Originally Posted by
arus2001
I mean, my jab at education isn't just about paying teachers more (in part to tempt more capable teachers into the career). Yes, we need more, but we need to cut down the number of heads they're supposed to be looking over per class, vastly renovating existing facilities or creating new ones so kids aren't having hour+ commutes, improving libraries if the school even has them, better modernizing to today's tech, not throwing 2+ hours of homework on kids a night, guarantee breakfast/lunch/after school snack no questions asked, stop correlating prison-like conditions to safety because we refuse to address the gun and mental health issues of today, stop banning books, stop preaching the South were ackshully the good guys, stop thinking abstinence is all we need for sex ed, stop pretending the US hasn't done shitty things throughout history, stop cutting arts programs or non-sports extra-carriculars, and toss in some basic courses like how to do your taxes/insurances and basic home/vehicle repairs because we can't pretend parents are around or capable of such.
I know there's the argument that SATs and such are discriminatory, and I can kinda get that based on the quality of a school and some other factors, but the idea that certain milestones should be accomplished per grade with that accumulating to a sort of endgame test doesn't strike me as A Bad Thing(tm). We need kids to be as informed as possible upon graduation, especially before expecting them to sign off on giant loans they probably won't be able to pay off for a long time, let alone guarantee the degree they chase is what they really want or even be a viable career a decade later. This also includes educating on toxic behaviors in the workplace, particularly when it comes to union-busting or anti-whistleblower rhetoric. And I wholly get why the right would fear all this, but to circle back to my ESS thing, abuse isn't always something people recognize in the moment and a lot of this shit is legit institutional atm.