Unlearn16: Class is in Session - The One Where I Educate TikTok 'Steve'

00:00:00.000 classes in session hey you doing and welcome to unlearn 16 classes in session um today you just

00:00:11.760 get me i know sometimes that's disappointing but i saw a tick tock and it got me two things

00:00:18.560 tick tocks tend to get me one of two things enraged and sort of triggers my thought process

00:00:27.680 a little bit to raising the question to actually have a nuanced discussion about what we need,

00:00:33.320 why we need it, and what's going so horrifically wrong in the world around us. And of course,

00:00:38.340 it has to do with teaching. So let me describe the TikTok first of all. So the TikTok was this

00:00:43.120 gentleman who, I don't know if he was trying to defend teachers. He could have been badly. He

00:00:49.640 could have been, but he didn't do it right. And this was his premise. His premise was,

00:00:55.920 heaven help him his premise was teachers don't need the education we have to do the job we're

00:01:04.540 doing and heaven help him at some point he said you know they're just babysitting grade twos

00:01:11.880 whoo i'm gonna call him steve i don't know his name but he feels like feels like a steve to me

00:01:17.420 listen because then he goes on to say we we've created these overqualified teachers with master's

00:01:24.900 degrees and extra education and all of these things. And meanwhile, we don't pay them enough

00:01:30.440 for that education. Steve, slow your roll. First of all, for the love stops. I would love it if

00:01:37.760 people didn't step so far out of their lane, they get hit by that Mack truck. But here comes the 0.96

00:01:42.160 truck, Steve. Listen, teachers are overeducated for what they're doing. They are underpaid for 0.97

00:01:51.600 the knowledge they require to do the job well. Now, at some point, he makes the assertion that

00:02:00.040 teachers are getting smarter and smarter and smarter, yet our kids are getting

00:02:03.780 less and less intelligent. Their grades and everything is all going to hell in a handbasket.

00:02:09.220 steve you cannot objectively measure any of that by the by all right so so let's

00:02:21.700 i don't even know where to start guys because number one i would change teachers college a

00:02:26.260 hundred percent number two i would absolutely change teachers education but number three in

00:02:32.980 in no way, shape, or form would I make it easier or less than. Period. They should be the most

00:02:41.000 highly qualified individuals on the planet that are taking care of everybody's children

00:02:48.300 in their most formative years. Let's start with the classroom, Steve. So the classroom nowadays

00:02:56.580 isn't like the classroom when you went to school, love, in 1982. Number one, kids don't just drop

00:03:04.420 out at 15 and get a job working on the GM line anymore. It doesn't happen. Kids can't drop out

00:03:11.440 in a lot of capacities. They have to stay in school. We keep them in school, and we've built

00:03:16.420 a system, which by the way, this is the system's fault, not a teacher's fault. We built a system

00:03:21.800 whereby we tell them they have to graduate,

00:03:25.720 every kind of student.

00:03:27.600 We tell them they have to graduate

00:03:29.020 in this particular structured setting.

00:03:32.400 And if they don't, you're never getting a good job.

00:03:36.800 You're never, like in Ontario,

00:03:38.840 I think if you're eight,

00:03:39.600 you have to be 18 in order to graduate

00:03:41.780 as long as you can leave school,

00:03:43.540 as long as you have your high school degree

00:03:46.780 or diploma, whatever it's called.

00:03:49.400 So we've completely changed that.

00:03:51.800 So, number one, if you're a student, you will be in high school.

00:03:57.300 There is no leaving.

00:03:58.700 There is no passing, going, collecting $200.

00:04:01.360 You will stay there until you graduate.

00:04:03.260 Now, here's the problem of the system.

00:04:05.020 Again, not the teacher, Steve.

00:04:06.640 The problem of the system is this.

00:04:10.100 They realize that they kept kids in school that can't necessarily, or that don't necessarily

00:04:16.660 want to be in school.

00:04:18.480 They don't try.

00:04:19.980 They don't give it an effort.

00:04:21.060 That's one type of kid, right? But we're going to pass them anyway. Want to know why, Steve?

