Love this conversation. I think you also can't overstate the easier job that private schools generally have than public schools. They filter out kids and families in all sorts of ways: overwhelmed financially? Not welcome. Kid misbehaves too much? Not welcome. Parents don't demonstrate their own ability to carry a heavy amount of the education of their kids, by not appearing educated in the application? Not welcome. It's not merely that private schools are able to spend more per kid, which is generally true but not always as big a difference as you might guess. It's that if private schools had to actually take the same kids that public schools take, their teachers, students and administrators would be overwhelmed with their needs.
I also hate my couch! I used to love it because it was a hand-me-down from a family that had had three boys and so it didn't matter what happened to it because it had been through everything. But then we got a dog and she's always spread out on it, which means being covered in fur when you sit down, and she also keeps ripping out the stuffing so it's not as comfortable.
This was amazing and I am so glad to be introduced to Sarah Wheeler. I particularly liked the Part II section on her newsletter. I am not a teacher but I work in textbook publishing, which gives me a lot of opinions about curriculum development and the kinds of pressures put on teachers to abandon deeper learning in favor of test-driven lessons. It feels like our society does everything we can to make teaching, especially in public school, an impossible job, and then looks for ways to blame teachers for the failures we've baked into the system.
Wow. This post is so, so, so great. So many good things, but this really hit home for me "And when we hollow out society to that point, of COURSE that goes to scapegoat next door."
Love this conversation. I think you also can't overstate the easier job that private schools generally have than public schools. They filter out kids and families in all sorts of ways: overwhelmed financially? Not welcome. Kid misbehaves too much? Not welcome. Parents don't demonstrate their own ability to carry a heavy amount of the education of their kids, by not appearing educated in the application? Not welcome. It's not merely that private schools are able to spend more per kid, which is generally true but not always as big a difference as you might guess. It's that if private schools had to actually take the same kids that public schools take, their teachers, students and administrators would be overwhelmed with their needs.
I also hate my couch! I used to love it because it was a hand-me-down from a family that had had three boys and so it didn't matter what happened to it because it had been through everything. But then we got a dog and she's always spread out on it, which means being covered in fur when you sit down, and she also keeps ripping out the stuffing so it's not as comfortable.
This was amazing and I am so glad to be introduced to Sarah Wheeler. I particularly liked the Part II section on her newsletter. I am not a teacher but I work in textbook publishing, which gives me a lot of opinions about curriculum development and the kinds of pressures put on teachers to abandon deeper learning in favor of test-driven lessons. It feels like our society does everything we can to make teaching, especially in public school, an impossible job, and then looks for ways to blame teachers for the failures we've baked into the system.
Wow. This post is so, so, so great. So many good things, but this really hit home for me "And when we hollow out society to that point, of COURSE that goes to scapegoat next door."