May 20, 2022 • 40 mins
The state of the education system within the United States of America. During this episode, they discuss where we are, how we got to this point, observations on the influence and opportunity of technology, and the education system's politicization. This episode is the first of a multi-part series focused on the problems and opportunities for the education system as a whole.
Daniel is joined by Peter to launch the (All) Unknowing Podcast . They thoroughly examine the critical flaws in our educational system that were unmasked by the recent pandemic and its destabilizing impact on school age children. Resolving issues of educational disparities is important and so is improving the learning experience for children so they can meet the demands of the 21st century.
Tune in as Daniel and Peter discuss:
· How the pandemic destabilized the educational system and impacted the psychological wellbeing of children in immeasurable ways.
· The factors that keep our educational system outdated.
· How rapid technological advances have changed the scope of education.
· The disparities and gaps of educational access between affluent and non-affluent school districts.
· Children who benefit the most from conventional education.
· Why critical thinking is a crucial skill for children at every grade level to learn.
· How the current educational system is failing to prepare children to practically apply what they’re learning outside of the classroom.
Connect with Daniel
WEBSITE: https://theallunknowing.com/
LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-r-curtis/
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/theunknowingall
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/theallunknowing/
YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5GT0TcNrS7AFEw6b0YQz0Q
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Daniel Curtis (00:08):
Welcome to the first episode of The (all)
Unknowing podcast. Today, Danieland Peter are going to be
discussing the current state ofthe education system in the
United States of America. Nowjoin us as we leap into the
unknown.
Before we get started, I thinkit's prudent for us to talk a
(00:32):
little bit as this is our firstepisode. So the real purpose of
the show is to bring forth theunknown possibilities from the
realm of the unknown, into theknown. And by that, I mean
simply that when you knowsomething, when you truly know
something, when you believe, youknow, something, you don't open
(00:53):
yourself up to the otherpossibilities that may be so
that there's a lot ofopportunity for us to solve
common problems in society andthe world around us. And we
don't consider them becausewe're so focused on one one way
of being one mode, one method,Peter, you know, I mean, it is
something that you and I havetalked about, you know,
obviously for years, but haveit. So I'm excited. I'm very
(01:16):
excited to be here, obviously,and to discuss this topic. So I
think it's it's a criticalcomponent to the future of not
just our society, but honestlyall societies that find
themselves in the state that wehave found ourselves in today.
Peter (01:30):
Yeah, I definitely think it's a very pivotal moment, at
least in US history. And Iimagine other countries
throughout the world are goingthrough the same sort of thing,
where we've had two going onalmost three years now, of the
pandemic, that has affectedsociety at all levels. And I
(01:50):
think in a lot of unexpectedfashions, and probably the most
profound has been the impact onthe children and young people as
their as they went through this.
Because the routine, theexpected cadence of day to day
life just got shot. So it's onething if you're talking
(02:12):
teenagers, young adults incollege, right, they're mature,
capable, have relatively wellformed personalities, and they
still may be evolving. And theycould more easily cope with this
and more flexible, given thenature of their maturity. The
impact on school age, elementaryschool children, I think, is
(02:32):
only really starting to beunderstood. Daniel, you and I
privately have talked about thisquite a bit. And coincidentally,
I caught up with some oldfriends who I hadn't seen in a
while. And we were who haveschool aged children, right. And
independently, they all notedthat the academic impacts were
noticeable, the manageable. It'sthe psychological and
(02:55):
developmental impacts on theirchildren that aren't being
adequately discussed at abroader level, individual
teachers are on the ball, theyknow what's going on. And
they're trying their best, atleast, the ones who are engaged
and interested. But this hasn'tpercolated up to the broader
society, I don't think. And whenit has, it has been in a very
nasty partisan manner, whichcomes from the inherent
(03:19):
politicization of the educationsystem, at least in the US as
it's evolved over, say, the last3040 years. There's a slight age
difference between us which, youknow, we know, for sure, but I
think that even that slight agedifference shows the
generational differences that weexperienced, you know, again,
(03:40):
elementary, high school leveland beyond. And I think it's
even more profound when wecompare our experiences with
what young parents are goingthrough now, you know, late 20s,
maybe early 30s, five, six yearold kid just entering the school
system for real. And I think we,we have to dig into this and
kind of share some of theexperiences in we have had as
(04:03):
well as other other parents. AndI think it's worth mentioning
that we intentionally pick thissubject as the first topic in
what will hopefully be a longseries of podcasts. Because this
is foundational to everythingthat comes in society. If you
have an uneducated populace, youhave a devastated society at the
(04:27):
end of the day. So yeah, if youdon't get education, right, at
least at the primary secondarylevel, you're you're doomed. And
going forward in terms of humanevolution. So this is something
that it's very dear to both ofus. And I think other people as
well.
Daniel Curtis (04:45):
Now, and I think it has to be it absolutely has
to be because if you can look ata history book, and you can
understand that and you can lookforward I mean, we're dealing
with more. The stakes aredifferent now the stakes are
different because the rate oftechnological changes is so
drastically different than ithas a pretty much any other
point in history. And, you know,so what does that do? It enables
(05:06):
us to see everything that'sgoing on around us. And it to an
extent, and some people cancertainly suffer because of
that. And I mean this like, at apsychological basis, because
then and we touched on this withthe children. You know, I have
two school aged children, andthey were they did remote
learning, for most of the COVIDyear, they're laid in spring of
last year and into 2020. And,you know, we're fortunate that,
(05:30):
that they have that opportunity.
And I realized that a lot ofpeople do not have that
flexibility. My, you know, I'mfortunate, I have a lovely wife,
she was able to make sure thatthe way that she kept them on a
schedule on a routine, andbecause she's able to do that,
it helped them to knowpsychologically that you know,
it's different. Yeah, it'sdifferent and it's stable.
That's, that's key stability,right? Because that's what
(05:52):
school aged children need.
That's what people in generalneed. Let's be honest, okay.
Yeah,
Peter (05:57):
not not to belittle the point. For children. routine,
and predictability is key,because it gives them a sense of
safety. And if they're safe,they're gonna be in a good
psychological space to learn,they'll flourish, they'll
thorough, they'll get the mostthat they cannot effectively do.
Daniel Curtis (06:14):
No, absolutely.
And it's not intended, the pointthat you made earlier is this is
not something that's small,because we don't know the
effects of this, we will notknow the effects of this until
we look back 10 or 15 or 20years from now and even even
someone astute we'll have to bedoing that people that that
actually care that want to drivetruth from the matter. Not not
(06:36):
in the without a politicalagenda, as we were previously
discussing. I really, you know,it's in that's something we have
to take up. It's completelyanother series, because
obviously, we're not gettinganywhere with the way that it's
happening right now. But
Peter (06:50):
it will kind of loop back to your point about how the pace
of technology's impactedeverything, right? I think
exactly. This topic is the mostgermane example of how that
rapid technological advanceaffects things, right? Yes, for
(07:10):
the first time, parents wereable to see actually what was
going on in their children'sclassrooms, not what they
thought it was not what wasgoing on, when they were in
school 1520 2530 years ago. AndI think there was a very hard
rude and rapid awakening of theunequal way in which different
(07:37):
school systems, differentschools, different teachers
responded. So that we got to seea very different view of the
real state of the educationalsystem in the country than what
has been popularly portrayed asan example. You know, I do
pretty well, economically, I wasable to have both my kids in, in
(07:58):
private school, right, right. Atthe time, my daughter was
finishing high school, my son isin his, his junior year right
now. Their schools said, Okay,this is a mess, give us a week,
we'll figure something out. Andthe kids will be back in on
learning. true to their wordthey did. So very happy. But I'm
(08:19):
paying for it out of pocket. Soit was expected. And I guarantee
you that all the other parentssaid something to the effect, to
the credit of the schools andthe teachers, they responded,
that's great. The town in whichI live, had a completely
opposite response. And we arenot in a particularly upscale
town were very middle class typetype town.
(08:42):
It took the teachers months tofigure out what to do it
literally months. So I would seethese poor kids walking around
the neighborhood, not in anymalicious way. But just as some
way to occupy their time becausethey were unable to have their,
their classroom situationaddressed by the town school
system. Right. I live inMassachusetts, Boston School
(09:05):
System, very large, admittedly,lots of different problems, at
all levels, the whole bitdifferent scale of operations,
took them much longer to figurethings out, and degenerate into
a lot of needless bickering inmy own opinion. Okay, so now by
virtue of what town you happento live in, you had a completely
different response based onwhether you're public versus
(09:26):
private, small town versus largecity. And all of a sudden,
people started asking, Well, ifthis guy can figure it out at
this school, and this headmasterand this teacher, I'll get it
squared away. Why can't thesepeople over in the larger cities
do likewise? Which is very validquestion. And rather than
address it to say, you know,whatever the case may be,
(09:49):
there's a lot of hand waving, inmy opinion, needle is finger
pointing, going back and forth.
