Why is everything so mediocre around me?(Warning: long rambling post)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP I have a kid who underachieves and I am far from a tiger mom. But yes - what you are learning is that public school education is BAD no matter how fancy the school district. Based on conversations with relatives in coveted public districts, I do think you start to see more value in middle school. For example I visited Westland Ms and the orchestra sounded amazing.

You may also want to move to an area with more Asian families.

You are a racist and people like you will only be friendly with other Asians.

NP. True, sadly.

[Anonymous]

OP is insane.

[Anonymous]

Public schools are mediocre.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP I have a kid who underachieves and I am far from a tiger mom. But yes - what you are learning is that public school education is BAD no matter how fancy the school district. Based on conversations with relatives in coveted public districts, I do think you start to see more value in middle school. For example I visited Westland Ms and the orchestra sounded amazing.

You may also want to move to an area with more Asian families.

You are a racist and people like you will only be friendly with other Asians.

Yet white people never have a problem with only having white friends...

Some of these suburbs only have White people. We finally has a little girl in our neighborhood that was in 4th grade like mine. She wasn’t allowed to come over. That’s just one example but I have my suspicions. Plus my friend told me her very large family will not allow their kids to be friends with White kids outside of school. They came over from China slowly bringing more and more family over. My friend was the black sheep in the family because she has White friends and was divorced.

So why would someone leave their country to go to a country that was completely different and ot want to get to know the locals? I understand the language barrier for Latinos and Asians and how it keeps them apart but their children are bilingual and to keep them apart from their peers is racist.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Find where high achieving immigrants hang out. Seriously - RSM classes, private music teachers, etc. Your kid will at least know another peer group with higher expectations.

Yeah this. I find the standards of high income wasp types are sort of mediocre regarding academics and music.

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Raised by immigrants

I was raised by immigrants and I see things really differently. I think immigrants pound the creativity out of their children with rote memorization. I think Wasps recognize that not everyone is a genius and no amount of pressure or forced math practice is going to turn their mediocre child into one. I think Wasps realize the point of learning piano is to have a fun hobby and sometimes play a song for your friends at get togethers throughout the course of your life, not to impress your mom’s friends or foster her delusion that you have a chance to play professionally at Carnegie Hall.

I think Wasps actually have a much better handle on how to promote creativity and invention than recent immigrants do. That’s why we wanted to be here and not wherever we came from. And didn’t Anglos invent penicillin, the plane, the computer, the telephone, air conditioning, etc.? I’d say they know what they’re doing, no?

Nope, see who is winning all the innovation awards in USA right now:
https://science-fair.org/2023/11/03/thermo-fisher-scientific-jic-announces-2023-winners/#:~:text=Congratulations%20to%20Adyant%20Bhavsar%2C%2013,version%20of%20a%20triboelectric%20nanogenerator.

https://www.invent.org/collegiate-inventors/finalists

To be smart first you have to have facts pounded in your head at a young age so you understand the basic grammar of each kind of subject and have a solid foundation. Then your creativity will thrive based on what you already knew. In the western world we used to know that until the "education innovators" started ruining everything as early as the 19th century.

Everyone should read this! My kindergartener is praised over and over for "brave spelling" and never gets anything corrected. Some things really do need to be practiced and yes, memorized. Why can't we correct one or two words per assignment or per week for a 6 year old? It's not going to crush a kid's dreams or self worth. This sort of things drives me crazy.

What’s wrong with waiting? They will know how to spell my elementary and middle school and then grammar and sentence structure will be taught over and over again. There are so many more important things to learn at this age. Patience.

None of this is accurate. Students today learn none of this.

There’s no way they can skip the rules of grammar. Really?

I think learning to write in actual words rather than “texting” is already a step up for many kids.

True I hope they didn’t give up with proper grammar.

Schools are not teaching grammar, let alone "proper grammar." Some elementary schools are teaching nouns, verbs, and adjectives and that's about it. I have family in all kinds of ed roles now- elementary homeroom, elementary specials, middle school science, middle school math, middle school admin, undergrad, hs summer school - every one of them complain that the kids coming up now no longer know how to write or spell.

For example when students start writing they don’t automatically know the difference between too or to. Or their, they’re or there. Structuring sentences, when to start a new paragraph. The little jingles like “I before E except after C”. They don’t do this anymore? My sixth grader only talks about science and social studies her favorites.

