The Teachers’ Unions wanted smaller class sizes, and they got them, but was this what they were after? Post-COVID, parents are keeping their kids home more than ever because of how Schools have changed and changed their kids.
Parents were no longer allowed in the building without appointments, [Rousmery Negrón] said, and punishments were more severe. Everyone seemed less tolerant, more angry. Negrón’s son told her he overheard a teacher mocking his learning disabilities, calling him an ugly name.
Her son didn’t want to go to school anymore. And she didn’t feel he was safe there. …
Across the country, students have been absent at record rates since schools reopened during the pandemic. More than a quarter of students missed at least 10% of the 2021-22 school year, making them chronically absent, according to the most recent data available. Before the pandemic, only 15% of students missed that much school.
All told, an estimated 6.5 million additional students became chronically absent, according to the data, which was compiled by Stanford University education professor Thomas Dee in partnership with The Associated Press.
The reader who sent me this sees it in their schools in New Hampshire.
They don’t want to be there, and this is not the normal “I don’t like school thing.” The schools have also put such fear into parents about being sick. Any kid with a sniffle now stays home. They don’t want to be there anyway. Parents fear that if the school finds out the kid has a belly ache, they’ll be called out of work and made to get the kid- then be required to deal with the pain in the ass that taking them to the doctors is so they don’t send them at any signs of trouble- which w kids is A LOT.
The schools are so mean and ugly now. There is violence now that I’ve never even heard of in our schools. A lot of vaping and drugs. It’s a nightmarish experience that many kids are struggling to survive. My daughter has a friend that suffering from really bad anxiety. She’s overwhelmed with fear of all sorts of stuff at school. She misses a lot because she has panic attacks – and this issue is not uncommon.
What has gone on since Covid is that the kids’ spirits have just been broken when it comes to school.. they go through the motions- at best. Climate Change fear has them all thinking the world is going to end anyway. The kids are in a state of post-[traumatic] stress disorder as they react to trauma day in and day out. This mental crap makes them physically sick often.
It is likely happening everywhere the public health industrial complex held or had sway where CRT discriminates against white kids for the alleged original sin of slavery for which there is no savoir or repentance. Unable to find a bunker or foxhole to hide from the cultural carpet bombing of the LGBTQ agenda, with no air or ground support.
Then there’s the political climate—the blatant liberal bias.
Public school was hard enough when all you had to do was navigate growing up and trying to learn math, science, and history in a building full of kids and mostly left-leaning admin and staff. You must know the approved science and history; questions can become landmines.
Thinking you have a right to an opinion outside the approved dogma will get you institutionally and socially excommunicated, with few adults on site to support you because they’re keeping their heads low to keep their job.
The system says it opposes bullying, but the system is the bully.
In seven states, the rate of chronically absent kids doubled for the 2021-22 school year, from 2018-19, before the pandemic. Absences worsened in every state with available data — notably, the analysis found growth in chronic absenteeism did not correlate strongly with state COVID rates.
Kids are staying home for myriad reasons — finances, housing instability, illness, transportation issues, school staffing shortages, anxiety, depression, bullying and generally feeling unwelcome at school.
Which means the system has literally let them down. “Absences were more prevalent among Latino, Black, and low-income students, according to Dee’s analysis.”
These kids are not likely to get home-schooled during absences because their single parent might be working one or more jobs to keep them from starving or living on the street.
We used to be one of the most literate countries in the world. These days, our education system is more interested in indoctrination than education, and it has undermined entire generations.
And I’m not convinced that isn’t what the teacher’s unions wanted.