Great. We have now identified afundamental flaw in how
education is delivered to ourChildren were past the worst of
the pandemic are coming out ofit. There's still no discussion
of the plan of, Hey, what did welearn? And what are we going to
do going forward to leveragethese things to improve the
(10:12):
experience overall for all kidsat all levels? And along those
lines? Again, speaking to thegap that you mentioned, between
technological access and alittle bit, right, yes.
Legitimate, there's a lot ofkids out there who do not have
the benefit of your lovely wifestayed home, to keep them on the
straight and narrow because theyhad to work legitimately, right?
(10:33):
Absolutely. Absolutely. So Gee,I use the truck driver as the
proverbial metaphor because, youknow, blue collar background,
these are the kinds of peoplethat I grew up around, find
decent, good people, but theydidn't have a ton of dough. I
didn't go to private school, Iwent to public school, right? So
is it fair, that the truckdriver who's making you know,
(10:54):
40 50,000, an hour a year,delivering stuff that his
children do not have equalaccess, because he can't afford
to go buy them laptops andwebcams and have internet access
and the whole thing that rapidlystarts adding to the bill? Okay,
what are you guys going to doabout it as a government to
serve your constituents?
(11:18):
Nothing. And you know, Daniel,but you and I are in the
technolog technology business,we know how this could have been
addressed, really without thatmuch money. But okay, federal
government releases cares money,what happened to it, a lot of
towns took it sat on it, I'vedone nothing with it to date,
this is a factual dispute it,you and I both responded to RFPs
(11:41):
for these things, and know thatthey all went nowhere, because
nobody wanted to pull thetrigger on actually executing
against anything. So again, whosuffers? You and I know, we just
move on to the next client, wedon't care. But the the children
of the constituents in thesetowns suffer, because the
administration was incapable ofacting rapidly and leveraging
(12:03):
resources that were in factavailable to them to meet the
needs and to move forward and toelevate the game for everybody,
not just the, the, you know, thethe poorest of the poor, or the
richest of the rich, this wouldhave helped everybody across the
board, where it implementedstrategically at a high level
with thought about what theimpact would be. And I know I
kind of went on a tangent, butWell, no, no, no, I
Daniel Curtis (12:25):
by all means, I think it's important to cover to
really flush out the problemhere, right? Because it's at
multiple levels. It's not, it'snot just that there's a an
identified problem with theability to deliver or respond to
a particular incident orpandemic, or whatever it may be.
Right, I mean, even and it justfor context, were public school.
(12:47):
Wisconsin, not Boston, fairlyaffluent area, it took them
about a week to get everybodyonline, basically, and you know,
everybody's using GoogleClassroom, Google meet and
everything set up, you know, andthey had some structure, and
they made it better over time.
But in this, this goes, justjust goes to another thought. I
mean, this is, again, it's apretty nice area. And the
(13:07):
schools, even though it'spublic, like it's rated very
highly in the state, like 99thpercentile, okay, so you and I
know, it draws a certain type ofperson there, they have a
certain structure, they operatein a certain way, there's
accountability. There, there'saccountability from the parents,
even even though it's publicschool, people are heavily
(13:28):
involved in the school. I mean,there's a lot of money, there's
a lot of donations that happenthere. And it's nice, it's nice
for that. But the real problemthere is that if there was a
good template for how to respondfor how to enable learning for
how to get kids, the educationthat they need to get them the
(13:49):
structure that they need, thatthe schooling, essentially, he's
providing, you know, if it'sworking well, and a few ways we
need to be we need to be sharingthat.
Peter (14:01):
And I think that's, that did not happen. Exactly. That
did not happen. Yes. And thisgoes to the legacy, I think, of
the fact that we're stillrunning education in the United
States of America, on a 19thcentury mindset, when in fact,
we're trying to prepare ouryoung people for the 21st
century and beyond. And stuffthat may have worked in 1950 is
(14:24):
not going to work and 2022, muchless 2030 2040 and beyond,
right? Yes. So all of this stuffwas going on individual schools
figured it out. Why was this notshared with other schools within
a system? Or if a particularschool system figured it out?
Why was it not shared with otherschool systems? And I'm quite
(14:46):
sure we would have a largeamount of people saying, well,
that's not true. That happened.
I vehemently disagree with that,because I was involved directly
with some of the schools ontrying to get this stuff going.
And the amount of infightingpetty territorial pissing, you
know, for lack of a betterphrase was staggering to me. And
especially when I went and I,you know, started trying to help
(15:10):
volunteer on certain bases andsee, okay, what's going on? You?
Well, we can't support this inour school why? Well, we're
having trouble. You look intoit. You see equipment that
hasn't been touched in literally25 years, right. from companies
that no longer exists. Yeah,using? Yeah. Yeah. Right. And,
you know, my immediate questionwas, what did you guys do with
(15:35):
all the money that you got fortechnology in the classroom? And
there was a lot of shoegazingand shuffling back and forth.
And at the end of the day, theysquandered it on other things,
because everything is happeningat either a school or a district
level, and not at a, you know,city state level.
Daniel Curtis (15:54):
Yeah. And that solution, it's almost like you'd
need something that's morestructured holistically, because
anytime we're dealing withscale, I mean, if you if you
want to do a technology project,even for your house, I mean,
it's can be complex, dependingon what you're doing. You know,
and at that level, it's like,okay, this is what we need per
classroom. This is the model,this is the method, it's tested,
(16:15):
it's proven. Now, let's goreplicate that in all the
classrooms. Right? That makessense.
Peter (16:20):
And even beyond that, I'm, I have a connection with me
and I have a lot of family andmade Right, right. And I'm quite
sure that a lot of people inWisconsin, are in the same
situation. Were in Maine, ifyou're in one of the major urban
centers, say around Portland orLewiston or what have you, yeah,
piece of cake, get broadband,you have multiple providers,
multiple price points, you'regood. Well, if you just go 2530
(16:43):
miles outside of these urbancenters, it's not a not
necessarily the case, you'relucky if you have broadband,
it's going to be a lot moreexpensive. I was shocked when I
saw what these people werepaying for pretty poor service,
then, you know, what's availablein the urban areas. And Maine is
a big, big state, Wisconsin, bigstate, right. So you know, you
(17:03):
get out to parts of both theseareas. And, you know, you can
extrapolate to other parts ofthe United States. It's the same
situation where a lot of peoplefar apart, no broadband, in
fairness, part of the Cares Actmoney was there to upgrade the
broadband and all that whathappened? No activity. Right. So
here, you could have parlayed aonce in a lifetime opportunity
(17:26):
to light up rural areas with noreal broadband access, right,
not satellite in the nonsensethat they say is broadband,
which we both know, in factisn't. And you would have done a
great deal to service thebroadest segment of your
populace that you could, becausenow, you have special needs
kids, right? Okay, maybethey're, you know, they're
(17:50):
functional enough where they cansit in front of, you know, some
kind of device and have remotelearning, right? Right. Is it
optimal? No, but it still givesthem something. And in the case
where they can't do it, okay,pandemic threw a monkey wrench
into traditional special ed,processes and all that.
Terrible, but, again, it's oneof those things where it's
(18:13):
happened once we've had apandemic and modern times, it'll
happen again. Well, what are wegoing to do to address the most
marginalized and most vulnerableof the population? Still haven't
seen anything? And I understandthe argument. Alright, hey, we
have to worry about gettingeverybody back to school. It's a
huge hurdle. I got it. I agreewith it totally. But why are we
(18:35):
not starting to seecomprehensive discussions about
this? Instead, we're arguingback and forth about whether or
not kids need to wear masks inthe classroom? Do you open the
window and all this othernonsense, right? We're past that
those days are done. We're nowon the rebuild phase, we have to
reassess and start planning forthe future show that if and when
(18:55):
this happens, again, it doesn'thave the devastating impact. We
have kids who have lost years ofdevelopment, right? Well, what
are you guys gonna do about it?
And there hasn't been anywidespread discussion of core
infrastructure stuff, or thereal other alternatives that are
on the internet is freeresources that could be brought
(19:16):
in to help people with this, youknow, kinda Academy what have
you, right? Yeah. Why is thatnot part of a standard?
Curriculum, right?
Daniel Curtis (19:27):
Internet based learning, and then by all means,
I mean, if you have people,teachers, professors, etc, that
are able to create excellentcontent. Yeah, you know what I
mean? And I mean, like, topnotch because like, and then
(19:47):
there's always a distribution.
It doesn't matter.
