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The "Mississippi Miracle:" Mississippi and Other Southern States Are Now Leading the Country In Literacy Rates Thanks to Common-Sense Education Standards

Southerners are illiterate and ill-educated?

Sorry, Hoss, you mean California and other blue states are illiterate and ill-educated.

Mississippi and other states are now leading most others in childhood literacy and reading achievement.


This month, the Department of Education released its latest edition of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the standardized tests better known as the Nation's Report Card. The results have left me blazing with rage.

In my home state of California, for instance, only 30% of public school fourth graders can read proficiently. Fully 41% cannot even read at a basic level -- which is to say, they cannot really understand and interpret written text at all. Eighth graders, as you might expect, look almost as bad.

These numbers have been tumbling downhill in California and more widely across the U.S. for years now, and not just because of school closures during the pandemic. Nationwide, reading scores for fourth graders peaked back in 2015, and while the especially ugly 2022 outcomes were dismissed at first as COVID-19 outliers, scores have fallen further since. The decline is the worst for the kids who were already struggling; the test scores of the bottom 10% of students have dropped catastrophically.

But scores are not slipping everywhere. In Mississippi, they have been rising year over year. The state recovered from a brief decline during COVID and has now surpassed its pre-COVID highs. Its fourth grade students outperform California's on average, even though our state is richer, more educated, and spends about 50% more per pupil.

The difference is most pronounced if you look at the most disadvantaged students. In California, only 28% of Black fourth graders read at or above basic level, for instance, compared to 52% in Mississippi. But it's not just that Mississippi has raised the floor. It has also raised the ceiling: The state is also one of the nation's best performers when you look at students who are not "economically disadvantaged."


Consider this the latest chapter of the "Mississippi Miracle," which has seen the state climb from 49th in the country on fourth grade reading to ninth nationally. This rise has received a great deal of coverage in publications ranging from The New York Times to The New York Post. And yet, it still feels as if what's taking place in the Deep South still has been grossly undersold.

First, it's not just Mississippi -- Louisiana, Alabama, and Tennessee have adopted the same strategies, stemmed the bleeding affecting states elsewhere, and seen significant improvements.

Second, many people who aren't too focused on education policy seem to imagine Mississippi has simply stopped underperforming, that they're now doing about as well as everyone else.

This is not true. They haven't just caught up to your state; they are now wildly outperforming it. If you live where I do, in Oakland, California, and you cannot afford private education, you should be seriously considering moving to Mississippi for the substantially better public schools. Black students are as likely to be basic-or-above readers in Mississippi (where the median Black household income was $37,900 in 2023) as in national top performer Massachusetts (where the median Black household income was $67,000 in 2022.)

...

To fail [in teaching children to read] is to lastingly abandon a significant fraction of our children to a lifelong struggle. And blue states have been failing. We have been spending lots of money on schools, but we have not been willing to muster the political will and effort necessary to hold those schools accountable for results and adopt teaching practices that actually work.

For a while, there was the excuse that it was hard to know what did work. But over the last 15 years, as Mississippi has scaled the state rankings and other southern states have mimicked its success, it has become clear that we do know -- or we could, if we wanted to.

"People are at a loss and would rather refer to it as the "Mississippi Miracle" than look under the hood to see what is really happening," Kareem Weaver, the executive director of FULCRUM, a literacy advocacy group here in Oakland, told me. "They aren't doing anything that others can't do. In fact, they are doing it with far less money than most state departments of education have at their disposal."

We just have to ask ourselves: Are we going to do it, or is it unimportant to us whether our children learn to read?

...

[T]here are some obvious commonalities among the Southern Surge states. White names three, the first of which sounds obvious in retrospect but was in fact novel: The states adopted reading curricula backed by actual scientific research. This led to them adopting phonics-based early literacy programs and rejecting ones that used the debunked "whole language" method that encourages students to vaguely guess at words based on context instead of figuring them out sound-by-sound.

I've banged the drum about this a lot. Educrats are Cargo Cultists who see what the faster-readers are doing and think, "Hey, we'll just tell the slow-readers to do what the fast-readers are doing!"

If you're good at redanig, and I asusem most of you are, you read alstmo words by a glance. You know the conxtet of the sectecen, you note the first letter of the wrod, and you see the legthn of the word. You don't read the word letter-by-lrtetel. You scan it at a glnace.

In fact, studies have shown that it doesn't matter how many misspellings occur in the interior of a word. If the first letter is right and the length is right, you'll blip right over the misspelled word and read it as the right one. As you did in the last paragraph, in which every fourth word was deliberately jumbled.

So this is what experienced readers do -- people who have read millions of words.

Fast-reading kids do this too, but with the much-smaller vocabulary they've already become very familiar with.

But before that -- they used the phonics method, reading letter by letter and sounding out the words. You use phonics to learn to read. Once you know how to read, you can start reading words-at-a-glance.

But stupid, incompetent educrats decided to stop teaching phonics to the slower readers and tell them to just read whole words via the "whole language" method the way that faster-readers do. The problem? The faster readers didn't start with reading whole words at a glance, they started with phonics.

And stupid educrats decided to saw off the first five rungs of the reading ladder and tell slower-readers to just jump up to the sixth run.

They did this with math, too, which is why parents cannot help their kids learn math any longer. Kids who are good at math begin noticing little patterns and making shortcuts in math. Like, the most simple sort of shortcut: If the problem is 350 divided by 30, you don't divide 350 by 30. You notice that both numbers are divisible by ten and divide everything by ten first, to get 35 divided by 3. A much easier problem to work out. (You might also see that 3 goes into 36 12 times evenly, so that the answer will be just a scotch lower than 12.)

But before kids can learn to do this, they have to take math step-by-step. You can't skip steps until you know the actual steps.

But just like with reading, idiot incompetent educrats decided that the kids who are bad at math should be taught the grab-bag of little tricks and short cuts the kids who are good at math have intuitively learned after doing lots and lots of math by the step-by-step approach.


This is the part of the story that has gotten the most attention -- teach phonics! And you should, indeed, teach phonics.

That's what I just said.

But making schools adopt the approach took more than a mere nudge. The Southern Surge states have tried earmarked funding, guidance to districts, and outright mandates to accomplish universal adoption.

In other words: the states had to force teachers to stop using a method that didn't work and start teaching a method that does work.

They didn't want to teach phonics because they didn't want to have to learn phonics themselves to teach it. They want to just tell kids to just look at word and magically divine its meaning. Because it's easier for them.

Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Those who can't teach, teach for the US public school system.

"Those states all made a commitment to rigorous reviews of the highest quality published materials for students and some level of incentive -- whether it was voluntary or involuntary -- for districts to implement those curriculums," White said.

...


The third pillar is everyone's least favorite, but it's equally crucial. "Number three is clear accountability at the district level, at the school level, at the educator level, and at the student and parent level," White said.

Accountability, of course, means standardized tests, requirements that students master reading before they are advanced to the fourth grade, and rankings of schools on performance. Accountability is no fun; when there aren't active political currents pushing for it, it tends to erode. But it's badly needed.

"Schools have gotten very distracted," White told me. "And at the same time, many states have been loosening the incentive structures that exist to focus on reading and math knowledge and skills. I think you have to question that. I think you have to see that these states have all had stringent accountability as a core tenet and have done it over successive administrations even when it wasn't a popular thing to do."

Hm, what have they gotten distracted by?

Maybe on teaching that there are 57 genders with new genders being scientifically discovered every day?

Posted by: Ace at 02:20 PM




Comments

(Jump to bottom of comments)

1 FIRST WITH THE BLADE BECAUSE THE BLADE IS FIRST

Posted by: Elric The Blade at September 26, 2025 02:20 PM (iFTx/)

2 1st

Posted by: GF at September 26, 2025 02:21 PM (UhUim)

3
Common Sense >> Common Core

Posted by: Blonde Morticia at September 26, 2025 02:21 PM (n7CIX)

4 Reading is Fun-damental!

Posted by: Eromero at September 26, 2025 02:22 PM (jgmnb)

5 "See?! You need us!"
-Randi Weingarten

Posted by: TheJamesMadison, in a world of gods and monsters with James Whale at September 26, 2025 02:22 PM (GBKbO)

6 Hm, what have they gotten distracted by?

Non English speaking students

Posted by: It's me donna at September 26, 2025 02:23 PM (VE6XX)

7 There are two ways to be rich:
1. Earn a *lot* more money, and enter the top rank
2. Earn more money, and end up in the top rank by default because everyone else blew their money on hookers and blow and dick surgeries.

In the middle is where most of it happens. A lot of states have started taking it seriously and got better. The former top states destroyed what they had. Nowhere is as good as it was 30+ years ago.

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at September 26, 2025 02:24 PM (6bTRc)

8 Mississippian speaking. Please do not move here from Oakland.

Posted by: Shane McGowan's Liver at September 26, 2025 02:24 PM (6M97i)

9 I heard it said that the South would rise again

Posted by: kallisto at September 26, 2025 02:24 PM (dCxaZ)

10 Victor Davis Hanson gave a speech about a year or so ago, where he pointed out that California is now in last place among public schools.

Amazing fall.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at September 26, 2025 02:24 PM (0U5gm)

11 Of course, this is the logical place to drop the unnecessarily cute hooked on phonics commercial

https://youtu.be/OBJR03BORRQ

Posted by: Kindltot at September 26, 2025 02:25 PM (rbvCR)

12 Southerners are illiterate and ill-educated?
++++
The fact that the South is rapidly becoming the country's economic engine (outside of high tech, anyway, which is still very much a Western industry) should have been a clue.

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at September 26, 2025 02:25 PM (6bTRc)

13 yikes got willowed

anyway this is WONDERFUL and I cannot love it enough

get rid of the DofEd and let schooling be GREAT again! (well, adequate anyway. I know it's a low bar)

and congrats to those who thought that MAGA kid thing was a fugazi! you win the cookie

Posted by: Black Orchid at September 26, 2025 02:25 PM (FHttA)

14 I hate to say it but I grew up in the public schools in Alabama. Almost the entirety of the bad wrap the education system got was from the high percentage of blacks pulling the average down.

Posted by: MAGA_Ken at September 26, 2025 02:25 PM (XVmbP)

15 And Oregon is owned by the Teachers' Union which means the Union tries the best to assure that the government is the best evar

Posted by: Kindltot at September 26, 2025 02:25 PM (rbvCR)

16 Oregon has the worst educational results in the country once you "adjust for demographic characteristics". (Translation: Oregon doesn't have a lot of minority students.)

But not to worry - Oregon state government sprang into action, and responded by banning standardized tests.

Posted by: The ARC of History! at September 26, 2025 02:26 PM (xTIDn)

17 In my home state of California, for instance, only 30% of public school fourth graders can read proficiently. Fully 41% cannot even read at a basic level -- which is to say, they cannot really understand and interpret written text at all. Eighth graders, as you might expect, look almost as bad.
++++
Does the survey control for nationality or ESL? Because I *strongly* suspect that if you subtract illegals, California's numbers probably look quite a bit better. I am sure it has declined radically from its peak, but I bet it's not as bad as it looks if controlling for that fairly big variable.

Just a guess.

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at September 26, 2025 02:26 PM (6bTRc)

18 “poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.”

Posted by: Joe Biden at September 26, 2025 02:26 PM (98kQX)

19 *scribbles note*

Get the hookers - BEFORE - getting dick surgery.

Almost was a disaster, there.

Posted by: Warai-otoko at September 26, 2025 02:26 PM (06Hmj)

20 14 I hate to say it but I grew up in the public schools in Alabama. Almost the entirety of the bad wrap the education system got was from the high percentage of blacks pulling the average down.


well they are one of the demos doing better now so! it can be done

Posted by: Black Orchid at September 26, 2025 02:27 PM (FHttA)

21
Alternate post title that makes this story all about racism:

Southern States Are "Writing Out" Slavery from History

That's how they're putting "writing out." Maybe they mean deleting? Maybe they mean "whiting" out? I dunno. They're stupid, so ask them.

Posted by: Soothsayer at September 26, 2025 02:27 PM (f4k7i)

22 California's numbers probably look quite a bit better. I am sure it has declined radically from its peak, but I bet it's not as bad as it looks if controlling for that fairly big variable.

Just a guess.
Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at September 26, 2025 02:26 PM (6bTRc)

Forget the students, how many California teachers can read at the grade level they teach?

Posted by: Warai-otoko at September 26, 2025 02:27 PM (06Hmj)

23 Well, yes. Focusing on learning to read, rather than hating whitey and sucking dicks, will do that.

Posted by: bear with asymmetrical balls at September 26, 2025 02:27 PM (cl15i)

24 Of all the obviously baseless, ridiculous, incredibly pernicious idiocies that have damaged the US for a few decades now, the collapse of "education" may be the most egregious, and obviously probably the most damaging.

The abandonment of known effective teaching methods (most of them just common sense) for all sorts of "new" pedagogical this and that. School teachers having masters in education (!!). On and on.

CA has been ruined by several avoidable things, but the teacher's union is one of the most important. Not only have they overseen the degradation of formerly the best educational system in the nation, their "union" has been the most powerful force in Sacramento for many years, of course always pushing for/getting the most damaging and indefensible nonsense advanced, in all policy areas.

Everyone my age here, especially those with kids, thanks the stars we got in *just* under the wire on it all. Excellent education from K to college, free or inexpensive. Yeah of course many wheels turning here, including cultural decline of so many parents since our day, but the contrast is so dramatic it's stunning.

Posted by: rhomboid at September 26, 2025 02:28 PM (U/Byj)

25 Fedsurrection acknowledged. Soros being looked at for material support to domestic terrorists.

It's a day of Trumpmas miracles.

Expect more leftist domestic terror as a result.

Heads on swivels. Video everything suspicious.

Posted by: Comrade Flounder, Disinformation Demon at September 26, 2025 02:28 PM (i24o9)

26
The third pillar is "accountability," eh? So what happens in the event of failure? Someone's got to get fired or defunded or held back in school or SOMEthing.

Posted by: Blonde Morticia at September 26, 2025 02:28 PM (n7CIX)

27 For a while, there was the excuse that it was hard to know what did work. But over the last 15 years, as Mississippi has scaled the state rankings and other southern states have mimicked its success, it has become clear that we do know -- or we could, if we wanted to.

Clearly you don't understand. Only educators have the secret knowledge enabling them to teach, and must be paid much, much more than they are. All others are just too stupid to appreciate how complicated it all is.

Posted by: Archimedes at September 26, 2025 02:28 PM (Riz8t)

28 Californica does have to teach a lot of Mexicans and other third worlders.

Posted by: illiniwek at September 26, 2025 02:28 PM (vbXSk)

29 Southern States Are Now Leading the Country In Literacy Rates

===

If only these bastards stoped putting Cotton Decorations in hallways on my luxurious hotel !!!

--Serena Williams

Posted by: runner at September 26, 2025 02:28 PM (g47mK)

30 Its fourth grade students outperform California's on average, even though our state is richer, more educated, and spends about 50% more per pupil.
++++
If there is one thing that has been made *abundantly* clear over the past 40 years, it is "student performance and per-pupil spending are not correlated."

We spend gobs more per-pupil in real terms than we used to, and results are worse. Class sizes are smaller, and results are worse. There is more technology, and results are worse. There are more student programs, more administration, more teachers, more everything - and results are worse.

American schools don't have a money problem. American schools have a performance problem.

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at September 26, 2025 02:28 PM (6bTRc)

31 If you're good at redanig, and I asusem most of you are, you read alstmo words by a glance. You know the conxtet of the sectecen, you note the first letter of the wrod, and you see the legthn of the word. You don't read the word letter-by-lrtetel. You scan it at a glnace.

...

As you did in the last paragraph, in which every fourth word was deliberately jumbled.


Actual deliberately jumbled word count is 5, 3, 7, 8, 3, 8, 5, 11, 6, not every fourth.

Posted by: Wesley Crusher, who reads every Ace post word-for-word at September 26, 2025 02:28 PM (0sNs1)

32 Homeschool.

Posted by: Wherever you live at September 26, 2025 02:28 PM (pJcVX)

33 Same with language learning. They replaced the tried-and-true "phonics" approach with the trendy -- but clearly wrong -- "whole language" approach and made decades worth of kids work harder to learn to read. But it made schoolbook publishers a lot of money. That's the important part.

Posted by: Elric The Blade at September 26, 2025 02:28 PM (iFTx/)

34 I should have known I was going to willow myself.

Posted by: Helena Handbasket at September 26, 2025 02:29 PM (ULPxl)

35 First, it's not just Mississippi -- Louisiana, Alabama, and Tennessee have adopted the same strategies, stemmed the bleeding affecting states elsewhere, and seen significant improvements.
++++
The South is where the action is and, in a tremendously unusual way, is not pissing it all away on nonsense.

Yet.

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at September 26, 2025 02:29 PM (6bTRc)

36 Does the survey control for nationality or ESL? Because I *strongly* suspect that if you subtract illegals, California's numbers probably look quite a bit better. I am sure it has declined radically from its peak, but I bet it's not as bad as it looks if controlling for that fairly big variable.

Just a guess.
Posted by: Joe Mannix
======
You can play around with NAEP data if you want that question answered.

Posted by: whig at September 26, 2025 02:30 PM (WDjG6)

37 For a while, there was the excuse that it was hard to know what did work.
++++
Yeah, this is true. A few centuries or more ago.

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at September 26, 2025 02:30 PM (6bTRc)

38 >>They replaced the tried-and-true "phonics" approach with the trendy -- but clearly wrong -- "whole language" approach


The key is to get the kids hooked on phonics early.
Then you have a customer for life.

Posted by: garrett at September 26, 2025 02:30 PM (tH0WK)

39 Are we sure that the yutes of Mississippi aren't just getting retarded slower than the rest of the country.

I can't shake the belief that people are getting dumber at a quicker pace. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting another example of stupidity these days.

Catalyst for this belief: Today coming out a convenience store I watched a young woman drop her phone while standing on the sidewalk in front of the store. Her phone landed in the parking lot with no cars coming or going. But, instead of taking a step off the curb to pick it up. She tried to pick it up from the sidewalk (an extra 6" at least to reach). She fell forward, spilled her drink, landed on her side, and I think on her phone.

