: "You know, all that book' learning hurts muh economy, right?"

This is really fascinating stuff. It explains a lot of things I've noticed about other people in my life I've known who are poor readers. I've always been a great reader for as long as I can remember, had parents who helped teach me to read and read with me and all that which can help a lot. The "incorrect" way that school are teaching to kids is to basically guess what words means instead of trying to memorize the phonetic pronunciation of individual words to commit them to memory. I remember in high school there being activities where we would go around the room and different students would read different parts of like a book or textbook out loud. And as someone lucky enough to have learned how to read well, I was always flabbergasted when I would hear some people read. I'd be reading along in the book and thinking "what the fuck, they're saying words that aren't even on this page. How is this even possible to mess up this badly that you're not just mispronouncing words you're literally inserting words out of nowhere" and the research would suggest that's its because they were literally just reading the first part of the word and guessing the rest of it. Zero, like, base line understanding of what letter combinations make what sounds. No wonder some people hate reading it's basically playing a guessing game 😳

When our kids were 7th and 8th grade my wife subbed at the school for a while. She worked a number of days at their grade level and a grade or 2 higher.

What she saw was very similar.

Our kids were getting straight As. No exaggeration. Yet they were having trouble doing homework consisting of math problems they struggled with 2 years prior.

They weren't being taught anything, they were being prepped for the standardized tests given at the end of the year. Also, any tests and quizzes throughout the year they were given multiple tries to retake, and that explains the straight As.

That's when we pulled them out and began homeschooling. No regerts.

Americans don't leave the record player on at night

why would China do this

The rapid gutting of the education system is a understated yet horrifying thing.