Statistically, there's always adistribution. And if we can get
a lot of kids access to things,then I'm talking about learning
material. I'm talking aboutcourses I'm talking about all
the stuff that the internet canprovide Right. This is like one
of the greatest things that wecan do in this in a connected
era. Instead of being thedisinformation age, let's pull
(20:08):
ourselves back to theInformation Age, let's use it
for the betterment of ofchildren and ultimately for the
entire society. I mean, it hasto happen, it should happen. And
it's silly that we're we have tohave this conversation right
now, frankly,
Peter (20:22):
agreed. And this is where I think we have to lose this 19
Sanctuary mindset, right? Yes,of kids going to a building in a
room with a teacher every dayall day to have something
drilled into them by rotelearning. Right? Okay, I
understand I'll get a lot offlack for that statement. And
it's an oversimplification. ButI make it as an illustrative
(20:49):
point for, you know, hey, whydoes it have to be that way? It
doesn't. Is there a benefit toit? Yeah, absolutely. Right.
Absolutely. With with a skillededucational professional, with a
good curriculum with engagedkids, a lot can happen. A lot of
good can happen. When you're ina classroom exchanging ideas
back and forth. You know, forthe little kids, all right. This
(21:11):
isn't necessarily appropriate,the old way, may be the better
approach,
Daniel Curtis (21:16):
I think, on that, specifically, is this social
interaction, you know, in earlyearly ages, you know, ages two
to four or five even. I mean,you're learning your role, like
how to interact with people,other people. I mean, it's
critical. You have to have that.
Yeah.
Peter (21:31):
Absolutely true, especially when we start talking
about special ed kids. And, youknow, trying to mainline them as
has been the approach for solong, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot
of benefit to that. I thinkwhere I bring a disagreement to
it, is when you start talkingabout the older kids, middle
school, high school and beyond.
Yeah. Yeah, definitely a lot ofvalue to classroom interaction.
(21:55):
But is that the be all end allof it? And, you know, why not
find world leaders in particularfields? Especially, you know,
academics, right. I mean, forpeople in the professional
field, this isn't viable. Butacademics love to talk about
their work. They love tolecture. It's part of what being
an academic is, yeah. And theability to do it through
(22:19):
platforms, Khan Academy, the UXthing, or whatever that accent.
Yeah. I mean, that's phenomenal.
Right? Sure. And could youapproach these people and have
them lecture class? Maybe,right? It's easy enough. Look
what we're doing with Zoom, andwe're, you know, 1500 miles
apart right now, right?
Daniel Curtis (22:40):
Yeah. Oh, absolutely. There's no reason
why they couldn't, there's noreason why there couldn't be an
engaging method of learning.
Even if it were done for, youknow, 10,000 students across 15
states, you know, it, we canmake it happen, obviously, I
mean, you go to college as a newtake classes, where there's four
or 500 people in the class, ifyou go to an auditorium to take
(23:00):
the class, I mean, okay, am Istill getting the information?
Do I get the knowledge? Yes, Ido. Now, the learning
mechanisms, I mean, identifyingand I think this is another
failure of the school system,I'm sure, we'll talk about this,
it's like identifying the factthat there are different ways to
learn, and the differentindividuals process information
differently. And that, you know,it's not it's, it's the, the
round hole in the square pegwith the square pegs the size of
(23:22):
a car, and the round holes, thesize of a coat can write like,
you know, they don't mash. Okay,but that doesn't mean that it's
wrong. Right. So,
Peter (23:33):
yeah, everybody is unique in their personality, their
their particular gifts. Yeah,they're all going to learn
different, right? Yes. So thisis an accepted fact, I don't
think any rational person isgoing to dispute that. So if
that's the case, why do wecookie cutter education for all
of the kids the same way? At thesame time, right, as long as
(23:56):
they cover the same material?
And understand it appropriately?
Yes. You know, hey, maybe, youknow, a little Johnny needs to
be in there with the teacherexplaining it to him and asking
a lot of questions, becausethat's the way little Johnny
learns. That's fine, actually.
Daniel Curtis (24:09):
And maybe instead of instead of carving up
classes, you know, and then somerandom distribution, it's like,
you know, to the 60th percentilethese kids learn hands on,
right, there's really, so putthem in these two classrooms,
and these two teachers can takecare of it,
Peter (24:25):
because your teachers are specialized to understand that
and to teach them in a mosteffective manner. Right. Yeah, I
think this is this is what'smissing on a lot of things. And
I think it also ends up adding alot of undue stress on teachers,
because we know this.
Daniel Curtis (24:41):
So I know that does for a fact. I know it does.
I've talked to many. Yes. Right.
Peter (24:45):
So you know, these people are out there. They're
professionals. They've dedicatedyears to learning this. Why
don't we carve it up andspecialize so that there's their
particular talents are appliedto the group that
Daniel Curtis (24:58):
will benefit them. That's the key word If
that's apply, why are we notapplying it in a manner and to
me, this is a failure of all ofeveryone here, everyone. That's
not, that's not a child that isabove college age, it is all on
us to make it better. It's notup to the children to tell us
that they're unable to learn, orthat we, you know, as a society,
as we advance technologically,as we advance our understanding
(25:21):
of the human mind and thecapacity to learn, why aren't we
taking that and bringing it outin a way that's consumable, that
have specialized individualsresources, to your point that
have been trained, you know, onall types of cognitive things?
And especially, you know, inthis case, particularly to
learning mechanisms, andidentifying that maybe are we
(25:42):
damned if we go and try toidentify that the way that
children learn based on I don'tknow, like millions and millions
of children that we've probablyprocessed and analyzed? I mean,
how long does it take you tofigure out the best way that you
learned something? It took me.
Peter (25:56):
Well, okay, now, yeah.
Daniel Curtis (25:58):
Well, it's easy, but when you're when you're
young Peter, right. Yeah, yeah.
Peter (26:03):
Understood. And I think that's part of what might be
lacking. All right. There's anoveremphasis on standardized
testing. I'm sorry, it has aplace. Yeah. But later, right.
What is not emphasized enough?
Is teaching children at alllevels, how to think so that
young kids can learn thefundamentals of logic,
(26:28):
procedure, etc, etc, right?
Yeah, sure. You know, how do youget to three? Well, you add one
plus one plus one, and you getto three, so on, right, right.
Take the tried and truemethodology, and still the core
of teaching kids how to learn atan early age, and then they'll
(26:49):
be able to develop their ownparticular learning style as
they mature. I think there's notenough of this, there's too much
focus on a one size fits all
Daniel Curtis (27:00):
approach, a one size fits all, because the
measure of accountability at theschool level is to take this
exam and X percentage of yourchildren have to pass that exam.
And it's like, just bashed itinto their heads, right. But
it's with everything that I did.
And I'll go through this inlife, it doesn't matter if I'm
learning something which I triedto do. I learned stuff all the
time. It's just how my mindworks. But it's like, if it's
not what I'm learning thatsatisfies me, it's that I know
(27:23):
how to learn and I'm applying itin a meaningful way that I'm
getting better at something.
Right, right. So and I thinkthat that's to, to your point,
that's a little bit what's lost.
It's not that two plus twoequals four, it's that any
combination of numbers in anyany way, shape, or form can
equal four, and it's how are yougoing to solve that problem?
Right, right. Yeah.
Peter (27:46):
And again, the the teaching have a methodology and
an approach to solve, right?
What I found interesting is thatwhen I was in school, we had,
again, we're talking juniorsenior year high school, right?
There was a lot of effort paid,since we were on a college
preparatory path of hey, you'regonna have to take a lot of
(28:06):
standardized tests goingforward, meaning LSAT,
immediately, but down the linelicensing exams for accounting
or what have you, there's amillion professions out there
that require it, hey, there's away to take these tests to
maximize your chances. Really, Ididn't know this. Tell me how.
And we worked through, you know,the fundamentals, you know,
multiple choice, you eliminatethe obvious errors, and then you
(28:28):
try and figure out what's lefton the others, you go from a one
in four chance down to a one intwo chance. Right? Okay, great.
That's a way to learn in a wayto solve a particular problem.
In terms of standardizedtesting. I, I've asked both my,
my kids, they didn't do that.
Right, I had to pay for extracourse, even with private
school, to, to have them learnhow to take SATs and later
(28:53):
professors licensure exams,right? I think this is the sort
of thing that has to getaddressed, because people want
to talk a lot about inequity ineducation. And I don't believe
that necessarily, there is aninherited equity in education. I
believe there's an inequity inthe quality of the instruction
(29:14):
and education through variousfactors. And part of it is along
this right? You take the kidsthrough school, you give them
all this knowledge, some of ituseless, some of it quite
useful, but then you never teachthese kids from the beginning.
how this affects reality. Right?