Posted by: Orson at September 26, 2025 02:30 PM (dIske)

40 there are 57 genders

Heinz gender fluid!

Posted by: Commissar of plenty and festive little hats at September 26, 2025 02:31 PM (HTa/G)

41 Baseball helps kids understand arithmetic as they calculate batting and earned run averages. I'm not sure about statistics like WAR because I quit caring about baseball when Willie Stargell retired and have no idea what they mean.

Posted by: Oglebay at September 26, 2025 02:31 PM (MMp6W)

42 The states adopted reading curricula backed by actual scientific research. This led to them adopting phonics-based early literacy programs and rejecting ones that used the debunked "whole language" method that encourages students to vaguely guess at words based on context instead of figuring them out sound-by-sound.
++++
So, the way it was done for ages *before* idiots took it over. Got it.

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at September 26, 2025 02:31 PM (6bTRc)

43 Meanwhile Oregon with all the latest and greatest left wing theories in education implemented is... bottom 10.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at September 26, 2025 02:31 PM (dfIr7)

44 Governor Sanders has implemented many school choice measures in Arkansas. I wonder how that's working out? I assume things are improving but I don't know.

Posted by: Emmie at September 26, 2025 02:31 PM (NIkq3)

45 If you're good at redanig, and I asusem most of you are, you read alstmo words by a glance. You know the conxtet of the sectecen, you note the first letter of the wrod, and you see the legthn of the word. You don't read the word letter-by-lrtetel. You scan it at a glnace.
++++
I see what you did there.

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at September 26, 2025 02:31 PM (6bTRc)

46 It has never been hard to know what works. People have been learning to read for millennia. They didn't stumble upon literacy by sheer dumb luck.

Posted by: bear with asymmetrical balls at September 26, 2025 02:31 PM (cl15i)

47 Same with language learning. They replaced the tried-and-true "phonics" approach with the trendy -- but clearly wrong -- "whole language" approach and made decades worth of kids work harder to learn to read. But it made schoolbook publishers a lot of money. That's the important part.

It really is all about the Benjamins, and what public school teachers are paid. If teaching is bog-simple, then their demands for more money are laughable, so it must be made more complicated and ineffective than it is. It's no different than Aztec priests pretending only the can commune with the gods. I suppose we should be grateful they aren't cutting out hearts. Yet.

Posted by: Archimedes at September 26, 2025 02:32 PM (Riz8t)

48 >>Does the survey control for nationality or ESL? Because I *strongly* suspect that if you subtract illegals, California's numbers probably look quite a bit better. I am sure it has declined radically from its peak, but I bet it's not as bad as it looks if controlling for that fairly big variable.



I am sure those Central American kids are proficient readers in their own language, tho...

Posted by: garrett at September 26, 2025 02:32 PM (tH0WK)

49 Ace thinks we read good.

Posted by: pudinhead at September 26, 2025 02:32 PM (AdHga)

50
You know what's funny?

Not daycare. I hate daycare and I truly believe it has destroyed a whole generation of stupid kids with stupid parents.

But what's funny is So Many kids are in daycare from, like, age 1 until 5, when they enter Kindergarten and, here's me point, They Learned Nothing.

Because Daycare is just Babysitting, but worse because it's a large group of snotty, germy kids, spreading germs.

Posted by: Soothsayer at September 26, 2025 02:32 PM (f4k7i)

51 I've never been able to learn through tricks. Mnemonics and the like never work. I have to do something by rote, completely over and over again, fifteen bajllion times and then my mind creates an effective shortcut system for me to bypass that because we are very very lazy.

Posted by: banana Dream at September 26, 2025 02:32 PM (3uBP9)

52 In fact, studies have shown that it doesn't matter how many misspellings occur in the interior of a word. If the first letter is right and the length is right, you'll blip right over the misspelled word and read it as the right one. As you did in the last paragraph, in which every fourth word was deliberately jumbled.
++++
Assuming the word is familiar and the conetxt makes it clear.

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at September 26, 2025 02:32 PM (6bTRc)

53
I'm sure that seeing these alarming improvements in education, Randi Weingarten is rushing to strengthen the teachers' unions in those states and tamp down all this literacy.

But srsly, what is the status of the teachers' unions in these states?

Posted by: Blonde Morticia at September 26, 2025 02:32 PM (n7CIX)

54 Only educators have the secret knowledge enabling them to teach, and must be paid much, much more than they are. All others are just too stupid to appreciate how complicated it all is.

You laugh. During the Portland teachers' strike, the teachers union denounced mere parents criticizing teaching methods by saying that surgeons didn't ask lay people how to do surgery. (They literally used this example.)

Posted by: The ARC of History! at September 26, 2025 02:33 PM (xTIDn)

55 Southern States Are Now Leading the Country In Literacy Rates

===

If only these bastards stoped putting Cotton Decorations in hallways on my luxurious hotel !!!

--Serena Williams
Posted by: runner at September 26, 2025 02:28 PM (g47mK)
____

The odds that this bitter racist recognized those decorations as cotton decorations are very low. She's probably saw them 100x of times before, but never noticed or recognized them.

Now, all of a sudden -- when she's desperate for media attention -- she suddenly can recognize and is offended by cotton decorations?

Oh fuck off, you fetid cunting slag.

Posted by: Elric The Blade at September 26, 2025 02:33 PM (iFTx/)

56 I'm not sure about statistics like WAR because I quit caring about baseball when Willie Stargell retired and have no idea what they mean.

nearly all the new stats are crap interesting only to stat-crunchers and play by play announcers.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at September 26, 2025 02:33 PM (dfIr7)

57 But before that -- they used the phonics method, reading letter by letter and sounding out the words. You use phonics to learn to read. Once you know how to read, you can start reading words-at-a-glance.
++++
One follows the other, in most cases. There are spontaneous readers, but it's relatively uncommon.

Basics first. Then the rest happens automatically.

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at September 26, 2025 02:33 PM (6bTRc)

58 By the time my kids left Kindergarten, they were reading at a first grade level. Their teacher taught them reading via phonics every day. Also, working with them at night and reading to them since they were very little. Too many parents want to push their responsibilities onto the schools.

Posted by: Cheri at September 26, 2025 02:33 PM (oiNtH)

59 52 In fact, studies have shown that it doesn't matter how many misspellings occur in the interior of a word. If the first letter is right and the length is right, you'll blip right over the misspelled word and read it as the right one. As you did in the last paragraph, in which every fourth word was deliberately jumbled.
++++
Assuming the word is familiar and the conetxt makes it clear.
Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at September 26, 2025 02:32 PM (6bTRc)

=======

This reminds me of how I keep track of characters in Russian novels.

Rxxxxxxxxx is one character. Rxxxxhxxxx is another character.

Couldn't tell you their names to save my life, but both have long R names, but only one has a tall letter in the middle of it.

Posted by: TheJamesMadison, in a world of gods and monsters with James Whale at September 26, 2025 02:33 PM (GBKbO)

60 It's like Ace has been eavesdropping on my personal rants.

Posted by: Emmie at September 26, 2025 02:33 PM (NIkq3)

61 >>Ace thinks we read good.


Ace knows we read anything that isn't Content.

Posted by: garrett at September 26, 2025 02:33 PM (tH0WK)

62 49 Ace thinks we read good.
Posted by: pudinhead at September 26, 2025 02:32 PM (AdHga)

How would he know? We never read what he writes. I hear he has a blog or something.

Posted by: bear with asymmetrical balls at September 26, 2025 02:33 PM (cl15i)

63 But not to worry - Oregon state government sprang into action, and responded by banning standardized tests.
Posted by: The ARC of History! at September 26, 2025 02:26 PM (xTIDn)


Did you see that Kotex had notified the various agencies that instead of a surplus, the state budget has 375 Million dollar shortfall, which she blames on Trump cutting monies to the state.
Which tells me that she had been planning to balance the money on COVID funds and NGO kickbacks.

Oh, and that shortfall in ODOT money that required that the state demand that the Kicker return on surplus tax revenue (it's an Oregon thing) be taken in violation of state law was before she figured out that Trump had cut her off.
ODOT may have to build fewer roundabouts on highways if this keeps up.

Posted by: Kindltot at September 26, 2025 02:34 PM (rbvCR)

64 I can't shake the belief that people are getting dumber at a quicker pace. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting another example of stupidity these days.


What else would you expect when the intelligent aren't having kids, while the morons do?

Posted by: Archimedes at September 26, 2025 02:34 PM (Riz8t)

65 Ace thinks we read good.
Posted by: pudinhead at September 26, 2025 02:32 PM


Ace also thinks none of us read his content.

Posted by: Duncanthrax, a mid-tier AoSHQ commenter, according to Grok at September 26, 2025 02:34 PM (0sNs1)

66 Be glad you a rebel 'cause
The South's Gonna Do It Again!

Posted by: Charlie Daniels Band at September 26, 2025 02:34 PM (wVcYX)

67
So kids are raised by Babysitters, a.k.a. Strangers. They learn Nothing in Daycare. It's time Not well spent during the most Formative Years of a person's life.

Posted by: Soothsayer at September 26, 2025 02:34 PM (f4k7i)

68 Dick and Jane has been "trans-placed" with

"See Dick", "Dick became Jane", or "Jane licks Sally".

Posted by: illiniwek at September 26, 2025 02:34 PM (vbXSk)

69 51 I've never been able to learn through tricks. Mnemonics and the like never work. I have to do something by rote, completely over and over again, fifteen bajllion times and then my mind creates an effective shortcut system for me to bypass that because we are very very lazy.
Posted by: banana Dream at September 26, 2025 02:32 PM (3uBP9)

=====

What about HOMES and SOHCAHTOA?

Posted by: Oglebay at September 26, 2025 02:34 PM (MMp6W)

70 But just like with reading, idiot incompetent educrats decided that the kids who are bad at math should be taught the grab-bag of little tricks and short cuts the kids who are good at math have intuitively learned after doing lots and lots of math by the step-by-step approach.
++++
And for some students, yes, the light will go on and they'll get it. For many, it won't. And those students now can't make change, and never will.

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at September 26, 2025 02:34 PM (6bTRc)

71 Joe M's probably right. The massive illegal alien/non-English native speaker factor is surely important.

But that reminds me of another aspect of the idiocy of the teacher's unions and affiliated/like-minded operations.

"Bilingual education" - a fantastic idea when it means introducing proficient native speakers to *foreign* languages - is of course a disaster when used to keep non-native speakers from learning the language of their adopted country. In another episode that brings back wistful memories of CA voters not being complete cretins, bilingual education was banned by initiative.

Hilariously, the two main antagonist "groups" were Asian immigrant parents (in favor of banning), and teachers/education-adjacent remoras. The measure passed. This time, instead of getting faithless constitutional officers to help a lawless federal court nix it (see Prop , or just surrendering when a ridiculous federal ruling resulted (see Prop 187), the new approach was .... defiance, not obeying the law. Surprise!

That got snuffed out fairly quickly, which is astonishing, but was quite "instructive" (heh).

Posted by: rhomboid at September 26, 2025 02:34 PM (U/Byj)

72 This month, the Department of Education released its latest edition blah blah blah........

And here I thought we were supposed to be getting rid of the Dept. of Edjumication?

Posted by: Lurker #4975 at September 26, 2025 02:35 PM (1g1YE)

73 This hasn't hit the Carolinas yet because it seems like these kids are dumb as hell around here.

Posted by: NCKate at September 26, 2025 02:35 PM (4bYb7)

74 nearly all the new stats are crap interesting only to stat-crunchers and play by play announcers.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor


Don't forget the bookies. I am amazed at what people will gamble money on, and some of those stats are big ticket items.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at September 26, 2025 02:35 PM (0U5gm)

75 Watch out Arkansas, we're coming for ya!

Posted by: Alabama at September 26, 2025 02:35 PM (jc0TO)

76 nearly all the new stats are crap interesting only to stat-crunchers and play by play announcers.
Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at September 26, 2025 02:33 PM (dfIr7)

I think the whole thing was an elaborate juvenile ruse by shadowy trillionaires to get grown men to say ridiculous things like "FPLORP" on television without laughing.

Posted by: Warai-otoko at September 26, 2025 02:35 PM (06Hmj)

77
You can't swing a dead cat without hitting another example of stupidity these days.

________

*picks cat hairs off clothes*
*glares*

Posted by: Hadrian the Seventh at September 26, 2025 02:36 PM (tgvbd)

78 I heard it said that the South would rise again
-----
And you never did think
That it ever would happen again
(In America, did you?)
You never did think
That we'd ever get together again
(We damn sure could)
Yeah, we're walking real proud
And we're talkin' real loud again
(In America)
You never did think
That it ever would happen again

Posted by: Zombie Charlie Daniels at September 26, 2025 02:36 PM (TN0g+)

79 but both have long R names, but only one has a letter with the thingie that goes up in the middle of it.
Posted by: TheJamesMadison, in a world of gods and monsters with James Whale at September 26, 2025 02:33 PM


Dude. Style Guide correction applied.

Posted by: Duncanthrax, a mid-tier AoSHQ commenter, according to Grok at September 26, 2025 02:36 PM (0sNs1)

80 Misspelled words bother me, like running over broken ground. Yes, you can run on it, but the going is better on a well maintained track!

Posted by: NemoMeImpuneLacessit at September 26, 2025 02:36 PM (ZVgZ4)

81 ODOT may have to build fewer roundabouts on highways if this keeps up.
Posted by: Kindltot at September 26, 2025 02:34 PM (rbvCR)

And suspend purchase orders for more dynamite for beached dead whale disposal. They'll just have to make do.

Posted by: Count de Monet at September 26, 2025 02:36 PM (wVcYX)

82
livestream of Florida govt not Fucking Around with foreign invaders:

https://is.gd/PgBhct

Posted by: Soothsayer at September 26, 2025 02:37 PM (f4k7i)

83 In other words: the states had to force teachers to stop using a method that didn't work and start teaching a method that does work.

They didn't want to teach phonics because they didn't want to have to learn phonics themselves to teach it. They want to just tell kids to just look at word and magically divine its meaning. Because it's easier for them.

++++
For some, surely so.

But I suspect that isn't the majority. Ed schools are full-blown cult-churches at this point. You do *not*, as a mere congregant, *dare* to question doctrine. You do not dare to go against doctrine. You do not dare to even consider something non-doctrinal and you do not, under *any* circumstances, consider the opinion of an outsider when it comes to doctrine.

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at September 26, 2025 02:37 PM (6bTRc)

84 NY constantly gets rid of various standardized tests, gets rid of advanced programs and wants to kill all charter schools. NY like most blue areas is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Teachers Unions.

Posted by: Smell the Glove at September 26, 2025 02:37 PM (8CfIy)

85 So it's a fonix thread?

Posted by: Just got here at September 26, 2025 02:37 PM (pJcVX)

86 The number one most cited "academic" in Education journals is Paulo Freire. Freire was a Brazilian Marxist born during the Great Depression. He grew up in a very poor part of Brazil. After the military coup in the 1960s, Freire was exiled, during which he wrote his manifesto, "Pedagogy of the Oppressed." It's straight Marxist indoctrination. Freire calls the traditional teaching method of learning facts, skills, and history the "banking model." Instead he pushes, "critical pedagogy," which is just how to rebel against the system.

In the 80s, he returned to Brazil, rejoined the socialist party, and became Secretary of Education where he infected the schools with his Marxist indoctrination. He's one of the biggest reasons Brazil remains backwards and violent, despite their fabulous natural resources.

Again, Freire is the number one most cited "academic" in Education journals.

Posted by: bonhomme at September 26, 2025 02:37 PM (Yp6az)

87 > Maybe on teaching that there are 57 genders with new genders being scientifically discovered every day?

Posted by: Ace at 02:20 PM

Don't forget wasting time on dumbass "active shooter drills" when the kids are far more likely to be killed in a traffic accident on the way to school than to ever face an "active shooter".

Most of these drills are worthless, anyway... e.g. "Stay in your classroom, sitting against the wall". Yeah? So the shooter doesn't have to hit moving targets? That's some first rate "expert advice" there, idiots.

I've heard that in some districts these have even replaced drills for REAL potential hazards (e.g., earthquakes on the west coast, tornados in the midwest and south, fire everywhere), which is just fucking retarded.

Posted by: Rodrigo Borgia at September 26, 2025 02:37 PM (qpyNK)

88 Bilingual education means the kids don't learn shit in whatever language they speak while the teacher yells at them impotently in impeccably accented safety school English.

Posted by: Warai-otoko at September 26, 2025 02:37 PM (06Hmj)

89 I started first grade at age 5 more than 29 years ago without going to kindergarten first. I did not even know what an "alphabet" was. My school taught look say reading and I did NOT learn how to read. It was a total puzzle to me.

In second grade we got a random few weeks of phonics lessons. I learned to read instantly and after that was always bored with reading class because I read through every new reading book the day it was passed out.

I never liked school and any education I have is mainly from voraciously reading on whatever subject interests me.

Currently I read the same books again and again because I read so fast I can't afford to buy enough books to feed my habit.

I'm not meaning to brag, but my point is that without learning phonics I would have struggled just as much as all those kids we hear about.

Depriving a child of what most any child can have and what every child needs is just despicable. And I do not think this is being done by accident.

Posted by: NancyB at September 26, 2025 02:37 PM (BV6iw)

90 Clearly you don't understand. Only educators have the secret knowledge enabling them to teach, and must be paid much, much more than they are. All others are just too stupid to appreciate how complicated it all is.
Posted by: Archimedes at September 26, 2025 02:28 PM (Riz8t)


I've taken quite a few education courses. Imagine my disappointment upon learning how few of these courses address good teaching methods. They're mostly about how to comply with ever-changing regulations. Boring legal stuff.

Posted by: Emmie at September 26, 2025 02:37 PM (NIkq3)

91 Accountability, of course, means standardized tests, requirements that students master reading before they are advanced to the fourth grade, and rankings of schools on performance. Accountability is no fun; when there aren't active political currents pushing for it, it tends to erode. But it's badly needed.
++++
"We need accountability."

Amazing.

