From a post that begins a discussion on the subreddit r/Teachers.
May 15, 2023
"What happens when current 3rd and 4th graders turn 18?"
"Coming into this year, I thought that 2nd graders were the furthest behind in terms of social development and academic skills. As a happy surprise, I have seen a lot of growth over the year.... 3rd and 4th grade, however, are an absolute shit show.... There are always a few but in some sections I have like 50%+ of students who are indifferent to learning, unashamed of their antisocial behaviors, and truly unpleasant to spend time with.... [When given free time, t]hey will do play like kindergarteners or 1st graders.
I watch them play and just feel sad. They feel like broken kids I cannot fix. I worry about what will happen when they become adults in 2032-33...."
From a post that begins a discussion on the subreddit r/Teachers.
From a post that begins a discussion on the subreddit r/Teachers.
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This is a great blog that touches on some of these issues. You'll have to dig for the 'pandemic posts', but they're worth reading.
In short, his prognosis for the pandemic pupils is not good.
Perhaps shutting down schools to “save grandma” was a horrible idea. Fauci should be tarred and feathered
The cost of lockdowns writ large. Thank you Saint Fauci.
Options include:
1. (optimistic) Slow development but they catch up. Puberty is the key -- most developmental issues are fixable before that.
2. (pessimistic) Permanently stunted and akin to children raised by wolves. Feral humans that never attain the historical norms of social interaction.
My guess is that #2 is more likely. Even those who were adults before COVID are struggling socially. For example, female anxiety and depression is off the charts, "Karens" attack random strangers, moral nuance and forgiveness turned into Woke absolutism, following Japanese otaku (nerds) and Korean gaming cafes -- many weak fat boys never learn real competition or pursue women, the average age of marriage gets later and later, passive-aggressive types use transgenderism for deluded competitive victories and gaining attention, etc.
Those small children have little support and weak or absent role models. Their crazy lawfare-obsessed parents win pyrrhic 'social justice' victories that result in non-functional and non-sustainable systems.
Extinction is always an option too.
r/teachers makes for interesting reading. The teachers are not terribly impressive for the most part.
but in some sections I have like 50%+ of students who are indifferent to learning, unashamed of their antisocial behaviors, and truly unpleasant to spend time with..
Sorry to say that it's been that way in Middle and High School for a while now. Which isn't that unexpected from a system that has stopped kicking kids out for bad behavior and won't the "don't give a shit" crowd drop out.
"For context, I am in a large urban district in the Midwest that is high poverty and racially diverse."
Translation: Democrats run the schools.
Post-coronavirus culture?? Nope. Guess again.
Gahrie’s point that our schools won’t “[let] the don’t give a shit crowd drop out” is an important detail here.
"I worry about what will happen when they become adults in 2032-3"
Why worry? They'll vote Dem and have Big Brother take care of them. Win-win.
For a third of fourth grader who turns 18 while in third or fourth grade, see Thurber "I Went to Sullivant." Owing to long division never comprehended, guys kept being kept back, until they were the greatest 4th grade league baseball players ever. Nobody beat that team.
All Praise Our Great and GLORIOUS culture!
America was the fairest land, on Earth, and we took it; and turned into a stinking Shithole!
Our Children hate our country; and Hate Themselves (so much, that they're castrating themselves!)
"What happens when current 3rd and 4th graders turn 18?"
They will demand reparations.
The Good News is:
When (not If, but WHEN) american falls to the muslims.. it won't seem like we're losing anything
They could be our saving grace. That is; this is a group of 21st century teachers. I'd love to hear what a group of 20th century teachers thought about these kids. They may be more like the we were back in the dim, dark reaches of the middle of the last century when children were much more independent and rambunctious.
They're aging process has been hormonally suppressed. It's age-affirmation care!!
Assumes that America will still be a country then. Not lookin too rosy. Gahrie's students will be mixed in with the millions of their educational peers we currently call "migrants".
Students that are not on the register do not bring any funds into the school from the state. Students = $. Per capita. Just like a herd of cattle being priced per head at the stockyard.
Headcount is the lifeblood of the system. People who do not spend time with the individuals in question make this priority a priority. Principals and deans who push too many people out the door for behavior are not good for the school district. They cost the district too much $, particularly when difficult students are the overwhelming majority of the total. No headcount means no school means no jobs for teachers and those who run the whole system.
You get what you incentivize. I don't envy anyone who is facing this problem. And you wonder why they didn't want to go back. They knew what they would face, plus no cohort was more frightened of/by Covid than the teachers. Nobody.