How does this matter to you inthe real world? And even I was
talking to my daughter, she's incollege, right? I said, Hey, you
(29:38):
know, do do they cover anyfinancial classes with you guys?
And she's like, nope, not unlessyour business major. So they're
telling you go ahead and getloans in Crewe perpetual debt,
and no idea if you're ever gonnapay it off. She's like, Yeah,
basically. Well, you know,clearly I've had these kinds of
discussions both my kids But Iwas not amazed, I would say
(30:00):
disappointed that given the waysocieties progress given what a
hot button issue, student loandebt is at the collegiate level
economics in general, yeah,right. Right. Nobody has talked
to them. Right. And I dug, I duginto it a little, I think maybe
this is a discussion for anothershow. But, you know, financial
literacy one on one, right? Whatwhat are we not prepping our
(30:24):
kids for? And why is everybodystruggling so much? Right?
Again, the core is 19th centuryeducation for 21st century
world, and not prepping? Anybodyat any level of it for the
variety of circumstances thatyou're going to encounter? And
what it really means, right?
What's garbage? What's gold? Howdo you have the kids
(30:47):
differentiate between it in thereal world? Not the academic
world?
Daniel Curtis (30:49):
Absolutely.
Absolutely. How do you use it?
It's like, I'm teaching youmath. Here's some practical
examples. And I'm not talkingabout here's a math word problem
that maybe helps me measure yourexecutive like functioning
skills as you interpret the themodes and means of that
paragraph and translate it intosomething meaningful, ie the
answer that the teacher needs,or expects. But, you know, you
(31:15):
might be one day sitting at thestore. And you might say, well,
I hand this guy a $10 bill,because I wanted a box of
cookies, and the box cookies is$8.88. So now I know immediately
in my head, I need $1.22 back,and I'd probably give it to him
as a tip anyway, right? But youknow, just just just for the
sake of the argument, you know,I need that or it's like, I need
(31:36):
to buy a car. Because while Ineed to get to work now that I
have a job, and I can buy thiscar, and you know, maybe I can
get 4% from the credit union.
And I don't even know what thatmeans. Because the dealership
says I can walk out of heretoday, with zero down, if I sign
here, you know, truth be told,you're paying eight and a half
percent on that one, or whateverit may be. And without
understanding how compoundinterest works, you don't
(31:59):
understand the total debt andwhat your cost per month is. Or
factored on top of that, that,Oh, now I have to pay insurance.
And I'm gonna have gas. And I'mand so I've just just concept a
total cost of ownership, right?
And then I can even break thatdown into a cost per mile,
essentially, that's driven. Andif I'm not allocating that in
some way, or my income isn'tgreater than a certain
(32:20):
threshold, I'm going to havefinancial problems,
Peter (32:22):
right? We all want the Ferrari. We all want the
Ferrari. But there's a reasonToyota is number one in America,
right? It's ever said,
Daniel Curtis (32:28):
yeah, it was very popular. I want to buy a Corolla
I'm not even joking, man.
Peter (32:38):
This is a show topic in
Daniel Curtis (32:40):
its own. So it is it is. And I just want to,
again, the first show, I justkind of wanted to touch on it,
because it's it the lack ofcommon skill knowledge in the
translation, because there'splenty of things that I that
I've read, and I think veryabstractly, right? And I can
read it, and I can sit there andthink about it, and I can pull
information out of it, I cancome back and think about it's
more like while I'm walking backyard a week from now, right? And
(33:03):
then I'll be like, Oh, then I'llprobably connect the dots.
Probably. What I found in lifeis that isn't typically the case
for the average person. And ifthose of us who know can convey
what those concepts are and howthey relate, then I think we're,
you know, at least in my eyes,trying to leave the world a
better place. And then that justcomes from the basic
(33:23):
understanding of how things workin the observe
Peter (33:25):
which, which I think, ultimately is the goal of
education, and which gets lostin so much of the senseless
rhetoric and bickering that goesaround. Yes, the whole purpose,
as stated from the beginning, isto create the virtuous man to
(33:45):
you know, take the ancientphilosophers phrase of it.
Right, right. So okay, now wewant the virtuous man and 21st
century or woman, right? Well,how do you do that quality
education at all levels? Thatisn't politicized. And that
doesn't assume mediocrity. Weneed to instill excellence in
the kids. And if we do that, wehave a winning society at all
(34:07):
levels.
Daniel Curtis (34:08):
I can't agree with you anymore on that
statement. I mean, it's it's notabout as you're stating, here.
It's not about lowering the barfor everyone so that everybody
crosses the line. It's aboutkeeping the bar high, because
without something to a mat.
Yeah, right. What what are wegoing to hit the ground in, in
this case? I don't want to hitthe ground. I want to hit the
target. Right, right. I mean, Imean, it's kind of I mean,
(34:29):
you're of Greek heritage, right.
And I have a there's a lot ofgreat philosophical works in
Greek history. And some of myfavorite books actually are
written for problem, you know,2500 years ago. And it makes me
laugh, really in my head notNot, not not not in a funny way,
but it's like, how much is thereto gain from the knowledge of
(34:53):
past societies from theknowledge of past brilliance
that we cannot even take andconsume here and apply To solve,
you know, in I read a book likeThe Republic, right, and it just
captures verbatim, the statethat we sit in right now. Yeah.
In that and you don't even haveto think too abstractly to see
(35:17):
it. I was baffled the first timeI read that I was like, Wow,
here we are. And I kind of thinkback to it. You know,
Peter (35:24):
I think that says something pretty profound,
though. Right? Where 2500 yearsand you know, you can take other
examples as well, right, Rome,Egypt, what have you. This is
human nature has not changed,since we first formed any kind
of society. Right, right. You goto uncontacted tribes in the
(35:46):
middle of the jungle on NewGuinea, South America, what have
you, they still have familystructures, they still have
societal customs, they stillhave societal expectations that
need to be transmitted, andeverybody wants to be the best
within that society. Right. Soif it's so universal, clearly,
it's an inherent part of what itmeans to be human. It absolutely
(36:07):
is. And if that's the case, thenstrip all this technology aside
and everything else and startteaching the kids how to be
excellent. And that there is amethodology that, you know, life
essentially is a game withrules. You need to learn those
rules, so that you can play thegame and hopefully win it. And
if you don't win it, at leastyou don't lose it. And this is,
(36:31):
I think, something that needs tobe emphasized a lot more than it
has been.
Daniel Curtis (36:33):
It has it has to be I think life is it's a blank
canvas for us all. Yeah, to goand do something to do something
perhaps meaningful to dosomething that, you know, I
think every single person thatlives that is a conscious being
has something in them, when youlook at something, when you're
(36:56):
drawn to something, you're drawnto some subject, you're drawn to
certain things, do you evenconsciously choose that, right?
Like, did I wake up one day andsay, I'm going to be a computer
guy, for all intents andpurposes or was like the money?
I wish I was, you know, it justhappened that way. Right? But I
mean, I was like seven or eightyears old. And I was like, Look
(37:18):
at this huge book that my motherhas for COBOL programming, and
I'm, like, start reading it. Andnext thing, you know, I'm
writing software on hercomputer. You know, and okay,
that that's not the story foreverybody. But the point that
I'm making there is that I wasdrawn to it. Yeah. Why was I
(37:38):
drawn to it? You know, why whenwhen, when when I look at
something, I don't try to belike the worst at something. And
I'm sure you don't either. Andmany of the people that we know
don't like we want to, we haveto drive towards excellence. I
think part of it fundamentallyand again, probably a topic for
another show, because I couldget into the psychology of this
all day long. But it's that thethe main emphasis here is that
(37:58):
if we don't strive towardsexcellence, okay, we are
destined to die. And I'm talkingthat as a society, if you
touched on it, if our othersocieties that we can observe
even uncontacted societies, theyhave social hierarchies, they
have dominance hierarchies, theywork within them, they fill
(38:18):
roles, they, they want toachieve excellence, they have to
achieve excellence, because ifthey don't, they don't eat. D,
these are the new we've beenkind of like, surrounded by
luxury, I call it like luxurybeliefs almost because we get to
As Americans, we get to view theworld, some of us get to view
the world through a certainlike, you know, tinted glass
(38:39):
here, and it takes the realityaway from the situation that,
oh, we have to work. And if wedon't work, then we don't try to
get better that someone else inthe world is going to do that.
Because now we're a globaleconomy. It's not just the
economy of Wisconsin andMassachusetts, or the United
States, right? We are eatingright, exactly. We're playing
this game and whether or not youwant to admit that you're
(39:01):
playing it or not, you'replaying it. You know. So if you
don't want to get better at thegame that you're playing, which
is, you know, being a member ofsociety in the 21st century,
then I don't know what you'redoing. But we certainly want to
help you.
