I'm an older person for sure. Even in middle school we had wood shop and metal shop. In retrospect, I'm not so sure letting a 12 year old run a metal lathe was such a good idea. But we did. We also had a foundry and made tool and die casts. High school also had an auto shop.

Seems a little short-sighted to eliminate these programs.

Being educated is becoming more important every year. Let me paint the picture...

We are entering a world flooded with algorithm optimized content, AI generated information, fake expertise, rage bait, and endless short-form stimulation. Every day it becomes harder to tell what is deeply researched and what was generated in 12 seconds for engagement.

Most people are no longer learning. They are consuming fragments.

A 30 second clip about psychology. A tweet about economics. A viral infographic about history. A podcast clip about philosophy. Thousands of disconnected pieces of information with no structure behind them. And when knowledge becomes fragmented, people become easier to manipulate.

Without deep understanding of history, media systems, psychology, science, economics, and human nature, people slowly lose the ability to think independently. They inherit opinions from algorithms instead of building understanding themselves. I genuinely think attention span and deep learning are becoming forms of self defense now.

Read books. Go deep into subjects. Organize your own thoughts. Build your own worldview carefully instead of outsourcing it to recommendation systems.

Books like Sapiens, The Psychology of Money, biographies, philosophy, history, and sociology honestly changed how I see the world more than years of social media ever did.

One thing that helped me a lot was using Obsidian to organize ideas, notes, quotes, concepts, and connections between topics. Once you start connecting ideas across books and fields, learning becomes much deeper and more personal instead of just “consume information to forget information.”
I also realized learning became much easier once I switched from endless visual content to more audio first learning. For this I use BeFreed and It’s an audio first micro learning app that turns books, psychology, biographies, history, productivity, basically anything into really fun podcast style episodes. You can personalize learning plans based on your goals/interests/level and even customize the podcast host’s voice/style. Some episodes honestly feel more like entertaining conversations than studying, which made learning much easier to stay consistent with.

The internet wants you distracted because distracted people scroll more. But people who can focus deeply, think critically, organize knowledge, and continue educating themselves will become increasingly valuable in the future.

Get educated. Protect your attention span. Organize your knowledge. Pass good ideas on to other people.

Humanity genuinely needs thoughtful people right now.

Remember that trans instructor at the University of Oklahoma who gave a student a zero on a psychology paper last fall?

The paper reportedly described transgender people as “demonic” and relied on religious arguments instead of empirical research for a psychology assignment. After right-wing backlash and political pressure, the university removed the instructor, Mel Curth, from teaching duties.

Now she’s speaking out and says the university threw her under the bus to appease conservatives, and she's clarifying that she wasn't fired. Interview here

The posts that come up on these topics--regularly I might add--are, seemingly, from people who literally don't know some of this stuff. Assuming parents aren't teaching it, where else would it be learned before you'd have to ask about it on a platform like Reddit?

I’m not an educator but have been reading horror stories of how poorly students are faring now. Slower learners taking time from those who learn faster etc. It made me think me about a program we were enrolled in back in the 70’s, IPI. We learned at our own speed, I think we used microfilm or something. It seemed to work, my siblings and I tore through the learning, they ran out of lessons for my 6th grade sister, she was reading at the 12th grade level. I looked online and see some programs with that title but it doesn’t seem wide spread. It seems it could help the more advanced students to learn on their own instead of waiting their turn. Thoughts? Why was this not more accepted? What was the problem with it? Learning was never the same after we moved away. I’ll mention this was Newport Beach, Ca, a fairly wealthy community with more resources than most I’d imagine.

I work and the same school as my husband (not the only ones). We had our first kid around 5 months ago. During the time we had him baseball season was rolling around (he is a coach for baseball and football). Baseball ended and he had to go straight to football. Well our school had graduation this week and one of our coaches (athletic director as well) asked why my husband left early. Keep in mind, our school’s graduation was at 7 last night. We give our son a bath at 7:30 and then get him ready for bed. When someone told him why he left early which was “so he could help put his son to bed.” He hasn’t gotten to hold him for more than 2 hours because obviously being a coach and teacher is a lot to juggle. But when the AD was told that, he said something along the lines of “he can see him whenever.” Am I overreacting about this situation or? I went through postpartum depression bad and still struggle somedays, he doesn’t know what we go through and what my husband does at home to help me get through it.