My kids (currently in 5th and 7th) had the same kindergarten teacher and her son is on my eldest kid's soccer team so I see her pretty regularly. She is close to quitting because of the anti-social behaviors of kindergarteners! She is very even keel and not one to go with drama, she said in her 20 years of teaching she has never seen anything like it, she thought it would get better this year, it hasn't it has gotten worse.
I have said it before and I will say it again, those kids went through a trauma and that is why society is seeing a difference in chronological age vrs their emotional age. They can close that gap but it is hard. Pre covid I saw it during the adoption process, when kids are left to fend for themselves at young ages and not shown love it affects them. 10 years on the gap for my child has largely closed but regressions are real this is not a complete fix type of situation.
Obviously the individual teachers can’t speak to this, but I really would like to see some robust comparisons between different areas that handled these things so differently. I happen to have a 4th grader and 2nd grader. My older kid missed the last 2 months of 1st grade, but the both went to school in fall of 2020, and it was largely fine. True, they had a very unusual year, but it seemed to go quite smoothly- the kids adapted to wearing masks and distancing easily (though they were thrilled to be rid of them). I don’t see any concern that they or their peers lack social or educational development.
I feel pretty strongly this was very much the right move, but I’d love to see some good reporting that confirms this.
The people who fought for lockdowns were wrong is what you're really saying...
I have a 3rd grader. I have no worries at all. He's very bright and inquisitive and everything I'd want for a third grader. And has been in public schools throughout. He is smart, though.
Honestly, I think it's a lot like autism rates out there. There's always been kids with a lot of different characteristics, but now we tend to notice the ones who are socially or intellectually different and think they're the examples of their whole generation. Nope. Just in the past, kids didn't have adults always hovering around to watch and kids who were behind or odd were just mostly ignored.
This trend has been going on for a while, long before Covid. I was substitute teaching fifteen years ago and found that excepting for the AP classes, students had little interest in school besides the social interactions. In one particular school system they had a high graduation rate, but less than fifty percent of students passed the state's basic math or reading standards.
Of course the "don't give a shit crowd" want to stay in school. Otherwise they'd be bored and lonely at home or have to find a job. It really amazed me to see the fancy pants students whose parents were farm workers.
I am somewhat experienced in dealing with Children who may have had a less than ideal beginning and/or disruption in their learning trajectory. I have 6 kids adopted from a non-English speaking country. I've adopted a 3 YO, 5 YO and 8 YO, (as well as 3 others aged 2 or below) each of which were raised in non-ideal environments (including being institutionalized.) They may start out behind, but each has overcome that challenge. I have 4 successful working adults, (one completed college, one in Pre-dental, two others with 2 years college completion so far. The last couple are still under 18.)
None of our kids were in public school, partly because we thought they would do better with a more tailored environment that we could provide. For 1 year, we sent 1 student to public school and were less than pleased with the level of support. That did not surprise me, but their claim that they would put together and work a special plan for that one did not come to fruition. I just don't think our schools are capable to dealing with kids who fall outside the center of the bell curve.
Like the previous post, parents need to take the responsibility for their children. Abdicating this to the State is turning out poorly. I think it was better in the past, but things have changed and they are not focused on child education nor respecting of parental priorities.
This just another unintended consequence of women's liberation, unfortunately. By de-emphasizing the value of a stay at home mom (or dad, which was the case for 10 years at this household) the raising of our children has been institutionalized and the institutional priorities don't match yours.
Been reading that sub for years now.
They're mostly progs and SJWs (with poor writing skills) but that makes their statements against interest all the more revealing.
" I worry about what will happen when they become adults in 2032-33...."
They will vote for 'free stuff' which means they'll vote Democratic and keep the same people in office, spouting the same policies that created the mess they grew up in. It doesn't end. It just spreads. Like a bad disease.
They will find rewarding careers in the food service industry because someone's gotta prepare the quick lunches all those imported Asian engineers, scientists, and medical doctors won't have time to cook for themselves.
Yeah, I what the usual suspects are thinking, There's Quaestor being racist again. Well, it's not racist to believe that mathematics and meritocracy are real and infinitely more socially valuable than the wokeist bullshit American children are being taught in public schools. Or is it?
American children are being taught to be compliant subjects of an aristocracy rather than citizens of a free republic. Under the current regime, they are doomed to become peons or heretics, a lot more of the former and, sadly, not many of the latter.
@ wild chicken the horrible prose and grammar made my head hurt by that “teacher”
You create a system where you break kids to the classroom. Remove all self-starting and initiative in learning in favor of waiting for the teacher to instruct. Then up an abandon the children for up to a year. And now the teachers lament is "we don't know what happened, we didn't do it"
"Perhaps shutting down schools to “save grandma” was a horrible idea"
And that's why I wrote the other day that Boomers will be seen as having failed the generational test of Covid. Boomers won't get to write the history of this and their children are hardly likely to blame themselves.