00:04:25.520 Because the government doesn't want to keep paying for them to be in school. So now we've shifted

00:04:31.000 curriculum. We've shifted expectations. Heaven help us. We've shifted assessment levels in order

00:04:38.480 to very quickly and somewhat ridiculously pass students again and again and again to get them

00:04:46.620 the hell out of education, out of a high school. Out you go into the workforce. Yay, you got your

00:04:51.880 diploma. And again, not a teacher's fault. If you want to talk to a teacher about how they want to

00:04:58.880 reform the educational system, I would argue that's probably the number one thing. Some students

00:05:04.200 don't put in the effort or the work in order to pass a course they shouldn't pass. Now, Steve,

00:05:10.420 let's dial it down to something else. We also have a lot of students with learning

00:05:15.860 exceptionalities. Now back in your day, Steve, as well as mine, those kids would just be booted out

00:05:20.480 of school or put in the classroom where there's like three kids in the library and given whatever

00:05:26.540 to play with until they got their way through high school. And that was that. But now what

00:05:31.680 we've done, rightly so by the way, is integrate all of these different learners into one classroom

00:05:39.420 and that classroom size, even though it used to be big back in our day, now that classroom size

00:05:44.820 is growing and growing exponentially every single year. However, Steve, there are at least

00:05:52.580 in a class of 30, I would say 10 distinct, and this is an underestimation, 10 distinct learning

00:06:00.800 styles, learning exceptionalities, and personalized, individually created educational programs in order

00:06:09.980 to target that student. You want to know the problem with that? There is no teacher on this

00:06:15.600 planet who can do that effectively in a class of 30. So what ends up happening? Well, lots of

00:06:22.160 things. Kids get passed by, kids get pushed forward, and we can't ever necessarily get at

00:06:29.600 what we need to get at. If a kid is dyslexic, I swear to God, I have seen them just give them

00:06:35.680 books on tape. What? What? We modify. There's two different things. We can accommodate and we can

00:06:46.660 modify. I'm against modification in every way, shape, or form. Here's why. If I have a standard

00:06:52.100 for a course, and that standard is you are to write a two-page essay, let's say, different kids

00:06:58.700 might want to get at that information in a different way. They might need more time to do

00:07:04.780 the essay. They might need different strategies to help them delineate material. They maybe need

00:07:13.380 a lot of writing help, a lot of literacy help in order to get them up to par to be able to perform

00:07:20.680 that task. Guess what? We just don't do it. If a kid doesn't like it, if in their IEP,

00:07:27.040 which I also have a problem with, says this is the skill set that they're lacking in,

00:07:32.600 Okay, so what a lot of schools will just accommodate and give them a different type of assignment. I have a problem with that

00:07:39.380 Here's why I have a problem with that

00:07:41.440 Kids are in school to get better at the things they're not good at not just to excel at the things they are already great at

00:07:51.140 Let me say it again

00:07:53.040 Kids should be in school and education should be built

00:07:56.740 To ensure that kids become good at the things they're not great at

00:08:01.940 and excel at the things they're already good at.

00:08:06.000 And in order to do that, you cannot have a class of 30 with all those different exceptionalities.

00:08:11.720 You cannot be pulled in 52 directions.

00:08:14.240 You need to be able to develop that plan and focus on that student.

00:08:17.980 And sometimes that student and that particular skill might take longer than you would like.

00:08:23.060 Okay, fine.

00:08:25.480 also that particular student who maybe isn't good at writing essays or they have literacy roadblocks

00:08:33.580 in their way guess what that kid might be amazing at standing in front of the class and giving a

00:08:39.540 speech or giving a presentation that kid might be amazing at doing an art project and describing

00:08:44.620 its application to the cultural historical and social realities of revolutionary France

00:08:50.080 Are you with me? But no, that's not what we do. We built an education system whereby, number one,

00:08:59.060 we rely heavily on written forms of assessment, which is a problem, by the way, because there is

00:09:07.120 no time when you get out of school that you're ever required to write necessarily an essay if

00:09:12.280 you're not in academia. But what you are required to do throughout your entire life is stand up in

00:09:19.700 front of a room and talk in front of many different groups of people, many different types of people,

00:09:24.900 many different realities, right? Number one fear of everybody, fear of public speaking.

