Thread by @QuantumAephraim

Feels like time for one of my occasional rants about #Education & society. [1 of e^N]

I can't think of a stress test which could have better exposed the hypocrisy of our allegedly education-focused society and its professed love for STEM and

quantitative,"data-driven," approaches than the lack of outcry when our ministries assure us that despite the trials of the past year, "children won't be held back" (literal read: "however little we've taught them this past year, we promise not to take the time to try to [2 of ?]

teach it to them now") & that their grades "won't go down" (literal read: "we will *require* all schools to *lie* about their students' proficiency at subject matter, to justify our choice to abdicate our responsibility to educate, and ensure that they receive quantitative [3of?]

documentary evidence of an education they have not in fact received").
[4of?]

This after years of regularly inspecting private schools to make sure that they comply with constantly changing, detailed provincial policies about how to arrive at each decimal point in a final mark, to assure some sort of "fairness" or uniformity, but which never paid as [5of?]

much attention to actually assuring that students were educated (in the publc schools or in the private). [6of?]

The part that upset me recently:
It occurred to me that I've heard not even a whisper of outcry at this state-mandated fraud, but rather shrugs and "well, you can't HOLD THEM BACK.” [7of?]
#Covid #RemoteTeaching

The unspoken assumption: it's not really the lack of education that "holds one back"; it's in fact the requirement that they stay in school that's seen as a brake. [8of?]

The sooner they're loosed on the job market, the happier every one is, and the bullshit about the importance of education is exposed as the window-dressing it was. [9of?]

Even the universities, complicit in this system, don't say publicly that it's inappropriate to expect us to teach remedial high school material, and that if we accept students based on these doctored high-school grades and then find they are a year behind, we too will [10of?]

simply start lying about what they know, each year down the line. [11 of ?]

But whoever gave the *order* that schools should under no circumstances allow any students' grade to drop in the final term – should in fact give them a diploma whether or not they had mastered the material – this person has no business working in education. [12of?]

Any government official who behaved in this way should not only be removed, but imprisoned for violating their duty of care to the children of our country, and abusing their governmental power in order to force teachers and principals to file fraudulent reports. [13of?]

It speaks volumes about our society that I have heard no one make the barest suggestion towards even questioning them – rather, they are treated with gratitude for trying to minimize the emotional harm this awful experience may do to students. Which is laudable, but [14of?]

not at the expense of any effort to minimize the impact on their actual education. [15 of ?]

All these folks who claim they believe education is important have finally removed any veneer from the truth that they merely believe the *trappings* of education to be important:
[16 of ?]

the diplomas and degrees armed with which their uneducated brood should join the job market as soon as possible and make what really matters: money. [17 of ?]

I wish at least the universities, fully aware of the increased meaninglessness of school grades this year, would use some additional measure (like an entrance exam) in their admissions. But we will not – [18 of ?]

not only because the government would surely not *permit* us to, but because then we'd end up with fewer students for the bottom line. [19 of ?]
#CorporatizationOfTheUniversity

(Some will try to add some additional transitional programs. I hope they manage to accomplish a fraction of what's needed.) [20 of ?]

#EndOfRant (for now...)