Roundup

Not that some people are weeds.

I'm mostly going to leave alone the shootings. One was an obvious leftist nut job, but hey, white and ostensibly male, so "violent white men". The other was more... complicated. But only barely, as the historically literate know that the whole class warfare based on race thing is based in old school progressivism.

Not that "leftists are the real racists" gets any traction, but when the only thing remotely "right wing" in a screed full of income and social equality, environmental, and similar issues is the racial supremacy aspect, not an example of "right wing" hate.

But since right wing == racist insofar as modern discourse goes, hey.

I will note that the EP shooter was not the product of a single parent household. Unfortunately it looks like his dad was a psychologist, and worse, a charlatan.

Poor kid.

In the meantime, Cataline has a good post on single-room schoolhouses.

Cataline has family in the teaching profession or at least he used to. One of them went into Special Ed. I casually asked her why and her answer has stuck with me. She told me, “I’m tired of teaching to the Middle. In the system we have now, the smart kids can’t help but get bored past a certain point. The ones that need the most help, fall to the bottom because they end up being neglected. The only kids that do all right with the system we have now are the ones in the middle and they are boring as hell to teach.

At least with Special Ed, I’m doing some good for someone who needs it.”

So wouldn’t the One Room School House have been worse? You ask.

Well actually no. We can start with the fact that the school day began with Christian prayer.

Almighty God, Our Heavenly Father, from Whom all life and all true gladness springs. We pray You to send Your blessings upon this school, upon those who teach and upon those who learn, that accepting daily the guidance of the Holy Ghost and holding fast to all that is good. May we worship and serve You all our days through Jesus Christ our lord. Amen.

These words are, as you know, a serious criminal offense if you are a member of the modern teaching profession. And would result in your being barred from pedagogy for the rest of your life, if you even murmured them under your breath.

Having asked for the Almighty’s blessing the children got down to the day’s lessons. The question you probably have is how did they make it work? All grades being in one room and all.

I’ll answer that question with a question. What is the best way to learn something?

Answer: you teach it to someone else.

The older students would teach the younger ones. The Third Years would tutor the First Years on reading, the Eighth Years would drill the Fifth Years on Algebra and so on.

Part of the reason that standards were higher was that the more advanced stuff was presented to the younger students in the class room before they actually had to learn it.

Worth reading, but I'll make a note that while it's valid to point out the level of knowledge required of some older tests, I'd have a hard time passing a few of the questions on the sample exam simply because I don't know what is the definitive list of the fundamental rules of arithmetic in that time period. For what it's worth, I'd utterly fail at the grammar questions because while I've been good at applying it - good enough to pass out of English comp 101 decades ago via written essay - memorization was never my strong suit compared to systems, so memorizing parts of speech or diagramming a sentence for grammar was never up my alley. Filed under "forgot the water levels in the steam generator a week after leaving the Navy but can still tell you all the plant interactions in response to a change in seawater temperature decades later."

And I utterly agree on the single room schoolhouse.

Under "leftists will be petty tyrants," school officials report a father and son for playing a wargame where one faction is the fascists. It's not just a lone wacko when the NYT piles on, and school systems distill these morons into lethal doses.

Also worth reading, a PDF of a newsletter on moving away from assuming a higher-trust society, and also, much like Owen Benjamin discusses, we should treat charity and interactions as personal things rather than leaning on institutions.