00:09:30.140 We don't even push this in high school via curriculum. We just keep adding curriculum,

00:09:37.460 adding more, adding more content, more content, more content. When in actuality, what we should

00:09:43.900 be understanding, what we should be doing is minimizing content because the content isn't

00:09:49.180 the thing. Teaching kids how to learn, how to express themselves, how to develop skills,

00:09:54.280 that's the thing. But when I have to teach American history from 1775 until now,

00:10:01.180 that content that we have pretended as though matters way more. The what matters way more

00:10:08.340 than the how, why have we done that? Well, it's quite easy because it seems simple. It gives the

00:10:15.660 illusion, the pretense of being objective. It is not because it tests a very specific student in a

00:10:22.920 very specific capacity and a very specific mindset in a world that isn't like when we went to school,

00:10:30.700 Steve? It just isn't. Kids today aren't less intelligent. They are juggling 57 balls in the

00:10:39.300 air. They know what's going on in Israel and Palestine. They know what's going on down the

00:10:44.200 street. They know what's going on in the interweb with AI and chat GPT and kids across the world.

00:10:50.860 They know all of these things. Everything is getting more intricate, more overwhelming.

00:10:57.700 The consumption and the access to information is a tidal wave.

00:11:04.460 And we are assuming that sit down, be quiet, memorize dates, times, and names is actually useful.

00:11:11.760 Remember when we were a kid and we'd say you'd never have a calculator when you're anywhere, so you might want to do the mental math?

00:11:17.600 Well, yeah, we do. We do, Steve. It's on our phone.

00:11:21.300 Everything is shifted. And education needs to shift.

00:11:24.580 but the government predominantly, not teachers, the government predominantly doesn't want to

00:11:29.840 shift education because this kind of education is going to take longer. This kind of education

00:11:34.660 is going to require less kids in a class. This kind of education is going to require teachers

00:11:40.800 and students to become amazing critical thinkers that can access and analyze and synthesize

00:11:48.240 information more than anyone ever has before. Does that sound like a space we don't want our

00:11:54.980 teachers to be highly educated, Steve? Is that it? Because I feel like, Steve, you're just looking

00:12:02.660 for a way for teachers not to get paid what they deserve. If they have less education, you would

00:12:08.220 like to cut their paycheck in half just to babysit the little two-year-olds. Are you insane? 0.98

00:12:13.920 Let me give you a psychological evaluation tool here, Steve. 0.99

00:12:18.300 Most psychiatrists would say 70% of who you are going to be and how you become a person

00:12:25.460 and what you learn and how you see the world is formed between the ages of, I'd say, four

00:12:33.020 and seven.

00:12:34.920 Whoo!

00:12:35.800 Grade one, two, and three.

00:12:37.620 Grade one, two, and three.

00:12:39.240 and before that, obviously, but kids develop a sense of self and awareness. This is where kids

00:12:46.580 will develop a fear or a hatred of certain subjects. You want to ask somebody when they

00:12:52.960 started hating math, it was grade three. I don't know why. I don't know what's going on in grade

00:12:57.820 three, probably because they jam pack a whole bunch of kids in that classroom and they don't

00:13:02.660 have and here's a direct sort of uh issue with what steve's suggesting because i think teachers

00:13:09.620 should be more specialized more educated because the grade three math teacher isn't a specialist

00:13:15.860 in math just because you can do grade three math and some of us still have a little trouble doesn't

00:13:23.220 mean you can teach it or you can teach it in the multi-faceted multi-layered kind of way

00:13:32.660 that different students with different learning abilities different viewpoints different perspectives

00:13:37.940 different paths will actually understand it that's the brilliance we should be paying teachers

00:13:47.780 way more and i haven't even got to the hard part yet steve because the hard part is something

00:13:54.260 completely different and the hard part is that is this and any teacher that's listening to this

00:14:00.420 right now will 100% agree with me. I don't care if it's elementary or high school. The majority of

00:14:06.580 my job, the majority has nothing to do with how I teach history or what history I teach

00:14:16.120 or how I assess necessarily. The majority of what I do has to do with the student that's sitting

