I guess it,'s all part of the plan to dumb down our kids. Many teachers liked the zoom classroom set-up.
Prior to the covid shutdowns, kids weren't doing great overall in school. The percentage of kids that met grade level standards in reading and math was concerning.
I guess it,'s all part of the plan to dumb down our kids. Many teachers liked the zoom classroom set-up.
Prior to the covid shutdowns, kids weren't doing great overall in school. The percentage of kids that met grade level standards in reading and math was concerning.
I am part of a Lions club team that goes into area schools to do free vision screenings and the number of kids at the middle and high school levels who literally cannot see is shocking! How did these kids ever get so far, we ask ourselves over and over. Didn't anyone catch it? Didn't anyone ask questions? And the answer I am afraid is a combination of ignorance and not caring. I know that if I came home with grades lower than a B questions would be asked. But then I grew up in an earlier time in a stable two-parent home. I can also tell you from personal experience that if you have never known what it is like to see correctly you will have no idea that anything could be different and so of course you aren't going to say anything about it.
So the kids can't see and the parents and teachers don't know, and they keep pushing them on to the next grade even though it is obvious they aren't learning anything and nine times out of ten these kids come from homes where learning isn't valued so of course the parents aren't going to demand more. School is just a hoop that has to be jumped through. In my area there are also a lot of migrant families who don't speak English and pretty much live in a bubble of their own. They aren't really interested in becoming part of the larger culture and as a result miss out on a lot of things that the rest of us take for granted. Even when information is made available in their language, it is often dismissed. Besides, some of them have reasons to want to stay under the radar, so it is very hard to reach such parents. It also does not help that certain groups are pushing agendas in the school that have NOTHING to do with learning, things that many find offensive, and in the case of the migrants, does nothing to encourage them to assimilate.
Thank you for dedicating your time to helping those children (to the extent you can). The experience you shared is very sad - imagine not being able to see clearly. Life is challenging enough for kids before the added hurdle of vision problems. IтАЩm glad youтАЩre doing what you can. Thank you.
Well, I think phones can't be entirely ruled out, especially as eye professionals are aware of the dangers of prolonged blue light exposure. However, I'd say that most of the things we are catching at the middle/high school level are things that the kid has had before they ever started school. When you are dealing with generational poverty and a negative attitude towards all things school to begin with, it's very hard to convince parents and students that change is needed. There was one father who got really irate at us when shown proof that his child could not see well. MY CHILD CAN SEE ALL RIGHT. HE CAN SEE BETTER THAN I CAN! Well, maybe Daddy can't see very well either. But when it's always been done that way, when you don't know any better, when bad vision, bad hearing, and bad teeth are simply the way things are, when there isn't money to cover these things, when assistance is seen as charity, then it is an uphill battle to fight for these students. And poor people are well aware that nobody really gives a damn about them. They are well aware that they live in a parallel society which is structured towards and for the better off. Their kids go to school because the law makes them but they really are not interested, because it's not for them and everyone knows it. It's a completely different world.
Interesting - when things were working correctly teachers and parents would be prompted to look to vision or hearing impairment as a potential cause of the student not learning at grade level. Now that there's to be notice taken that a student isn't 'keeping up', why bother figuring out why?
Because most of the students that have trouble keeping up probably come from backgrounds of poverty, and the poor seem to be invisible. Take a look around at your school sometime. Who is it geared to, what kinds of students, from what kinds of families? If you are not athletic, if you are not college-bound, if your family doesn't have the kind of money that makes participating in extracurricular activities possible, you fall through the cracks. You go unnoticed, which is very easy to do in a large school system with so many "deserving", talented, ambitious students who are able to participate. Teachers have only so much energy to go around, and they'd much rather expend that energy on the top students. The ones at the bottom simply get written off as trouble-makers, problem students. I saw that with my own father who was a teacher, how he would talk about certain students as not worth bothering with. It also does not help these students when educational standards are watered down or abandoned in the name of equity and fighting racism. In fact, I'd argue that the reason why schools are doing this is it simply makes life easier for the staff rather than an actual concern over educational disparities.
That is a great point. Many, including myself, are not happy at new comers not even trying to assimilate. But I too would not be assimilating into the type of society schools are teaching.
I can also speak to your point that those with vision problems can not know they have them unless told. I got my first pair of eye glasses around 20 years old while in the Navy. For me, at the time it was not a problem with vision, but the muscles that control my eyes got over worked each day causing headaches. The navy eye doctor asked if I had any unusual experiences with my eyes or eye sight. I answered тАЬNo.тАЭ. , he asked several more times and finally provided examples; one of which I did experience and I then answered, тАЬYes.тАЭ He got angry and yelled at me. Told me that that was exactly what he meant when he first asked if I have anything unusual with my eyes. I shot back, тАЬNot unusual we me, Doc. These are the only eyes I have ever had. This is how they they have always worked.тАЭ He was genuinely stunned by my answer. He shot up bolt straight, eyes wide opened, then his eyes started searching around and he started shaking his head slowly. He was very polite after that.
I thought it strange that a doctor would not instinctively know that those with conditions form birth or early childhood could not think them to be unusual.
