children from elementary schools in 1989.
We are for the most part reaping the consequences of a general failure to actually craft a proper education system, and the development of an anti-family environment
Pedagogy, as in the
actual discipline of teaching, has actually improved for the most part. Kids today as well have a significantly larger amount of homework they have to do.
I'm a resident of a state that isn't doing too badly in education, but I definitely saw signs of brain rot when I worked as a teacher's assistant at my elementary school. Teacher retention is difficult, on the account that the salary means you're at risk of being priced out of the area. To the point that it's speculated that Teachers might actually have to accept welfare as a fact of their livelihood.
More importantly the administration wastes money on things that don't actually improve education. These kids are legitimately being raised by their screens. They have to do everything online, and I had to spend those sessions constantly making sure they aren't watching youtube, playing games, or are on their food..
It sacrifices quality just for convenience.
With fifth graders in particular I found teaching certain concepts in math difficult because of this screen dependency. Keep in mind my assigned specialty was being the help for kids with special needs. I wasn't their primary overseer, mainly just the help.
But in general, I often found it easier to teach third graders tricks for solving math problems, because those kids actually had to write/draw the math itself.
With fifth grade students I tutored, many of them found it difficult to adjust to the fact that I demanded they needed to write down every step of their reasoning on paper in order to better remember it.
Also do you remember what I said about my speciality? I wasn't even a professional or someone who has any career experience in doing this.
The school doesn't even have a librarian position anymore. I've had to deal with kids who didn't speak a single word of English, because the funding for the school's ELL program got cut. We pretty much had to use other students as translators to handle them.
TLDR: We are in deep shit.