https://www.youtube .com/watch?v=mZHOTfSrox0
This week we’re joined by U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona. We cover everything from why schools aren’t evolving fast enough to keep up with current challenges, how the role of schools and teachers have shifted and left many educators without the resources they need to succeed, and how we can remake the system to be more student-centered and less about test scores and resume-building. Plus, Staff Writer Kasaun Wilson and Deniz Çam from our research team discuss their experiences with the schooling system. The full episode is available on Apple Podcasts: theproblem.link/MiguelCardona Watch The Problem With Jon Stewart on Apple TV+ https://theproblem.link/AppleTV Subscribe to The Problem with Jon Stewart podcast: https://theproblem.link/ApplePodcast Subscribe to The Problem with Jon Stewart’s YouTube channel: https://theproblem.link/YouTube Follow The Problem With Jon Stewart Instagram: https://theproblem.link/Insta Twitter: https://theproblem.link/Twitter Follow Apple TV: Instagram: https://theproblem.link/AppleTVInsta Facebook: https://theproblem.link/AppleTVFacebook Twitter: https://theproblem.link/AppleTVTwitter Giphy: https://theproblem.link/AppleTVGiphy Follow Apple TV+ Instagram: https://theproblem.link/AppleTVPlusInsta Apple TV+ is a streaming service with original stories from the most creative minds in TV and film. Watch now on the Apple TV app: https://apple.co/AppleTVapp #school #education #podcast
We can’t have nice things because bigots run education.
My first year teaching started August of 2020. I started online, and then switched to the mutant ‘hybrid’ format where I had some students in person while simultaneously teaching student who were still at home on their computer. I worked between 70-80 hours a week that year and I was rated by how the students did. Some of my students could not keep up with the class because their internet was so bad they couldn’t open assignments. Now I’m a STEM middle school teacher and I still work 60+ hours a week to keep up with planning, grading, feedback, trainings, meetings, inventory, and contacting families. I LOVE teaching my content but I can’t keep this up. Putting my family and my health on top means I can’t do my job well and it feels terrible.
I gotta 3 on my English SAT score, I gotta 13 over all SAT score, now here’s the thing, I gotta A+ for my senior level English lit class in college, I had the highest score in my college calculus class, I was asked to switch my major to mathematics from economics by the dean of mathematics, my senior year of college my gpa was 3.2 on 4.0, I went to 3 colleges but I never did get a degree, but wound up with about 130 hours of college, get it? SAT’s are bull…
There is so much I want to say here. But a short answer could be, watch the movie ‘Where to Invade Next’ the school portion they are so thoughtful in this matter. Those are the ideas I think we should follow. I also talked to someone who said when she visited a friend in Germany, I believe, her friends son, graduated from high school as an electrician. Also, I do not agree with Jon, in that ‘ school is the same’. It is not. I had much better education, than my daughter did. I home schooled her for 4 years of her education on and off, and I learned a lot about ‘learning.’ I’m very passionate about this subject. If I could do anything to possibly help, I’m here. There is so much we could and should do.
There is so much to learn, other countries do it better.
1. Common Core Standards need to be redone, BY TEACHERS, SPEECH PATHOLOGISTS, OTs, CHILD PSYCHOLOGISTS AND DEVELOPMENTAL PEDIATRICIANS. There are too many standards that are not developmentally appropriate for students on the full typical spectrum of development. We should not gear the standards to only the earliest developers, but account for the outliers on each end of the spectrum.
2. Teaching Decoding/Encoding (phonics) needs to be a dedicated protected 45 minutes daily for grade levels k-3rd. No child should leave third grade without being a fluent reader. But much phonics instruction ends in 2nd grade whether students have it or not.
3. All elementary school teachers should be given a week long training on teaching reading foundations (specifically phonics and phonological awareness) when first hired, and then must complete a refresher course of one to two days at the start of each school year, as the Science of Reading gives us new information.
4. Content knowledge needs to be prioritized over “comprehension strategies”. New and much needed vocabulary is built into the also much needed content knowledge.
5. The other areas of reading and overall literacy- vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, writing- cannot be adequately addressed if students are not given meaningful and effective instruction in phonics, phonological awareness and content knowledge. Phonological awareness mastery can even develop to mastery after phonics instruction for some. Bare bones, phonics and content knowledge are critical and are the two areas we have ignored the most at the elementary level for decades.
