I'm transphobic. Never said why they claim radical feminism isn't feminism. NO THOUGHTS - NO CONTENT - ONLY BUZZWORDS.

They also seem to be so horrendous at reading that they saw me mention male supremacy, I presume in my bio; and somehow concluded I support it?! And that it means I want the sexes segregated?!?! How??? How are these people so quick and willing to proclaim a strong opinion on something they're literally so ignorant (and usually always wrong) on?

Even female separatism, which I fully support (but do not mention in my bio) is not a total separation of the sexes (except in an ideal and unrealistic utopia;) and even that would not be actual "segregation".

And if this person can't understand that the sentence about male supremacy in my bio is calling it the status quo that needs to be overturned by genuine feminism; then ...wow. I just don't know what's going on in schools this past decade. Why are so many of these kids unable to properly read?? 🤦‍♀️ Why are so many unable and/or unwilling to analyze something complex, or even simple - unwilling to critically think and see what conclusions they draw, to challenge their own views by analyzing a disagreeing view; to even learn enough about their own stance to articulate it beyond a basic slogan or buzzword?? Do they even know how they choose a stance? Not specifically with taythewhom but I've seen instances of other people like them admitting when questioned that they don't know why they have the stance they do, they just felt "it's what everyone else is doing" or something like that.

Like, I...cannot even imagine basing my opinions off popularity alone like that.

And honestly I do consider a large part of this person's state to be this failing of the modern public education system. For someone to call a moderate paragraph a "novel" is fucking mind-blowing. Whether you disagree with the subject or not, even if you find it totally boring; you can't call a mild size paragraph a "novel" unless something pretty bad is up with you.

No wonder these Tumblr TRA's are so often woefully uneducated about issues women face, and so woefully incapable of learning or understanding new concepts and things that they're presented with. So uneducated about how to analyze things and use critical thought. Even so uneducated about trans issues (with them often having no idea the meanings, ramifications, and realities of the trans stuff they talk about); so uneducated about gender roles and how they've been used on people, so uneducated about history (and so willing to rewrite it to fit their narrative but that's a whole different post...), so uneducated about actual feminism; about misogyny, patriarchy; about homosexuality and the gay community. So uneducated about how many of these things relate to each other, and how stuff doesn't exist in a vacuum and therefore stuff like so-called "choice feminism" doesn't work.

No wonder their reading comprehension is fucking abysmal (where does my blog say anything about sex segregation????) They either CAN'T or DON'T read...so they don't even understand the issues and stances that they're trying to support - much less the ones they've been told they're in opposition to!!

This is why we see so many of them being trans ideologists. Gender ideology necessities people who do not think, question, or read. Because as soon as one does that, it begins to fall apart.

Also - because genuine feminism ideally requires educating onself on feminist philosophy, and going on a journey through the study of feminist texts to arrive at the conclusions all of us radical feminists do, to be able to articulate these facts to others and to raise female class consciousness and have impactful discussions - it is a lot less appealing to kids who don't want to read, who don't want to think or put in effort. Who would rather be told that they can think and behave exactly how they already do, but just call it "their choice" and therefore "feminist", and be done with it. No class analysis, no understanding of the way males oppress them specifically because of their sex and have done so for hundreds even thousands of years; no - that requires long paragraphs, and very heavy subject matter.

To be clear I do truly empathize with young women feeling turned away by how heavy it is emotionally to face and accept the actual realities of their oppression...the realities of who does it, how severe and all encompassing it is; the reality of what it is based upon. It is a horrible thing to face; and once you've seen it you can never stop seeing it. It permeates everything around us in our entire culture, it overshadows and undertones everything and every situation and etc etc etc. But - to use the overdone matrix analogy - would you rather take the blue pill to make you forget that you ever peaked behind the curtain, or would you rather take the red pill that shows you the grim truth in full - and live the rest of your life in proud resistance against the oppressive force? That red pill is what radical feminists all choose...and it is certainly worth it emotionally.