00:14:25.020 in front of me, the developmental state they have reached, what learning exceptionalities they have,

00:14:31.560 and how I can conceivably get at them to make them, to open doors so they can become the best

00:14:39.500 possible student, the best thinker, the best analytical, critical entity that they possibly

00:14:47.060 can be. That's the hard job. And you want to know what teachers don't have? That education. I realize

00:14:53.900 some teachers chose to, but you don't have to. Is that understood? When I went to university,

00:14:59.960 what was my job? Well, my job was to take a major and a minor, and those two teachables would be my

00:15:04.680 high school teachables. I never once, not once, had to take a child developmental psychology course,

00:15:11.540 never once had to take a course on teens who are at risk, never once had to take a course

00:15:16.860 on developmental delays and different learning exceptionalities, never once had to take a course

00:15:22.340 on ADHD, never once had to take a course on all of the different traumas and all of the different

00:15:28.260 mental health scenarios that will get in the way, that will weigh a student down and make it

00:15:34.500 impossible for them to accomplish their goals. Why aren't we doing that? Because we're still

00:15:42.140 under the belief and society is still under the belief. Teachers aren't. The teachers are there

00:15:47.700 to manage, to babysit, to be a relay of information.

00:15:56.520 You want to start changing the future?

00:15:58.820 You want to make your kids brilliant thinkers?

00:16:02.060 You want to make your kids analytical entities?

00:16:05.440 You have to change the nature of this system,

00:16:07.620 and teachers need to start learning what those developmental cycles look like.

00:16:11.540 We need to shift.

00:16:12.680 I need to know history, sure. 0.98

00:16:14.580 A math teacher needs to know math 100%.

00:16:16.920 All of those things are true. But also, by the way, this is what I would do with Teachers College.

00:16:21.840 Want to know what I would do? All of those courses that I took when I was Teachers College,

00:16:27.340 I'd throw them out. Throw them out in the garbage. Bye. Teachers College, to me, 0.88

00:16:34.580 no matter what course you're teaching, should be a two-year degree, postgraduate degree. So,

00:16:40.940 you need an undergrad first, in which it is an intensive study about developmental child

00:16:48.620 psychology, about mental health issues, about clinical and formulaic assessments of what kids

00:16:57.680 can do and how they can do them. It should be a course that teaches what an IEP is good for,

00:17:04.840 the difference between an accommodation and a modification, the way that we can possibly

00:17:09.660 see and quickly identify students that not only have educational barriers, but also have mental

00:17:18.640 health and home life barriers. Because everybody loves to talk about how to protect kids, and all

00:17:26.020 of these groups all over the internet are saying, the teachers, the teachers are doing this, they're

00:17:29.620 brainwashing, they're indoctrinating. Listen, let's be honest. Damage that is done to our youth,

00:17:37.520 physical damage emotional damage sa damage those calls for the most part the vast majority those

00:17:50.480 calls are coming from inside the house and you want to know what i don't have a degree in what

00:17:54.880 i don't have an expertise in recognizing that dealing with that helping a kid get help because

00:18:01.760 of that we have to make phone calls but but at the end of the day i'm not that expert how in the

00:18:07.120 hell when we are when we spend eight hours a day with these students how is it not part of my job

00:18:14.240 to become the most educated in being able to see the symptoms see the the clear indications of kids

00:18:24.240 that are going through hell and back at home why not why not you know why

00:18:30.000 Why? Government doesn't necessarily want to do that because parents would lose their mind, 0.95

00:18:34.860 and the only parents who would lose their mind are the ones that like to indoctrinate,

00:18:37.920 like to keep their kids' doors shut, and like to keep what goes on in the family in the family.

00:18:43.000 Those parents. The ones that say things like, I should be in charge of everything my kid learns.

00:18:49.620 That one scares the bejesus out of me. You know what my mom never would have been scared of?