Peter (39:17):
And I think on that note, we have an hour, maybe we bring
the show to a conclusion, andtake up a new topic next time.
Daniel Curtis (39:26):
Absolutely. I think part of part of what I'd
like to do in this series in thecontinuing episode is we
certainly have a lot more todiscuss on on the education
system. And we're certainlylooking for feedback from from
our viewers, as far as you know,other content that we'd like to
see, and we'll be sharing thatsubsequently. So thank you all
for listening. Peter, thank youvery much for your time, sir.
(39:48):
Thank you, Daniel. Always apleasure. You as well. Talk to
you soon.
Welcome to the first episode of The (all)
Unknowing podcast. Today, Danieland Peter are going to be
discussing the current state ofthe education system in the
United States of America. Nowjoin us as we leap into the
unknown.
Before we get started, I thinkit's prudent for us to talk a
(00:32):
little bit as this is our firstepisode. So the real purpose of
the show is to bring forth theunknown possibilities from the
realm of the unknown, into theknown. And by that, I mean
simply that when you knowsomething, when you truly know
something, when you believe, youknow, something, you don't open
(00:53):
yourself up to the otherpossibilities that may be so
that there's a lot ofopportunity for us to solve
common problems in society andthe world around us. And we
don't consider them becausewe're so focused on one one way
of being one mode, one method,Peter, you know, I mean, it is
something that you and I havetalked about, you know,
obviously for years, but haveit. So I'm excited. I'm very
(01:16):
excited to be here, obviously,and to discuss this topic. So I
think it's it's a criticalcomponent to the future of not
just our society, but honestlyall societies that find
themselves in the state that wehave found ourselves in today.
Peter (01:30):
Yeah, I definitely think it's a very pivotal moment, at
least in US history. And Iimagine other countries
throughout the world are goingthrough the same sort of thing,
where we've had two going onalmost three years now, of the
pandemic, that has affectedsociety at all levels. And I
(01:50):
think in a lot of unexpectedfashions, and probably the most
profound has been the impact onthe children and young people as
their as they went through this.
Because the routine, theexpected cadence of day to day
life just got shot. So it's onething if you're talking
(02:12):
teenagers, young adults incollege, right, they're mature,
capable, have relatively wellformed personalities, and they
still may be evolving. And theycould more easily cope with this
and more flexible, given thenature of their maturity. The
impact on school age, elementaryschool children, I think, is
(02:32):
only really starting to beunderstood. Daniel, you and I
privately have talked about thisquite a bit. And coincidentally,
I caught up with some oldfriends who I hadn't seen in a
while. And we were who haveschool aged children, right. And
independently, they all notedthat the academic impacts were
noticeable, the manageable. It'sthe psychological and
(02:55):
developmental impacts on theirchildren that aren't being
adequately discussed at abroader level, individual
teachers are on the ball, theyknow what's going on. And
they're trying their best, atleast, the ones who are engaged
and interested. But this hasn'tpercolated up to the broader
society, I don't think. And whenit has, it has been in a very
nasty partisan manner, whichcomes from the inherent
(03:19):
politicization of the educationsystem, at least in the US as
it's evolved over, say, the last3040 years. There's a slight age
difference between us which, youknow, we know, for sure, but I
think that even that slight agedifference shows the
generational differences that weexperienced, you know, again,
(03:40):
elementary, high school leveland beyond. And I think it's
even more profound when wecompare our experiences with
what young parents are goingthrough now, you know, late 20s,
maybe early 30s, five, six yearold kid just entering the school
system for real. And I think we,we have to dig into this and
kind of share some of theexperiences in we have had as
(04:03):
well as other other parents. AndI think it's worth mentioning
that we intentionally pick thissubject as the first topic in
what will hopefully be a longseries of podcasts. Because this
is foundational to everythingthat comes in society. If you
have an uneducated populace, youhave a devastated society at the
(04:27):
end of the day. So yeah, if youdon't get education, right, at
least at the primary secondarylevel, you're you're doomed. And
going forward in terms of humanevolution. So this is something
that it's very dear to both ofus. And I think other people as
well.
Daniel Curtis (04:45):
Now, and I think it has to be it absolutely has
to be because if you can look ata history book, and you can
understand that and you can lookforward I mean, we're dealing
with more. The stakes aredifferent now the stakes are
different because the rate oftechnological changes is so
drastically different than ithas a pretty much any other
point in history. And, you know,so what does that do? It enables
(05:06):
us to see everything that'sgoing on around us. And it to an
extent, and some people cancertainly suffer because of
that. And I mean this like, at apsychological basis, because
then and we touched on this withthe children. You know, I have
two school aged children, andthey were they did remote
learning, for most of the COVIDyear, they're laid in spring of
last year and into 2020. And,you know, we're fortunate that,
(05:30):
that they have that opportunity.
And I realized that a lot ofpeople do not have that
flexibility. My, you know, I'mfortunate, I have a lovely wife,
she was able to make sure thatthe way that she kept them on a
schedule on a routine, andbecause she's able to do that,
it helped them to knowpsychologically that you know,
it's different. Yeah, it'sdifferent and it's stable.
That's, that's key stability,right? Because that's what
(05:52):
school aged children need.
That's what people in generalneed. Let's be honest, okay.
Yeah,
Peter (05:57):
not not to belittle the point. For children. routine,
and predictability is key,because it gives them a sense of
safety. And if they're safe,they're gonna be in a good
psychological space to learn,they'll flourish, they'll
thorough, they'll get the mostthat they cannot effectively do.
Daniel Curtis (06:14):
No, absolutely.
And it's not intended, the pointthat you made earlier is this is
not something that's small,because we don't know the
effects of this, we will notknow the effects of this until
we look back 10 or 15 or 20years from now and even even
someone astute we'll have to bedoing that people that that
actually care that want to drivetruth from the matter. Not not
(06:36):
in the without a politicalagenda, as we were previously
discussing. I really, you know,it's in that's something we have
to take up. It's completelyanother series, because
obviously, we're not gettinganywhere with the way that it's
happening right now. But
Peter (06:50):
it will kind of loop back to your point about how the pace
of technology's impactedeverything, right? I think
exactly. This topic is the mostgermane example of how that
rapid technological advanceaffects things, right? Yes, for
(07:10):
the first time, parents wereable to see actually what was
going on in their children'sclassrooms, not what they
thought it was not what wasgoing on, when they were in
school 1520 2530 years ago. AndI think there was a very hard
rude and rapid awakening of theunequal way in which different
(07:37):
school systems, differentschools, different teachers
responded. So that we got to seea very different view of the
real state of the educationalsystem in the country than what
has been popularly portrayed asan example. You know, I do
pretty well, economically, I wasable to have both my kids in, in
(07:58):
private school, right, right. Atthe time, my daughter was
finishing high school, my son isin his, his junior year right
now. Their schools said, Okay,this is a mess, give us a week,
we'll figure something out. Andthe kids will be back in on
learning. true to their wordthey did. So very happy. But I'm
(08:19):
paying for it out of pocket. Soit was expected. And I guarantee
you that all the other parentssaid something to the effect, to
the credit of the schools andthe teachers, they responded,
that's great. The town in whichI live, had a completely
opposite response. And we arenot in a particularly upscale
town were very middle class typetype town.
(08:42):
It took the teachers months tofigure out what to do it
literally months. So I would seethese poor kids walking around
the neighborhood, not in anymalicious way. But just as some
way to occupy their time becausethey were unable to have their,
their classroom situationaddressed by the town school
system. Right. I live inMassachusetts, Boston School
(09:05):
System, very large, admittedly,lots of different problems, at
all levels, the whole bitdifferent scale of operations,
took them much longer to figurethings out, and degenerate into
a lot of needless bickering inmy own opinion. Okay, so now by
virtue of what town you happento live in, you had a completely
different response based onwhether you're public versus
(09:26):
private, small town versus largecity. And all of a sudden,
people started asking, Well, ifthis guy can figure it out at
this school, and this headmasterand this teacher, I'll get it
squared away. Why can't thesepeople over in the larger cities
do likewise? Which is very validquestion. And rather than
address it to say, you know,whatever the case may be,
(09:49):
there's a lot of hand waving, inmy opinion, needle is finger
pointing, going back and forth.
Great. We have now identified afundamental flaw in how
education is delivered to ourChildren were past the worst of
the pandemic are coming out ofit. There's still no discussion
of the plan of, Hey, what did welearn? And what are we going to
do going forward to leveragethese things to improve the
(10:12):
experience overall for all kidsat all levels? And along those
lines? Again, speaking to thegap that you mentioned, between
technological access and alittle bit, right, yes.