If you want a good synopsis of this huge area of need and how we are currently failing students please read “The Knowledge Gap” by Natalie Wexler
As articulate is Secretary Cardona is, he isn’t much different than those who came before. President Carter created the Dept. of Ed as a political payback. Ronald Reagan grabbed it and used it for political indoctrination. Every president since has done the same thing, only geared to their party ideology. In a country where there is enourmous diversity of culture, religion, language, personal identity, and class warfare against those who do not have the financial wherewithal for medical care, even satisfactory living quarters outside of crime ridden neighborhoods, there is not one paradigm that works. And the last place the ideas should come from is DoE! For all its potential problems, education policy and planning needs to be at the state/county/community. The DoE needs to return to the ‘Office of Education’ whose sole job is to collect and standardize data from each state and make the corpus of that data available to all states for their decision making. An important issue is marginalized or under represented children. The last place that should be addressed is DoE. They are not the Dept. of Justice, FBI, or any other enforcement agency. We have laws to protect these children if the agencies would do their jobs. I have a book coming out by December 31, “Chaos in the University,” that addresss some of these issues. The beginning starts slow with a brief history of how liberal education came about. The rest is an exposè of the neoliberal predators that are destroying education. What should be taught and how should be a states issue, but the compromised universities, or ‘multiversities’ as Clark Kerr called them, must do what they did prior to Reagan and neoliberalism. Historically universities have been the source of most new knowledge, and could be again, along with establishing the pedagogy to be taught. But they must make changes to remove the neoliberal predators administering the university. I am not in agreement with Secretary Cardona. His ideas are fine locally perhaps,but not as a national paradigm. But the problem is created by the very agency he chairs. Its not just him. Its been a cess pool since it was created. Rread my book.
Special Education teacher here that works with moderate EBD (Emotional Behavioral students) and I’m a huge fan of Job Corps (or at least what it is and how it works in theory). Helpful thing part 2 would be a model something like Japan, in which teachers plan for half the day and then teach for half the day; since excellent lessons take a shit ton of time to create. This could bring many of the teachers that have quit the profession back, since there is at least more time to do the job, but they would ALL have to be paid a competitive wage. Also, Teacher preparation should be a kind of apprenticeship, with literally YEARS of hands-on in-the-classroom learning. End Rant. 🙂
I want schools to have free breakfast available to all, as well as subsidized lunches which might still be need based.
Blood sugar in the brain is necessary for focus & absorption, and I wish nutritional support was available to all pre-K thru 12 students without stigma.
I dont think I walked away encouraged; Jon seemed to me like he was asking, tell me what you are Doing what Solutions are you implementing and he just kept saying out loud the problems poetically, yea well we know the problems already. What are doing about it?
The same way high school has JROTC for military Prep, do the same with the police. Soph Year is mental eval, you pass, Jr yea study the laws, Senior year test prep, graduate work at the Jail or Prison for two years then onto the street of your city so you develop the police from your own community
Allow grads in mental health to give mentor ship, give assemblies where they can discuss coping mechanisms for suicidal thoughts, sexual assault victims, bullying, etc and if the suicide rate, the drop out rate goes down, grades go up take some of the student debt away.
my high school was full of tools, most of them graduated…. I did
This has nothing to do with the video, but I just realized how much I like the effect that separates Jon and his guest. It’s cool looking.
Say Jon one more time …
Joking aside, I have zero doubt about good intentions but I can’t agree more with Jon’s assessment that there’s far too much in the way of nice talk about intent and little about the means to achieve those positive intentions.
Speaking from my own experience, I think education in this country is about as close to fraud as one can be without crossing the line; the only thing saving it from meeting that charge is all of the asterisks and fine print next to what we call an education in this country.
K-12 does achieve literacy but predominantly serves the purpose of babysitting kids whose parents are busy with work. Sprinkle in a few decent classes depending on the funding the school has.
Higher ed is important but I couldn’t agree more about the ridiculous price tag it comes with. I think it’s probably lip service but I liked what the guest had to say about coming after colleges regardless of their private or public status or prestige if they cost hundreds of thousands of dollars but their students struggle to make mid-tens.
Social mobility, philosophy, creativity, critical thinking, and practical skills of all types, whether it’s STEM, communication, design, trades are all things schools should teach. There’s a need to prepare students for the economy and that is critical, that gets them the base of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, but there’s also preparation that needs to take place for adapting to when that changes, to be a lifelong learner, as well as a need to teach or present options at very least about how to live and consider what is important in life.
I want less pleasant language about the issue and intentions and more concrete plans of how we will shape the next generation and leave them in better shape for the present and the future than we had when we were coming up.
This was an amazing conversation. I hope like hell they can do away with standardized testing. That stuff has never worked and has never been relevant. I was bored beyond measure in high school, but I did managed to do all class and homework while in school. I see how things could be greatly improved and I would hope some sort of progress could be made so my daughter can reach her maximum potential.
The repetitious use of “both sides” is telling. This whole conversation felt like listening to a politician, taking up time with little to no substance. Sounds like he’s simply managing interests the best that he can. The U.S. not only needs a competent education system, but it needs a hard examination of it’s values.