Who is Dr. Grant? Is that some character on House or some soap opera? Nope. I can’t stand soap operas but I do like watching House from time to time. I’m not speaking of a person either but instead an issue our Founding Fathers had the wisdom to avoid but ‘modern wisdom’ has messed up. I’m speaking of how the federal grant system and the doctoral systems have ended up in disrupting our educational system with politics and ego instead of common sense and wisdom.
How can I make such claims? What right do I have or experience the back this up? As my header says, I was once an educator. I sat through my classes in college quietly observing and taking notes. I compared what the Ivory Tower had to say with what my years of experience with children taught me. Then with my K-12 degree in hand, I spent my years working with some 5000 kids taking it all in as I assisted all of the classes, grades and subjects. My experience gave me a valuable lesson. The best professors were those without the doctorates. They had their Master degrees but one other crucial ingredient. They were fresh out of the real world. The Ivory Tower made a cardinal sin. They forgot the K-12 pupils were children.
To achieve a doctorate or a PhD one needs to create a thesis paper for peer review adding something to the field of study. This becomes increasingly difficult as a field of study matures. So to acquire a doctorate requires increasing creative measures to justify adding new members to their rank. One such category is education of the grades K-2. I’ll describe this in more detail in another entry.
Another factor in this equation is the grant system. In order to justify the doctoral positions, research studies are pressed in order to both justify the increasingly ‘creative’ approaches and the justification of the federal grant money to conduct said research. Grant money which was not meant to be a function of the US government as too much control would then rest in the hands of the federal government. The Founding Fathers knew well of checks and balances and the tendency of men towards control and corruption.
How does this factor in with age appropriate education? The answer to that comes in the curriculum that astonishingly ignores basic details about kids. That is if one is to give the benefit of the doubt to those in charge of curriculum decisions. So either it is astonishingly incompetent curriculum planning, self-delusional or intentional actions. I will go into that further on another entry.
In my experience, I’ve seen public school districts attempt to teach 6 year olds the real names for their genitals complete with location, push select religions and a pseudo holiday on Kindergarten children and a litany of other topics as well. Some in particular are a study of the Trojan War, Egyptology, Greek Mythology, Hammurabi, Alexander the Great and nomads founding Mesopotamia to 1st graders who are about 7 years old. Much of which is not history but anthropology. Science side delves into the correct scientific names for the clouds in the sky such as cirrus, stratus, cumulus and cumulonimbus.
Some may say – Wow that is advanced!! And they would be right. But that awe is also forgetting about the children and instead thinking about it as an adult. Consider the following which anyone familiar with kids knows:
- K-2 kids take everything they are told as if it is fact as they lack the skills yet to discern between a proven fact and opinion. Huge caution flag here.
- K-2 or ages 6-8 are in various stages of missing their front 8 teeth impacting their ability to pronounce words. (Try saying cumulonimbus with a few front teeth missing or the names of Egyptian pharaohs.)
- K-2 children are trying to learn a basic thing. How to read. When they are learning the words like, their, were and the like, maybe, just maybe Tutankhamen, cumulonimbus, and Hatshepsut is a bit beyond their skills hmm? Since you learn 10% of what you hear and 20% of what you see/ read, wouldn’t it make sense to wait until the kids can read?
- No matter how fancy you make the curriculum, the number one time of day for K-2 kids will be – Recess. Time to play. Gee, go figure those short ones might just possibly be – children.
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