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at September 26, 2025 02:37 PM (6bTRc)

92 Just read in the paper that the Dems are determined to shut down the government as promised

who will cave

Posted by: Don Black at September 26, 2025 02:37 PM (AOsQT)

93 I can't shake the belief that people are getting dumber at a quicker pace. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting another example of stupidity these days.

I think that it is a combination of functional illiteracy (only able to read short text bursts), massive arrogance and sense of entitlement (how dare you question me), and cultural rot (learning to read is acting white!)

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at September 26, 2025 02:37 PM (dfIr7)

94 I would’ve gotten here sooner, but I was reading the post.

Posted by: Jack Squat Bupkis at September 26, 2025 02:38 PM (GD2xa)

95 Our country has suffered from Maleducation for the past 30-50 years.

The crusade against phonics and rote memorization from college educated teachers who always hated them (because teachers have always been the stupidest people admitted to college) has been the greatest disservice to children* in our time.



*especially minority children! But that won't matter because they had good intentions.

Posted by: Formerly Virginian at September 26, 2025 02:38 PM (N1tpc)

96 Hm, what have they gotten distracted by?

Maybe on teaching that there are 57 genders with new genders being scientifically discovered every day?

++++
That's one symptom of many. Whatever the prog ideology is.

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at September 26, 2025 02:38 PM (6bTRc)

97 ODOT may have to build fewer roundabouts on highways if this keeps up.
------
Roundabouts are stupid and cause accidents because most drivers need *fewer* decisions left to themselves, not more. Yet another thing that we stupidly imported from the UK.

Posted by: Crusader at September 26, 2025 02:39 PM (TN0g+)

98 Which tells me that she had been planning to balance the money on COVID funds and NGO kickbacks.

Oregon Democrats are currently panicking because Oregon's income tax calculations are tied to the Federal ones, which means that Oregonians are about to get a big tax cut, courtesy of Trump.

They are trying to figure out a way to raise the state taxes back up without being blamed for it.

Posted by: The ARC of History! at September 26, 2025 02:39 PM (xTIDn)

99 "Hook-edd on Pa-Honics Work-edd for MEH!"
--Brian Reagan showing how it only goes so far

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at September 26, 2025 02:39 PM (dfIr7)

100 I would’ve gotten here sooner, but I was reading the post.
Posted by: Jack Squat Bupkis at September 26, 2025 02:38 PM


Hoping for a Permanent Record entry?

Posted by: Duncanthrax, a mid-tier AoSHQ commenter, according to Grok at September 26, 2025 02:39 PM (0sNs1)

101 Roundabouts are stupid and cause accidents because most drivers need *fewer* decisions left to themselves, not more. Yet another thing that we stupidly imported from the UK.


demonic

according to Terry Pratchett, literally!

Posted by: Black Orchid at September 26, 2025 02:39 PM (FHttA)

102 What else would you expect when the intelligent aren't having kids, while the morons do?
Posted by: Archimedes at September 26, 2025 02:34 PM (Riz8t)
___________________________

Heh...

"Flagpole Sitta" -- Harvey Danger (1997)

"Been around the world, and only stupid people are breeding."

Posted by: Orson at September 26, 2025 02:39 PM (dIske)

103 The Southern states have always lagged behind the rest of the country in education and income because they were ruled by Democrats for 90 years.

Posted by: JohnW at September 26, 2025 02:39 PM (2jGim)

104 You laugh. During the Portland teachers' strike, the teachers union denounced mere parents criticizing teaching methods by saying that surgeons didn't ask lay people how to do surgery. (They literally used this example.)
Posted by: The ARC of History! at September 26, 2025 02:33 PM (xTIDn)


Back when high schools taught Latin in high school, reading, writing, mathematics and beginning history were generally taught by young teachers with a two years "Normal" degree in teaching

Posted by: Kindltot at September 26, 2025 02:39 PM (rbvCR)

105 >The "Mississippi Miracle:"
----

#13 Ole Miss gotta play #4 LSU on Saturday

Posted by: Don Black at September 26, 2025 02:40 PM (AOsQT)

106
I hope this bubbles up to higher education in southern states and thence to industry. Man, won't it be hilarious if 30 years from now people are vying to get into some upstart Alabama university that they can graduate from and get a good job in biotech nearby?

All while Harvard is becoming Paris -- reeking of urine, living off its former glory, and beset with locals who want a patriarchal welfare system.

Posted by: Blonde Morticia at September 26, 2025 02:40 PM (n7CIX)

107 Just read in the paper that the Dems are determined to shut down the government as promised

They are determined to get illegals and healthy bodied welfare recipients their freebies back at all costs.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at September 26, 2025 02:40 PM (dfIr7)

108 You might also see that 3 goes into 36 12 times evenly, so that the answer will be just a scotch lower than 12.
_______
And after two scotches, you won't care.

Posted by: Eeyore at September 26, 2025 02:40 PM (s0JqF)

109 After more than a century of education research, it should be a rock solid process.

Posted by: MAGA_Ken at September 26, 2025 02:41 PM (XVmbP)

110 I remember, from the 1990s, the advertisements for "Hooked on Phonics." Video tapes, flash cards, teaching materials, guidebooks. All aimed squarely at middle-class parents who saw that their kids were illiterate and got *nowhere* when trying to figure out why the schools weren't teaching them to read.

The mere existence of "Hooked on Phonics" should have been a clue.

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at September 26, 2025 02:41 PM (6bTRc)

111 Bilingual education means the kids don't learn shit in whatever language they speak while the teacher yells at them impotently in impeccably accented safety school English.

Posted by: Warai-otoko



Most of the illegals dumped into public schools are illiterate in ANY language, just like their illegal alien parents.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at September 26, 2025 02:41 PM (0U5gm)

112 All while Harvard is becoming Paris -- reeking of urine, living off its former glory, and beset with locals who want a patriarchal welfare system.
Posted by: Blonde Morticia at September 26, 2025 02:40 PM


Harvard men will always be in demand!

Posted by: David Hogg, Harvard graduate at September 26, 2025 02:41 PM (0sNs1)

113 Illegals not only depress results by being, on average, lower IQ and unable to speak the language, but they are a major distraction of time, effort and resources, causing teachers to teach down the rest of the class so illegals set the new mean to which all must regress

Posted by: Field Marshal Zhukov at September 26, 2025 02:41 PM (wBaIH)

114 Late to the party.

I'm in my 7th decade. My parents had me reading the King James Bible aloud when I was ten. Dad and Mom read English Shakespearean sonnets to me when I was a toddler.

Old methods work.

Posted by: RS at September 26, 2025 02:41 PM (ppbNg)

115 "But stupid, incompetent educrats decided to stop teaching phonics to the slower readers and tell them to just read whole words via the "whole language" method the way that faster-readers do. The problem? The faster readers didn't start with reading whole words at a glance, they started with phonics."

This is similar to what was tried with Common Core math. People that do lots of math eventually work out little tricks like rounding up or down etc.. to make doing it in your head easier. Common Core tries to use these tricks to teach kids how to do math from the beginning. But the huge error is that first you have to have math skill learned form memorization and repetition. Only then can you apply those tricks to do it in your head. Furthermore, those are only for doing it in your head, not working it out on paper, as Common Core tries to teach kids. It is all ass-backward.

Posted by: Ripley at September 26, 2025 02:41 PM (GUOwU)

116 I remember a time when a gender-bender was a small device used to join two cables with the same gender at the ends.

There was no butt hurt, or cries for reparations, just a sweet melding of crucial information.

Posted by: Rev. Wishbone at September 26, 2025 02:41 PM (UWX1m)

117 It's hard to read with the hood on.

Posted by: The ghost of Orval Faubus at September 26, 2025 02:42 PM (pJcVX)

118 After more than a century of education research, it should be a rock solid process.

It was, before the 1960s and a push to change education

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at September 26, 2025 02:42 PM (dfIr7)

119 Most of these drills are worthless, anyway... e.g. "Stay in your classroom, sitting against the wall". Yeah? So the shooter doesn't have to hit moving targets? That's some first rate "expert advice" there, idiots.
--------

I hope I never find myself in a building with an active shooter, but if I do I seriously doubt I will "shelter in place". It all depends on the circumstances (obviously), but IF I see no sign of the active shooter, I'm getting the hell out of there. I've considered carrying (our state allows it without a permit), but haven't acquired the habit yet.

Posted by: Crusader at September 26, 2025 02:42 PM (TN0g+)

120 I hope this bubbles up to higher education in southern states and thence to industry. Man, won't it be hilarious if 30 years from now people are vying to get into some upstart Alabama university that they can graduate from and get a good job in biotech nearby? ...
Posted by: Blonde Morticia at September 26, 2025 02:40 PM (n7CIX)
++++
It's already happening.

If you want to be industry, be in the South.

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at September 26, 2025 02:42 PM (6bTRc)

121 Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Those who can't teach, teach for the US public school system.

Posted by: Ace at 02:20 PM

I'll post this over and over again.

Teaching majors are the stupidest people admitted to college.

We should really do something about this. (Such as, instead of REQUIRING a teaching degree, we specifically disqualify anyone with a teaching degree.)

Posted by: Formerly Virginian at September 26, 2025 02:43 PM (N1tpc)

122 Most of the illegals dumped into public schools are illiterate in ANY language, just like their illegal alien parents.
Posted by: Thomas Paine at September 26, 2025 02:41 PM (0U5gm)

This!

Posted by: Count de Monet at September 26, 2025 02:43 PM (wVcYX)

123 I'm in my 7th decade. My parents had me reading the King James Bible aloud when I was ten. Dad and Mom read English Shakespearean sonnets to me when I was a toddler.

I learned to read before school by sitting in my dad's lap and reading the newspaper with him. Mom and I would read books like Charlotte's Web, reading every other line with her.

I still remember stumbling over the curiously pronounced "plymouth."

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at September 26, 2025 02:43 PM (dfIr7)

124 I remember in first grade the nuns handed out two little boxes with teeny little chips in them - one (blue?) box for consonants and consonant groups (are those diphthongs?!?) and the other (pink?) vowels and vowel pairs.

and we were to make words as specified. this was along with learning phonetically the previous year.

I loved those little things! could make little stories and mess around with them all day. anyone else remember them?

Posted by: Black Orchid at September 26, 2025 02:43 PM (FHttA)

125 You laugh. During the Portland teachers' strike, the teachers union denounced mere parents criticizing teaching methods by saying that surgeons didn't ask lay people how to do surgery. (They literally used this example.)
Posted by: The ARC of History! at September 26, 2025 02:33 PM (xTIDn)

Back when high schools taught Latin in high school, reading, writing, mathematics and beginning history were generally taught by young teachers with a two years "Normal" degree in teaching
Posted by: Kindltot at September 26, 2025 02:39 PM (rbvCR)
____

Lay people are asking surgeons many more questions about what they're doing and how and why. You can easily educate yourself on medical and surgical procedures by searching the internet. Now, when a doctor says "we need to do X," the patient immediately hits the internet to research X.

Posted by: Elric The Blade at September 26, 2025 02:44 PM (iFTx/)

126 What I don't understand is why they've stayed at it for so long. They were anti-phonics in the 50s, when I went to school. My grandmother had taught me to "sound it out" with Winnie the Pooh. And I was reading from there. But my first grade teacher hated that, and put me in a slow reading group. So, for over 60 years they've been resolute that American children shall not read.

Fire every single one of them.

Posted by: Eeyore at September 26, 2025 02:44 PM (s0JqF)

127 Yet another thing that we stupidly imported from the UK.
Posted by: Crusader at September 26, 2025 02:39 PM (TN0g+)

Do you panic, shit yourself, and balls up traffic every time you enter a freeway? No? (I mean, hell, maybe you do, but i doubt it)

The whole point of a roundabout is that there's no decision beyond "is there a car coming or not". It's no different than merging anywhere else.

You wouldn't say four way stop lights are stupid if someone made a left turn on red. You'd say "wow look at that asshole". I don't think roundabouts are stupid when someone pulls out in front of me and then stops right in the middle of the road. I think "how did you even get pants onto yourself this morning, dude?".

Posted by: Warai-otoko at September 26, 2025 02:44 PM (06Hmj)

128 I hope I never find myself in a building with an active shooter, but if I do I seriously doubt I will "shelter in place". It all depends on the circumstances (obviously), but IF I see no sign of the active shooter, I'm getting the hell out of there. I've considered carrying (our state allows it without a permit), but haven't acquired the habit yet.


I told my kids:

if you can, run

if you can't run, hide

if hiding didn't work either, FIGHT

Posted by: Black Orchid at September 26, 2025 02:44 PM (FHttA)

129 I was reading long before I started school, but I don't remember how long before.

But I remember going to the dirt track races and being able to read the program they'd sell at the ticket counter.

I couldn't write, but I could read.

Posted by: XTC at September 26, 2025 02:44 PM (UnA8+)

130 Teaching majors are the stupidest people admitted to college.


Posted by: Formerly Virginian



I feel much better.

- gender studies major

Posted by: Thomas Paine at September 26, 2025 02:44 PM (0U5gm)

131 ... Teaching majors are the stupidest people admitted to college. ...
Posted by: Formerly Virginian at September 26, 2025 02:43 PM (N1tpc)
++++
This is not always true.

Of universities that have both programs, it's a coin toss as to whether the Ed school or the J-school have the dumbest students on campus.

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at September 26, 2025 02:45 PM (6bTRc)

132 119 Most of these drills are worthless, anyway... e.g. "Stay in your classroom, sitting against the wall". Yeah? So the shooter doesn't have to hit moving targets? That's some first rate "expert advice" there, idiots.
--------

I hope I never find myself in a building with an active shooter, but if I do I seriously doubt I will "shelter in place". It all depends on the circumstances (obviously), but IF I see no sign of the active shooter, I'm getting the hell out of there. I've considered carrying (our state allows it without a permit), but haven't acquired the habit yet.

Posted by: Crusader at September 26, 2025 02:42 PM (TN0g+)

Flee or Fight are the 2 best options, in that order of possibility. Freeze is always the worst, but the issue is they teach freeze (aka, "hide" which is kinda ridiculous b/c everyone knows folks are in classrooms in school hours) b/c it's easiest for the adults to execute with the kids.

Posted by: Nova Local at September 26, 2025 02:45 PM (tOcjL)

133 Miss Crabtree had it figured in in the 1930s.

Posted by: Our Gang at September 26, 2025 02:45 PM (wVcYX)

134
Gov Meatball: "Florida is not Portland."

Posted by: Soothsayer at September 26, 2025 02:45 PM (f4k7i)

135 One of the things I never learned was diagramming a sentence which for some reason was dropped from literature and English classes by the 80s. It really would have helped my writing.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at September 26, 2025 02:45 PM (dfIr7)

136 > I can't shake the belief that people are getting dumber at a quicker pace.
----

I too feel this is happening
we are headed for the event horizon

the imbecilic singularity, where all the human knowledge ever gathered will vanish

Posted by: Don Black at September 26, 2025 02:45 PM (AOsQT)

137 Hooked on Ebonics

Posted by: Bertram Cabot, Jr. at September 26, 2025 02:45 PM (63Dwl)

138 Florida is America's Dong.

Posted by: toby928 at September 26, 2025 02:46 PM (jc0TO)

139 Another thing I realized as a kid. There were many teachers who were genuinely threatened by kids who were smarter than they. Which was many of them.

Posted by: Eeyore at September 26, 2025 02:46 PM (s0JqF)

140 Posted by: Field Marshal Zhukov at September 26, 2025 02:41 PM (wBaIH)
______________________

Meh...education smeducation. What the illegals really screwed up is off the rack clothes purchasing. If you're tall (say 6'4" and taller) buying off the rack is more difficult because the influx of illegals lowered the average height in the US, and the retailers adjusted their stock purchases accordingly.

Posted by: Orson at September 26, 2025 02:46 PM (dIske)

141 Sinclair Media says they are ending the Jimmy time out.


Posted by: AlaBAMA at September 26, 2025 02:46 PM (l/bhe)

142 > I've considered carrying (our state allows it without a permit), but haven't acquired the habit yet.

It feels weird as hell to carry a concealed weapon for a while. You feel like everyone's looking at you. You feel like an alien. But that feeling passes.

Spend time at the range.

Work on drawing from concealed at home.
Diligently check the weapon several times when you do this. Leave ammo in a completely separate room and say out loud, "The weapon is unloaded" after you check. Then when you load it again, say out loud, "The weapon is loaded" and don't handle it anymore.

Posted by: bonhomme at September 26, 2025 02:46 PM (Yp6az)

143 > Couldn't tell you their names to save my life, but both have long R names, but only one has a tall letter in the middle of it.
Posted by: TheJamesMadison, in a world of gods and monsters with James Whale at September 26, 2025 02:33 PM (GBKbO)

It's even worse when the same character goes by multiple names. Natalia, Natasha, Natalie, Natalushka, Nata, Natusya, whose second name might be Ilyinichna (patronymic) or Rostova (actual family name).

Leo Tolstoy, I'm looking in your direction.

The Russians love this name shit almost as much as Germans love compound words and Italians love hand gestures.

Posted by: Rodrigo Borgia at September 26, 2025 02:46 PM (qpyNK)

144
Gov Meatball promises "severe consequences" for those who fuck around with law enforcement in Florida.

Posted by: Soothsayer at September 26, 2025 02:46 PM (f4k7i)

145 Teaching majors are the stupidest people admitted to college.
Posted by: Formerly Virginian at September 26, 2025 02:43 PM


Even 50 years ago, highest test scorers/high-school GPAs went into STEM departments, and the lowest into education. Over four years, there was a downward migration through majors for those finding the one they were in too difficult.

Education was the floor, again.

Posted by: Duncanthrax, who represents the "geek-conservative" archetype in AoSHQ's ecosystem, according to Gro at September 26, 2025 02:47 PM (0sNs1)

146 What I don't understand is why they've stayed at it for so long. They were anti-phonics in the 50s, when I went to school. My grandmother had taught me to "sound it out" with Winnie the Pooh. ...
Posted by: Eeyore at September 26, 2025 02:44 PM (s0JqF)
++++
My dad took a slightly less fun approach, but same idea. One very long, very boring, very frustrating weekend day and I learned the basics. Phonics. I didn't need to fall back on phonics for very long, but I always could - and still do, when greeted with an unfamiliar (and usually long) word.