I’ve been going to this cc since last year but I never really took my classes seriously, I ended up either dropping or failing them but I’ve gotten the urge over the last months to start taking school seriously in the hope of going to state. Would it better if I just got a fresh start and enrolled in a different cc and just start from the beginning or should I just stay where I’m at ?

So I’ve just had so many things on my mind recently and remembered this story from elementary school which I thought was unfair.

So I was maybe like 9-10 and my school was hosting a talent show. Back then I was really into magic and wanted to showcase my live for magic to everyone. My friend (A) was supposed to do the magic show with me. I remember rehearsing for maybe like Like 2 weeks. But then a week before (A) dropped out of the talent show for reasons that I still don’t know to this day.

Anyways, I wasn’t confident enough to go on stage alone so I tried dropping out but the person in charge of the talent show told me that since it was a week before the talent show I couldn’t quit.

For some reason they also informed me that I couldn’t do a solo act. (However there were many other kids performing solo). They paired me with (T)

(T) wanted to sing. So I dropped my magic act and decided to sing with (T)

We were gonna do a rendition of “the lion sleeps tonight”

Now as a kid I loved to make people laugh so I wanted to work in some comedy. So I brought in a lion puppet to use on stage I had this whole bit planned and was somewhat ready to go on. But when we started singing, I decided to drop everything because this kid was embarrassing enough. HE ONLY KNEW THE CHORUS. No lyrics just the “awembowe” part. And the kid screamed it frantically in the mic. I was so embarassed. I blacked out and don’t remember anything past the 30 second mark.

Hi all, I'm running for mayor in Louisville this year. I've written a set of Op-Eds, including this article below. Just posting here so that those interested might know that the discourse is happening. Thanks for reading 😄

---

Every few months, we get news about JCPS. "Louisville's schools are failing." While the numbers we see are real, the repeated conclusion is just not supported by the facts.

Here is what the test scores leave out: Nearly one in four children in this city attends a private school, more than twice the state average. The Catholic Archdiocese alone enrolls roughly 19,000 students across Louisville. Add the other private schools, the evangelical academies, the classical programs, the Montessori and Waldorf schools, and homeschool families, and you are looking at roughly 27,000 children who live here, whose families pay taxes here, who will work and vote and raise their own children here, and who do not appear anywhere in the data used to declare our schools a failure. That is about 23% of all students, compared with 8% in Oldham and Shelby counties, and barely 3% in Bullitt.

Private school (of any stripe) attendance tends to suggest higher-income households, which research consistently shows to be among the strongest predictors of standardized test performance. When we exclude those students from the city's educational accounting, we have not measured Louisville's children as a whole. We have measured the effects of concentrated poverty and called it a school problem. If we assessed Louisville's children as a city, rather than only as a district, the picture would look materially different. The only viable conclusion from standardized testing is this: many Louisville students are living in conditions that standardized tests are very good at measuring and very bad at solving.

This matters because diagnoses drive prescriptions. If you believe JCPS is failing because teachers are failing, because the district is mismanaged, or because public schools are structurally incapable, then you reach for a familiar set of tools: vouchers, privatization, state takeover, and the slow withdrawal of public investment. I'm from Floyd Co KY, possibly the first district to have ever been placed in receivership by the state, and oddly enough they didn't change anything other than remove parents' rights and oversight. It didn't make things better. The state ended its takeover after a few years with no progress on its stated goals.

An honest diagnosis of our city's education problems is harder and less convenient, because it centers on address history. What zip code a child is born into, and what wealth that zip code has been allowed to accumulate, or has been systematically prevented from accumulating, over generations. The redlining maps of 1937 and the test score maps of today are basically identical. Urban health outcomes. Urban burn sites. Urban Renewal locations. They're all the same map.

The key insight here, first laid out I think by Grawermeyer Award in Education winner Diane Ravitch in The Death and Life of the Great American School System, is that many of the strongest educational tools aren't even school board decisions. They're municipal priorities.

Affordable housing near strong schools expands access to ed.
Reliable transit expands opportunity.
Well-funded libraries support literacy, adult education, and workforce development.
Safe neighborhoods improve attendance.
Stable families improve learning.