"Lockdown children" will be the subject of much sociological agonizing over the next 5-10 years.
"I worry about what will happen when they become adults in 2032-3"
By the time Biden is out of office, there will be + 10 million people to boost the numbers in the Dependent Class.
Growing the dependent class is a feature, not a bug for Democrats.
Education has been intentionally dumbed down since WWII. Democrats only stay in office by promising the poor, others peoples money. Democrats MUST create poverty...not solve it.
Just spitballing here: Given a total lack of grounding in civics, history and geography, convince them there is some great non-racist country out there that they should emigrate to?
People are commenting here that this is nothing new -- the Reddit poster isn't disagreeing! He's saying in the classes he teaches he always had some like that, but it's skyrocketed.
Reading through the Reddit comments is interesting. There's a number of comments talking about children lacking coordination and spatial awareness, which could be a direct consequence of authorities trying to prevent people from going outside to play (e.g. police chasing down a man jogging alone on the beach). Although one commenter speculates it's because the children all got infected multiple times by coronavirus and this is a side effect. Which seems . . . dubious.
What does "tar and feather Fauci" really mean? Nothing, I think. Might as well just flip him off.
How about stripping him of his worldly possessions and pensions? How about creating new museum in DC for shaming government officials who betray the people they're sworn to serve. He'll have plenty of company.
Fixing the problem would require a lot more people acknowledging the problem, but there is more money to be made from not doing so. The left has made clear that maintenance of their power is more important than any suffering their power inflicts.
Wife and I mentor at an elementary school--lower middle class, upper lower class, 90% white. Nothing like this. Other than that everybody has some kind of computer, and the maintenance staff isn't men who were veterans of the last war, pretty much the same as in our day
Wife and I mentor at an elementary school--lower middle class, upper lower class, 90% white. Nothing like this. Other than that everybody has some kind of computer, and the maintenance staff isn't men who were veterans of the last war, pretty much the same as in our day
Fauci is going to have his own tome when "The Wrong Side of History" is written.
I feel pretty strongly this was very much the right move, but I’d love to see some good reporting that confirms this.
I have an AI bot that will find EVERYTHING that agrees with your concerns!!!
As the branch is bent, so the tree grows. IMHO the socialization --and creation of "self" and "conscience" and "empathy"-- that begins at birth really goes to full boost as kids move from toddling to being, well, kids. Language is the key to socialization --it takes at least two to use it!-- and as kids acquire language they begin to work with abstractions, with hypotheticals, with "the other" and begin to think of a future, of alternatives, of hypotheticals, of something like planning, patience, generosity, deferred gratification. All this is enormously important and IMHO teachers are essential guides. (Including in "teachers" those who home-school).
Covid beat the crap out of our children: especially those in pre-K through middle school. That key formative time was largely wasted. Sorry, Zoom classes don't replace reality. Now we have to rush to catch up, hope for natural resilience and curiosity to kick in.
We parents and so on are all grown up and (maybe) harder to break; or in any case, we're not going to be influencing the planet as long as our kids will (let's hope), so if you just look at the problem of species survival in a crisis like Covid, you'd favor helping the young over the old. By that measure it was absolutely boneheaded to shut down schools and stall all those young lives, and utterly messing with the very young (say ages 3 to 9 or 10, in order to "save grandma." ( In fact we could have saved grandma with common sense, and never have to put our entire lives into the freezer; but that's another story.)
Point being, I agree with those who think closing schools was a huge mistake with consequences we are just beginning to appreciate. I just hope the kids will be all right...
"What happens when the current 3rg and 4th graders turn 18?"
They'll be poorer than the average Pole and as well-educated as their peers in some counties... Botswana, for example. Take a well-deserved bow NEA members, you've accomplished your goal, which was what? Oh, yeah... get Haiti off the bottom rung of the Western Hemisphere's socioeconomic achievement list.
but in some sections I have like 50%+ of students who are indifferent to learning, unashamed of their antisocial behaviors, and truly unpleasant to spend time with..
"Sorry to say that it's been that way in Middle and High School for a while now. Which isn't that unexpected from a system that has stopped kicking kids out for bad behavior and won't the 'don't give a shit' crowd drop out."
Accountability has been replaced by apathy and tolerance. It has nothing to do with the pandemic.
Don't be fooled, this is all by design. The first page of the Democrats' and teachers unions' playbook is: keep blacks uneducated, unemployable and in a permanent state of utter despair. It's much easier to control people that way.