(NOT to be confused with the fucking "red pill" that far-right males sometimes refer to!! They have entirely different views from radfems, this cannot be overstated - and their "red pill" views of hateful misogynistic nonsense; and often of other hateful and stupid views like antisemitism or homophobia; are entirely incorrect. The ONLY similarity is the matrix pill analogy itself.)

Anyway... going back to the younger people who won't read. They don't read and they don't think. And it considerably contributes to keeping them inside an echo chamber as well, as I'm sure one can understand - if they read nothing from the outside, they've obviously been successfully placed in an echo chamber where they just keep supporting and agreeing with their own stances...which again are often so shallow because they don't even flesh out what they're supposed to believe in themselves.

This is also so concerning for so many reasons; I've already glossed over some and am sure I don't need to list them all... Essentially - being able to read, to effectively properly read and do the thinking that comes with it; is SO DAMNED IMPORTANT. Being able to read multiple paragraphs is VITAL. Books are vital, for a start. If you want to have a stance about a serious and complex issue, for example feminism; you need to be able to read books, studies, articles, news reports, and complex discussion threads. Otherwise you have your stance in name only, with no substance behind your label; and so it would be more beneficial if you don't say a word in these discussions and debates and instead let the people who can actually read and learn and think and speak do the reading, learning, thinking, and speaking...otherwise you'd just be derailing the conversation and adding pointless or even detrimental words.

Like taythewhom does in the notes on multiple feminist posts I've seen 🙃 and they don't mean well at all, certainly not when it comes to women's rights. It's people like this who turn the word "transphobia" meaningless - and into a joke or even into a compliment, depending on context.

Anyway, to wrap this up; while this is a post about the importance of being able to read well (and that's still undeniably true), I admit this also has a level of irony because it is somewhat longer than it needs to be. However there are multiple places where I could have brought up other topics and tangents that were relevant, though - so is it really longer than necessary?? To me that's an incredibly cool thing about writing; no matter what you're discussing there are so many ways you could expand upon what you're saying if you were so inclined to. And how abundantly rich the world is with subject matter is something everyone deserves to be able to access and experience; and the way the school system is degrading the literary level of children is just so tragic and disgusting for so many reasons.

Well - if you made it this far through my 4am adderall comedown vent; congratulations, I think - and thank you! ADHD, which I have, is often awful to live with - but sometimes it can be very handy; although not always in the most productive manner.

Reading and writing are a never-ending source of enrichment, intrigue, revelation and knowledge; and the last one in particular can easily be your greatest source of personal power. All of them lead to personal growth, so don't neglect them. To be a little petty - the moral of this post is, in its simplest terms...be a reader - don't be taythewhom.

[dosesofcommonsense]

[itzmoss]

its back to school time you know what that means

LISTENING TO THE MAGNUS PROTOCOL WHILE DOING ART LETSGOOOOOOO

i am also incredibly behind so i will have a lot to catch up on yipiee!!!

also i hate my schools art department... cus we barely have one...

ive taken literally all the art classes my school has to offer

this year i only have ceramics for the second half of the year 😭

my study skills/free period teachers are gonna have to deal with me just doing art the whole time...

this is devastating truly

how the hell am i... a student in senior year supposed to make a PORTFOLIO FOR COLLEGE when i dont have a fucking PORTFOLIO class...

like sorry there are only 4 people at this school that doesnt wanna do sports or stem

HELP 😭😭😭😭

[dwarf-vader-of-middle-earth]

I was just reminded of the time my 6th grade teacher who absolutely despised me thought I was either a psychic or a hacker, and she couldn't decide which.

My 6th grade teacher was HELLA transphobic, she was a sexist bitch sincerely who eventually got fired for her awful behavior despite tenure, and she played favorites with only the most "popular" girls (popularity is a load of garbage, and I was the outcast reject of outcast rejects). All boys she consistently would call them less mature just for being boys, and she'd always insult every boy together in front of the class, while praising all girls shortly thereafter. Like I never did anything to offend the woman, but nobody had to. She was just the type of person that was always miserable no matter what, y'know?

Additionally, as the reject student, I had tons of rumors going about myself for... whateverthefuck reasons. How they started idk, but students just liked to insult me however they could. And one of those rumors was that I was psychic. Don't ask, I have zero ideas myself.