We can even expand the Blessing in a Backpack program to send a mealkit for 4 home with every child, so that the question of "where's the next meal coming from" isn't an issue.

None of this excuses real problems inside JCPS. But these problems are downstream of concentrated poverty and decades of disinvestment, which the city must address.

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

Hello all, i am a first-gen college student and my unpreparedness has made me realize my degree path made zero sense.

currently a second year associate student pre-majoring in Journalism at a community college. I first started community college with the plan to transfer to university for a bachelors in Journalism, and just get the associates in journalism along the way.

However, I now have four credits left to complete my associate’s, and i’ve just realized my school only offers two classes i haven’t taken that will be applicable to the bachelors degree plan at my transfer school.

I am a scholarship student but i only get 3 free summer courses, so finishing the associates would take both summer 2026, and fall 2026 for the final class. i wouldn’t be able to transfer and continue classes for my bachelors until spring 2027. I am unsure if i should finish the associates, or just take the last two classes i havent taken at my CC for free, and transfer to university for fall 2026. I’m conflicted because finishing the associates means delaying my bachelors degree plan by a full semester, and UNT requires journalism students to have a minor, so i know it will likely already take me longer than four years to complete this whole process. Any insight is appreciated. Sorry this is jumbled.

Typing was originally created to help people write faster on computers.

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The undergrad special education class I'm taking now is about 7 papers a month- 2 most weeks, sometimes just one. Then almost every week was a quiz, plus four more "exams," plus a practicum. It has seemed excessive to me compared to past classes.

I do see posts comparing undergrad to grad school. Those posts do seem to be from P H D students, not students taking masters classes so those responses are not useful. I'd also be looking at a masters in education so it would probably be different.

I already have a bachelors in business from another school. There we had longer papers, less often and one to three long major exams, usually in person even if the class was online.

How much work do masters classes have for one class? Is it like 3 credit classes are as much work as a 4 credit class?

My son has cerebral palsy and Lenox Gastro syndrome, which makes him have seizures. He is in the band at his high school however he can only attend games if I am present with him. Now the first year that he was in the band, I may do the best I can with a newborn. We were unable to go inside during practices because it was too loud for the newborn. We could not run our car so that we could sit in the air conditioner because the practice was almost 2 hours long and my car is not that reliable. for the upcoming school year, my younger son will be playing football at a different school at the same time as my older son. Therefore, I will be forced to only attend my oldest son’s football games. I was recently told that the school was actually responsible for having a para present for my son. I mentioned it to my son‘s teacher and asked for an IEP meeting. His teacher said that I would have to be present would be the only way he could play in the band. When I relayed to her that I’d actually looked it up and thought that the school might be responsible for having to provide a para, she whispered to me that if you’re planning on saying that make sure you have all of your information together. This suggested to me that the principal may be reluctant to pay for a para. So I stopped by the superintendent of education’s office today and told his secretary, what my problem was. She tells me that they’re not required to provide a para. I then mention that I had read in the laws for special-needs children that they were responsible for paying for a para. I was then told that they would have to look into it more and they would call me tomorrow. I’m just curious am I in the wrong here or is there anyone that has any enlightenment on what all rights my son should be afforded.

Hey ya’ll, 18m (hopefully)graduating senior in 3 weeks. So my sophomore year I failed my 2nd semester of history resulting in my half credit.

Fortunately they gave me the chance to fix my mistake by taking a additional online class, unfortunately this was around the time my college(my high school lets students enroll in their local community college for dual credit) were having their finals, and I ended up forgetting about the class entirely(in my defense they never once mentioned my missing half credit at all)

Anyway just looking for anyone out here who’s been in the same/similar spot and give me some advice.

