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Yesterday was Labor Day and it appears that many DCUM users were offline celebrating rather than posting on DCUM because the active threads were not all that active yesterday. The most active thread was titled, "High schoolers can’t write", and posted in the "Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)" forum. The original poster says that her kids go to Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, are native English speakers, and get all As in school. Nevertheless, their writing is "awful". They have poor grammer and punctuation and can't correctly form an argument. The original poster says that she is in shock and wants to know if others have noticed this issue with their kids. Almost all of those responding have noticed this. They blame it on Montgomery County Public Schools not teaching grammer, spelling, or writing skills anymore. Some posters allege that the problem begins in early grades so that by high school the teachers have given up. Others say that kids don't read enough these days and that reading is important to gaining writing skills. Another poster, however, says that reading doesn't build writing skills but rather practice does. A teacher says that in public school she had too many students and not enough time for reviewing their writing, implying that she didn't provide writing assignments as a result. However, after switching to private school, she had greater support and fewer students and the school placed more emphasis on writing. Therefore, she was much more involved in teaching writing. Because of the shortcomings posters see in MCPS with regard to reading and writing, many posters say that they have either supplemented with tutors or writing classes, or moved their children to private or parochial schools. In their search for whom to blame for the current state of writing education, some posters focus on kids with special needs who, in these posters' view, require too much support and take away resources – especially the teachers' attention — from the other students. According to these posters, teachers are spending their time assisting students with special needs and, therefore, don't have time to teach writing. The second target is the "social justice, social emotional learning, anti-racism" initiatives that some posters believe have replaced traditional teaching in MCPS. Several posters would like to see MCPS return to focusing on the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Other posters blame the parents who are complaining, asking why they didn't read to their kids and teach them writing themselves. These might be valid questions for the average DCUM poster, but it ignores that some MCPS parents may lack proper English reading and writing skills themselves and, therefore, are not in a position to assist their children. Much of this thread is devoted to debating the pros and cons of private or parochial education compared to public. Catholic schools are especially debated with several posters praising their traditional teaching while others decry them as "archaic" or unappealing to non-Catholics.