So true. And getting rid of good teachers through low pay and other disincentives.

My daughter had a completely unqualified “substitute” teacher for her entire sixth grade here in Indiana. Her qualifications? She ran a children’s theater troupe in Orange County, CA. Really. Never taught a class in her life, which is why she did at least two blatantly illegal things (only one of which I knew about in time):

1. Punished my daughter for refusing to say the pledge of allegiance. That was decided as her right by SCOTUS in the 1940s.
2. Told the kids that the 2020 election was a lie and Trump was the real president.

I wish I had known about the second one during the school year because I read her the riot act on the first one.

And now she’s in online school in the 8th grade. It’s a public school, but done online. The teachers are accredited, and they are (overall) decent. It is run by Pearson, the evil company that makes the textbooks most public school kids use, so she’s learning from the same source as most kids in the U.S… Since I’m a “learning coach,” meaning I make sure she stays on track, I’m reading what they’re teaching her and it’s ridiculous.

Right now she’s doing English grammar. Shit that does not matter outside of academic fields like linguistics, things that are not necessary to know for good writing and reading. You don’t have to be able to define a participle to know how to read or to write well. And frankly, it’s really fucking confusing to the point that I can’t follow it sometimes. Even her teacher keeps screwing it up based on what I overhear while she’s doing her lessons. What they do teach about composition is insane and stupid. She’s supposed to start a formal essay essay with a “hook,” which usually ends in a question mark. So an essay on, say, compound interest is supposed to begin with something like, “do you know people can earn interest on the interest they already earn?” rather than a fucking topic sentence. That’s supposed to be the second sentence. She actually got marked down for not having a hook and just starting the essay in an adult manner.

Social studies isn’t any better. In fact, it’s far worse. They’re covering the 19th century right now. First, Washington’s entire presidency was one single lesson. Then there was another lesson with 11 very long pages about Marbury vs. Madison (again, mostly an academic topic that Americans only need basic knowledge of). More recently they had four very short pages on the accomplishments of women in the 19th century. Harriet Tubman got two paragraphs.

On top of it, absolutely nothing in either class has any sort of context she can apply to her own life. Does she want to know how the checks and balances system of the U.S. federal government can affect things she cares about? Too bad, they’re just going to tell you what they are and move on with maybe a brief explanation of the background rather than the ultimate results. Does she want to know how to keep paragraphs concise and not use ten words when one will do? Too bad, it’s time to learn about gerunds. You know how important it is to know what a gerund is, right? College-level English term papers require you to write detailed explanations of such things what with how essential they are.

And I won’t even get into the bullshit they teach her about drugs in her health class.