00:18:53.240 more education. My mom never would have been scared of ever a teacher saying things, talking

00:19:00.060 about consent or talking about mental health in a significant way, talking about what addiction

00:19:05.740 looks like in the home, talking about what mental health issues look like in the home. My mom never

00:19:10.260 would have been afraid of that because I'll tell you this, if somebody thought my mom was causing

00:19:15.360 me harm in any way, shape or form, my mom would want to know about it so she could fix it. Any

00:19:22.520 parent that says, I don't want them in my, those parents are usually trying to hide something. Now

00:19:28.740 I know what some of you are going to say, because this is very, very, very true. Um,

00:19:33.580 the government and different government agencies have utilized sort of stepping into a kid's

00:19:41.140 household in order to particularly, um, erase and destroy indigenous culture. Understand very, 0.55

00:19:50.820 very, very clearly. That's not what I'm talking about. Nobody's advocating for that. But if more

00:19:56.400 teachers were educated, especially on indigenous issues, especially on different cultural,

00:20:02.080 can you imagine a math teacher who really understood what social construction of gender was?

00:20:07.080 Or a science teacher who definitely pushed the boundaries of why we've categorized it race? What 0.71

00:20:12.720 was the social implications of that? Or an English teacher? All of these teachers should

00:20:18.780 have this information because you can't teach the student without understanding the world in which

00:20:23.180 they live. By the way, the second huge input of my money would go to social services. I would,

00:20:30.100 you know, quadruple their pay and quadruple their education, education, and their oversight to make

00:20:36.480 sure that none of that, this, this 60s scoop and all of that horrific focus of our government at

00:20:47.000 that time was halted in its tracks. But all of this being true, this would make teachers some of

00:20:57.260 the most intellectually, socially, developmentally educated and aware individuals, and those are the

00:21:10.220 people we want teaching our kids. Name a better person. Now, you could say, Joanna, that's going

00:21:20.140 to cost too much money. That's absolutely insane. Okay, so we can argue about money, where money

00:21:24.480 should be spent, if it should be spent here, what the future ramifications were, yada, yada, yada.

00:21:29.420 But I'm pretty sure you can't argue that this would be a bad idea. There's no way you could

00:21:35.980 argue we don't need that in the classroom. By the way, elementary school teachers should be way

00:21:41.180 higher paid than me. Why? Because that's foundational. A kid can't do grade 10 math

00:21:46.420 because in grade three, he stopped doing it. We need math specialists in elementary school. We

00:21:53.120 need science specialists in elementary school. We need literacy specialists in elementary school,

00:21:59.240 specifically that can handle things like that have been educated in how to

00:22:04.500 um fix and help forms of dyslexia and learning impasses those are the people that we need

00:22:11.740 and i'm just telling you all of the different aspects that need to go into what teacher is

00:22:18.900 sitting in front of your kid in the classroom and in no way shape or form do i say they need 0.99

00:22:25.060 less education what they need is less stupid education what they need is less less uh you 0.99

00:22:32.040 know, conversations about how to give a really good report and how to write a good rubric. 0.99

00:22:38.480 Stop it.

00:22:39.980 Uh-uh.

00:22:40.840 That's not it. 0.98

00:22:42.920 The education system also needs to shift.

00:22:45.500 And if more teachers were highly educated, they start pushing that envelope even more.

00:22:50.140 Right?

00:22:51.340 We want our kids to be able to write.

00:22:53.100 Of course we do.

00:22:53.980 But not only.

00:22:55.500 But not only.

00:22:56.620 we want our students to be able to stand in that room and give a speech or lead that debate and

00:23:02.380 convince people in that room and be able to speak on and articulate the complex thoughts that they're

00:23:09.100 having, not just simply write them down. I would chuck all forms of standardized testing. Why?

00:23:15.540 Because it's garbage. Standardized tests are an illusion. They're a government bait and switch. 0.99

00:23:23.000 It is a bullcrap notion of dangling a standardized test in front of you and saying, this is the objective measure we can decide and we can define and we can somehow categorize your level of potential and intelligence. What absolute garbage. What garbage. 1.00

00:23:43.080 And the more we hear about standardized tests, by the way, outside of the Felicity Huffmans 0.98

00:23:47.340 of the world, buying off what they can buy in order to get their kids good marks and

00:23:51.680 get the right tests and get them into the right place and get some, we realize that

00:23:58.280 all of these things are a cash grab and it gives the illusion the government has done

00:24:03.840 something so that educational model somehow measures up to this standardized test.