Legitimate, there's a lot ofkids out there who do not have
the benefit of your lovely wifestayed home, to keep them on the
straight and narrow because theyhad to work legitimately, right?
(10:33):
Absolutely. Absolutely. So Gee,I use the truck driver as the
proverbial metaphor because, youknow, blue collar background,
these are the kinds of peoplethat I grew up around, find
decent, good people, but theydidn't have a ton of dough. I
didn't go to private school, Iwent to public school, right? So
is it fair, that the truckdriver who's making you know,
(10:54):
40 50,000, an hour a year,delivering stuff that his
children do not have equalaccess, because he can't afford
to go buy them laptops andwebcams and have internet access
and the whole thing that rapidlystarts adding to the bill? Okay,
what are you guys going to doabout it as a government to
serve your constituents?
(11:18):
Nothing. And you know, Daniel,but you and I are in the
technolog technology business,we know how this could have been
addressed, really without thatmuch money. But okay, federal
government releases cares money,what happened to it, a lot of
towns took it sat on it, I'vedone nothing with it to date,
this is a factual dispute it,you and I both responded to RFPs
(11:41):
for these things, and know thatthey all went nowhere, because
nobody wanted to pull thetrigger on actually executing
against anything. So again, whosuffers? You and I know, we just
move on to the next client, wedon't care. But the the children
of the constituents in thesetowns suffer, because the
administration was incapable ofacting rapidly and leveraging
(12:03):
resources that were in factavailable to them to meet the
needs and to move forward and toelevate the game for everybody,
not just the, the, you know, thethe poorest of the poor, or the
richest of the rich, this wouldhave helped everybody across the
board, where it implementedstrategically at a high level
with thought about what theimpact would be. And I know I
kind of went on a tangent, butWell, no, no, no, I
Daniel Curtis (12:25):
by all means, I think it's important to cover to
really flush out the problemhere, right? Because it's at
multiple levels. It's not, it'snot just that there's a an
identified problem with theability to deliver or respond to
a particular incident orpandemic, or whatever it may be.
Right, I mean, even and it justfor context, were public school.
(12:47):
Wisconsin, not Boston, fairlyaffluent area, it took them
about a week to get everybodyonline, basically, and you know,
everybody's using GoogleClassroom, Google meet and
everything set up, you know, andthey had some structure, and
they made it better over time.
But in this, this goes, justjust goes to another thought. I
mean, this is, again, it's apretty nice area. And the
(13:07):
schools, even though it'spublic, like it's rated very
highly in the state, like 99thpercentile, okay, so you and I
know, it draws a certain type ofperson there, they have a
certain structure, they operatein a certain way, there's
accountability. There, there'saccountability from the parents,
even even though it's publicschool, people are heavily
(13:28):
involved in the school. I mean,there's a lot of money, there's
a lot of donations that happenthere. And it's nice, it's nice
for that. But the real problemthere is that if there was a
good template for how to respondfor how to enable learning for
how to get kids, the educationthat they need to get them the
(13:49):
structure that they need, thatthe schooling, essentially, he's
providing, you know, if it'sworking well, and a few ways we
need to be we need to be sharingthat.
Peter (14:01):
And I think that's, that did not happen. Exactly. That
did not happen. Yes. And thisgoes to the legacy, I think, of
the fact that we're stillrunning education in the United
States of America, on a 19thcentury mindset, when in fact,
we're trying to prepare ouryoung people for the 21st
century and beyond. And stuffthat may have worked in 1950 is
(14:24):
not going to work and 2022, muchless 2030 2040 and beyond,
right? Yes. So all of this stuffwas going on individual schools
figured it out. Why was this notshared with other schools within
a system? Or if a particularschool system figured it out?
Why was it not shared with otherschool systems? And I'm quite
(14:46):
sure we would have a largeamount of people saying, well,
that's not true. That happened.
I vehemently disagree with that,because I was involved directly
with some of the schools ontrying to get this stuff going.
And the amount of infightingpetty territorial pissing, you
know, for lack of a betterphrase was staggering to me. And
especially when I went and I,you know, started trying to help
(15:10):
volunteer on certain bases andsee, okay, what's going on? You?
Well, we can't support this inour school why? Well, we're
having trouble. You look intoit. You see equipment that
hasn't been touched in literally25 years, right. from companies
that no longer exists. Yeah,using? Yeah. Yeah. Right. And,
you know, my immediate questionwas, what did you guys do with
(15:35):
all the money that you got fortechnology in the classroom? And
there was a lot of shoegazingand shuffling back and forth.
And at the end of the day, theysquandered it on other things,
because everything is happeningat either a school or a district
level, and not at a, you know,city state level.
Daniel Curtis (15:54):
Yeah. And that solution, it's almost like you'd
need something that's morestructured holistically, because
anytime we're dealing withscale, I mean, if you if you
want to do a technology project,even for your house, I mean,
it's can be complex, dependingon what you're doing. You know,
and at that level, it's like,okay, this is what we need per
classroom. This is the model,this is the method, it's tested,
(16:15):
it's proven. Now, let's goreplicate that in all the
classrooms. Right? That makessense.
Peter (16:20):
And even beyond that, I'm, I have a connection with me
and I have a lot of family andmade Right, right. And I'm quite
sure that a lot of people inWisconsin, are in the same
situation. Were in Maine, ifyou're in one of the major urban
centers, say around Portland orLewiston or what have you, yeah,
piece of cake, get broadband,you have multiple providers,
multiple price points, you'regood. Well, if you just go 2530
(16:43):
miles outside of these urbancenters, it's not a not
necessarily the case, you'relucky if you have broadband,
it's going to be a lot moreexpensive. I was shocked when I
saw what these people werepaying for pretty poor service,
then, you know, what's availablein the urban areas. And Maine is
a big, big state, Wisconsin, bigstate, right. So you know, you
(17:03):
get out to parts of both theseareas. And, you know, you can
extrapolate to other parts ofthe United States. It's the same
situation where a lot of peoplefar apart, no broadband, in
fairness, part of the Cares Actmoney was there to upgrade the
broadband and all that whathappened? No activity. Right. So
here, you could have parlayed aonce in a lifetime opportunity
(17:26):
to light up rural areas with noreal broadband access, right,
not satellite in the nonsensethat they say is broadband,
which we both know, in factisn't. And you would have done a
great deal to service thebroadest segment of your
populace that you could, becausenow, you have special needs
kids, right? Okay, maybethey're, you know, they're
(17:50):
functional enough where they cansit in front of, you know, some
kind of device and have remotelearning, right? Right. Is it
optimal? No, but it still givesthem something. And in the case
where they can't do it, okay,pandemic threw a monkey wrench
into traditional special ed,processes and all that.
Terrible, but, again, it's oneof those things where it's
(18:13):
happened once we've had apandemic and modern times, it'll
happen again. Well, what are wegoing to do to address the most
marginalized and most vulnerableof the population? Still haven't
seen anything? And I understandthe argument. Alright, hey, we
have to worry about gettingeverybody back to school. It's a
huge hurdle. I got it. I agreewith it totally. But why are we
(18:35):
not starting to seecomprehensive discussions about
this? Instead, we're arguingback and forth about whether or
not kids need to wear masks inthe classroom? Do you open the
window and all this othernonsense, right? We're past that
those days are done. We're nowon the rebuild phase, we have to
reassess and start planning forthe future show that if and when
(18:55):
this happens, again, it doesn'thave the devastating impact. We
have kids who have lost years ofdevelopment, right? Well, what
are you guys gonna do about it?
And there hasn't been anywidespread discussion of core
infrastructure stuff, or thereal other alternatives that are
on the internet is freeresources that could be brought
(19:16):
in to help people with this, youknow, kinda Academy what have
you, right? Yeah. Why is thatnot part of a standard?
Curriculum, right?
Daniel Curtis (19:27):
Internet based learning, and then by all means,
I mean, if you have people,teachers, professors, etc, that
are able to create excellentcontent. Yeah, you know what I
mean? And I mean, like, topnotch because like, and then
(19:47):
there's always a distribution.
It doesn't matter.
Statistically, there's always adistribution. And if we can get
a lot of kids access to things,then I'm talking about learning
material. I'm talking aboutcourses I'm talking about all
the stuff that the internet canprovide Right. This is like one
of the greatest things that wecan do in this in a connected
era. Instead of being thedisinformation age, let's pull
(20:08):
ourselves back to theInformation Age, let's use it
for the betterment of ofchildren and ultimately for the
entire society. I mean, it hasto happen, it should happen. And
it's silly that we're we have tohave this conversation right
now, frankly,
Peter (20:22):
agreed. And this is where I think we have to lose this 19
Sanctuary mindset, right? Yes,of kids going to a building in a
room with a teacher every dayall day to have something
drilled into them by rotelearning. Right? Okay, I
understand I'll get a lot offlack for that statement. And
it's an oversimplification. ButI make it as an illustrative
(20:49):
point for, you know, hey, whydoes it have to be that way? It
doesn't. Is there a benefit toit? Yeah, absolutely. Right.