I was the student IT, and if any teachers had issues I was legit called out of class to come help if the IT guy was unavailable. I knew computers inside and out, and everyone knew that. I taught kids cheat codes in games, so they called me a hacker.

But basically in Windows XP which we ran in the school, when you hit the start button to shut a computer down, it showed in the bottom lefthand corner the name of the user logged in currently.

The school had accounts for every teacher, with their first and last names listed.

So one day my awful teacher said that we students could leave for lunch early if we guessed her first name right. She'd never said the name to any students, and nobody knew it, but I had seen it in the corner of the screen when she projected it one day on the whiteboard, and shut the computer off while projecting.

So I was in line, waiting as she asked students to guess, and all got the name wrong.

I came up, and I told her outright.

She looked HORRIFIED!!!!

My teacher just FROZE! And she PANICKED!! She GLARED at me and whispered with a voice that could cut steel, "HOW DID YOU KNOW THAT?!"

I got my revenge and gave a shit eating grin, telling her with a shrug, "I dunno. I just guessed."

She wouldn't believe me at all. She kept pressing and I just kept grinning saying it was a lucky guess. I refused to give away my secret.

She let me go angrily that day.

And damn did she scorn me forever after that even more.

Idk. Maybe don't mess with a psychic hacker? /jk

Anyway, to young kiddos reading this, if rumors are ever bothering you, know you're gonna make it regardless, and someday you'll take a metaphorical shit on the graves of all who offend you by making it in spite of them. <3

[greatrunner]

I really need more people and public spaces to look at what's happening to our health system and react accordingly

[CDC: Maybe if we set this on fire. Anyone with good sense: Oh, yeah? That's a no.]

Because this shit the CDC is doing with headlice regulations is fucking beyond stupid.

[wisewordsofpolly]

do yall remember when in elementary school they school would practically beg parents to buy school supplies and cleaning supplies because they were broke as fuck or was that not a universal experience

[theexodvs]

I wonder how the folks who call marriage and the family "idols" prioritize them in relation to NATO, the FDIC, the American public school system, the establishment clause, the interstate commerce clause, psychiatry, or boomers' retirement funds.

Or whether they're willing to take the Hezekiah option against them the way they do against marriage and the family.

[autisticthings]

I don't understand why sex is such a hush hush topic. we ALL have genitals. I didn't know the difference between a vagina and vulva until last year. I had to learn from YouTube.. American Sex Ed sucks. honestly at the very least we should just learn about our bodies. I took a sports med class in highschool, and the things I learned were so important. knowing your body is so important.

[tiredphilosophy]

It’s times like these (exams) that I wonder what all this work was for. Like, on a whole, were the people who advanced society (philosophers, mathematicians, scientists, some politicians & rulers, etc) thinking “ah yes, one day my descendants will be able to sit in fluorescent-lit rooms and fill in bubbles on a piece of paper that will be judged by a machine to determine if they’re intelligent enough to not have to take a class in the special school they’ll go to after 12 years of schooling” or “ah yes, one day my decedents will be staying up late researching things they don’t give a damn about because the government decided it was important. Will they ever be genuinely interested in pursuing the topic after associating it with exhaustion, back pain, lack of control over their own lives, and a lack of self worth? Ha, probably not, isn’t that great?”

And then did pioneers from what are less privileged groups today go, “oh, oh, and my decedents will struggle to get an education instead! They’ll also have dirty water and be starving and their economy will be failing and their government will be corrupt! Wouldn’t that be so fun?”

And did the pioneers from what are privileged groups today go, “That’s genius! And the young people from our countries will learn, like, Calculus, while not being encouraged to help those less fortunate than them. I mean, they’ll do ‘service hours,’ I guess, but that won’t be nearly as rewarded as working to be accepted to a highly respected college, which they’ll also pay to attend, even though we’ll eventually create a resource (the internet) where literally all the knowledge of the human race can be recorded and communicated.”

