My completely unfounded theory about why education is declining: Teachers don't get to beat kids anymore. (I'm not saying they ought to). If it's one mentally completely exhausted adult doing nothing but "use their words" against 25 kids/teenagers with nothing but energy, and a feeling that the system, which the teacher is the agent of, is their enemy, the power balance flips radically.

Forcing kids to go to school only works as long as you actually have any force at your disposal.

(And convincing them that going to school is in their best interest similarly requires that to actually be the case. Kids who start off bright-eyed and bushy-tailed will quickly reverse their position when they're either below or above the bell curve and their educational needs/welfare are being completely and obviously disregarded.)

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myroon5 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Teachers still beat kids:

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2023/01/19/it-is-sti...

and looking at state maps, beatings look negatively correlated with test scores:

https://reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1krxcco/oc_ranking_of_...

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MisterSandman 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

This is not just an unfounded theory but a completely insane theory. Many (all?) of the countries ahead of the US in test scores also don’t “beat their kids” because that is absolutely fucking insane.

It’s such an American thing, to blame something on a lack of violence.

	▲	Dilettante_ 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		I'm not referring to the gap between the countries, I was focused on the historic development of the one population. The old paradigm produced results(arguably?), but was "gutted". By this train of reasoning, this old, and still "current" teaching paradigm simply does not work without violent coercion is the point I was really trying to drive.