Absolutely. With with a skillededucational professional, with a
good curriculum with engagedkids, a lot can happen. A lot of
good can happen. When you're ina classroom exchanging ideas
back and forth. You know, forthe little kids, all right. This
(21:11):
isn't necessarily appropriate,the old way, may be the better
approach,
Daniel Curtis (21:16):
I think, on that, specifically, is this social
interaction, you know, in earlyearly ages, you know, ages two
to four or five even. I mean,you're learning your role, like
how to interact with people,other people. I mean, it's
critical. You have to have that.
Yeah.
Peter (21:31):
Absolutely true, especially when we start talking
about special ed kids. And, youknow, trying to mainline them as
has been the approach for solong, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot
of benefit to that. I thinkwhere I bring a disagreement to
it, is when you start talkingabout the older kids, middle
school, high school and beyond.
Yeah. Yeah, definitely a lot ofvalue to classroom interaction.
(21:55):
But is that the be all end allof it? And, you know, why not
find world leaders in particularfields? Especially, you know,
academics, right. I mean, forpeople in the professional
field, this isn't viable. Butacademics love to talk about
their work. They love tolecture. It's part of what being
an academic is, yeah. And theability to do it through
(22:19):
platforms, Khan Academy, the UXthing, or whatever that accent.
Yeah. I mean, that's phenomenal.
Right? Sure. And could youapproach these people and have
them lecture class? Maybe,right? It's easy enough. Look
what we're doing with Zoom, andwe're, you know, 1500 miles
apart right now, right?
Daniel Curtis (22:40):
Yeah. Oh, absolutely. There's no reason
why they couldn't, there's noreason why there couldn't be an
engaging method of learning.
Even if it were done for, youknow, 10,000 students across 15
states, you know, it, we canmake it happen, obviously, I
mean, you go to college as a newtake classes, where there's four
or 500 people in the class, ifyou go to an auditorium to take
(23:00):
the class, I mean, okay, am Istill getting the information?
Do I get the knowledge? Yes, Ido. Now, the learning
mechanisms, I mean, identifyingand I think this is another
failure of the school system,I'm sure, we'll talk about this,
it's like identifying the factthat there are different ways to
learn, and the differentindividuals process information
differently. And that, you know,it's not it's, it's the, the
round hole in the square pegwith the square pegs the size of
(23:22):
a car, and the round holes, thesize of a coat can write like,
you know, they don't mash. Okay,but that doesn't mean that it's
wrong. Right. So,
Peter (23:33):
yeah, everybody is unique in their personality, their
their particular gifts. Yeah,they're all going to learn
different, right? Yes. So thisis an accepted fact, I don't
think any rational person isgoing to dispute that. So if
that's the case, why do wecookie cutter education for all
of the kids the same way? At thesame time, right, as long as
(23:56):
they cover the same material?
And understand it appropriately?
Yes. You know, hey, maybe, youknow, a little Johnny needs to
be in there with the teacherexplaining it to him and asking
a lot of questions, becausethat's the way little Johnny
learns. That's fine, actually.
Daniel Curtis (24:09):
And maybe instead of instead of carving up
classes, you know, and then somerandom distribution, it's like,
you know, to the 60th percentilethese kids learn hands on,
right, there's really, so putthem in these two classrooms,
and these two teachers can takecare of it,
Peter (24:25):
because your teachers are specialized to understand that
and to teach them in a mosteffective manner. Right. Yeah, I
think this is this is what'smissing on a lot of things. And
I think it also ends up adding alot of undue stress on teachers,
because we know this.
Daniel Curtis (24:41):
So I know that does for a fact. I know it does.
I've talked to many. Yes. Right.
Peter (24:45):
So you know, these people are out there. They're
professionals. They've dedicatedyears to learning this. Why
don't we carve it up andspecialize so that there's their
particular talents are appliedto the group that
Daniel Curtis (24:58):
will benefit them. That's the key word If
that's apply, why are we notapplying it in a manner and to
me, this is a failure of all ofeveryone here, everyone. That's
not, that's not a child that isabove college age, it is all on
us to make it better. It's notup to the children to tell us
that they're unable to learn, orthat we, you know, as a society,
as we advance technologically,as we advance our understanding
(25:21):
of the human mind and thecapacity to learn, why aren't we
taking that and bringing it outin a way that's consumable, that
have specialized individualsresources, to your point that
have been trained, you know, onall types of cognitive things?
And especially, you know, inthis case, particularly to
learning mechanisms, andidentifying that maybe are we
(25:42):
damned if we go and try toidentify that the way that
children learn based on I don'tknow, like millions and millions
of children that we've probablyprocessed and analyzed? I mean,
how long does it take you tofigure out the best way that you
learned something? It took me.
Peter (25:56):
Well, okay, now, yeah.
Daniel Curtis (25:58):
Well, it's easy, but when you're when you're
young Peter, right. Yeah, yeah.
Peter (26:03):
Understood. And I think that's part of what might be
lacking. All right. There's anoveremphasis on standardized
testing. I'm sorry, it has aplace. Yeah. But later, right.
What is not emphasized enough?
Is teaching children at alllevels, how to think so that
young kids can learn thefundamentals of logic,
(26:28):
procedure, etc, etc, right?
Yeah, sure. You know, how do youget to three? Well, you add one
plus one plus one, and you getto three, so on, right, right.
Take the tried and truemethodology, and still the core
of teaching kids how to learn atan early age, and then they'll
(26:49):
be able to develop their ownparticular learning style as
they mature. I think there's notenough of this, there's too much
focus on a one size fits all
Daniel Curtis (27:00):
approach, a one size fits all, because the
measure of accountability at theschool level is to take this
exam and X percentage of yourchildren have to pass that exam.
And it's like, just bashed itinto their heads, right. But
it's with everything that I did.
And I'll go through this inlife, it doesn't matter if I'm
learning something which I triedto do. I learned stuff all the
time. It's just how my mindworks. But it's like, if it's
not what I'm learning thatsatisfies me, it's that I know
(27:23):
how to learn and I'm applying itin a meaningful way that I'm
getting better at something.
Right, right. So and I thinkthat that's to, to your point,
that's a little bit what's lost.
It's not that two plus twoequals four, it's that any
combination of numbers in anyany way, shape, or form can
equal four, and it's how are yougoing to solve that problem?
Right, right. Yeah.
Peter (27:46):
And again, the the teaching have a methodology and
an approach to solve, right?
What I found interesting is thatwhen I was in school, we had,
again, we're talking juniorsenior year high school, right?
There was a lot of effort paid,since we were on a college
preparatory path of hey, you'regonna have to take a lot of
(28:06):
standardized tests goingforward, meaning LSAT,
immediately, but down the linelicensing exams for accounting
or what have you, there's amillion professions out there
that require it, hey, there's away to take these tests to
maximize your chances. Really, Ididn't know this. Tell me how.
And we worked through, you know,the fundamentals, you know,
multiple choice, you eliminatethe obvious errors, and then you
(28:28):
try and figure out what's lefton the others, you go from a one
in four chance down to a one intwo chance. Right? Okay, great.
That's a way to learn in a wayto solve a particular problem.
In terms of standardizedtesting. I, I've asked both my,
my kids, they didn't do that.
Right, I had to pay for extracourse, even with private
school, to, to have them learnhow to take SATs and later
(28:53):
professors licensure exams,right? I think this is the sort
of thing that has to getaddressed, because people want
to talk a lot about inequity ineducation. And I don't believe
that necessarily, there is aninherited equity in education. I
believe there's an inequity inthe quality of the instruction
(29:14):
and education through variousfactors. And part of it is along
this right? You take the kidsthrough school, you give them
all this knowledge, some of ituseless, some of it quite
useful, but then you never teachthese kids from the beginning.
how this affects reality. Right?
How does this matter to you inthe real world? And even I was
talking to my daughter, she's incollege, right? I said, Hey, you
(29:38):
know, do do they cover anyfinancial classes with you guys?
And she's like, nope, not unlessyour business major. So they're
telling you go ahead and getloans in Crewe perpetual debt,
and no idea if you're ever gonnapay it off. She's like, Yeah,
basically. Well, you know,clearly I've had these kinds of
discussions both my kids But Iwas not amazed, I would say
(30:00):
disappointed that given the waysocieties progress given what a
hot button issue, student loandebt is at the collegiate level
economics in general, yeah,right. Right. Nobody has talked
to them. Right. And I dug, I duginto it a little, I think maybe
this is a discussion for anothershow. But, you know, financial
literacy one on one, right? Whatwhat are we not prepping our
(30:24):
kids for? And why is everybodystruggling so much? Right?