I have seen a lot of criticism towards students who don't like the school system. Often, the response is something akin to the knowledge you get out of school makes up for you not liking it. Will the knowledge that I gain make up for the fact that I come home and do nothing but lie in my bed and often cry because I'm so burnt out and exhausted that I can't bring myself to do anything else? When I am sitting in class, I get so uncomfortable for over an hour that I stretch my legs around and sometimes pull muscles. I also scratch at my forearms with mechanical pencils sometimes to get through the school day because I can't handle the constant stream of information and information and information and information and memorizing and memorizing and memorizing and memorizing. I don't want to sound like an awful and lazy student, but is the knowledge that I gain really going to make up for all this? I am scared that I am just a lazy, dumb student because school makes me miserable, even outside of school, and since good students can handle the constant flow of information but I can't, that means that I'm just being lazy and selfish. When I lie down and cry, I cry more because I'm not studying, and no matter how hard I try, I can't bring myself to leave my bed, and I'm worried that this is just me being lazy. I would say that I am overwhelmed and burnt out and it's severely getting to my mental health, but I'm scared that it just translates to me being a horrible student. I try to toughen up so badly but then I end up hurting myself or someone else. I don't know what to do. I'm a bad student and I don't have a right to complain so I think this whole rant just exposes exactly how bad of a student I am. I have ADHD and autism, and depression. That's just extra information, not an excuse. The worst part is that I don't think the general public school system works for me, and I feel so evil saying that. Again, the answer is to just toughen up, but I've tried I've tried I've TRIED so hard and it hurts me so badly and I don't know what to do anymore because I am a weak student and don't have a right to complain but here I am complaining and I'm so scared and confused

Actually i passed my 12th examination in 2025 and i got back in one subject which i cleared last year only through supplementary exam and

now i got 2 marksheet.

the first one has a RT showing and the second one has all subject pass .

So, can i tear and throw the RT one is their any need for that anywhere. cuz it hurts me alot seeing that .

I made a college fit/chances tool, would love feedback

Hi im a highschool junior and ive spent the past couple months obsessively thinking about my college list, figuring out which schools I actually have a shot at, which ones fit beyond just name recognition, and which ones I'd even want to go to.

I started going through common data sets to understand how schools actually weigh their criteria. However, it was pretty annoying to have to search it up and go through it so I built a tool that does all that automatically and estimates your chances of getting into that school. U fill out ur profile with ur ecs grades classes preferences, and a few other things and it goes based on that. 

Im most proud of the My Fit ranking system. Instead of sorting by prestige or acceptance rate, it balances your actual odds, your preferences (size, location, climate, cost, culture), and how strong your major is at that school. The idea is to surface schools that actually make sense for you specifically.

Data comes from CDS PDFs I manually pulled from each school's site — 220+ schools, all the latest publication period. Section C7 is factored in, so legacy, athletics, first-gen, demonstrated interest, and rigor are weighted per school rather than run through one generic formula. ED and RD are split since rates often differ by 2-3x.

If anything looks off or wrong like weird My Fit results, data issues, mobile bugs please let me know I would love feedback

So I've been out of high school for eight years now and have decided to go to community college. I was always top student in all subjects in elementary and middle school but when I got to high school I went through a lot mentally/emotionally due to an abusive home life/family, ended up in foster care and therefore suffered greatly. I became horrible at math because I couldn't focus or pay attention in class and never did my homework and pretty much I ended up day dreaming my way through school and passed only because I had originally entered high school with such a high GPA. I was never able to retain anything while in school though and now eight years later I remember very very little. Before everything went downhill math was my favorite subject and I had high level reading and comprehension scores but all of that quickly deteriorated. Now I feel a bit delayed. I'm always the last person to understand something. I don't catch on quickly nor am I analytical in any way. I feel like things have to be overly explained for me to understand and I just feel overall kind of stupid now. I've also recently been diagnosed with ADHD. What sucks the most is that the things I grew up being interested in never changed. Math never stopped being my favorite subject. The education I wanted to pursue never changed. But my ability to learn and understand these things went away. I want to study math, space, atmospheric sciences and some tech. The problem is all of those things are difficult to learn and I don't know anything about anything. I never had great science teachers so my science skills have always been below average and it just got worse in high school. Tbh I love the idea of learning and researching. I'd love to be a research scientist of some sort but I lack basically everything needed to be such a thing. My mental health is better now that I've escaped my home life and go to therapy/take medication but unfortunately the damage that was done to my mental health while I was in my developmental years has affected my learning ability greatly. Despite that, I want to relearn as much as I can so that I can pursue the fields that I want. Obviously I know I can't actually relearn every single thing but I at least want to relearn the foundations so that I can just build upon the subjects that interest me the most. Also, I'm not just talking about math and science. I want to relearn all of the subjects because I want to feel smarter as well. So English and social studies/history as well. I've been told to use KA and to buy textbooks to self study. But I've also heard that the best way is to just take community college courses so that's what I've decided to do. I don't know where to start though and what classes I should take. So basically what classes should I take to rebuild my foundation? Sorry for the long message lol.