[Anonymous]

We go to a title 1 school in California. My daughter is doing great, but I think most of her peers are behind. I think having a college educated mother has helped her. I'm thinking maybe a lot of women in nicer suburbs dropped out of college and are stay at home mom's with high earning husbands. As a single mom I knew I had to finish college to make it in the world.

I did notice my first grader didn't know what continents are or any other geography. The other day I saw my preschool report card (a private church Montessori around 1999) and they checked off all the continents I knew as well as some countries. I was also learning about 3-d shapes, just a lot of stuff my youngest isn't learning at his church preschool. I think the teachers are more overwhelmed because the cost of living is going up, and behavior is getting worse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We go to a title 1 school in California. My daughter is doing great, but I think most of her peers are behind. I think having a college educated mother has helped her. I'm thinking maybe a lot of women in nicer suburbs dropped out of college and are stay at home mom's with high earning husbands. As a single mom I knew I had to finish college to make it in the world.

I did notice my first grader didn't know what continents are or any other geography. The other day I saw my preschool report card (a private church Montessori around 1999) and they checked off all the continents I knew as well as some countries. I was also learning about 3-d shapes, just a lot of stuff my youngest isn't learning at his church preschool. I think the teachers are more overwhelmed because the cost of living is going up, and behavior is getting worse.

Montessori teaches in grade level bands so Pre-K kids might be grouped with kindergarten and first grade so younger kids are exposed to more primary grade content.

My kid learned the continents in a song in 2nd grade.

Is there really a material difference in learning this at age 4 or 7? It's rote memorization. It's not this incredible display of rigor

[Anonymous]

The standard age groupings in Montessori are ages 3-5, called Primary, where age 5 equals Kindergarten, then ages 6-8, called Lower Elementary, corresponding to grades 1-3.

The bigger difference is that many US schools, public or private, do not teach geography at all. Geography is built-in to the usual (i.e., AMI or AMS accredited) Montessori curriculum. Geography is not just names of continents, but how to read a map, shapes of various countries, which countries have which neighboring countries, how climates differ, and so on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The standard age groupings in Montessori are ages 3-5, called Primary, where age 5 equals Kindergarten, then ages 6-8, called Lower Elementary, corresponding to grades 1-3.

The bigger difference is that many US schools, public or private, do not teach geography at all. Geography is built-in to the usual (i.e., AMI or AMS accredited) Montessori curriculum. Geography is not just names of continents, but how to read a map, shapes of various countries, which countries have which neighboring countries, how climates differ, and so on.

This is true. My 1st grade Montessori child is learning to read a topographical map and I believe the upper el students do map orienteering/land navigation. Perhaps not entirely applicable to modern life, but learning new things and being challenged is always good for brain development

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Public schools are mediocre.

So are diocesan schools. I taught at one for many years. People think just because you pay it’s better and that’s just not true.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Public schools are mediocre.

So are diocesan schools. I taught at one for many years. People think just because you pay it’s better and that’s just not true.

True. Some of my local parochial schools are on small lots with no grass to play on during recess. Nice 3 story building, but I can't imagine paying for that when the academics are not even better than the public option.

[Anonymous]

Parochial schools can vary widely in school style/culture and academic rigor.

[Anonymous]

I have this experience and have wondered the same thing. I’m thinking it’s the ideology of this dmv area that’s partially responsible for the mediocrity. Have been thinking about moving back to my non-extremist state to get the high quality public schooling I grew up with.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would love to know what good private school are teaching in 1st grade math. My guess is multiplication and starting to work with variables (X).

LOL

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP I have a kid who underachieves and I am far from a tiger mom. But yes - what you are learning is that public school education is BAD no matter how fancy the school district. Based on conversations with relatives in coveted public districts, I do think you start to see more value in middle school. For example I visited Westland Ms and the orchestra sounded amazing.

You may also want to move to an area with more Asian families.

You are a racist and people like you will only be friendly with other Asians.

Yet white people never have a problem with only having white friends...

Some of these suburbs only have White people. We finally has a little girl in our neighborhood that was in 4th grade like mine. She wasn’t allowed to come over. That’s just one example but I have my suspicions. Plus my friend told me her very large family will not allow their kids to be friends with White kids outside of school. They came over from China slowly bringing more and more family over. My friend was the black sheep in the family because she has White friends and was divorced.

So why would someone leave their country to go to a country that was completely different and ot want to get to know the locals? I understand the language barrier for Latinos and Asians and how it keeps them apart but their children are bilingual and to keep them apart from their peers is racist.

I wouldn’t take that personally. Maybe their legal status or occupation needs to stay hidden.