Then every two years, tell blacks it's all the Republicans' fault. And now that the lousy schools are harming most students, not just blacks, all the better.
I teach reading, (as a Title 1 Associate,) in a large rural elementary school. Some in-class time, some one-on-one time, and small groups outside of the classroom, (which is the optimal method in my opinion as the tempos IN the classroom is chaotic and noisy.) I also fill-in as a Substitute Teacher for Pre-K to grade 5 because of shortages. During the pandemic, this amounted to 47 times. So, guess what? Every day that I did, those children who were my actual assigned students did not receive extra help. They would see me in the halls with a class behind me taking them to the cafeteria and some would ask, " am I going to see you today?!" The impact of COVID-19 with it's on-line 'learning' (that phrase is just a phrase, not the reality,) resulted in lack of social development, and even worse test scores. But children are not test scores. Had they taken a pause on testing, maybe that time could have been more successfully used for instruction time. Honestly, so many activities override actual instruction time. These children were already behind before COVID-19. I wonder at what point will they ever catch-up?
"American children are being taught to be compliant subjects of an aristocracy rather than citizens of a free republic."
There's your problem, right there.
"And that's why I wrote the other day that Boomers will be seen as having failed the generational test of Covid."
The youngest boomers are 60, oldest are nearly 80. Plenty of blame to go around for the succeeding (and preceding, for that matter) generations, too.
These kids will be illiterate and ignorant of history and math, just as the Democrats want them to be.
Living on a city loading dock can perhaps make some trends visible: Lots more Chinese, and some more Indian, immigration in the past decade. It's the West Coast.
1st gen Chinese/Indian immigrants (due to family structure, tradition and learning/behavior...maybe some genetics), will want to live on the loading dock, but they ain't going to sacrifice physical safety, nor AP classes.
Yesterday in a high end bagel shop, there were 8 black people in and out (3 Somali, 5 likely American black) in about an hour and they were ALL delivery drivers.
As for COVID, the only people who seem to believe our institutions should be given the benefit of the doubt are the Boomers, the very young, and people whose interests make them blind to other realities.
Seattle ain't representative for various reasons, but this is where all the people who think oppressor/oppressed all the time, and live in the fantasy of radical liberation for as long as they can. They've run parts of the city and the economy into the ground, and will continue to do so as long as others let them.
We had dinner last Friday with a friend who's a 3rd grade teacher. She told us about the absolutely horrid behavior of her students. It's not the kids. It's the parents. The kids all know their parents will make a stink.
Millennials parents are the problem. They have no interest in being actual parents. They're the problems with the transgenderism. They're the problem with poor behavior. They're indulgent of their childrens' poor behavior and contribute to it.
Good parents would mitigate the lost Covid years. Poor parenting is going to exacerbate them. I fear for my grandchildren.
What will happen to them?
Well. Since their parents are indifferent to their education and social discipline they will become good party members. Easily led. Easily manipulated. Unable to reason on their own. Ripe for the ranks of BLM and Antifa. A whole new "jugend"
When I should have been in 3rd grade, I was out in 4th grade. When I was in 5th grade I was put with the 6th graders. At 18 I was well into college. And?
Second wave feminism decreased the average IQ of public school teachers by a full standard deviation. An alternate Althouse might have been THAT high school English teacher; prodding her protégés with alternate provocation and prolix pedantry. I leave it to the reader to surmise what the impact of second wave feminism might have been on legal education.
Public schools have been creating this problem for decades with leftist policies. This didn’t just happen because of school shut downs. They have been dumbing down the public for years.
Late to this:
I appreciate the mention, but would like to say that while I vehemently opposed school closures from March 2020 on, and consider the drop in performance predictable, I don't really see the doom and gloom in the kids coming up. My sophomores are kids who spent all of middle school in the pandemic, and my chunk of them are doing fine. My freshmen had a lot of key math taught in zoom and are likewise doing well. Definitely don't see all the socio emotional crap that other teachers complain about. The only thing this year that's insane is the huge number of absences--like 20 or more to a quarter. Mostly focused among the seniors, who spent freshman and sophomore year online.
Also, on the academic front: there's not a major correlation between stated education method and performance drop. That's because all states let parents choose remote, and the parents mostl likely to want remote were non-whites, which includes (but is not restricted to) blacks and Hispanics. So the kids in each state likely to do poorly were in remote regardless of their state or district policy. That's why it's possible for Florida to have a bigger overall NAEP drop than California, even though California was the state most likely to be in remote while Florida allowed all parents who wanted in person to have it. California did a non-terrible job of educating in remote, while 30% of Florida students, including way over half of its low performing Broward and Miami Dade Counties, were in remote all year.
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