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at September 26, 2025 02:47 PM (6bTRc)

147 I'm told illegals are good for test scores. Can't speak english and are illiterate in native tongue. Sounds good.

Posted by: Sports Illustrated PR team at September 26, 2025 02:47 PM (s9EN2)

148 Sounds of the pyrotechnics from the MAGTF show at Miramar drifting in ..... believe it is the only such demo in the world. Combined air/ground operations demonstrated with fixed wing, helos, armor, infantry - and lots of pyrotechnics. Unfortunately have to be there to see most of it, and lost my special access a while back, so can't easily come/go/park at the base amidst the CF that is the larger event.

Posted by: rhomboid at September 26, 2025 02:47 PM (U/Byj)

149 Shameless plug:

PSA

PLANO FIELD LOCKER ELEMENT DOUBLE GUN CASE - PLAM9540

Originally $319.99 Now $79.00 Closeout

https://tinyurl.com/4nwynu6z
Posted by: rickb223 at September 26, 2025 02:20 PM


This is a good deal.

Posted by: toby928 at September 26, 2025 02:47 PM (jc0TO)

150 Fascinating stuff, Ace. I knew phonics instruction was considered superior to alternatives, but didn't know how it established the groundwork for whole-word reading.

Of course, I assumed - correctly, it seems - that the education establishment was responsible for getting it wrong.

Posted by: Paco at September 26, 2025 02:48 PM (mADJX)

151 Gov Meatball: "Florida is not Portland."
Posted by: Soothsayer at September 26, 2025 02:45 PM (f4k7i)


Psst! Even people in Beaverton hate Portland.

Posted by: Kindltot at September 26, 2025 02:48 PM (rbvCR)

152 One of the things I never learned was diagramming a sentence which for some reason was dropped from literature and English classes by the 80s. It really would have helped my writing.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor


I never did either. I was always placed a year ahead in English classes, and tested out of college English, but could not diagram a sentence. The teacher couldn't understand why, and I pointed out that diagramming isn't English, it's more like math.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at September 26, 2025 02:48 PM (0U5gm)

153


When a douche lib starts in on this topic just remind them the voter base for the Dems is illiterate blacks who are kept stupid on purpose.

Posted by: E Buzz at September 26, 2025 02:48 PM (7PLlJ)

154 Shit, Dexter Manly went to college and while at the Redskins someone noticed he was reading the newspaper upside down. His sack records still stand, though. A magnificent DE. He can read now, BTW.

Posted by: pudinhead at September 26, 2025 02:48 PM (AdHga)

155 Didn't the brits come up with some weird Alternate Spelling for everything that they started teaching in schools in the 60s and 70s?

Posted by: XTC at September 26, 2025 02:48 PM (UnA8+)

156 Or we just stop administering tests and then everyone is equal.
- DEI Administrators

Posted by: Its Go Time Donald at September 26, 2025 02:48 PM (wrRTB)

157 121 Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Those who can't teach, teach for the US public school system.

Posted by: Ace at 02:20 PM

I'll post this over and over again.

Teaching majors are the stupidest people admitted to college.

We should really do something about this. (Such as, instead of REQUIRING a teaching degree, we specifically disqualify anyone with a teaching degree.)

Posted by: Formerly Virginian at September 26, 2025 02:43 PM (N1tpc)

VA does not require a teaching degree to teach. Instead, they have coursework requirements for your subject area. You do have to pass the teaching tests, though, and then have your "probationary" year of teaching before you get a license...

You CAN get a degree, but it's not necessary.

Posted by: Nova Local at September 26, 2025 02:48 PM (tOcjL)

158 @141

>>Sinclair Media says they are ending the Jimmy time out.


This is probably for the best, get the psychodrama over with, and point and laugh as his ratings plummet below re-runs of The Electric Company.

Posted by: Thomas Bender at September 26, 2025 02:48 PM (XV/Pl)

159 Follow the money.
A lot is spent on materials and programs, which require consultants, special pay and "training" trips to offsite locations on expense account.

Learning a new "technique" for teaching is not only lucrative for teachers, but it is fun and has plenty of room for graft. So they have new techniques every few years and there is nothing new about "sound it out."

The country has wasted many billions on teaching teachers how to fuck up our kids.

Posted by: bob (moron incognitus) at September 26, 2025 02:49 PM (6Qpsc)

160 Or watch old reruns of The Electric Company.

Posted by: InZona at September 26, 2025 02:49 PM (6zPzw)

161 Yet another thing that we stupidly imported from the UK.
Posted by: Crusader at September 26, 2025 02:39 PM (TN0g+)

Do you panic, shit yourself, and balls up traffic every time you enter a freeway? No? (I mean, hell, maybe you do, but i doubt it)

The whole point of a roundabout is that there's no decision beyond "is there a car coming or not". It's no different than merging anywhere else.

You wouldn't say four way stop lights are stupid if someone made a left turn on red. You'd say "wow look at that asshole". I don't think roundabouts are stupid when someone pulls out in front of me and then stops right in the middle of the road. I think "how did you even get pants onto yourself this morning, dude?".
--------
You mistake the point of my objection. *I* am an amazing driver--very skilled, very aware of where every car on the road is and monitoring every mirror I have at my disposal. I regularly cruise +10 over whatever speed limit is posted and nobody notices because my moves are smooth and I blend with traffic. Its ALL THE REST OF YOU on the road that I distrust--I don't want to have to trust that other people at a roundabout SAW ME and know to do the right thing.

Posted by: Crusader at September 26, 2025 02:49 PM (TN0g+)

162 Here's the tool I think:

www.nationsreportcard.gov/
profiles/stateprofile

Posted by: banana Dream at September 26, 2025 02:49 PM (3uBP9)

163 I could have been first but my quaint southern hospitality demanded that I let Elric have it.

Posted by: fd at September 26, 2025 02:49 PM (vFG9F)

164 I never did either. I was always placed a year ahead in English classes, and tested out of college English, but could not diagram a sentence. The teacher couldn't understand why, and I pointed out that diagramming isn't English, it's more like math.
Posted by: Thomas Paine at September 26, 2025 02:48 PM (0U5gm)
++++
My favorite example of it was some court case (Ohio, I think), where the defense lawyer diagrammed the sentence in the law and demonstrated that "flashing" (as in "flashing lights") was a noun and not a verb, and therefore his client was not guilty of violating "flashing lights" provisions for flashing (verb) his headlights (noun).

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at September 26, 2025 02:49 PM (6bTRc)

165 All the arguments about what method of learning to use still miss the big picture.

The children should've been taught by their parents to read before entering first grade, not dumped at a school and been expected to start from zero.

These kids are years behind pace because their parents refused to teach them anything so they're instantly put on the remedial track and constantly falling further behind.

Posted by: Sjg at September 26, 2025 02:50 PM (aqZN1)

166 Its worth considering that for a leftist young woman, teaching kids standard English and reading is racist because that's not how their culture might do things and imposing white ideals on them is oppressive.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at September 26, 2025 02:50 PM (dfIr7)

167 " teachers union denounced mere parents criticizing teaching methods by saying that surgeons didn't ask lay people how to do surgery. (They literally used this example.)"

Not asking "lay people" about how to perform a surgery, but parents sure should have asked more questions about "why are you forcing an untested 'vax' on my children that are not at risk?"

Or of the unions more parents should have demand to know "why are you destroying my child's learning/future by keeping him isolated and out of school?"

"Trust the Experts" is as absurd as "Trust the Science".

Posted by: illiniwek at September 26, 2025 02:50 PM (vbXSk)

168 I remember in first grade the nuns handed out two little boxes with teeny little chips in them - one (blue?) box for consonants and consonant groups (are those diphthongs?!?) and the other (pink?) vowels and vowel pairs.

and we were to make words as specified. this was along with learning phonetically the previous year.

I loved those little things! could make little stories and mess around with them all day. anyone else remember them?
Posted by: Black Orchid at September 26, 2025 02:43 PM


Hh! W r th mst mscln lngg!

Posted by: The Welsh at September 26, 2025 02:50 PM (0sNs1)

169 Most schools in the South are not union. Unions raise the cost of education. What's going on now is common sense learning instead of all of the nonsense being taught in other state schools. Just get back to the three R's. Tell the unions to get real and teach the kids what they need to know. Not lesbian poetry or some other useless crap.

Posted by: Case at September 26, 2025 02:50 PM (jHd3X)

170 Psst! Even people in Beaverton hate Portland.
-----------------
Most of Oregon hates Portland and California.

Posted by: pudinhead at September 26, 2025 02:50 PM (AdHga)

171 But just like with reading, idiot incompetent educrats decided that the kids who are bad at math should be taught the grab-bag of little tricks and short cuts the kids who are good at math have intuitively learned after doing lots and lots of math by the step-by-step approach.
++++
And for some students, yes, the light will go on and they'll get it. For many, it won't. And those students now can't make change, and never will.
Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at September 26, 2025 02:34 PM (6bTRc)

-------

The problem with the tricks is that kids are taught all of them and it's very easy for a young child to confuse steps in the process. Of my kids my daughter especially had this problem. I kept on thinking as I was trying to help her, "FFS teach her just ONE METHOD to expertise".

Posted by: MAGA_Ken at September 26, 2025 02:50 PM (XVmbP)

172 Check out Sarah Hoyt’s blog where she talks about what the schools in Colorado wanted to do to her sons. You see Sarah is a naturalized USA citizen of Portuguese extraction. So of course she’s Latin and must speak Spanish at home. They wanted to put her sons in Spanish only classes at school! Now never mind that Portuguese is not Spanish: the Hoyts speak English at home, and her boys didn’t know any Spanish! This is what comes from giving education majors cookie cutters and permission to use them!

Posted by: NemoMeImpuneLacessit at September 26, 2025 02:50 PM (ZVgZ4)

173 Funny. The new SOP for my club (a shooting range where the RSOs carry) advises the same as all the other institutions do - run away, or hide, and only as a last resort "resist".

Don't think it'll ever happen, but if there is an "active shooter" at the range, odds are "resist" will be Option 1, and instantly adopted. Shooter will probably not last long.

Posted by: rhomboid at September 26, 2025 02:51 PM (U/Byj)

174 ....and point and laugh as his ratings plummet below re-runs of The Electric Company.
--------

The Electric Company was an amazing show back in the day! I looked forward to every episode.

Posted by: Crusader at September 26, 2025 02:51 PM (TN0g+)

175 I hope I never find myself in a building with an active shooter, but if I do I seriously doubt I will "shelter in place". It all depends on the circumstances (obviously), but IF I see no sign of the active shooter, I'm getting the hell out of there.
Posted by: Crusader at September 26, 2025 02:42 PM (TN0g+)

Right. Cautious reconnaissance, followed by running like a cornholed greyhound.

That's what I'd tell my kids, if I had kids of school age. I'd tell them to keep their mouths shut and go along with the drill, but if it's not a drill, boogie TF out of there, paying no attention to a teacher or other administrator who tells you to stop.


Posted by: Rodrigo Borgia at September 26, 2025 02:51 PM (qpyNK)

176 I never did either. I was always placed a year ahead in English classes, and tested out of college English, but could not diagram a sentence. The teacher couldn't understand why, and I pointed out that diagramming isn't English, it's more like math.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at September 26, 2025 02:48 PM (0U5gm)

So is the game Scrabble...I drove my spouse nuts on that one b/c his vocab ability is exceptional...but I see patterns and point-scoring better, so my 2 letter words going both ways outscored his erudite words, and I'd always win...ox/ax is a great combo on a triple letter score...

Posted by: Nova Local at September 26, 2025 02:51 PM (tOcjL)

177 Or watch old reruns of The Electric Company.

I think that helped me too. The only television I watched as a tot was Sesame Street, then Electric Company.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at September 26, 2025 02:51 PM (dfIr7)

178 One of the things I never learned was diagramming a sentence which for some reason was dropped from literature and English classes by the 80s. It really would have helped my writing.
Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at September 26, 2025 02:45 PM (dfIr7)


Yewtube Community kollige. I need to learn it too. It was dropped from the schools in the 70's I think.

Oddly enough, I had a class in it in Spanish, but I didn't know enough Spanish at the time for it to be useful

Posted by: Kindltot at September 26, 2025 02:51 PM (rbvCR)

179 This reminds me of how I keep track of characters in Russian novels.

Rxxxxxxxxx is one character. Rxxxxhxxxx is another character.

Couldn't tell you their names to save my life, but both have long R names, but only one has a tall letter in the middle of it.
Posted by: TheJamesMadison, in a world of gods and monsters with James Whale at September 26, 2025 02:33 PM (GBKbO)

I have similar problems with Japanese/Korean novels.

Posted by: Formerly Virginian at September 26, 2025 02:51 PM (N1tpc)

180 155 Didn't the brits come up with some weird Alternate Spelling for everything that they started teaching in schools in the 60s and 70s?
Posted by: XTC at September 26, 2025 02:48 PM (UnA8+)
________
They did something like that when my little sister (born 1960) was in school. They gradually reverted to English by the end of the year. She was the 2nd best reader of the 4 of us, though.

Posted by: Eeyore at September 26, 2025 02:51 PM (s0JqF)

181 Most of these drills are worthless, anyway... e.g. "Stay in your classroom, sitting against the wall". Yeah? So the shooter doesn't have to hit moving targets? That's some first rate "expert advice" there, idiots.

When my kid was in school, I preached to her to ignore the "shelter in place". I told her to get out of the classroom by any means necessary -- even through glass windows. Then run to the woods, zig zagging often and randomly. I promised I would find them.

Posted by: Our Country is Screwed at September 26, 2025 02:52 PM (N39Ws)

182 If you aren't reading to and with your kid, it's your fault as much as the school. Sending your kid to school ignorant of simple things sets your kid up to fail. I was lucky, with three older sisters, and I was pushy. I wanted to know. So I learned.

Even in high school, Dad did poetry at the dinner table, along with various geometry and trigonometry problems. And they weren't boring, either. I can still recite Robert Service poems. And I know what a pi radian is, because we ate pie.

Posted by: tcn in AK, Pickle Queen of AK at September 26, 2025 02:52 PM (urtE/)

183 My favorite example of it was some court case (Ohio, I think), where the defense lawyer diagrammed the sentence in the law and demonstrated that "flashing" (as in "flashing lights") was a noun and not a verb, and therefore his client was not guilty of violating "flashing lights" provisions for flashing (verb) his headlights (noun).

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at September 26, 2025 02:49 PM (6bTRc)

Ummm, it's actually an adjective...but we never said lawyers learned English...

Posted by: Nova Local at September 26, 2025 02:52 PM (tOcjL)

184 Sjg with a key point. The home, parents, are the first/ongoing biggest factor in education. Which explains a lot. And is pretty ominous.

Posted by: rhomboid at September 26, 2025 02:52 PM (U/Byj)

185 The Electric Company was an amazing show back in the day! I looked forward to every episode.
Posted by: Crusader at September 26, 2025 02:51 PM (TN0g+)

What about Naomi?

Posted by: InZona at September 26, 2025 02:52 PM (6zPzw)

186 A lot don't track 12th grade for some reason.

Posted by: banana Dream at September 26, 2025 02:52 PM (3uBP9)

187 The bikini-clad equestriennes like reading to their horse after a frolic in the river:
http://tiny.cc/kz3t001

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at September 26, 2025 02:53 PM (6bTRc)

188 Common Sense Educational Standards? We, as public school teachers and therefor your betters, do not have any time for that between the drag queen shows, grooming, molesting and diddling of the kids while we also push DEI and how white people are terrible and love Trump.

Posted by: Teacher's Union Member and Militant Homosexual at September 26, 2025 02:53 PM (R/m4+)

189 I started first grade at age 5 more than 29 years ago without going to kindergarten first. I did not even know what an "alphabet" was. My school taught look say reading and I did NOT learn how to read. It was a total puzzle to me.


Posted by: NancyB at September 26, 2025 02:37 PM (BV6iw)

Same here. I got pulled out of kindergarten shortly after starting because I was already reading. I guess they figured there was no reason for me to be playing with crayons when I was reading the box they came in. lol

Posted by: Berserker-Dragonheads Division at September 26, 2025 02:53 PM (snZF9)

190 "It really would have helped my writing."

I don't know it didn't help mine.

Posted by: fd at September 26, 2025 02:53 PM (vFG9F)

191 I had a deep, passionate love of diagramming sentences. Something about it, man. The order out of chaos. The very rules of making sounds with your face made tangible. Symbols to be manipulated, with their own crystalline objective truth regardless of if any actual face has ever made that exact sequence of sound before in human history...

Posted by: Warai-otoko at September 26, 2025 02:53 PM (06Hmj)

192 What else would you expect when the intelligent aren't having kids, while the morons do?
Posted by: Archimedes at September 26, 2025 02:34 PM (Riz8t)

There was a movie with this premise...

Posted by: Formerly Virginian at September 26, 2025 02:53 PM (N1tpc)

193 but I see patterns and point-scoring better, so my 2 letter words going both ways outscored his erudite words, and I'd always win...ox/ax is a great combo on a triple letter score

That's the way to win Scrabble. Not the best words, but playing the board. I tried to play Scrabble in Russian when I was in 4th year and it was humiliating. I could not think of a single word to make. You think your vocabulary is getting pretty good until you pull that game out.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at September 26, 2025 02:53 PM (dfIr7)

194 Ok, a story from long ago. Back in the 70's, schools still taught phonics (roughly...). I quickly learned to read and became a VORACIOUS reader by 5/6-th grades. My younger sister had problems (not with understanding, but with her eyesight, which had her undergoing eye surgery between 2nd/3rd grades). In order to help her catch up, my parents invested in a "Hooked on Phonics" home package, and I got drafted into helping her. By the time she hit 5th grade she was reading ABOVE grade level.

BL: Phonics WORKS if you start early, and can even help you catch up, if you start EARLY!

-SLV

Posted by: Shy Lurking Voter at September 26, 2025 02:54 PM (e/Osv)

195 Hi Ace, my love.

I am from Mississippi. Have not lived there for 50yrs since college out West, but have family there and a farm. When I went out West, age 20yrs, I was unique in many ways. First, I had teeth. And,while I had a thick accent, I was competing in difficult pre-med classes with mostly males. I honestly did not care what people thought of me as once they knew me I had many friends. I had a blast in college and beyond.