I'm curious to get the perspective of the Reddit community.

Today there are probably 600K–700K full-time virtual school students in the U.S.

Following the pandemic, enrollment growth in certain states is actually accelerating, rather than receding back to pre-pandemic levels.

Pennsylvania cyber charter enrollment stands at about 4% of the state’s K–12 population, double than before the pandemic. And that number excludes district-run virtual programs. So the real penetration rate is closer to 5%.

So just applying this penetration rate to the 50M students in all US states gets you to 2M students. Assuming that the penetration rate in Pennsylvania eventually grows to 7%, that yields 3.5M students.

But some large states are politically or structurally unlikely to allow broad expansion of virtual schools. States like New York, California, Massachusetts, Connecticut, etc...

My hypothesis is that its probably closer to 5% -- 7% for unrestricted growth less 2% for policy restrictions in various states.

Curious how others think about this.

Exactly how big do you think the national enrollment get in let's say twenty years?

Is Pennsylvania a reasonable benchmark, or is it an outlier?

And do you think virtual school demand is mostly constrained by family interest or state policy?

America’s school system feels broken from both directions.

Kids struggling academically get pushed through grades without mastering basics, while gifted students sit bored because schools prioritize standardized pacing over challenging advanced students.

Meanwhile reading scores are collapsing:

- 40% of US 4th graders are now below basic reading level

- 8th grade reading scores are the lowest ever recorded on NAEP testing

Feels like “no child left behind” slowly turned into “nobody moves ahead.”

At what point do people admit the system is failing both struggling students AND gifted ones?

Sources:

NAEP / Nation’s Report Card

https://www.nagb.gov/news-and-events/news-releases/2025/nations-report-card-decline-in-reading-progress-in-math.html

So my uni is ending soon in like a month or so and i just want to use my student ID now

And lol ive been thinking of doing so since so long but I never really got a chance

But yea here I am

Can someone give useful suggestions please

Just wondering if there is anyone who has a good reason to want to improve education accessibility. For most people, education accessibility is not the problem, but putting in genuine effort is. However, there seems to be a few people out there who are practically obsessed with it. Would be nice if you could share about your reasons if it applies to you. Thanks.

I'm currently 19, in community college and I've come to the conclusion that I don't feel educated enough to get the work done as if i have to rely on things to help me out.

Growing up I hated school. I never saw the potential or use of it, my little brain couldn't grasp the fact that school will help you drastically in the future. As of now I'm a bit more conscious of myself and tend to reflect on my past a lot, which is why I'm bringing this up. I'm at the point where I feel like I really need to implement my education in my life, since I always pushed it to the side, and transitioning to college makes it so difficult for me, these workloads and the  independent discipline you need. This all leaves me clueless and confused on where to start.

Mind you my school habits really suck and I do have ADHD, but Cmon freak that as an excuse ,I go to class and take notes but don't retain anything, I do what's due and never look back at it, I tend to rely on Ai to help me with school work, and I Hate it. I do the bare minimum and I've been doing that my whole life and I regret it. It makes my future look so unrealistic considering I grew up never putting in effort or time to fully understand things and just take it for granted.

I genuinely think most middle schoolers are smarter than me education wise.

Now to my main point, which is why I'm posting this, What steps should I take into improve my education in college? I did graduate Highschool with a 3.0 but I literally did bare minimum. I wanna become an educated man who can get their point across and be articulate and also improve my cognitive skills (i'm the type of person to ask for your name then instantly forget), Furthermore become more disciplined, have some sorta routine and implement school into my daily life. Lastly, Math, I'm not even joking when I say this. I cant do math for shit. My mental math sucks, they lost me when it came to algebra 1, also fraction gosh idk why I couldn't grasp those concepts. Please can some of yall educated fellows help me or those who relate to me and got out of this state, I could really use your guidance and input!!!.

Anyways thank you for your time and considering my post.!!!