I was told by people much smarter than me that the school system and much of our culture is meant, first and foremost, to benefit the economy. And personally, I believe it. We’re taught about productivity and how to maximize output, with only a small amount of time being dedicated to exploring what is valuable to us as individuals and to the world as a whole. Or the way that we, as individuals, function best, both alone and in a group. (And when I say in a group, I don’t mean group projects where you just want to get it done and get a decent grade, I mean group projects that you actually care about contributing to.) We’re basically taught how to do a simple job. Get instructions, follow instructions, improve at task. And even then, the skills are only really applicable to jobs that don’t require actual independent thought.

Critical thinking skills? Unheard of. Comprehension skills? What are you even talking about.

We aren’t taught thinking skills; we’re taught patterns. It’s no wonder that most young people seem unoriginal and dependent. Society took the human feature that allows us to improve as a whole and made it so extreme that we don’t grow as individuals. (Or learn to actively consider the actual whole, including those outside our social group and more.)

TLDR: Is measurable academic success, (and later economic success, especially through traditional means) really what we should be shaping children to value and achieve?

[fairycorewalterwhite]

so fun fact about me, i couldn't read In English until 2d or 3rd grade due to the fact that I went to a French emersion school in which you are only allowed to speak English in class for an hour a day (aside from recess) after 3rd grade, in fith grade I took an adhd test(that claimed I didn't have adhd but scince then ive been diagnosed by a professional) that said I read in English at a high school level, in fourth grade I was still occasionally breaking into French randomly at home even though my parents only speak English, in sixth grade my teacher whom everyone praised and adored sidelined me and ignored me due to my inattentiveness in sixth grade I experienced my first panic attack and in seventh grade I left public school. not to mention I had to learn to read in English with a tutor outside of school because the school didn't provide that kind of resources

if you need any proof the public education system and medical system is biased against neurodivergent children (specifically neurodivergent females) just take my experiences for example

[ded-inside-anonymous]

That moment when you realize that you and your friends not using the bathroom unless it was an absolute emergency in middle school and high school because sometimes people are weird about the stupid cracks between the door and stall and floor and ceiling in public bathrooms isn't a universal experience and other countries don't have these stupid gaps and people feel completely (or at least more) safe using public bathrooms

[invincible-selfxmade-punk]

Big f****** teaching rant under the cut.

On Facebook, I made a post blaming Greg Abbott, and yes, this is partly his fault for coming down our state to the point that we would do this. But the real villains in this are the school board and the superintendent. And of course, I can not call them out on Facebook without being fired.

At school, we got an email to every teacher saying that if there was a test grade in our electronic gradebook that was less than a 50, we had to change it to a 50.

It didn't matter that the kid didn't earn it. It didn't matter that we didn't have enough time to reteach it or to make sure that the kid got it the second time around.

And for kids that are coming in basically on first grade level, who are taking tests and making 10s and 15s, its an absolute lie

because it shows they have an ability they do not.

The excuse we were given was

the grade book could not calculate grades lower than 50. But that is BS cuz I have been there for 8 years and at the beginning when we had a better Administration backing us, if they earned a 33 that is what they kept unless they were in Special Ed and had accommodations saying they can retake it multiple times.

But when basically 75% of my kids are in special ed, we don't have the time or the staff to test all these kids again.

So overnight I look like the greatest teacher in the world.

Once I change all those grades, it makes it look like all my kids are doing amazing when they're not. So on paper I look like the best teacher in the world.

I am told this has been the policy for a long time. But I've never had to do this before and I am guessing it is because 75% of the kids are on almost first grade level and the parents are freaking out because all of the kids are failing.

That is because all of the kids did not get taught in second and third grade, and so now they are coming into 4th, not knowing anything at all. But instead of trying to help them, which we do not have the staff to do, they're just telling us just pass them anyway.

My first two years as a teacher I was so nervous about giving the kids any kind of extra credit. I was so afraid someone was going to challenge me and say why did you raise your grade a couple of points. Or someone was going to go back in and actually check the work that they did and add it up.

With this Administration and this principle I don't have to back up anything I can just make up grades off the top of my head and give them to whoever I want and as long as they're passing no one is going to care and that is so sad.

[my-sibling-wears-a-muumuu]

Jesus christ who needs reality tv when you have american high schools