I had a very good public school education. Our school had black kids who wanted a better education. Of 50 kids in this class, many became doctors, lawyers, architects, nurses and teachers. I became a RN from a very tough college in the West.

Then the federal government redistricted us in 1970. I skipped my junior year by taking American Lit and American History in summer school. Was basically forced to to to a private school for 1 miserable year. Graduated HS at age 16yrs.

I had enough self confidence to believe I could achieve anything, and did.

Mississippi, from what I read a few years ago, decided to introduce phonics and keep back 4th graders who could not compete. This is the result.

I am a redneck, a title I bear with pride, and Try Me.

Posted by: ChristyBlinkyTheGreat at September 26, 2025 02:54 PM (6PCLE)

196 I didn't learn to diagram a sentence either, until I took Latin. Hell, until I took Latin I didn't know what the difference was between an adverb and an adjective.

Posted by: Eeyore at September 26, 2025 02:54 PM (s0JqF)

197 > Don't think it'll ever happen, but if there is an "active shooter" at the range, odds are "resist" will be Option 1, and instantly adopted. Shooter will probably not last long.
Posted by: rhomboid at September 26, 2025 02:51 PM (U/Byj)

Maybe 20 years ago, there was an idiot who tried to stick up a gun store in the Seattle area. Even worse, there were a couple of King County cop cars in the parking lot (this particular store was popular with the local cops).

This did not work out well for him.

I mean you can hardly even call that a Darwin Award.

Posted by: Rodrigo Borgia at September 26, 2025 02:54 PM (qpyNK)

198 Ummm, it's actually an adjective...but we never said lawyers learned English...
Posted by: Nova Local at September 26, 2025 02:52 PM (tOcjL)
++++
LOL. That's on me.

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at September 26, 2025 02:54 PM (6bTRc)

199 Kindltot, this saying of course covers lots of ground, but there's clarity and accuracy that give it a lot of zing:

We used to teach Latin and Greek in high school - now we teach remedial English in college.

(CA state colleges - not the UCs, the other system - discontinued counting the remedial English/math students enrolled in such courses a few years back - but I believe it was hitting close to 50% at some campuses)

Posted by: rhomboid at September 26, 2025 02:54 PM (U/Byj)

200 The bikini-clad equestriennes like reading to their horse after a frolic in the river:
http://tiny.cc/kz3t001

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at September 26, 2025 02:53 PM (6bTRc)

No reading required here, just really good eyes. lol

Posted by: Berserker-Dragonheads Division at September 26, 2025 02:55 PM (snZF9)

201 192 What else would you expect when the intelligent aren't having kids, while the morons do?
Posted by: Archimedes at September 26, 2025 02:34 PM (Riz8t)

There was a movie with this premise...
Posted by: Formerly Virginian at September 26, 2025 02:53 PM (N1tpc)

Banjos played in the background?

Posted by: Our Country is Screwed at September 26, 2025 02:55 PM (N39Ws)

202 I was lucky, with three older sisters, and I was pushy. I wanted to know. So I learned.

Same here, but with brothers. My three older brothers were so amazing and brilliant I just had to learn to do the stuff they did. It made me seem precocious and smart but really I was just following their unconscious leadership.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at September 26, 2025 02:55 PM (dfIr7)

203 152 One of the things I never learned was diagramming a sentence which for some reason was dropped from literature and English classes by the 80s. It really would have helped my writing.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor
_________________________

Absolutely. And, the amusing thing is that you can see that deficit in the Trans movement. They are all pious about their pronouns, but have no idea how pronouns work. One moment they are telling you they recognize as They/Them...and in the next they are using singular pronouns like "I" and "my". Mostly, it's because they don't realize that "I" and "my" are singular pronouns, which they would had they learned to diagram a sentence.

Posted by: Orson at September 26, 2025 02:56 PM (dIske)

204
You know what else I want to rant about? Acronyms.

Eggheads are so fixated on creating clever acronyms, they have nothing left in the tank to make their programs actually, you know, effective. The acronym is all that matters.

Posted by: Soothsayer at September 26, 2025 02:56 PM (f4k7i)

205 For reasons I still don't really understand, French was a mandatory class in my elementary school.

I didn't (and still don't) live in a French-speaking area.

Posted by: XTC at September 26, 2025 02:56 PM (UnA8+)

206 We have much more important things than math or reeding to teach our children, like what all the colors and letters mean in a LGBTQIA+ flag, and that Black Lives Matter, and that the pronoun 'they' can sometimes be plural, and sometimes singular, and the butt is not just for pooping, and that the United States was founded by evil White Men who kept black people as slaves, and that Christians believe in fairy tales in the Bible but Muslims believe in the Holy Quran, and that Love is Love......

Posted by: Teachers Unions at September 26, 2025 02:56 PM (Dv3i1)

207
It's already happening.

If you want to be industry, be in the South.
Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!)

===============

In that case, I also might feel a little more hope that this educational resurgence leads to a cultural resurgence as well. Imagine some southern capital becoming a big center for art and world-class theater and music, and draining artists away from New York.

Posted by: Blonde Morticia at September 26, 2025 02:56 PM (n7CIX)

208 Hi Ace, my love. ...
Posted by: ChristyBlinkyTheGreat at September 26, 2025 02:54 PM (6PCLE)
++++
LOL

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at September 26, 2025 02:56 PM (6bTRc)

209 I just embarrassed myself. I went into a café for brunch leaving Charlie the poodle in the 4Runner with the windows cracked. When left the café and approached the 4Runner, I could see Charlie eyeballing me so, as I often do, I said, "Hi, precious." Then I saw that in the car parked next to me, there was an old, about my age, sitting the driver's seat with the window down. "I was talking to my dog," I explained.

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, [0] Day(s) Since Leftist Terror Attack! at September 26, 2025 02:56 PM (L/fGl)

210 Tkhans for that. Now I'm eye-crossed.

Posted by: Lex at September 26, 2025 02:57 PM (l5xX+)

211 "run to the woods, zig zagging often"

Serpintine! Shell!

Posted by: Sports Illustrated PR team at September 26, 2025 02:57 PM (s9EN2)

212 I still remember stumbling over the curiously pronounced "plymouth."
Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at September 26, 2025 02:43 PM (dfIr7)

My daughter (4th grade) literally did this last night.

Posted by: Formerly Virginian at September 26, 2025 02:57 PM (N1tpc)

213
Literate?

Riddle me this:

I'm SQRT((1+(tan**2)C) and I know it.

Posted by: Wesley Crusher at September 26, 2025 02:57 PM (0sNs1)

214 166 Its worth considering that for a leftist young woman, teaching kids standard English and reading is racist because that's not how their culture might do things and imposing white ideals on them is oppressive.
Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at September 26, 2025 02:50 PM (dfIr7)

In reality, she's afraid they will be smarter than her.

Posted by: tcn in AK, Pickle Queen of AK at September 26, 2025 02:57 PM (urtE/)

215 Hell, until I took Latin I didn't know what the difference was between an adverb and an adjective.

Yeah taking foreign languages taught me way more grammar than studying English in school. Verb cases and tenses and on and on. You had to get at least a basic understanding or you couldn't move on.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at September 26, 2025 02:57 PM (dfIr7)

216 California could have better results if so many of the kids didn't go home to a household where nobody speaks or writes English.

And there's no book or newspapers.
And drugs etc.

Millions of them.
Bondi finally got around to demanding California's voting records. California has in the past refused an audit of its voting records and it won't give it up.

Bondi should demand the driver's license application records where 800000+ illegal aliens were given licenses. You can bet many vote.

Posted by: torabora at September 26, 2025 02:57 PM (CaODM)

217 I'm SQRT((1+(tan**2)C) and I know it.
Posted by: Wesley Crusher at September 26, 2025 02:57 PM (0sNs1)

Shut up, Wesley.

Posted by: tcn in AK, Pickle Queen of AK at September 26, 2025 02:58 PM (urtE/)

218 it is easier in mississippi because the alphabet they use has 21 letters.

Posted by: n at September 26, 2025 02:58 PM (yGQ+9)

219 213
Literate?

Riddle me this:

I'm SQRT((1+(tan**2)C) and I know it.
Posted by: Wesley Crusher at September 26, 2025 02:57 PM (0sNs1)

Shut up Wesley

Posted by: Capt Jean Luc Picard at September 26, 2025 02:58 PM (N39Ws)

220 Excellent post. Thanks for shining a light on this crucial issue.

Posted by: jocon307 at September 26, 2025 02:58 PM (EuROc)

221
We used to teach Latin and Greek in high school - now we teach remedial English in college.


Posted by: rhomboid at September 26, 2025 02:54 PM (U/Byj)

Son had severe (clinical) agoraphobia for over 15 years. He's just started college and as a freshman was placed in junior English classes because he could actually read and write, and even better: cite sources properly. He's also taking ancient Greek and loving it - has decided to minor in it - since he wants to go into art/museum archival and preservation. His classmates don't know how to write a paragraph without consulting ChatGPT, and it shows.

Posted by: moki at September 26, 2025 02:59 PM (wLjpr)

222 > 160 Or watch old reruns of The Electric Company.
Posted by: InZona at September 26, 2025 02:49 PM (6zPzw)

Jane of the Jungle. Mmmm... (yes, I was a precocious lad).

Posted by: Rodrigo Borgia at September 26, 2025 02:59 PM (qpyNK)

223 ...ox/ax is a great combo on a triple letter score...

Posted by: Nova Local



Last weekend I managed to put 'oxide' on a triple

Posted by: Thomas Paine at September 26, 2025 02:59 PM (0U5gm)

224 Yeah taking foreign languages taught me way more grammar than studying English in school. Verb cases and tenses and on and on. You had to get at least a basic understanding or you couldn't move on.
Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at September 26, 2025 02:57 PM (dfIr7)
++++
Having strong skills and a wide vocabulary in English makes learning related (read: W. European) language easier, too. Finding cognates and mongrel loanwords is much easier when you know a lot of words. Especially coming *from* English, which has spent its entire history helping itself to everyone else's vocabulary.

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at September 26, 2025 03:00 PM (6bTRc)

225 I didn't (and still don't) live in a French-speaking area.
Posted by: XTC

The AoS comments seem to have an inordinate amount of French language posts. You're welcome! Er, bon accueil!

Posted by: Chuck Martel at September 26, 2025 03:00 PM (Dv3i1)

226 47 ...
It's no different than Aztec priests pretending only the can commune with the gods. I suppose we should be grateful they aren't cutting out hearts. Yet.
Posted by: Archimedes at September 26, 2025 02:32 PM (Riz8t)
_______
Do we actually know they pretended that, or is that just an assumption.

Posted by: Eeyore at September 26, 2025 03:00 PM (s0JqF)

227 Like ferrous oxide, we never sleep.

Posted by: Big Penguin at September 26, 2025 03:01 PM (0sNs1)

228 For reasons I still don't really understand, French was a mandatory class in my elementary school.

I didn't (and still don't) live in a French-speaking area.

Posted by: XTC at September 26, 2025 02:56 PM (UnA8+)

Same here, 7th grade junior high. I had no clue wtf that was about.

Posted by: Berserker-Dragonheads Division at September 26, 2025 03:01 PM (snZF9)

229 Like ferrous oxide, we never sleep.
Posted by: Big Penguin at September 26, 2025 03:01 PM (0sNs1)
++++
*snort*

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at September 26, 2025 03:01 PM (6bTRc)

230 224 Having strong skills and a wide vocabulary in English makes learning related (read: W. European) language easier, too. Finding cognates and mongrel loanwords is much easier when you know a lot of words. Especially coming *from* English, which has spent its entire history helping itself to everyone else's vocabulary.
Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at September 26, 2025 03:00 PM (6bTRc)

Trying to learn anything with a completely different writing system, however, is maddening.

Posted by: XTC at September 26, 2025 03:01 PM (UnA8+)

231 A somewhat amusing aside. Regarding the Ryder Cup, US is struggling a bit today. But...

They did team intros on Wednesday. Keegan Bradley, the US Captain, thanks Governor Hochul because the Cup is at Beth Page Black on Long Island. I hadn't heard one boo in either his speech or the European captain's speech, but when Keegan mentioned Hochul the golf crowd was not shy about letting her have it.

Does that portend anything?

Posted by: Lex at September 26, 2025 03:01 PM (l5xX+)

232 215 Hell, until I took Latin I didn't know what the difference was between an adverb and an adjective.

Yeah taking foreign languages taught me way more grammar than studying English in school. Verb cases and tenses and on and on. You had to get at least a basic understanding or you couldn't move on.
Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at September 26, 2025 02:57 PM (dfIr7)

I had grammar every year of jr. hi and high school. I can diagram the hell out of a sentence. Not sure why I would want to, but there it is.

I also type like a maniac. That little woman with the 3 inch heels and the 8 inch beehive drilled us until we nearly couldn't feel our fingers. Imagine how excited I was when we got IBM Selectrics instead of the old black manuals. I'm still hell on keyboards.

And I have some inkling that history didn't start at WWII.

Posted by: tcn in AK, Pickle Queen of AK at September 26, 2025 03:01 PM (urtE/)

233 What else would you expect when the intelligent aren't having kids, while the morons do?

I would argue the midwits aren't having kids, because they're the ones most susceptible to the Marxist Calamity Of The Day (global warming or whatever). But they greatly outnumber the actually intelligent.

Posted by: Ian S. at September 26, 2025 03:01 PM (2ocoG)

234 "I've banged the drum about this a lot. Educrats are Cargo Cultists who see what the faster-readers are doing and think, "Hey, we'll just tell the slow-readers to do what the fast-readers are doing!"

No.

That's the excuse they sell it with. But the people actually calling the shots are deliberately destroying vast swathes of our society for fun and personal/ideological profit.

They know EXACTLY what they are doing and why.

Posted by: heya at September 26, 2025 03:01 PM (wMDIO)

235 Ok, this is the right place to bring this up.

The word you want is TRANSEXUAL, not transgender.

Sex is either male or female.

Gender refers to possessive pronouns: his or hers.

We all learned this in school. Act like it.

Posted by: Plants flag at September 26, 2025 03:01 PM (pJcVX)

236 @julie_kelly2
·
22h
ABC News reporting that career prosecutors in the Eastern District of VA office prepared a “declination memo” citing reasons the DOJ should not pursue charges against Jim Comey.


well knock me ovah with a feathah!

Posted by: Don Black at September 26, 2025 03:01 PM (AOsQT)

237 His classmates don't know how to write a paragraph without consulting ChatGPT, and it shows.

Posted by: moki



My department gets a lot of recent graduates, ready to be trained for management. I spend the first few months teaching them how to write so their emails aren't an embarrassment.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at September 26, 2025 03:01 PM (0U5gm)

238 Same here, 7th grade junior high. I had no clue wtf that was about.
Posted by: Berserker-Dragonheads Division at September 26, 2025 03:01 PM (snZF9)
++++
Ditto.

7th: French. Mandatory.
8th: Spanish. Mandatory.
High school: either. Two semesters mandatory, elective thereafter.

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at September 26, 2025 03:02 PM (6bTRc)

239 Ooooh, I love "Try me!"

Posted by: pawn at September 26, 2025 03:02 PM (PmITa)

240 Especially coming *from* English, which has spent its entire history helping itself to everyone else's vocabulary.
Posted by: Joe Mann


it was the best of languages, it was the worst of languages

Posted by: n at September 26, 2025 03:02 PM (yGQ+9)

241 I didn't (and still don't) live in a French-speaking area.
Posted by: XTC at September 26, 2025 02:56 PM


Yet.

Posted by: Quebecois at September 26, 2025 03:02 PM (0sNs1)

242 Dropping this here because willowed last thread and it might not make it to Sunday's Gub thread.

Palmetto State Armory

PLANO FIELD LOCKER ELEMENT DOUBLE GUN CASE - PLAM9540

Originally $319.99 Now $79.00 Closeout

https://tinyurl.com/4nwynu6z

Posted by: rickb223 at September 26, 2025 03:02 PM (PFH6n)

243 Its ALL THE REST OF YOU on the road that I distrust--I don't want to have to trust that other people at a roundabout SAW ME and know to do the right thing.
Posted by: Crusader at September 26, 2025 02:49 PM (TN0g+)

That's no different than any other yield sign. I agree, people are cretinous window lickers and a solid 50% of motorists should not only not have licenses, they should be put under observation in some kind of special facility. But that's not the roundabout's fault, that's all of traffic. You always make sure people are stopping for their red light, same with yield signs, same with roundabouts. But everyone blames the roundabout when some asshole barrels into it without looking, while no one blames the red light when people run it.

Posted by: Warai-otoko at September 26, 2025 03:02 PM (06Hmj)

244 I didn't (and still don't) live in a French-speaking area.
Posted by: XTC

The AoS comments seem to have an inordinate amount of French language posts. You're welcome! Er, bon accueil!
Posted by: Chuck Martel at September 26, 2025 03:00 PM (Dv3i1)

Sacre blue, mes ami!

Posted by: Count de Monet at September 26, 2025 03:02 PM (wVcYX)

245
transvestite

vest = clothes, garb, attire

All these fruits are doing are dressing up as the opposite sex.

Posted by: Soothsayer at September 26, 2025 03:02 PM (f4k7i)

246 2025 state education ranking.

https://tinyurl.com/dh3dhnrb

Posted by: thatcrazyjerseyguy at September 26, 2025 03:02 PM (5xuJ/)

247 I've heard that learning Latin makes it easier to learn other Romance languages --Spanish, Portuguese, French (sorta), Romanian.

I don't know. My school didn't offer Latin. I still feel ripped off.

Posted by: Rodrigo Borgia at September 26, 2025 03:03 PM (qpyNK)

248 12 weeks until Christmas.

Posted by: rickb223 at September 26, 2025 03:03 PM (PFH6n)

249 65 Ace thinks we read good.
Posted by: pudinhead at September 26, 2025 02:32 PM

Ace also thinks none of us read his content.
Posted by: Duncanthrax, a mid-tier AoSHQ commenter, according to Grok at September 26, 2025 02:34 PM (0sNs1)
________
Who reads the content? Hell, I doubt Ace does. I'm not sure doing that is allowed at this site.