I guess it,'s all part of the plan to dumb down our kids. Many teachers liked the zoom classroom set-up.
Prior to the covid shutdowns, kids weren't doing great overall in school. The percentage of kids that met grade level standards in reading and math was concerning.
I am part of a Lions club team that goes into area schools to do free vision screenings and the number of kids at the middle and high school levels who literally cannot see is shocking! How did these kids ever get so far, we ask ourselves over and over. Didn't anyone catch it? Didn't anyone ask questions? And the answer I am afraid is a combination of ignorance and not caring. I know that if I came home with grades lower than a B questions would be asked. But then I grew up in an earlier time in a stable two-parent home. I can also tell you from personal experience that if you have never known what it is like to see correctly you will have no idea that anything could be different and so of course you aren't going to say anything about it.
So the kids can't see and the parents and teachers don't know, and they keep pushing them on to the next grade even though it is obvious they aren't learning anything and nine times out of ten these kids come from homes where learning isn't valued so of course the parents aren't going to demand more. School is just a hoop that has to be jumped through. In my area there are also a lot of migrant families who don't speak English and pretty much live in a bubble of their own. They aren't really interested in becoming part of the larger culture and as a result miss out on a lot of things that the rest of us take for granted. Even when information is made available in their language, it is often dismissed. Besides, some of them have reasons to want to stay under the radar, so it is very hard to reach such parents. It also does not help that certain groups are pushing agendas in the school that have NOTHING to do with learning, things that many find offensive, and in the case of the migrants, does nothing to encourage them to assimilate.
Thank you for dedicating your time to helping those children (to the extent you can). The experience you shared is very sad - imagine not being able to see clearly. Life is challenging enough for kids before the added hurdle of vision problems. IтАЩm glad youтАЩre doing what you can. Thank you.
Great comment. I wonder if the kids not being able to see has anything to do with obsessive attention paid to smart phones? Is this a new development?
Or, has the near-sightedness been exacerbated by their heads in the phones all the time?
Well, I think phones can't be entirely ruled out, especially as eye professionals are aware of the dangers of prolonged blue light exposure. However, I'd say that most of the things we are catching at the middle/high school level are things that the kid has had before they ever started school. When you are dealing with generational poverty and a negative attitude towards all things school to begin with, it's very hard to convince parents and students that change is needed. There was one father who got really irate at us when shown proof that his child could not see well. MY CHILD CAN SEE ALL RIGHT. HE CAN SEE BETTER THAN I CAN! Well, maybe Daddy can't see very well either. But when it's always been done that way, when you don't know any better, when bad vision, bad hearing, and bad teeth are simply the way things are, when there isn't money to cover these things, when assistance is seen as charity, then it is an uphill battle to fight for these students. And poor people are well aware that nobody really gives a damn about them. They are well aware that they live in a parallel society which is structured towards and for the better off. Their kids go to school because the law makes them but they really are not interested, because it's not for them and everyone knows it. It's a completely different world.
I think my phone has made my eyesight worse.
Interesting - when things were working correctly teachers and parents would be prompted to look to vision or hearing impairment as a potential cause of the student not learning at grade level. Now that there's to be notice taken that a student isn't 'keeping up', why bother figuring out why?
Because most of the students that have trouble keeping up probably come from backgrounds of poverty, and the poor seem to be invisible. Take a look around at your school sometime. Who is it geared to, what kinds of students, from what kinds of families? If you are not athletic, if you are not college-bound, if your family doesn't have the kind of money that makes participating in extracurricular activities possible, you fall through the cracks. You go unnoticed, which is very easy to do in a large school system with so many "deserving", talented, ambitious students who are able to participate. Teachers have only so much energy to go around, and they'd much rather expend that energy on the top students. The ones at the bottom simply get written off as trouble-makers, problem students. I saw that with my own father who was a teacher, how he would talk about certain students as not worth bothering with. It also does not help these students when educational standards are watered down or abandoned in the name of equity and fighting racism. In fact, I'd argue that the reason why schools are doing this is it simply makes life easier for the staff rather than an actual concern over educational disparities.
That is a great point. Many, including myself, are not happy at new comers not even trying to assimilate. But I too would not be assimilating into the type of society schools are teaching.
I can also speak to your point that those with vision problems can not know they have them unless told. I got my first pair of eye glasses around 20 years old while in the Navy. For me, at the time it was not a problem with vision, but the muscles that control my eyes got over worked each day causing headaches. The navy eye doctor asked if I had any unusual experiences with my eyes or eye sight. I answered тАЬNo.тАЭ. , he asked several more times and finally provided examples; one of which I did experience and I then answered, тАЬYes.тАЭ He got angry and yelled at me. Told me that that was exactly what he meant when he first asked if I have anything unusual with my eyes. I shot back, тАЬNot unusual we me, Doc. These are the only eyes I have ever had. This is how they they have always worked.тАЭ He was genuinely stunned by my answer. He shot up bolt straight, eyes wide opened, then his eyes started searching around and he started shaking his head slowly. He was very polite after that.
I thought it strange that a doctor would not instinctively know that those with conditions form birth or early childhood could not think them to be unusual.