It always starts the same way: a man asking what children ought to learn, as if the answer were fixed somewhere in the stars, or trapped inside the skull of a brain surgeon who can’t do multivariate calculus. We pretend we know the purpose of school, that grand factory of minds, but the truth is we’re improvising. The world keeps shifting under our feet and we’re still teaching as though nothing has changed since the day Euclid sharpened his quill.
Someone proposes the three essential questions — what to learn, how well, and why — and suddenly the whole discussion tilts. Because once you ask why, the floor gives out. Is the child being shaped into a worker, or into a citizen? Into an obedient technician or into a human being capable of staring reality in the face without flinching? Everyone claims they know the answer; in reality no one does.
And then the voices rise like a chorus. One says education is not just a ticket to a job but the passport to a functioning democracy. Another says the pandemic proved how brittle the public mind has become — a nation wandering through contradictory announcements, grabbing at rumors like they were life rafts. Misinformation blooms when people forget how to think, but forgetting how to think is what happens when a society stops caring about thought in the first place.
A man from Eastern Europe joins in. He remembers when an “A” burned your fingertips because you had to earn it through blood, sweat, and midnight lamps. But here, in America, As fall like confetti from a careless hand. Grades are not measures anymore — they’re decorations. Little badges for parents to brag over and administrators to tally, while knowledge itself grows thin and ghostlike.
Then come the faithful defenders of the tests — the SAT, the ACT, those stark little rites of passage. Bring them back, they say. At least tests can tell whether someone is ready for the next step. Maybe they’re right. Maybe they’re clinging to driftwood. Because grades are inflated, tests are attacked, and the institutions don’t know which signals to trust. If everything lies, who’s telling the truth?
Meanwhile the schools push students forward like products on a conveyor belt. No one fails; no one is held back. Entire districts exist where not a single student reads at grade level, yet everyone marches upward. Social promotion, the gentle phrase for a quiet catastrophe. Children who cannot calculate, cannot read, cannot distinguish a fact from a fable — yet somehow they graduate. The system would rather avoid embarrassment than admit collapse.
And beneath all of it, like a current under the street, lies the deeper truth: we have no shared philosophy of education anymore. No common story about what learning is for. Once it was clear — apprenticeships, civics, moral instruction. Now it's a blurred collage of job prep, political battles, test scores, and cultural panic. A nation that cannot decide what its children should know cannot decide what sort of future it wants.
In the end, everyone argues about the symptoms because no one wants to face the disease. We have built an educational world without a center, without purpose, and without memory. And until we choose what we believe in again, the children will continue to drift through the system like travelers moving through a fog — passing every milestone, yet arriving nowhere at all.
ORGANIZED & GROUPED VERSION
A. CORE QUESTION ABOUT EDUCATION — PURPOSE OF LEARNING
Pinned comment – @tarlkudrick1174 (13 hours ago, $5.00)
Theme: What should children learn, how well, and why?
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We still aren't asking the three core questions:
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What do we need children to learn?
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How well do we need them to learn it?
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Why?
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Example: Top brain surgeons can’t do multivariate calculus — does that make them “morons”? Of course not.
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So education must be aligned with purpose.
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Bonus questions:
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Will these answers be the same in 100 years?
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What process should society use to update these answers when needed?
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B. CIVIC EDUCATION VS. JOB TRAINING
@greatguyaaa (7 hours ago)
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Education isn’t just job prep.
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It builds citizens who:
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Make informed decisions
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Understand systems
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Participate responsibly in democracy
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Focusing only on “useful” skills undermines civic foundations.
@Bobrogers99 (5 hours ago, replying to @greatguyaaa)
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Many people understand job training but not the need for informed citizens in a democracy.
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Pandemic confusion showed why civic literacy matters.
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Contradictory federal announcements + misinformation made the situation worse.
@greatguyaaa (0 seconds ago, replying to @Bobrogers99)
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Social control has moved away from civic virtue, leading to “Trump and other disasters.”
C. GRADE INFLATION & DIFFERENCES BETWEEN COUNTRIES
@monikastrojna232 (1 day ago)
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Eastern Europe: getting As = hard work.
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US: majority of students get As.
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Too much focus on grades, not enough on actual knowledge.
D. STANDARDIZED TESTING DEBATE
@susandevine3907 (1 day ago)
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Standardized tests ensure proper college placement.
@dtlocke (1 day ago)
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Bring back the SAT/ACT requirement.
@thelastviolinist12 (1 day ago)
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Colleges stopped accepting SAT/ACT; now they face consequences.
E. BASIC SKILLS, FAILING STUDENTS, AND PROMOTION POLICIES
@chudleyflusher7132 (13 hours ago)
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Problem: letting students graduate without basic skills.
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Schools no longer hold back students who haven't learned the material.
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Some school districts have zero students performing at grade level.
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