Posted by: Eeyore at September 26, 2025 03:03 PM (s0JqF)

250 @julie_kelly2
·
22h
ABC News reporting that career prosecutors in the Eastern District of VA office prepared a “declination memo” citing reasons the DOJ should not pursue charges against Jim Comey.


well knock me ovah with a feathah!
Posted by: Don Black at September 26, 2025 03:01 PM


I want to read it.

Posted by: toby928 at September 26, 2025 03:03 PM (jc0TO)

251 Long ago, SCOTUS ruled illegal aliens children even if illegal aliens themselves HAVE to attend public schools at zero cost with 100% benefits.

The Court figured they're never getting deported so we might as well educate their kids.

That's how stupid the Court is. Weapons grade stupid.

Posted by: torabora at September 26, 2025 03:03 PM (CaODM)

252 I've heard that learning Latin makes it easier to learn other Romance languages --Spanish, Portuguese, French (sorta), Romanian.



the romance does not refer to brassiere buster novels

Posted by: n at September 26, 2025 03:03 PM (yGQ+9)

253 228 Same here, 7th grade junior high. I had no clue wtf that was about.
Posted by: Berserker-Dragonheads Division at September 26, 2025 03:01 PM (snZF9)

I was taking it 1st-5th grades.

And ended up back in it in 7th grade because I didn't have any interest in Spanish (which was the only other choice in middle school, Latin was later added in high school, but since I didn't want to be a lawyer, I had no interest in that, either.)

The more I think about it, my middle and high schools were absolute shit, when it came to courses offered.

Posted by: XTC at September 26, 2025 03:03 PM (UnA8+)

254 ·
22h
ABC News reporting that career prosecutors in the Eastern District of VA office prepared a “declination memo” citing reasons the DOJ should not pursue charges against Jim Comey.

Didn't a Grand Jury rule yes ?

Posted by: It's me donna at September 26, 2025 03:04 PM (VE6XX)

255 I honestly don't recall how I learned to read, but I know I was reading in kindergarten at the latest (mid-60s). I remember reading the newspaper (comics mostly) very early in grade school.

I remember learning how to "diagram sentences" in grade school.

I also remember that it wasn't until high school that I was really taught how to write well, and not just grammatically.

Posted by: Tex Lovera at September 26, 2025 03:04 PM (wtvvX)

256 For reasons I still don't really understand, French was a mandatory class in my elementary school.

I didn't (and still don't) live in a French-speaking area.

Posted by: XTC at September 26, 2025 02:56 PM (UnA8+)

Same here, 7th grade junior high. I had no clue wtf that was about.

Posted by: Berserker-Dragonheads Division at September 26, 2025 03:01 PM


Our rural elementary school had optional language classes starting in the 6th grade. IIRC they had both German and French. Everybody that I knew wanted to take German because then we would know what the Krauts were saying when we watched Rat Patrol and Combat on TV. Sadly they both got dropped the year before I could take one. I don't recall why but my guess is both teachers retired.

Posted by: Mister Scott (Formerly GWS) at September 26, 2025 03:04 PM (0N4FZ)

257 >>> The bikini-clad equestriennes like reading to their horse after a frolic in the river:
http://tiny.cc/kz3t001
Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at September 26, 2025 02:53 PM (6bTRc)


Riding a horse is exactly what you'd expect walking by committee would be like,

me: I would like pass on the left away from that giant cobweb with the face stabbing spider hanging down from the low branch.

horse: Sure bro, except I'm walking you on the right directly through that cobweb because there's a red bucket sitting way over to the left I haven't seen before and it's spooooooky.

Posted by: banana Dream at September 26, 2025 03:04 PM (3uBP9)

258 Imagine how excited I was when we got IBM Selectrics instead of the old black manuals

----

I owe everything to the IBM Selectric

Posted by: Jharles Cohnson at September 26, 2025 03:04 PM (H/vEE)

259 223 ...ox/ax is a great combo on a triple letter score...

Posted by: Nova Local

Last weekend I managed to put 'oxide' on a triple

Posted by: Thomas Paine at September 26, 2025 02:59 PM (0U5gm)

That's a good one...

My spouse would probably make it, then I'd add an S and make another word while doing it to score 2 words.

Posted by: Nova Local at September 26, 2025 03:04 PM (tOcjL)

260 I didn't (and still don't) live in a French-speaking area.
Posted by: XTC

The AoS comments seem to have an inordinate amount of French language posts. You're welcome! Er, bon accueil!
Posted by: Chuck Martel

Sacre blue, mes ami!
Posted by: Count de Monet


This thread went to the dogs toot sweet.

Posted by: rickb223 at September 26, 2025 03:04 PM (PFH6n)

261 Houston's HISD decided to try something new and brought in a guy that had successes in education in Texas and Colorado.
Rearranged a bunch of teachers, demoted and fired a bunch of useless principals, pretty much gutted a failing enterprise.
Protests galore from the education crowd.
Somehow within two years schools rated F became Bs and a whole lot of A rated schools popped up.
Whiners are still whining. Amongst theyselves.

Posted by: DanMan at September 26, 2025 03:04 PM (8uzBS)

262 ABC News reporting that career prosecutors in the Eastern District of VA office prepared a “declination memo” citing reasons the DOJ should not pursue charges against Jim Comey.



how do they say, tell me you are tired of your job without telling me you are tired of your job?

Posted by: n at September 26, 2025 03:05 PM (yGQ+9)

263 "No One Is Above The Law" except ...

During his CNN appearance with Erin Burnett, Blumenthal openly bragged about his plans to interfere with the DOJ’s case against Comey.

Blumenthal admitted that Senate Democrats are drafting legislation to give “remedies and rights” to political operatives like Comey who face prosecution, claiming America is on the “way to tyranny” because Trump’s DOJ dared to indict a Democrat’s ally.

I was told the FBI is apolitical.

Posted by: SMOD at September 26, 2025 03:05 PM (RHGPo)

264 phonics was fun

Posted by: cherries in season at September 26, 2025 03:05 PM (8ocT3)

265 They wanted to put her sons in Spanish only classes at school! Now never mind that Portuguese is not Spanish: the Hoyts speak English at home, and her boys didn’t know any Spanish! This is what comes from giving education majors cookie cutters and permission to use them!
Posted by: NemoMeImpuneLacessit

--------------------
As I said, follow the money.

I bet CO pays more for ESL students.
"Fuck those wetback kids - we need to maximize revenue!"

Posted by: bob (moron incognitus) at September 26, 2025 03:05 PM (6Qpsc)

266 In the New York State suburbs, where all the illegal immigrants are escaping to because Red States are cutting them off, they’ve moved a lot of their teaching resources into the ESL classes. Those resources have come from the taxpayers children who now get the shaft for New York’s new favored class.

In a state where insurance companies are leaving the auto, healthcare and home markets, the energy costs are higher than any other state, the taxes are confiscatory levels, forced vaccination for children is the norm, and the Democrat legislature is plucking away the Bill of Rights one at a time, it’s the final straw. There is zero reason to live in NY.

Posted by: Vengeance at September 26, 2025 03:05 PM (GMR//)

267 You know if they were actually teaching the students instead of trying to fuck them, or brainwash them with weird-ass sexualized shit, or brainwash them then fuck them, the kids might be able to read, write, spell and add.

Posted by: Forget phonics let's talk fellatio at September 26, 2025 03:05 PM (TbWk/)

268 *transvestite

vest = clothes, garb, attire*


Is this about me?

Posted by: Corporal Max Klinger at September 26, 2025 03:05 PM (pJcVX)

269 Comey is above the law.
That's what 8647 was all about.
He was rubbing our nose in it.

Posted by: torabora at September 26, 2025 03:06 PM (CaODM)

270 I wish I had a classical education. They offer that at the Catholic school in Anchorage. Kids learn Latin starting in 3rd grade, and Greek in middle school. Those languages are the basis of pretty much all history, science, literature, etc. My Latin sucks since I only learned it for the Mass, on my own. My Greek is non-existent. I would love to read the Bible in the original Greek. It would likely be an eye-opener.

Bring back the Trivium and the Quadrivium. Make kids think instead of regurgitate. Keep them challenged. Fix America.

Posted by: tcn in AK, Pickle Queen of AK at September 26, 2025 03:06 PM (urtE/)

271 22h
ABC News reporting that career prosecutors in the Eastern District of VA office prepared a “declination memo” citing reasons the DOJ should not pursue charges against Jim Comey.


yeah, and last week they reported that career imams in the eastern district of middle prepared a memo citing reasons that islam should take over the world.

Posted by: Berserker-Dragonheads Division at September 26, 2025 03:06 PM (snZF9)

272 BREAKING: Transportation Secretary Duffy announces terrifying findings of audit

- States are issuing CDL’s to people who are in our country illegally
- Thousands of licenses issued that should never have been issued
- Newscum’s California was the WORST offender
- eligibility requirements are a joke
- states are not following procedure

Effective immediately, the eligibility for non-domiciled CDLs is completely overhauled.

Posted by: SMOD at September 26, 2025 03:06 PM (RHGPo)

273 This thread went to the dogs toot sweet.
Posted by: rickb223 at September 26, 2025 03:04 PM


And yet, we can go for days, sometimes weeks, without real art on the Art Thread.

Posted by: Duncanthrax, a mid-tier AoSHQ commenter, according to Grok at September 26, 2025 03:06 PM (0sNs1)

274
“declination memo”

LOVE how Disney "News" is making this out to be an official document. LOL @ "career lawyers" like they're non-partisans. Fuuuuuuck you.

You know what it is? It's a bullshit note from Democrat activists within the office.

Posted by: Soothsayer at September 26, 2025 03:06 PM (f4k7i)

275 213
Literate?

Riddle me this:

I'm SQRT((1+(tan**2)C) and I know it.
Posted by: Wesley Crusher


Don’t you mean
SQRT((1+(tan(C)**2) = sec C?

Posted by: NemoMeImpuneLacessit at September 26, 2025 03:06 PM (ZVgZ4)

276 I knew how to read before kindergarten.

My sister taught me.

She was 7.

Posted by: garrett at September 26, 2025 03:06 PM (tH0WK)

277 The bikini-clad equestriennes like reading to their horse after a frolic in the river:
http://tiny.cc/kz3t001
Posted by: Joe Mann


guessing when the ride has finished, the bruising, abrasions, and soreness are going to mean these two are of no use to anybody.

Posted by: n at September 26, 2025 03:06 PM (yGQ+9)

278 In seventh grade, I had a choice between French and German. I have no idea why Spanish wasn't offered. I took French. It actually helped many years later, when I had to go to Paris regularly. I can at least order from a menu and tell the driver where I need to go.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at September 26, 2025 03:06 PM (0U5gm)

279
“declination memo”
"career lawyers"

See it?
See how Disney "News" just gaslit You?

Posted by: Soothsayer at September 26, 2025 03:07 PM (f4k7i)

280
Blumenthal admitted that Senate Democrats are drafting legislation to give “remedies and rights” to political operatives like Comey who face prosecution, claiming America is on the “way to tyranny” because Trump’s DOJ dared to indict a Democrat’s ally.


Funny they didn't do third during Trump's First term when they were rounding up his people

Posted by: It's me donna at September 26, 2025 03:07 PM (VE6XX)

281 Huh, puzzling. I would've thought all the time dedicated to Drag Queen Story Hours would've been such a boon to children's reading skills!

Posted by: Lady in Black at September 26, 2025 03:07 PM (qBdHI)

282 For reasons I still don't really understand, French was a mandatory class in my elementary school.

I didn't (and still don't) live in a French-speaking area.

Posted by: XTC at September 26, 2025 02:56

We had the choice between French or Spanish in high school. The one good piece of advice my brother ever gave me was to take French, since "wouldn't you rather vacation in Paris than Nicaragua?"

Posted by: Josephistan at September 26, 2025 03:07 PM (w/kbs)

283 I also type like a maniac. That little woman with the 3 inch heels and the 8 inch beehive drilled us until we nearly couldn't feel our fingers. Imagine how excited I was when we got IBM Selectrics instead of the old black manuals. I'm still hell on keyboards. ...
Posted by: tcn in AK, Pickle Queen of AK at September 26, 2025 03:01 PM (urtE/)
++++
The IBM Selectric II is still the keyboard with the best feel. IBM's own attempt to reproduce it for computer use - the legendary Model M keyboard - is close.

I more or less have to use one. I type *hard.* I always have (but I have used a manual typewriter maybe once or twice in my life). My wrists and fingers would hurt when I typed a lot - and I work in computers, so it was all the time. Braces, whatever. Nothing worked.

An older colleague told me, "spend a hundred bucks and buy a Model M. It's a lot. It's worth it. Your problem will go away." He was right. The key action on it prevents bottoming out by allowing you to feel it about to break free on each keypress because of how the mechanism works, and so you unconsciously back off.

Haven't had finger or wrist pain in *years.* That old guy saved me a lot of pain.

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at September 26, 2025 03:07 PM (6bTRc)

284 Back in junior high, I was reading John Hersey's novel The War Lover. The love interest is Penelope, you know, like antelope. I thought what a weird name.

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, [0] Day(s) Since Leftist Terror Attack! at September 26, 2025 03:07 PM (L/fGl)

285
Here is a good linguistics question:

Is English best described as a Cajun, a Pidgin, or a Koine?

Posted by: Kindltot at September 26, 2025 03:07 PM (rbvCR)

286 Hah! I blew the ()s too!

Posted by: NemoMeImpuneLacessit at September 26, 2025 03:08 PM (ZVgZ4)

287 Effective immediately, the eligibility for non-domiciled CDLs is completely overhauled.


overhauled?!?!

fucking END IT

Posted by: Black Orchid at September 26, 2025 03:08 PM (FHttA)

288 I would love to read the Bible in the original Greek. It would likely be an eye-opener.
Posted by: tcn in AK, Pickle Queen of AK at September 26, 2025 03:06 PM


I am learning that if you truly want to *study* the Bible, the original Greek is the Way.

Posted by: Duncanthrax, a mid-tier AoSHQ commenter, according to Grok at September 26, 2025 03:08 PM (0sNs1)

289
Funny they didn't do third during Trump's First term when they were rounding up his people
Posted by: It's me donna at September 26, 2025 03:07 PM (VE6XX)

Damned autocucumber.. How did this become third ?

Posted by: It's me donna at September 26, 2025 03:08 PM (VE6XX)

290 270 I wish I had a classical education. They offer that at the Catholic school in Anchorage. Kids learn Latin starting in 3rd grade, and Greek in middle school. Those languages are the basis of pretty much all history, science, literature, etc. My Latin sucks since I only learned it for the Mass, on my own. My Greek is non-existent. I would love to read the Bible in the original Greek. It would likely be an eye-opener.

Bring back the Trivium and the Quadrivium. Make kids think instead of regurgitate. Keep them challenged. Fix America.

Posted by: tcn in AK, Pickle Queen of AK at September 26, 2025 03:06 PM (urtE/)

No time like the present - you can learn at any age.

I didn't read the great dystopian classics til adulthood...heck, I didn't read almost any classic til adulthood...

Posted by: Nova Local at September 26, 2025 03:08 PM (tOcjL)

291 As I said, follow the money.

I bet CO pays more for ESL students.
"Fuck those wetback kids - we need to maximize revenue!"
Posted by: bob (moron incognitus) at September 26, 2025 03:05 PM (6Qpsc)

Same with my son. Every year they wanted to enroll him in special Native American tutoring, right up until they found out he is Mayan and doesn't belong to a "recognized tribe." Then suddenly he didn't need tutoring. Racists saw his skin color and saw the gravy train.

Posted by: tcn in AK, Pickle Queen of AK at September 26, 2025 03:08 PM (urtE/)

292 Hi. This is near and dear to me. The educators who know better than me were cramming whole word at my dyslexic, autistic child who got so frustrated her emotional regulation went right out the window and it was BAD. If you have a learning disorder that is letter and reading based, everything else suffers. I was told be happy of she got to a 3rd grade level. When I took her out and started homeschooling, we did phonics. Miracle of miracles, she started reading. She hated reading at first and the amazing mamas on this very site told me to stop worrying if she only wants to read graphic novels and not books- just let her read anything she wants. She has now participated in multiple book clubs, she just finished Harry Potter. She is always reading something.

Posted by: Piper at September 26, 2025 03:08 PM (p4NUW)

293 Crockett: Trump’s Followers Can’t Call Themselves Patriotic if They Cheer Comey Indictment

Posted by: SMOD at September 26, 2025 03:09 PM (RHGPo)

294
Imagine going to work and refusing an assignment/project. And calling your refusal a "declination memo." Imagine doing this at Dunkin Donuts, or in the Army.

Posted by: Soothsayer at September 26, 2025 03:09 PM (f4k7i)

295 I also type like a maniac. That little woman with the 3 inch heels and the 8 inch beehive drilled us until we nearly couldn't feel our fingers. Imagine how excited I was when we got IBM Selectrics instead of the old black manuals. I'm still hell on keyboards.

I learned to type on an IBM with that ball that spun to type the right letter. I cannot imagine what it is like to type on a manual but mom could FLY on her old one, without a single error. I got really good and years of typing nearly every day has kept it up but I would slow to a crawl having to stomp those keys down.

I have an old manual on my desk, its very vintage with an old timey desk lighter, lamp, telephone, and fan on it. And my replica of the Maltese Falcon.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at September 26, 2025 03:09 PM (dfIr7)

296 I taught Jr. Black to read when he was 4. With his Magna-Doodle, I'd write letters for him to phonetically sound out. Then I started writing simple 3-letter words he could read. That quickly progressed to simple sentences. When he started kindergarten at 5, he was the only kid who could read anything.

Posted by: Lady in Black at September 26, 2025 03:09 PM (qBdHI)

297 There is zero reason to live in NY.
____

Come on over, the weather is fantastic here!