00:24:09.840 Now, do I understand that different schools might have different levels of qualifications?

00:24:19.160 Yeah, but nobody wants to talk about that.

00:24:22.600 Nobody wants to talk about...

00:24:24.320 I went to Anderson High School in Whitby.

00:24:27.440 That's in Ontario.

00:24:29.020 Some of my friends went to Henry.

00:24:30.960 Listen, everybody and their brother knew.

00:24:33.520 Everybody.

00:24:34.000 Everybody knew that an A on a paper in Henry Street High School was worth a B at Anderson, period.

00:24:42.160 Yet, Henry and Anderson both apply to universities at the same time.

00:24:47.040 Nobody cares.

00:24:48.100 The university does not care about what high school you came from, right?

00:24:54.100 So what ends up happening?

00:24:55.300 Well, you end up having kids, maybe without the best possible academic records, bump to the head of the line to get into universities.

00:25:06.280 Now, what have universities done?

00:25:07.800 Well, you think they would get harder, but they haven't.

00:25:09.780 Want to know why?

00:25:10.460 Because now they're businesses.

00:25:11.700 They're businesses who are trying to get more and more kids in them rather than academic institutions built on being actual defining entities that really test and push somebody's academic capacity.

00:25:30.380 The amount of take-home tests that go on at universities today makes me giggle.

00:25:35.840 Absolutely.

00:25:37.120 The standards get lower.

00:25:38.580 and the standards get lower, not because of the teachers, not because of the professors,

00:25:43.840 not because of the students. Want to know why? Because of the parents. Because of the parents

00:25:50.120 and the taxpayers and the people who want their kid to have everything. They got to get a good

00:25:54.560 education. They got to get really good marks. They got to go to the right thing. Nobody's

00:25:57.960 talking about what actually should be talking about is does the A they got in history actually

00:26:03.380 reflect reflect their skill their capacity their work ethic does it nobody's talking about that

00:26:10.740 we've chucked it out the window in hopes for universities making more money in hopes of

00:26:20.080 universities pretending to be the bastions of whatever you want to talk about why kids are

00:26:26.240 out in the world without the skill set because we haven't demanded it from them because when

00:26:31.360 your student was in grade 10 and and she cheated on the final exam and instead of failing her the

00:26:37.560 way it should have happened you came in and went to bat and said oh she shouldn't fail it's going

00:26:41.820 to be bad for her mental health and she you know she'll never do it again and whatever you and all

00:26:48.160 of a sudden she gets passed no no we are doing a disservice by making education easier and we are

00:26:59.400 also doing a disservice simultaneously to the student because we are shoving way too many kids

00:27:06.040 in one classroom and we are not helping them. The public system is not helping. It is not teaching.

00:27:11.320 It is not pushing them to understand where their limitations lie. It is not pushing them

00:27:21.300 to understand where their insecurities are or where their weaknesses are. Sorry, it took me a

00:27:28.080 to get to that word it's not doing that it's saying ignore your weakness don't worry about it

00:27:33.760 you don't want to stand up in front of the class because you get nervous that's fine

00:27:36.880 you never have to do it here's your a what

00:27:43.280 it's not because our kids are less intelligent because i'm going to tell you right now i've

00:27:46.880 been teaching for 21 years they are brilliant they are brilliant they are capable they are powerful

00:27:55.200 But everybody, including the government, including the taxpayer, including the parent, including teachers, teachers college, all of these different aspects, they all need to get together and understand that a good, healthy education system is going to cost a boatload of money.

00:28:13.380 It's going to demand incredible things.

00:28:16.700 But if we don't lay the foundation, if we don't lay the groundwork for our students and our expectations of these brilliant little minds, they will not live up to the standards because we don't set them.

00:28:32.280 Push them through because they just should be?

00:28:36.080 No.

00:28:37.400 No.

00:28:38.040 I would probably guess that if we were being honest, a lot more kids would fail courses.

