Shadowing Practice: SOCIETAL COLLAPSE: US Reading Test SCORES PLUNGE - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
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Turning now to test scores.
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Turning now to test scores.
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This is a really depressing investigation from the New York Times with a lot of data behind it.
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I encourage you not only to go read it for yourselves,
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but there's a tool where all of you can go
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and look at your individual school district
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and see what is almost certainly a 10-year decline in the test scores for children for math and reading.
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So let's go ahead and put this up here on the screen.
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They say why test scores are in a generational long decline.
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And in general, what they see is that across America,
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whether you're rich, whether you're poor,
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whether you're black, whether you're white,
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whether you're Hispanic, whether they've done this program,
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whether they've done that program,
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students are performing worse than their peers 10 years ago.
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District level test data, which was released by the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford,
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reveals that compared with a decade earlier,
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reading scores were down last year in 83% of school districts where data was available.
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Math scores were also down in 70%.
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The declines have affected rich and poor and cross-racial and geographic divides.
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The new data provides the first national comparison of school districts through 2025
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and shows a detailed picture of individual school districts have performed over time.
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From 2017 to 2019, students lost as much ground in reading as they did during the pandemic.
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Reading scores continued to fall at a similar rate through 2024.
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Immediately after the pandemic, there was hope that students would recover quickly.
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New data shows that scores have inched upward in reading last year and have climbed more steadily in math since 2022,
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but it's been nowhere near enough to make up for lost ground.
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So in other words, the decline began in 2017,
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if you look on this long timescale.
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However, it got exacerbated, but way worse by COVID,
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then there's been a modest uptake,
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but it's still lower than where we are in 2017.
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And I think that's what,
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you know, and the funny thing is,
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is when everybody starts to look at like, oh, what is it?
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Here's the thing about the education system.
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And I see a lot of conservatives,
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like the whole education system is corrupt.
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You think the education system is corrupt in Utah?
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Because school district is down in Utah.
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Okay, math and reading is down in Utah.
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Education is one of the last bastions of localism that we have here in the United States.
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If you as a citizen want to have an impact,
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as we saw during all the CRT debates, you actually can.
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You actually can have an impact on your school district if you want to.
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As a parent, that's what property taxes are for, by the way.
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And one of the reasons you pay them is because you have an investment actually in it.
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Yes, even if you're childless,
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boomer, or if your children are no longer in the education system.
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But the point that you see here,
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the whole nation, it's one of the most decentralized systems in the world, right?
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Every school has, by their local school board and the state,
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there's been all of the,
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I mean, how many pilot programs have there been, right?
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Of charter schools and this school and that's magnet schools
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and New York City does something this way and California does something that way.
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At the end of the day,
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the test score has gone down,
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which means only one thing.
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It's cultural, almost certainly, and it's technology.
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I just, I do not see a way out of it.
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And let me just put my cards up here at the front.
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Technology alone in the school is not going to save you because as they point out,
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they've still continued to see declines even in schools where they have had phone bans.
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Yeah.
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Because it's not just about the phone.
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We were talking earlier about Chromebook and you were telling me about how your kids' school,
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like they issue them all Chromebooks and all the homework has to be done on Chromebook.
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Yeah.
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I think that's got to go.
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Honestly, at this point, I even think the overhead projector has got to come back.
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No PowerPoints, nothing, paper homework, period.
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Because, I mean, you read these stories,
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the Wall Street Journal, Chromebooks,
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and somehow, you know, there's some whiz kid,
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as we all used to do with LAN on our computers,
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this is 20 years ago,
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you know, to play Halo or whatever.
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People will always figure it out.
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Some mother discovers that her son's been watching 7,000 hours of YouTube in two years on his school-issued,
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7,000 hours of YouTube on his school-issued Chromebook.
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That's an extreme example, but I'm just giving one of what it is.
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The fact is, is that the mass distraction in college,
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because remember this is also being found in college and universities,
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is we are seeing it now across the entire United States.
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And that's why, again, a lot of conservatives were like,
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oh, it's being woke.
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I'm like, again, like you literally,
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it's in in Florida too, guys.
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It's in Utah.
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It's the whole nation.
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It's a much more, it's a much bigger problem.
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Like you can have those individual debates, but I don't know.
