Summary
Social media influencers are fuelling a rise in misogyny and sexism in the UK’s classrooms, according to teachers.
More than 5,800 teachers were polled… and nearly three in five (59%) said they believe social media use has contributed to a deterioration in pupils’ behaviour.
One teacher said she’d had 10-year-old boys “refuse to speak to [her]…because [she is] a woman”. Another said “the Andrew Tate phenomena had a huge impact on how [pupils] interacted with females and males they did not see as ‘masculine’”.
“There is an urgent need for concerted action… to safeguard all children and young people from the dangerous influence of far-right populists and extremists.”
It’s a shame teachers are pressured to “curve grade” rather than just flunk these people and hold them back a grade.
Even when I went to elementary school over 15 years ago in Canada, kids weren’t allowed to be held back without written permission from their parents. I thought it was really fucking weird because we literally had a kid whose mom did all of his homework (everyone knew; he had horrible writing and she didn’t) and yet refused to put him in a remedial class or have him repeat a year.
I knew a kid like that in school, who’s mother did all his homework and projects for him, he couldn’t even spell “phone”. He was a rich kid who would miss half the school year going on family trips, never took the SAT’s, never went to university. He’s now an executive at JP Morgan (wish I was joking.)
I can’t help but wonder what Dad’s take on this situation was.
That assumes there was one (dad, or take from the dad).
Schools now lose funding when kids don’t pass, so admins press teachers to move them along.
“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law
Or, if you prefer a clip from The Wire, juking the stats.
Republicans really do destroy everything
This is true for nearly every state, from deep red to deep blue. It is not a party issue but a stupid policy that intended for teachers and faculty to work harder to teach students.
It’s from a federal law passed under the Bush administration, tying funding to standardized testing scores.
But it was bipartisan, so you’re not wrong.
The ironic tragedy here is that the new MAGA GOP is going to destroy and dismantle public education, citing the “failure” of public education to meet the needs of our children, even though it was a Republican policy that crippled the system in the first place.
All Kids Left Behind
All Kids Shuffled Off To Become Someone Else’s Problem
Murica’
Many if not all school districts in the States have their funding tied to their performance, so there is a negative incentive to make grades look good. My elementary school tried to place me in their Special Ed program because my grades would have brought the average up there.
Plus, holding back 60, 70, 80% of an entire class just isn’t logistically feasible in most cases.
Its so absurd.
I went to a rural title one highschool. I took general level classes and had honors/high honors at least half of my semesters.
Half way through my senior year, I moved. It sucked balls. My new school, was small, literally the smallest school in my state. Graduation class size was 54 students. It was outside the Capital city, and affluent. Everyone was a “prep” had money, some drove very fancy cars to school ect.
The new school didnt offer Gen level classes, only college and AP. I was upset at that because those classes were known to me to be super difficult at my old rural school. At that time I just wanted to smoke pot with my friends tbh. But … I took the classes.
Y’all. This little rich prep school’s College course classes were easier than my Title one school Gen Ed. I couldn’t believe it. This was 2006, and I know now, they did that to keep the funding going. All the little rich kids had parents who could afford to send them all to college, and they needed to look good for thier hard-to-get-into universities.
It still frustrates me the world is like this.
I believe it. I think the much older push against standardized tests was so that “fancy” schools could pump up their grades. I never understood the newer push against standardized tests, you want them exactly so schools can’t pump up their grades. Standardized tests create an actual level playing field.
The recent push came from Covid when many people could not take the tests, and then it stuck around after since administrators wanted to focus on your “well-roundedness” and not high test scores.
The newer push was years before covid.
Neither is passing a kid who doesn’t understand the material.
It is when that kid becomes someone else’s problem to deal with.