00:28:45.640 And if we were really honest about the kids that would fail courses, it would stop being such a

00:28:50.340 horrific stigma and an embarrassment for that student. And it would just mean simply,

00:28:57.240 you weren't up to it yet. Not never. You didn't develop the skill set yet. That part of your

00:29:06.640 brain still needs to develop a little bit more we still need to build you up you still have more

00:29:12.080 learning to do in this capacity and that's not a problem that is the thing you have to do that is

00:29:18.880 the thing that's going to make you a superstar because i'm telling you right now if we stopped

00:29:24.480 kids from only taking courses that they like number one is a problem made them more of a holistic

00:29:29.120 learner every single student would have courses that they'd struggle with so

00:29:33.280 since when is struggle bad struggle is only bad if it is if it is diminished it if it is bullied

00:29:42.720 if it's you know made fun of as being somehow inferior but what i promise you

00:29:48.960 is that every single person has a struggle great put it on the table

00:29:55.200 show it and then say but that struggle i'm gonna get better at

00:30:00.080 everybody has one and how dare we how dare we just push kids through again and again and again

00:30:08.540 to save them from what because if we're all being honest and we all put our struggles on the table

00:30:14.720 we would all have something we need to get better at we would all have something we'd probably have

00:30:20.280 to redo so there goes the shame there goes the embarrassment and we can actually talk about

00:30:27.020 developmental psychology and how it impacts different kids at different times and how their

00:30:32.380 entire world, their holistic learning experience is never the same as the kids sitting beside them

00:30:38.120 just because they happen to be 16 years old. So yeah, Steve, you're wrong. Education and teachers

00:30:48.100 need more education, maybe different from what we're pushing right now. They need to be paid 0.90

00:30:53.800 a hell of a lot more. They need more specialization. They need more understanding of students.

00:30:57.720 The public needs to understand this is the number one, the number one thing we should be flooding

00:31:04.040 money into that system. And I don't care what kind of government you are. I really don't.

00:31:11.700 Conservative, Democrat, I don't care. You should all want and you should all understand this is

00:31:18.180 the play. This is the play for the future. It should be in our constitution as a constitutional

00:31:25.680 right. Because what we're doing with it right now is we're playing loose and fast with politics

00:31:31.780 and we're moving around kids' education and what they're allowed to read and what they're not

00:31:36.520 allowed to read and what information they're allowed to be put on and how it has to be done.

00:31:40.560 And all of that is happening and we're playing politics with kids' futures. And it's embarrassing,

00:31:46.440 It's destructive. And trust me, in 20 years, you will feel the weight of it. But that's why

00:31:53.160 politicians don't care right now. Because in 20 years, they're likely not to be in office. And in

00:31:59.040 20 years, that's when they're going to see the fruits of their labor. So it also depends on us,

00:32:04.840 the voting people. It depends on us. In places like Canada, that is a provincial jurisdiction,

00:32:11.160 but federal money always comes down and gets transferred to each province, that is on us.

00:32:17.180 What do we think the mass majority of money should go, how it should go there,

00:32:23.660 and what kind of educational requirements and classroom dynamics do we need to create

00:32:28.080 in order to facilitate the best and the brightest students coming out of that system

00:32:36.260 with the most confidence and the most critical ability?

00:32:40.320 What do we have to do to get that? Not, what do we have to do to get our kids to pass the

00:32:46.040 literacy test that hasn't mattered to anybody in the entire time it's been created? Not what is the

00:32:51.280 bare minimum that we have to do in order to cycle our kids through the education system so they can

00:32:56.840 get out and stop costing us money. And it sure as hell, it sure as hell is not about devaluing

00:33:04.140 education and telling kids they don't need post-secondary. Who the heck needs it? They're

00:33:10.680 saying that because we have purposefully, in a lot of capacities, devalued education and what it is,

00:33:17.480 and we've done that through gutting the system time and time and time again. That needs to stop

00:33:22.720 today. So, Steve, I hope that answers your question, and I'll try to answer it on TikTok

00:33:29.880 in a fewer words and maybe, you know, a nice pop-up book or something for you, hun. But until

00:33:38.300 that TikTok, I will see you guys next Tuesday. Same bat time, same bat station. Dismissed.

Unlearn16: Class is in Session - December 05, 2023

The One Where I Educate TikTok 'Steve'

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