Again, the core is 19th centuryeducation for 21st century
world, and not prepping? Anybodyat any level of it for the
variety of circumstances thatyou're going to encounter? And
what it really means, right?
What's garbage? What's gold? Howdo you have the kids
(30:47):
differentiate between it in thereal world? Not the academic
world?
Daniel Curtis (30:49):
Absolutely.
Absolutely. How do you use it?
It's like, I'm teaching youmath. Here's some practical
examples. And I'm not talkingabout here's a math word problem
that maybe helps me measure yourexecutive like functioning
skills as you interpret the themodes and means of that
paragraph and translate it intosomething meaningful, ie the
answer that the teacher needs,or expects. But, you know, you
(31:15):
might be one day sitting at thestore. And you might say, well,
I hand this guy a $10 bill,because I wanted a box of
cookies, and the box cookies is$8.88. So now I know immediately
in my head, I need $1.22 back,and I'd probably give it to him
as a tip anyway, right? But youknow, just just just for the
sake of the argument, you know,I need that or it's like, I need
(31:36):
to buy a car. Because while Ineed to get to work now that I
have a job, and I can buy thiscar, and you know, maybe I can
get 4% from the credit union.
And I don't even know what thatmeans. Because the dealership
says I can walk out of heretoday, with zero down, if I sign
here, you know, truth be told,you're paying eight and a half
percent on that one, or whateverit may be. And without
understanding how compoundinterest works, you don't
(31:59):
understand the total debt andwhat your cost per month is. Or
factored on top of that, that,Oh, now I have to pay insurance.
And I'm gonna have gas. And I'mand so I've just just concept a
total cost of ownership, right?
And then I can even break thatdown into a cost per mile,
essentially, that's driven. Andif I'm not allocating that in
some way, or my income isn'tgreater than a certain
(32:20):
threshold, I'm going to havefinancial problems,
Peter (32:22):
right? We all want the Ferrari. We all want the
Ferrari. But there's a reasonToyota is number one in America,
right? It's ever said,
Daniel Curtis (32:28):
yeah, it was very popular. I want to buy a Corolla
I'm not even joking, man.
Peter (32:38):
This is a show topic in
Daniel Curtis (32:40):
its own. So it is it is. And I just want to,
again, the first show, I justkind of wanted to touch on it,
because it's it the lack ofcommon skill knowledge in the
translation, because there'splenty of things that I that
I've read, and I think veryabstractly, right? And I can
read it, and I can sit there andthink about it, and I can pull
information out of it, I cancome back and think about it's
more like while I'm walking backyard a week from now, right? And
(33:03):
then I'll be like, Oh, then I'llprobably connect the dots.
Probably. What I found in lifeis that isn't typically the case
for the average person. And ifthose of us who know can convey
what those concepts are and howthey relate, then I think we're,
you know, at least in my eyes,trying to leave the world a
better place. And then that justcomes from the basic
(33:23):
understanding of how things workin the observe
Peter (33:25):
which, which I think, ultimately is the goal of
education, and which gets lostin so much of the senseless
rhetoric and bickering that goesaround. Yes, the whole purpose,
as stated from the beginning, isto create the virtuous man to
(33:45):
you know, take the ancientphilosophers phrase of it.
Right, right. So okay, now wewant the virtuous man and 21st
century or woman, right? Well,how do you do that quality
education at all levels? Thatisn't politicized. And that
doesn't assume mediocrity. Weneed to instill excellence in
the kids. And if we do that, wehave a winning society at all
(34:07):
levels.
Daniel Curtis (34:08):
I can't agree with you anymore on that
statement. I mean, it's it's notabout as you're stating, here.
It's not about lowering the barfor everyone so that everybody
crosses the line. It's aboutkeeping the bar high, because
without something to a mat.
Yeah, right. What what are wegoing to hit the ground in, in
this case? I don't want to hitthe ground. I want to hit the
target. Right, right. I mean, Imean, it's kind of I mean,
(34:29):
you're of Greek heritage, right.
And I have a there's a lot ofgreat philosophical works in
Greek history. And some of myfavorite books actually are
written for problem, you know,2500 years ago. And it makes me
laugh, really in my head notNot, not not not in a funny way,
but it's like, how much is thereto gain from the knowledge of
(34:53):
past societies from theknowledge of past brilliance
that we cannot even take andconsume here and apply To solve,
you know, in I read a book likeThe Republic, right, and it just
captures verbatim, the statethat we sit in right now. Yeah.
In that and you don't even haveto think too abstractly to see
(35:17):
it. I was baffled the first timeI read that I was like, Wow,
here we are. And I kind of thinkback to it. You know,
Peter (35:24):
I think that says something pretty profound,
though. Right? Where 2500 yearsand you know, you can take other
examples as well, right, Rome,Egypt, what have you. This is
human nature has not changed,since we first formed any kind
of society. Right, right. You goto uncontacted tribes in the
(35:46):
middle of the jungle on NewGuinea, South America, what have
you, they still have familystructures, they still have
societal customs, they stillhave societal expectations that
need to be transmitted, andeverybody wants to be the best
within that society. Right. Soif it's so universal, clearly,
it's an inherent part of what itmeans to be human. It absolutely
(36:07):
is. And if that's the case, thenstrip all this technology aside
and everything else and startteaching the kids how to be
excellent. And that there is amethodology that, you know, life
essentially is a game withrules. You need to learn those
rules, so that you can play thegame and hopefully win it. And
if you don't win it, at leastyou don't lose it. And this is,
(36:31):
I think, something that needs tobe emphasized a lot more than it
has been.
Daniel Curtis (36:33):
It has it has to be I think life is it's a blank
canvas for us all. Yeah, to goand do something to do something
perhaps meaningful to dosomething that, you know, I
think every single person thatlives that is a conscious being
has something in them, when youlook at something, when you're
(36:56):
drawn to something, you're drawnto some subject, you're drawn to
certain things, do you evenconsciously choose that, right?
Like, did I wake up one day andsay, I'm going to be a computer
guy, for all intents andpurposes or was like the money?
I wish I was, you know, it justhappened that way. Right? But I
mean, I was like seven or eightyears old. And I was like, Look
(37:18):
at this huge book that my motherhas for COBOL programming, and
I'm, like, start reading it. Andnext thing, you know, I'm
writing software on hercomputer. You know, and okay,
that that's not the story foreverybody. But the point that
I'm making there is that I wasdrawn to it. Yeah. Why was I
(37:38):
drawn to it? You know, why whenwhen, when when I look at
something, I don't try to belike the worst at something. And
I'm sure you don't either. Andmany of the people that we know
don't like we want to, we haveto drive towards excellence. I
think part of it fundamentallyand again, probably a topic for
another show, because I couldget into the psychology of this
all day long. But it's that thethe main emphasis here is that
(37:58):
if we don't strive towardsexcellence, okay, we are
destined to die. And I'm talkingthat as a society, if you
touched on it, if our othersocieties that we can observe
even uncontacted societies, theyhave social hierarchies, they
have dominance hierarchies, theywork within them, they fill
(38:18):
roles, they, they want toachieve excellence, they have to
achieve excellence, because ifthey don't, they don't eat. D,
these are the new we've beenkind of like, surrounded by
luxury, I call it like luxurybeliefs almost because we get to
As Americans, we get to view theworld, some of us get to view
the world through a certainlike, you know, tinted glass
(38:39):
here, and it takes the realityaway from the situation that,
oh, we have to work. And if wedon't work, then we don't try to
get better that someone else inthe world is going to do that.
Because now we're a globaleconomy. It's not just the
economy of Wisconsin andMassachusetts, or the United
States, right? We are eatingright, exactly. We're playing
this game and whether or not youwant to admit that you're
(39:01):
playing it or not, you'replaying it. You know. So if you
don't want to get better at thegame that you're playing, which
is, you know, being a member ofsociety in the 21st century,
then I don't know what you'redoing. But we certainly want to
help you.
Peter (39:17):
And I think on that note, we have an hour, maybe we bring
the show to a conclusion, andtake up a new topic next time.
Daniel Curtis (39:26):
Absolutely. I think part of part of what I'd
like to do in this series in thecontinuing episode is we
certainly have a lot more todiscuss on on the education
system. And we're certainlylooking for feedback from from
our viewers, as far as you know,other content that we'd like to
see, and we'll be sharing thatsubsequently. So thank you all
for listening. Peter, thank youvery much for your time, sir.
(39:48):
Thank you, Daniel. Always apleasure. You as well. Talk to
you soon.
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