Reply #15: I'm going to take some of this out of context,

[Trillo]

meaning I haven't read the article, only the excerpt. I read it yesterday, and it stuck in my mind:

"As more states strive to improve math curricula and raise standardized test scores, more students show up to college unprepared for college-level math."

If true, then what more proof is needed that changes made during this unspecified time period ("strive to improve") aren't working?

"So if eighth graders are taught math at the level of a college sophomore why are graduating seniors struggling?"

Obviously, that's the con, or sales, job, for the taxpayers benefit; that K-12 graders have been prepared. Instead, it seems, their time has been wasted by the state in stupid lessons. Why it is happening is less important than the fact that it is happening. What is important is that the state has gone on record as saying the 'intent' is to prepare for college, while failing that task.

However, there's another issue. What about those that won't be going to and completing college? Isn't that about 74-75% of everyone? In those cases, how has K-12 not been, overall, an authoritarian punishment? Jump through these hoops, because we told you to jump through them, the sales lie is we're preparing you for something you don't need or want, and we're not going to compensate you one dime for your time that we forced you to spend doing what we told you to do.

In this latter case, what good does it do to tell these folks that their time was wasted? That their educations were worthless? Isn't that the same schtick that employers (college grads) constantly drum into their employees? You're worth-less or worth less than we're paying you.

The pattern of the two suggests the problem is rooted in money, and whether we have the right to determine our own lives by making our own choices, or have to live out the lives of drudgery and punishment the state and associates have outlined for us by doing their will, their stupid, under threat of their constant punishment.

Like it or not, the hoops we all must jump through in school become punishment when those tasks fail us.

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I read an article online the otherday, I can't find the link right now, the basic premise was that things are the way they are because that's how our rulers want them in spite of what they constantly tell us to get elected. It seems everything we've been exposed to is a great big con job.

So, while the ultimate purpose of deliberately failing to teach 3/4 of us seems to be about and rooted in money, the secondary purpose is likely to keep us divided and calling each other names such as "stupid" and "unprepared".

It's essentially the division of the haves and the have nots, and the college grads stuck in the middle between the two, executing the will of the rulers against the employees for their own financial benefit, hoping against all hope that their dream of education really was and is for everyone and that everyone had just as much opportunity as they did and that any failures were personal instead of systemic.

To acknowledge that the problems are systemic risks questioning one's own success, for what is success in a sick system but sickness itself?