Posted by: Illinois at September 26, 2025 03:09 PM (Dv3i1)

298 293 Crockett: Trump’s Followers Can’t Call Themselves Patriotic if They Cheer Comey Indictment
Posted by: SMOD at September 26, 2025 03:09 PM (RHGPo)


Dumb as a box of rocks.. Apologies to the box of rocks

Posted by: It's me donna at September 26, 2025 03:09 PM (VE6XX)

299 Our rural elementary school had optional language classes starting in the 6th grade. IIRC they had both German and French. Everybody that I knew wanted to take German because then we would know what the Krauts were saying when we watched Rat Patrol and Combat on TV. Sadly they both got dropped the year before I could take one. I don't recall why but my guess is both teachers retired.

Posted by: Mister Scott (Formerly GWS) at September 26, 2025 03:04 PM (0N4FZ)

Well thats one reason I would have taken German, lol. It wasn't offered. In junior high it was french only. I'm not even sure German was offered in high school.

Posted by: Berserker-Dragonheads Division at September 26, 2025 03:10 PM (snZF9)

300 This is about us, isn't it?

Posted by: bikini-clad equestriennes at September 26, 2025 03:10 PM (pJcVX)

301 I saw a comment on X, from a teacher there. They just used the methods that work and made a commitment to follow through.

Posted by: Notsothoreau at September 26, 2025 03:10 PM (kUxzU)

302 Blumenthal admitted that Senate Democrats are drafting legislation to give “remedies and rights” to political operatives like Comey who face prosecution, claiming America is on the “way to tyranny” because Trump’s DOJ dared to indict a Democrat’s ally.

-

How does the minority party draft legislation? There will be no legislation coming out of this.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at September 26, 2025 03:10 PM (0U5gm)

303 The infuriating thing is that we have known this for at least thirty years, if not longer. Does anyone from the Northeast remember "Hooked on Phonics," a course that parents could purchase when it was clear that the local public school wasn't actually teaching anyone to read?

It was popular enough that I remember hearing people chant "Hooked on Phonics" at (NY) Rangers games in the 90s (it was well-known even to people without kids from the radio ads).

Posted by: Henry O at September 26, 2025 03:10 PM (X5Mi4)

304 Personally, I'm not a fan of the IBM Selectrics with the type ball.

Posted by: Dan Rather at September 26, 2025 03:11 PM (0sNs1)

305 We had the choice between French or Spanish in high school. The one good piece of advice my brother ever gave me was to take French, since "wouldn't you rather vacation in Paris than Nicaragua?"
Posted by: Josephistan at September 26, 2025 03:07 PM (w/kbs)

Sorry, but a LOT of SpecOps language specialists I had the opportunity to meet took French for similar reasons, and ended up in Africa for their first tours...

-SLV

Posted by: Shy Lurking Voter at September 26, 2025 03:11 PM (e/Osv)

306 I didn't read the great dystopian classics til adulthood...heck, I didn't read almost any classic til adulthood...

Yeah mom made me read one classic a summer all through high school and I benefitted from it, plus she'd bring me home some from the library through the year and I read some of them. But I have gone back and am trying to catch up reading old great literature.

Some of it is magnificent and I am glad I picked it up. Some if it is just awful and I cannot understand how it got rated so highly.

And I'd love to have a Model M keyboard, but damn those things are expensive

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at September 26, 2025 03:11 PM (dfIr7)

307 Crockett: Trump’s Followers Can’t Call Themselves Patriotic if They Cheer Comey Indictment



Well then, I'm pretty sure you cheered every trump indictment, so that means I can definitely call you piece of monkey shit.

Posted by: Berserker-Dragonheads Division at September 26, 2025 03:12 PM (snZF9)

308 I'm SQRT((1+(tan**2)C) and I know it.
Posted by: Wesley Crusher

Don’t you mean
SQRT((1+(tan(C)**2) = sec C?
Posted by: NemoMeImpuneLacessit at September 26, 2025 03:06 PM (ZVgZ4)

*SQRT*

Posted by: Carlos Danger at September 26, 2025 03:12 PM (TbWk/)

309 Aiding and abbetting a felon?

Not a good look, senators. Just sayin'.

Posted by: Warai-otoko at September 26, 2025 03:12 PM (06Hmj)

310 Hooked On Phonics > Hooked On Classics

Posted by: banana Dream at September 26, 2025 03:12 PM (3uBP9)

311 > Is English best described as a Cajun, a Pidgin, or a Koine?
Posted by: Kindltot at September 26, 2025 03:07 PM (rbvCR)

Someone described it as what you get when soldiers whose language is French (as spoken by Danes) try to pick up Saxon/Celtic barmaids.

It's a freakin' mess is what it is.

Since then we've added a bunch of Latin, Hebrew, Yiddish, Italian, and even the odd bit of Hindi, Chinese and Japanese.

Posted by: Rodrigo Borgia at September 26, 2025 03:12 PM (qpyNK)

312 306 Yeah mom made me read one classic a summer all through high school and I benefitted from it, plus she'd bring me home some from the library through the year and I read some of them. But I have gone back and am trying to catch up reading old great literature.

Some of it is magnificent and I am glad I picked it up. Some if it is just awful and I cannot understand how it got rated so highly.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at September 26, 2025 03:11 PM (dfIr7)

I think I died 8 times trying to read "The Old Man and the Sea".

Posted by: XTC at September 26, 2025 03:13 PM (UnA8+)

313 I didn't read the great dystopian classics til adulthood...heck, I didn't read almost any classic til adulthood...
Posted by: Nova Local at September 26, 2025 03:08 PM (tOcjL)

I have read many of the classics. I still do from time to time. I devour history books, particularly ancient and medieval histories. DH won't let me move house again because he won't carry any more boxes of books. It's a disease.

Posted by: tcn in AK, Pickle Queen of AK at September 26, 2025 03:13 PM (urtE/)

314 Ace's misspelling example did not work so well for me.

I have seen that if the "shape" of the word is similar it works much better. So replacing the letters that stick out with similar letters makes it easy to recognize misspelled words.

It is first letter, length, and shape.

Posted by: bob (moron incognitus) at September 26, 2025 03:14 PM (6Qpsc)

315 Both my kids learned to read pretty easily.. My Son was reading Lord of the Rings at 10... He still is quite the reader...

Posted by: It's me donna at September 26, 2025 03:14 PM (VE6XX)

316 When did math get allowed on the blog?

Posted by: Q at September 26, 2025 03:14 PM (LfZHp)

317 How does the minority party draft legislation? There will be no legislation coming out of this.
Posted by: Thomas Paine at September 26, 2025 03:10 PM (0U5gm)

They get some piece of shit traitor to sponsor it or something, whatever the mechanism is.

Posted by: Warai-otoko at September 26, 2025 03:14 PM (06Hmj)

318 Since then we've added a bunch of Latin, Hebrew, Yiddish, Italian, and even the odd bit of Hindi, Chinese and Japanese.
Posted by: Rodrigo Borgia at September 26, 2025 03:12 PM (qpyNK)
++++
Whatever works. English has been grave-robbing - or mugging - other languages for as long as it has existed.

There's a reason it's so expressive.

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at September 26, 2025 03:14 PM (6bTRc)

319 Crockett: Trump’s Followers Can’t Call Themselves Patriotic if They Cheer Comey Indictment
Posted by: SMOD


Watch my flag waving ass bitch.

Posted by: rickb223 at September 26, 2025 03:14 PM (PFH6n)

320 But everyone blames the roundabout when some asshole barrels into it without looking, while no one blames the red light when people run it.
------
I've noticed in the last 3-4 years that along with the culture's disregard of law we've seen a huge increase in people who no longer consider "yellow" lights to be the last chance to enter an intersection--you can often count "1...2" after a light turns red and STILL see cars coming from the other direction. Its really, really far more dangerous out there than it should be.

Posted by: Crusader at September 26, 2025 03:14 PM (TN0g+)

321 And I'd love to have a Model M keyboard, but damn those things are expensive
Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at September 26, 2025 03:11 PM (dfIr7)


I picked up a Razr gaming keyboard at a garage sale, and it is about as close to that as I can find cheaply.
Try one of those. They have a good clean "clicky" action and are set up for 'fast' and accurate action.

Posted by: Kindltot at September 26, 2025 03:14 PM (rbvCR)

322
horse: Sure bro, except I'm walking you on the right directly through that cobweb because there's a red bucket sitting way over to the left I haven't seen before and it's spooooooky.
Posted by: banana Dream at September

Do you have a warmblood? Because the warmblood brain is very like this. In the letter box, doing great…HOLY COW THERE IS A BUTTERFLY! HELP! RUN! BUCK! RUN MORE!

Posted by: Piper at September 26, 2025 03:15 PM (p4NUW)

323 " But they greatly outnumber the actually intelligent.
Posted by: Ian S. at September 26, 2025 03:01 PM (2ocoG)"

Spectacularly so.

If you want to be depressed go look at work on the communication barriers present between different levels of IQ. I work in a high skilled, professional environment and it's a daily struggle to understand what some coworkers don't understand about things, so I can explain it at their level.

Take any technical concept. Describe it in 2-3 sentences. Now pick a word at random, any word. Imagine trying to work with someone who fundamentally does not comprehend the word, or believes it has some random definition. And you have to play minesweeper finding which word it is... and you can't teach them what it means when you ID it, you have to work around it. Because they're incapable of learning it. This is "teach grandma to program the VCR" level pain.

Posted by: heya at September 26, 2025 03:15 PM (wMDIO)

324 I think English is "technically" a creole.

Posted by: Warai-otoko at September 26, 2025 03:15 PM (06Hmj)

325 How does the minority party draft legislation? There will be no legislation coming out of this.
Posted by: Thomas Paine at September 26, 2025 03:10 PM (0U5gm)

They get some piece of shit traitor to sponsor it or something, whatever the mechanism is.
-----
And Trump will veto.

Posted by: Crusader at September 26, 2025 03:15 PM (TN0g+)

326 We had the choice between French or Spanish in high school. The one good piece of advice my brother ever gave me was to take French, since "wouldn't you rather vacation in Paris than Nicaragua?"
Posted by: Josephistan at September 26, 2025 03:07 PM (w/kbs)

More useful would have been "Which one will have the better looking kids from the opposite sex?"

Posted by: Hour of the Wolf at September 26, 2025 03:15 PM (S/Y4j)

327 293 Crockett: Trump’s Followers Can’t Call Themselves Patriotic if They Cheer Comey Indictment
Posted by: SMOD at September 26, 2025 03:09 PM (RHGPo)


Dumb as a box of rocks.. Apologies to the box of rocks
Posted by: It's me donna at September 26, 2025 03:09 PM (VE6XX)

Boxes of rocks can be useful. Hold a door open, keep a tarp in place, be part of a French drain, become part of a driveway. Jasmine Ratchet is useless as well as dumb and puerile.

Posted by: Send her back to flipping burgers at September 26, 2025 03:15 PM (TbWk/)

328 I didn't read the post, what was it about?

Posted by: Guy Mohawk at September 26, 2025 03:15 PM (rvwwT)

329 And I'd love to have a Model M keyboard, but damn those things are expensive
Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at September 26, 2025 03:11 PM (dfIr7)
++++
They are. I consider it a trade tool, though, and as far as those go, they're cheap. It would be a serious luxury if I didn't use it to make money, though.

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at September 26, 2025 03:16 PM (6bTRc)

330 I see that WitchDoktor is not on the absent friends list. I hope one of the cobs adds him.

Posted by: Bulg at September 26, 2025 03:16 PM (77rzZ)

331 I am learning that if you truly want to *study* the Bible, the original Greek is the Way.
Posted by: Duncanthrax, a mid-tier AoSHQ commenter, according to Grok at September 26, 2025 03:08 PM (0sNs1)

I agree!!

Posted by: Pete Buttigieg at September 26, 2025 03:16 PM (5xuJ/)

332 I witnessed this, and I swear to God that it is true.

On a Saturday in the summer of 1985, I was having lunch at the kitchen table with my oldest daughter. She was going to enter first grade the following fall, but she had learned phonics in kindergarten. Also, my wife and had had read aloud to her from when she was an infant. Well, my daughter had a children's book (I forget which one) and was reading it slowly. Every so often, she'd come to a word she didn't recognize, and I'd guide her in sounding it out.

Then, suddenly, she began to read fluently! It was as if a switch in her head had flipped on, and what had been a struggle was suddenly easy. My wife and I looked at each other, each of us wondering what the hell had just happened: the change was a sudden, and as radical, as that.

My daughter is now in her 40s, and is the mother of four accomplished kids. And she still reds voluminously, in several languages. Yet I am convinced that without the assist that phonics gave her when she just starting out as a reader, she might never have realized her potential.

Posted by: Nemo at September 26, 2025 03:16 PM (4RPgu)

333 I didn't read the great dystopian classics til adulthood...heck, I didn't read almost any classic til adulthood...
Posted by: Nova Local at September 26, 2025 03:08 PM (tOcjL)


Lord of the rings made sure I never read a classic again, and just stuck with ancient history and science.

Posted by: Berserker-Dragonheads Division at September 26, 2025 03:16 PM (snZF9)

334 An October surprise for some

@rawsalerts 41m
🚨#BREAKING: White House has issued a warning and directs federal agencies to brace for mass employee firings

Posted by: weft cut-loop at September 26, 2025 03:16 PM (mlg/3)

335 Crockett: Trump’s Followers Can’t Call Themselves Patriotic if They Cheer Comey Indictment

No one listens to the ignorant shit that comes out of your suck hole.

Posted by: The way I see it at September 26, 2025 03:16 PM (EYmYM)

336 Bill Clinton: Sam, you must have watched too many of my opponent’s TV spots. I’m tired of the Bush campaign trying to portray my home state as some sort of primitive Third World country. The fact is, Arkansas did have a long way to go, but we’ve made progress. When I started as governor, we were fiftieth in adult literacy, and last year, I’m proud to say, we shot ahead of Mississippi.
Sam Donaldson: You mean you were last?
Bill Clinton: That’s not fair. Just this year we passed Mississippi to become 41st in the prevention of rickets. Watch out, Alabama—we got your number!

Anyone else old enough to remember this?

Posted by: Avi at September 26, 2025 03:16 PM (cBCwV)

337 I didn't read the post, what was it about?
Posted by: Guy Mohawk at September 26, 2025 03:15 PM (rvwwT)
++++
People who can't read the post.

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at September 26, 2025 03:17 PM (6bTRc)

338 sorry, it is spelled Razer

Still a decent keyboard

Posted by: Kindltot at September 26, 2025 03:17 PM (rbvCR)

339 I have never once thought of asking permission to call myself anything from some ratchet ass chickenhead phoney shat out upon the body politic by nefarious forces looking for a laugh.

Posted by: Warai-otoko at September 26, 2025 03:17 PM (06Hmj)

340
148 Sounds of the pyrotechnics from the MAGTF show at Miramar drifting in ..... believe it is the only such demo in the world. Combined air/ground operations demonstrated with fixed wing, helos, armor, infantry - and lots of pyrotechnics. Unfortunately have to be there to see most of it, and lost my special access a while back, so can't easily come/go/park at the base amidst the CF that is the larger event.
Posted by: rhomboid at September 26, 2025 02:47 PM

-----

I wondered what that noise was. Sounded like thunder.

Posted by: Semi-Literate Thug at September 26, 2025 03:17 PM (azNOR)

341 When they say they are going to draft legislation, it means they are going to have a staffer write up a proposed alteration to a law that will never even reach a committee, much less a vote.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at September 26, 2025 03:17 PM (0U5gm)

342 Boxes of rocks can be useful. Hold a door open, keep a tarp in place, be part of a French drain, become part of a driveway. Jasmine Ratchet is useless as well as dumb and puerile.
Posted by: Send her back to flipping burgers at September 26, 2025 03:15 PM


Nothing is completely useless if it can serve as a bad example.

Posted by: Duncanthrax, who represents the "geek-conservative" archetype in AoSHQ's ecosystem, according to Gro at September 26, 2025 03:17 PM (0sNs1)

343 I think I died 8 times trying to read "The Old Man and the Sea".

Yeah Hemingway is the single most overrated author of the 20th century and I include hacks like Maya Angelou and Stephen King in that. He's not incompetent, he's just nothing even remotely close to great. Everything that he is beloved and praised for, Dashiell Hammet did ten times better.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at September 26, 2025 03:17 PM (dfIr7)

344 >>> 334 An October surprise for some

@rawsalerts 41m
🚨#BREAKING: White House has issued a warning and directs federal agencies to brace for mass employee firings
Posted by: weft cut-loop at September 26, 2025 03:16 PM (mlg/3)

Oh no!

Posted by: Helena Handbasket at September 26, 2025 03:17 PM (ULPxl)

345 Rebecca West (b.1892) thought it a gross injustice that in her day boys were taught both Latin and Greek, while girls were taught only Latin.

I suppose that is something like pre-first wave feminism.

Posted by: Henry O at September 26, 2025 03:18 PM (X5Mi4)

346 I am learning that if you truly want to *study* the Bible, the original Greek is the Way.
--------
Except for the Old Testament.

Posted by: Crusader at September 26, 2025 03:18 PM (TN0g+)

347 I think English is "technically" a creole.
Posted by: Warai-otoko

No, it isn't it's a West Germanic language with a lot of borrowed vocabulary. It is not, a never was, a creole or a pidgin.

Posted by: Bulg at September 26, 2025 03:18 PM (77rzZ)

348 I didn't read the post, what was it about?
Posted by: Guy Mohawk at September 26, 2025 03:15 PM (rvwwT)

++++

People who can't read the post.
Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at September 26, 2025 03:17 PM


Excellent TLR

Posted by: Duncanthrax, who represents the at September 26, 2025 03:19 PM (0sNs1)

349 The IBM Selectric II is still the keyboard with the best feel. IBM's own attempt to reproduce it for computer use - the legendary Model M keyboard - is close.

I learned to type in high school on a Selectric II in the late 80s. And yes, the feel of typing on it is unmatched. I don't think even the Model M is particularly close.

Posted by: Ian S. at September 26, 2025 03:19 PM (2ocoG)

350 Some of it is magnificent and I am glad I picked it up. Some if it is just awful and I cannot understand how it got rated so highly.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at September 26, 2025 03:11 PM (dfIr7)

You and me both. I think James Joyce is unreadable, and he really doesn't reflect Ireland or anything Irish. Tolstoy is a long slog for very little benefit, although he captures Russians well. Zola is stultifying. Greek plays are fun, Shakespeare is fabulous, those were both written to entertain.