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I see no other evidence.
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Like it's just technology.
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And there are, I think if memory serves,
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I could go back and look at the chart.
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There were three places that defied the trend.
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One of them was DC.
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Yeah.
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And Mississippi.
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Mississippi was another, and I think Hawaii was the third,
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which shows you, to your point,
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those are very different places ideologically.
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So this isn't really a liberal versus conservative thing,
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and we should all be looking at Mississippi and D.C.
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Also, I hate to say this, but Mississippi and D.C were so shitty that being modestly increased is like,
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so let's be honest.
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Look, no disrespect, but it's true.
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D.C.
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I don't think Hawaii was great shakes either.
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Remember the documentary about D.C schools and how awful they were with that eight?
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What was that woman?
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Oh, yeah.
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The Asian lady.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Oh, gosh, I forgot too.
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She came in, she was a big charter school, whatever.
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Anyway, I know part of what they did in DC is there's this very,
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it's very controversial, like the way to teach kids to read,
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even though there's a very clear science-based analysis that teaching phonics is the way to go and like doing it in a,
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you know, rather than the sight reading ways that,
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you know, people used to do, whatever.
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Anyway, so DC really fully implemented that and that seems to have worked for them well.
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But to your point about this is obviously a national issue,
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it's obviously a cultural issue.
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I don't really know that I would pin it so much on the Chromebooks and the school.
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I think it's more about culturally.
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Like people, they don't read books, right?
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Instead they're on their screens.
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That's a big shift.
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You know, another one that people don't talk about is another thing that screen time replaced is board games.
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Now board games are very good in terms of math skills,
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like just very basic.
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I have to roll the dice and I have to add them together
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and know how many places to move and be able to count that out.
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Or, you know, dealing with money if you're playing Monopoly and these sorts of things.
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This is something that one of my children's teachers told me.
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She was like, you know, older towards retirement.
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She said one of the big differences she notices is kids coming into kindergarten.
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They don't have that basic numeracy because they're not playing card games.
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They're not playing board games.
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So that's another one.
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I mean, this is just,
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you know, the screens take up everything.
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And so that means that other activities that were more educational
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and helped to develop brains more effectively are pushed out to the side.
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And the other thing that this data shows you is that whether you looked at families where they were like,
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go wild with the screens,
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or families that considered themselves to be more restrictive,
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they did a little bit better,
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but there is a huge increase in screen time for everyone.
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And this is where I get sort of frustrated with some of the conversations,
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the debates that unfold online that's like very judgmental about parents and how much screen time their kids are getting.
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And listen, we have restrictions in my household.
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I do my best.
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I know every parent is out there doing their best for their kids to try to figure all this stuff out.
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But you are up against a multi-trillion dollar industry.
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You are up against an entire culture.
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The idea that you are going to be able to just individually bootstrap your way to avoid the complete dominant culture.
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I mean, it's impossible.
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It's genuinely impossible.
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You can, you have to be rich and you have to be fucking crazy.
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You actually have to be crazy.
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Yes.
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And then there's downsides to that because then your kid is weird.
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They're not in touch with the dominant culture.
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And there's something to be said for being weird, right?
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Some of the greatest thinkers and insights and creatives
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and whatever come out of people who don't grow up in the mainstream culture and so they have a different perspective.
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But most people are not going to be able to pull that off.
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The other thing that came out in this data
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that I thought was really interesting is in In terms of the post-COVID improvements,
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the two sectors of society that have done the best are the rich,
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predictable, because they can invest in tutoring and whatever supports they need, blah, blah, blah.
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And the poor, because there were programs,
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there was money put in place of like,
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okay, we know we had this learning loss during COVID,
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we've got to do something.
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And it's actually the sort of middle income,
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just like your average middle income district and family
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that has seen the least improvement post-COVID
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because they don't have the resources of the rich to helicopter parent in
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and do everything possible and potentially with one stay at home parent that can do all the work on the side.
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And they don't have the extra support from the state
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and from the government to help get their kids back up to speed.
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So I thought that was really noteworthy as well.
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Yeah, and to your point here about the culture,
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and this is when I say Chromebook,
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I'm not blaming just the Chromebook.
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I'm saying that it's about the ethos of doing things on the screen.
