Allison Gentle

What is really wrong with education in my opinion is the 30% of students it consistently fails to teach literacy to effectively. It’s not a crisis, it’s a persistent reality, it’s wrong & it’s unnecessary. We have stratified societies that we feed with stratified literacy abilities. Betts was right.

Such an important conversation, still! There are people who care enough about minority children to want to help them achieve in school, but then say the solution is for families to abandon their cultural ways of raising their children & raise them more like middle class white families raise theirs.

Go the Quakers! Always at the forefront of spiritually fueled social activism, from Emancipation to disrupting Trumpism. Godspeed.

As a teacher, I sometimes say “motivation is everything” and then wonder if I am exaggerating. I don’t think so. When children really want to learn something, they are phenomenally teachable. When they are deeply focused on learning, behaviour isn’t an issue. And that energy is contagious.

If you want something clearly explained, ask a teacher. The dystopian vision of Project 2025 for the systematic neglect of education for children with disabilities is morally horrific. Read it and weep.

Project 2025: Ending Public Education for Students with Disabilities - Nancy Bailey's Education Website The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people and be willing to bear the expense of it. ~John Adams, President and Statesman, 1758 The Fourth of July always makes me thi...

There is much concern about cuts to special education services that parents rely on for their children. Project 2025 on this appears to be coming true. nancyebailey.com/2024/07/07/p...

The whole mentality of compulsory voting works against even conservatives trying that. They do love to shift electoral boundaries though.

Fair point. In Australia we get a fine in the mail if we didn’t vote. And our elections are held on Saturdays, which makes it easier for most voters.

It might have made a difference to the 36% of people who didn’t bother showing up to vote.

Yes, that’s all most of us can do. It’s hard to find the detachment to just observe. But there are people of principle who will meet the moment like Bishop Budde did. Maybe we have to put our faith in them, and the value of morality that we haven’t all forgotten.

The people most affected by it are the ones who don’t know what it is.

I don’t know what they’re thinking now or what they were thinking then. I sent my postal vote from Australia. The post office clerk said it would cost $45 to make sure it arrived on time. I paid it. He looked surprised. I said “It’s Trump!” I wish everyone valued their vote.

We’re going to start saying he’s from New Zealand.

Undereducated, no critical literacy skills, vulnerable to propaganda. I’m more annoyed with the 36% who didn’t vote at all.

This is so depressing. The biggest voting bloc is can’t be bothered.

I hope those inspectors general are getting good advice and that they take the tough option to stand up for the rule of law. It’s important.

You mean the military under the leadership of an unqualified alcoholic Trump loyalist?

To be fair, it was only 32%

He’s suffering from the real Trump Derangement Syndrome.

He put his head down and did the job, trusted he’d be judged by his results. But it seems about half of the people prefer someone who sits up all night making empty boasts on social media. Kamala promised care, respect, kindness; about 50% prefer callous, disdainful cruelty. It’s depressing.

Last time I would wake up every morning and look at my phone to see what chaos he’d unleashed with a 4am tweet.

And 5-figure medical bills

Disability law needs to be elevated to the standards of any other law, with accountability and consequences for those who break it. How can that happen?

The faces of unprincipled ambition

Crisis management strategy no. 13.

Nah, potato masher way more sensible

It also explains the often observed phenomenon that MAGA folk seem very angry for winners.

Also, starting by finding out what they already know. Otherwise a teacher might be explaining what they already know or what they don’t have the prerequisite knowledge to comprehend. Either damages engagement and effective learning.

Well most teachers encourage students to read broadly across genres but SF is part of the mix, and I think there was a SF book on the English curriculum when I was in secondary school in Australia in the 1970s. Probably still is. AC Clarke is a well regarded writer.

As one literacy educator, my answer would come from 2 perspectives. An important stage in literacy is independent wide reading, which would include SF, expanding knowledge as you say. Also critical literacy, which requires students to read the literature of ideas. Student choice, not indoctrination.