Etc.

Posted by: tcn in AK, Pickle Queen of AK at September 26, 2025 03:19 PM (urtE/)

351 Republicans are about to cave on Obamacare subsidies that find massive fraud and illegal aliens.

But they’re totally on your side.

Posted by: Vengeance at September 26, 2025 03:19 PM (8R679)

352 303 The infuriating thing is that we have known this for at least thirty years, if not longer. Does anyone from the Northeast remember "Hooked on Phonics," a course that parents could purchase when it was clear that the local public school wasn't actually teaching anyone to read?

It was popular enough that I remember hearing people chant "Hooked on Phonics" at (NY) Rangers games in the 90s (it was well-known even to people without kids from the radio ads).
Posted by: Henry O

-------------

This started in CA -- CA was where most of this madness originally started. (Later versions of "whole language," etc. got big in other states too) and Hooked on Phonics was big in CA as parents were desperate to get their kids a real way to read instead of the shit those fucking scumbag teachers were doing in the public schools.

Anyway, it varied a lot from state to state. Even school to school as a many teachers would sneak in phonics even though the program forbid it. The schools really fucked up the kids for decades.

Posted by: bob (moron incognitus) at September 26, 2025 03:19 PM (6Qpsc)

353 I didn't read the post, what was it about?
Posted by: Guy Mohawk at September 26, 2025 03:15 PM (rvwwT)
++++
People who can't read the post.
Posted by: Joe Mannix

Ah good. Neither them nor I missed anything.

Posted by: Guy Mohawk at September 26, 2025 03:19 PM (rvwwT)

354 288 I would love to read the Bible in the original Greek. It would likely be an eye-opener.
Posted by: tcn in AK, Pickle Queen of AK at September 26, 2025 03:06 PM

I am learning that if you truly want to *study* the Bible, the original Greek is the Way.
Posted by: Duncanthrax, a mid-tier AoSHQ commenter, according to Grok at September 26, 2025 03:08 PM (0sNs1)

Bah! If the King James version was good enough for Peter and Paul, it's good enough for me!

Posted by: My Old Grandmother at September 26, 2025 03:20 PM (uWKK8)

355 #BREAKING: White House has issued a warning and directs federal agencies to brace for mass employee firings

Who knew Chuck Schumer would be DOGE's most valuable employee?

Posted by: Ian S. at September 26, 2025 03:20 PM (2ocoG)

356 And Trump will veto.
Posted by: Crusader at September 26, 2025 03:15 PM (TN0g+)

He would stuff Danny DeVito into a Veto Pro-Pac and wear him like Master Blaster to sign the veto.

Posted by: Warai-otoko at September 26, 2025 03:20 PM (06Hmj)

357 343 Yeah Hemingway is the single most overrated author of the 20th century and I include hacks like Maya Angelou and Stephen King in that. He's not incompetent, he's just nothing even remotely close to great. Everything that he is beloved and praised for, Dashiell Hammet did ten times better.
Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at September 26, 2025 03:17 PM (dfIr7)

Hemingway is soul-destroyingly boring.

Posted by: XTC at September 26, 2025 03:20 PM (UnA8+)

358 Had to read James Joyce in a college literature class. It's shite. No wonder English professors love it.

Posted by: They have great love for garbage at September 26, 2025 03:20 PM (TbWk/)

359
Why do the Donk commie cocksuckers and their teacher's union minions deliberately foster Black illiteracy? Because it produces good little illiterate cannon fodder to throw at their latest bete noire.

Rather like the South Park movie with all the Black troops clustered together as human shields for the tanks in the invasion of Canada during "Operation Certain Death".

Posted by: IllTemperedCur at September 26, 2025 03:20 PM (y9nCu)

360 Does anyone from the Northeast remember "Hooked on Phonics," a course that parents could purchase when it was clear that the local public school wasn't actually teaching anyone to read?

Posted by: Henry O at September 26, 2025 03:10 PM (X5Mi4)

I found one at a garage sale a few weeks ago. Didn't have the cash in my pocket so I went to get some and when I came back it was gone. I was compressed about that. My 5 yo grand isn't where my 9 yo was at the same point. 9 yo reads everything and anything, 5 yo not so much.

I also think that competition between states for the best educated kids would be a very healthy developement.

Posted by: Reforger at September 26, 2025 03:21 PM (QZM6U)

361 "The IBM Selectric II is still the keyboard with the best feel. IBM's own attempt to reproduce it for computer use - the legendary Model M keyboard - is close."

Yes: the Selectric had a wonderful keyboard. The old IBM PC's keyboard - the one that weight about 75 pounds - was also very good. I learned on a manual, and used an Underwood 5 through college - at one time, I could type over 100 wpm on it.

I bought an expensive gaming keyboard, and am quite happy with it. Life is too short to spend it using crappy keyboards!

Posted by: Nemo at September 26, 2025 03:21 PM (4RPgu)

362 Old Testament Septuagint is worth reading. Since the NT authors were reading it (Hebrews and Gospels anyway; Saul The Pharisee had a Hebrew education so quoted the Masoretic).

Posted by: gKWVE at September 26, 2025 03:21 PM (gKWVE)

363 Bah! If the King James version was good enough for Peter and Paul, it's good enough for me!
Posted by: My Old Grandmother

Hah!

Posted by: Bulg at September 26, 2025 03:21 PM (77rzZ)

364 Except for the Old Testament.
Posted by: Crusader at September 26, 2025 03:18 PM


The Septuagint is Greek. Hebrew isn't bad to pick up either, whether you're Protestant or not.

Posted by: Duncanthrax, who represents the at September 26, 2025 03:21 PM (0sNs1)

365 🚨#BREAKING: White House has issued a warning and directs federal agencies to brace for mass employee firings

-
So stock up on champagne before the shelves are bare?

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, [0] Day(s) Since Leftist Terror Attack! at September 26, 2025 03:22 PM (L/fGl)

366 In the late '90's I was an adjunct clinical professor for a RN program at the med center. Each semester my clinical class of 12 had to write a large paper of a patient and diagnosis. Part of their semester grade.
They learned quickly if they did not know their patients, their diagnosis, and medications to watch out.

I not only focused on the nursing/medical aspect of the paper, but would circle misspelled words in red. Their hideous writing did not impact their grade. I discovered many could not write worth a toot.

I still have some of my nursing school papers and I kicked arse compared to others who simply could not write. Whether innate or education, I do not know. I do know I had enough English lit college credits to declare a minor, but did not. I had plenty on my plate to do well as a student RN during the week, and a partying maniac on Fri/Sat nights.

My Sunday's were devoted to peace in the mornings of not reading words but looking at art books. So I also had some classical art. Then I wrote papers, studied my arse off, and ironed my blasted uniforms for the week ahead.

It was a grind for 2.5yrs but I done did it with booster rockets engaged and blasting rock and roll.

Posted by: ChristyBlinkyTheGreat at September 26, 2025 03:22 PM (6PCLE)

367 I think I died 8 times trying to read "The Old Man and the Sea".

Yeah Hemingway is the single most overrated author of the 20th century and I include hacks like Maya Angelou and Stephen King in that. He's not incompetent, he's just nothing even remotely close to great. Everything that he is beloved and praised for, Dashiell Hammet did ten times better.
--------
My favorite "Partridge Family" episode was when Laurie was a student-teacher and gave Danny's class an assignment to write a short story. Danny copied a Hemingway short story...and Laurie gave the story a D originally....then reflects later and changes the grade to a C-.

Posted by: Crusader at September 26, 2025 03:22 PM (TN0g+)

368 I like my scripture in the original German.

Posted by: toby928 at September 26, 2025 03:22 PM (jc0TO)

369 I went to school in Louisiana from the 60’s through the 80’s . My school’s ACT scores were as high as any other State public school. We had a few that had perfect scores.

The youngest person to ever build a nuclear reactor was from TN . The kid who broke that record was from AR. ( possible it was the other way around)

Posted by: The way I see it at September 26, 2025 03:22 PM (EYmYM)

370 King James version was good enough for Peter and Paul

KJV kind of WAS good enough for Paul, since KJV is mostly a careful translation from the Hebrew...

Posted by: gKWVE at September 26, 2025 03:23 PM (gKWVE)

371 Bah! If the King James version was good enough for Peter and Paul, it's good enough for me!
Posted by: My Old Grandmother at September 26, 2025 03:20 PM (uWKK

IT'S FUNNY BECAUSE THE CANONICAL BIBLE DID NOT EXIST WHEN PETER AND PAUL WERE ALIVE, AND THE KING JAMES VERSION WASN'T PUBLISHED UNTIL 1611

Posted by: BEN ROETHLISBERGER at September 26, 2025 03:23 PM (TbWk/)

372 I found one at a garage sale a few weeks ago. Didn't have the cash in my pocket so I went to get some and when I came back it was gone. I was compressed about that. My 5 yo grand isn't where my 9 yo was at the same point. 9 yo reads everything and anything, 5 yo not so much.

I also think that competition between states for the best educated kids would be a very healthy developement.

Posted by: Reforger


Check ebay

Posted by: Thomas Paine at September 26, 2025 03:23 PM (0U5gm)

373 The Septuagint is Greek. Hebrew isn't bad to pick up either, whether you're Protestant or not.
Posted by: Duncanthrax

Don't forget Aramaic

Posted by: Bulg at September 26, 2025 03:24 PM (77rzZ)

374 Am Anfang schuf Gott Himmel und Erde.
Und die Erde war wüst und leer, und es war finster auf der Tiefe; und der Geist Gottes schwebte auf dem Wasser.
Und Gott sprach: Es werde Licht! und es ward Licht.

Posted by: runner at September 26, 2025 03:24 PM (g47mK)

375 Posted by: They have great love for garbage at September 26, 2025 03:20 PM (TbWk/)
++++
Me too.
http://tiny.cc/e04t001

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at September 26, 2025 03:24 PM (6bTRc)

376 Und es ward Licht!

Posted by: runner at September 26, 2025 03:24 PM (g47mK)

377
They know EXACTLY what they are doing and why.
Posted by: heya at September 26, 2025 03:01 PM (wMDIO)

Yep

Posted by: ... at September 26, 2025 03:24 PM (QpIvv)

378 Don't forget Aramaic
Posted by: Bulg at September 26, 2025 03:24 PM (77rzZ)

You betcha

Posted by: Mel Gibson at September 26, 2025 03:24 PM (EYmYM)

379 Gott Himmel

God and Heaven ? Only two I think I got...

Posted by: It's me donna at September 26, 2025 03:25 PM (VE6XX)

380 My college freshman English class I had to read Hemingway, FS Fitzgerald, and Jane Austin.

I fucking hated that class.

Posted by: bob (moron incognitus) at September 26, 2025 03:25 PM (6Qpsc)

381 "Yeah Hemingway is the single most overrated author of the 20th century and I include hacks like Maya Angelou and Stephen King in that. He's not incompetent, he's just nothing even remotely close to great. Everything that he is beloved and praised for, Dashiell Hammet did ten times better.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor"



I recently read "Faewell to Amrs" supposedly his best work. I was massively disappointment. In fact, I had to force myself to finish it. The fact that there was a massive ware raging everywhere seemed incidental to the story.

Posted by: Ripley at September 26, 2025 03:25 PM (GUOwU)

382 The Septuagint is Greek. Hebrew isn't bad to pick up either, whether you're Protestant or not.
Posted by: Duncanthrax

Don't forget Aramaic
Posted by: Bulg at September 26, 2025 03:24 PM (77rzZ)

The black beast of aaaaaa....

Posted by: From the back of the throat at September 26, 2025 03:25 PM (TbWk/)

383 380 My college freshman English class I had to read Hemingway, FS Fitzgerald, and Jane Austin.

I fucking hated that class.
Posted by: bob (moron incognitus) at September 26, 2025 03:25 PM (6Qpsc)

Love Jane Austen...

Posted by: It's me donna at September 26, 2025 03:25 PM (VE6XX)

384 If the Left was as good at creating as they are at destroying we would have colonized 10 other planets by now.

Posted by: ... at September 26, 2025 03:26 PM (QpIvv)

385 Hebrew isn't bad to pick up either, whether you're Protestant or not.

Yiddish is great for insults. It's how I know (via JJ's morning posts) that the German metal band Feuerschwanz means "fire dick".

Posted by: Ian S. at September 26, 2025 03:26 PM (2ocoG)

386 NOOD ALVIN BRAGG

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at September 26, 2025 03:26 PM (6bTRc)

387 A Thread Fen would like, yet she be not here.

Posted by: Duncanthrax, who represents the at September 26, 2025 03:26 PM (0sNs1)

388 I recently read "Faewell to Amrs" supposedly his best work. I was massively disappointment. In fact, I had to force myself to finish it. The fact that there was a massive ware raging everywhere seemed incidental to the story.
-------

Right next to this big fire, the ants on this brick wall are going with just another normal day of their lives.

Posted by: Mary Tyler Moore episode at September 26, 2025 03:26 PM (TN0g+)

389
#BREAKING: White House has issued a warning and directs federal agencies to brace for mass employee firings

-
So stock up on champagne before the shelves are bare?
Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks

===============

I can't afford champagne, but liberal tears have a very fine finish on the palate.

Posted by: Blonde Morticia at September 26, 2025 03:27 PM (n7CIX)

390 Am Anfang schuf Gott Himmel und Erde.
Und die Erde war wüst und leer, und es war finster auf der Tiefe; und der Geist Gottes schwebte auf dem Wasser.
Und Gott sprach: Es werde Licht! und es ward Licht.
Posted by: runner

Well, it's no "It was the best of times; it was the worst of times." Or, in the original German, "the worst of times."

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, [0] Day(s) Since Leftist Terror Attack! at September 26, 2025 03:27 PM (L/fGl)

391 Except for the Old Testament.
Posted by: Crusader at September 26, 2025 03:18 PM (TN0g+)

The Septuagint was written in Greek. Unless you can read Hebrew, that's as close as you are gonna get.

Posted by: tcn in AK, Pickle Queen of AK at September 26, 2025 03:28 PM (urtE/)

392 I recently read "Faewell to Amrs" supposedly his best work. I was massively disappointment. In fact, I had to force myself to finish it. The fact that there was a massive ware raging everywhere seemed incidental to the story.
Posted by: Ripley at September 26, 2025 03:25 PM (GUOwU)


Islands in the Stream is not bad for the middle point when they are hunting down a crew from a beached German submarine. The rest of it was not gripping.

Posted by: Kindltot at September 26, 2025 03:28 PM (rbvCR)

393 >>> Do you have a warmblood? Because the warmblood brain is very like this. In the letter box, doing great…HOLY COW THERE IS A BUTTERFLY! HELP! RUN! BUCK! RUN MORE!
Posted by: Piper at September 26, 2025 03:15 PM (p4NUW)


I don't know, I don't ride much, but my daughter is on a barrel racing team, has her own horse and asked me to go on trail rides with her. Daddy daughter time. So I do that more now and I get the ones that are recovering from racing or otherwise not on the regular team. They seem to all have a lot of personality and are onery.

Posted by: banana Dream at September 26, 2025 03:30 PM (3uBP9)

394 It helps to know the text, but I was surprised I remembered enough German to actually read that.

now we can do Also Sprach Zarathustra

Posted by: Tom Servo at September 26, 2025 03:30 PM (uWKK8)

395 Catalyst for this belief: Today coming out a convenience store I watched a young woman drop her phone while standing on the sidewalk in front of the store. Her phone landed in the parking lot with no cars coming or going. But, instead of taking a step off the curb to pick it up. She tried to pick it up from the sidewalk (an extra 6" at least to reach). She fell forward, spilled her drink, landed on her side, and I think on her phone.
Posted by: Orson at September

Overdose kicking in.

Posted by: From about That Time at September 26, 2025 03:31 PM (n4GiU)

396 I’m still waiting for someone to find hidden away in the dead desert the original Hebrew Matthew

Posted by: Avi at September 26, 2025 03:32 PM (cBCwV)

397 Yiddish is great for insults. It's how I know (via JJ's morning posts) that the German metal band Feuerschwanz means "fire dick".

I learned that from Frank Zappa

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at September 26, 2025 03:34 PM (dfIr7)

398
Tolstoy is a long slog for very little benefit, although he captures Russians well.

Etc.
Posted by: tcn in AK, Pickle Queen of AK at September 26, 2025 03:19 PM (urtE/)



I think most Russian authors are slogs. Although Gogol is a cut above most of them because he's funny. Dead Souls is a hoot, although some knowledge of the system of Russian serfdom is needed to get a lot of the humor.

Posted by: IllTemperedCur at September 26, 2025 03:34 PM (y9nCu)

399 “Yeah Hemingway is the single most overrated author of the 20th century and I include hacks like Maya Angelou and Stephen King in that.”

This reminds me of a comment I once read years ago, referring to Tom Clancy as the James Fennemore Cooper of our generation. Never having read anything of Cooper’s only watching movies based on his work I assume that was a compliment until asking some of my more literate friends who said that Cooper was a terrible writer and that i the comment was an indictment on Tom Clancy‘s writing.. I often felt like Clancy stories were good, but maybe he should’ve sold his outline to a ghost rider.

Posted by: Avi at September 26, 2025 03:36 PM (cBCwV)

400 Tolstoy is a long slog for very little benefit, although he captures Russians well.

I found the death of Ivan Ilych. To be ann easy read and one of the best stories I’ve ever read.

Posted by: Avi at September 26, 2025 03:38 PM (cBCwV)

401 The only Hemmingway book I liked was "For Whom the Bell Tolls."

A few months ago I spent a few nights trying to read "A Moveable Feast" because of our trips to Paris. It remains on my bookcase. I might finish in a blur of insomnia one night this winter.

I thought it would have more food mentions vs angst and sorrow. I think there was some sex, but was not why I picked it. Anyone can have sex (I don't want to know how the furries do it).

Well, y'all have a good weekend. We have an atheist funeral to go to briefly and flee this evening. I just want to get past this possible horror. Super weird guy who married a niece. We barely knew him. Reading his obituary he barely knew himself...which sounds mean and I don't intend to be mean. I just tell it like it is.

Posted by: ChristyBlinkyTheGreat at September 26, 2025 03:49 PM (6PCLE)

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