My profession is given to be too "soft", too susceptible to trends without data to back them up. This reflects in the curriculum, sadly, but not in the way that the Moral Panic of the 21st century says. The post by
westwall is ridiculous.
My profession is too likely to fall for Lucy Calkins reading BS, which we did for 20 years, wherein we think children looking at pictures is "reading". Mostly--rather than being crones that want to sexually "groom" children--we are people who love children and want them to succeed, and THIS can be our downfall. We are too likely to fall for feel-good, fly-by-night solutions that make "struggling readers" feel good rather than the workhorse lessons that simply get the job done, day after day, year after year.
That is the first problem with the curriculum. IMO it can be traced to the advent of the "self-esteem" movement in the 80s which has been scientifically proven to be largely bunk (see above, children feeling good trumps children learning).
The second large problem is society, frankly.
My fellow conservatives have no answer--they go silent--when I point out that all the problems of society, all of them, come through our doors. I just read about in my area, a mother of seven children who passed away. She was 25 years old. Now the grandmother is attempting to raise them. Of course, the grandmother can try, but she will struggle.
Who will fill in that gap? Of course, the schools. It will be no less than a miracle if any single one of those children comes to school ready to learn academics. They will already be so far, far behind. But according to my fellow conservatives, a five year old coming from this family situation is grown in a lab or something and does not bring past situations with them. So that child should be ready to sit down and learn to read.
Sure.
