I can only speak about what I saw happening in the district where I taught. Over the years, more things that should have been addressed in the home were added to the school day. This included such things as "character education," drug abuse prevention, anti-bullying and such. For each of these, something had to be taken from available time. The obsession with testing also removed such things as handwriting. We were told that if we had favorite topics or "units" we loved to teach that were not directly in the state curriculum and therefore not tested, we could no longer include them. We even had an Assistant Superintendent who issued an order that we were forbidden to teach math facts. They could only be addressed within the context of the particular math concept we were teaching. I know that I'm a dinosaur, but I mourn the loss of real teaching and learning. Education continually tries to find new ways to help children learn, but they expect this to happen within the school building. Until we fix family issues, little will improve. Officially stepping off of my soapbox.
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