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You know, there's been a ton of evidence about education and retention of information.
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Typing is not the same as writing.
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It's just not.
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And yet, what do we teach?
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Oh, all homework has to be done on the Chromebook.
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No, paper needs to come back.
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And look, it's one of those for retention,
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patience, lack of instant gratification.
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It's like a whole ethos around it.
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So when I say ban the screens and the Chromebooks inside,
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I'm talking about introducing friction and learning and retention,
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which at this point only exists in private school,
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which I'm personally very against.
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Like I don't, I'm not saying we shouldn't have the option.
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I'm saying for me personally,
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I don't believe in private school,
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like literally in terms of my own family.
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A, because I think it's like kind of antithetical to like a social project,
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but you know, more so more what I'm saying is like,
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what it means is the,
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the American project of like mixing and actually getting to know like a lot of different people,
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I think is very important.
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I support people's right to do so homeschool or private school or whatever,
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if they want to religious school,
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if that's your thing, but I'm saying the way that I look at things.
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And that's why though, I think the government policy around this is so vital and important.
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Let's go to the D2.
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This supports your point here about technology.
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So American children now spend a massive amount of time on internet-enabled devices.
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And this is the best part.
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All families, it's all the way up.
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What you also see though is families who say they are low-tech and prioritize outdoor play,
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not all that different than the families who say they encourage engagement with technology.
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There's a gap, but it's not that big.
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The point is that based on the reports of parents,
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40,000 children reported by 24,000 parents that adults may have reported children as using multiple devices simultaneously,
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it shows the weekly combined hours that a child use any internet-enabled device
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that has steadily climbed up with their age
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that ultimately culminates in some 19 hours per week that a child is on an internet-enabled device.
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And I think that points out the even
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if you're one of the conscientious people that you're really just not that far off from even the people who are like,
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oh yeah, whatever, you can use an iPad.
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So when I said you have to be crazy, I really mean it.
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You have to be nuts.
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And you can also see this in terms of a broader culture.
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Go to the next one.
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This is another fascinating one.
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You could tell me more about this because your kids are older.
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American children are not allowed to go many places.
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The percent of children at each age allowed to walk,
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bike, or drive given distance without an adult accompanying them according to each parent.
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So what you see is
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that there has been a dramatic decrease of the ability for children to not go too many places,
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cannot leave the house, cannot leave the street,
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cannot leave the yard, and cannot leave the neighborhood.
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And that obviously children become more independent as they get older,
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but the age at which they're allowed to go and to be able to do things is steadily climbed.
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Some of this is probably,
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you know, there's all this talk about anxious generation.
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A lot of this might be,
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you know, a surveillance, like with technology,
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just because people literally know like where you're going with what's
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that app called that all these families are using like life life 360.
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I think that's what it is.
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Yeah.
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It's like a tracker, which I get,
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you know, but in general,
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the lack of independence of the street,
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we were talking about with board games, critical thinking.
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I just think a lot of these formative experiences have dramatically declined over the last 20 years or so,
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even just compared to my childhood,
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which was already pretty embedded in the television culture,
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which was already dramatically different.
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There are trade-offs.
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It's a value neutral phenomenon,
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but you have to observe it and say,
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what's the impact here on the education system?
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Yeah.
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I think I'm just thinking this through in real time about the increased protection about what you're allowed to do.
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So I'll just say my nine-year-old,
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she's certainly allowed onto the house.
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But if she was going to go,
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I'm uncomfortable with her just going around the neighborhood,
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yourself at nine years old.
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And I'm worried about cars.
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Yeah, it should be.
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People don't pay attention.
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That's what I am fearful of.
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My 12-year-old is allowed to go around the neighborhood by himself.
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I want him to tell me before he leaves.
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But when he's got his phone with him,
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that's another thing is the nine-year-old doesn't have a phone.
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The 12-year-old does have a phone,
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so that's a difference as well.
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So that's the balance that I struck.
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When I was 9, 10,
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I lived in a much larger neighborhood,
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and I was allowed to go anywhere on my bike at any time.
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And so I know that it's different.
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And I'm not sure why there's a different level of comfort for me.
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And by the way, if my mom was watching my kids,
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she's putting even more limitations on them than I am,
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even though she raised me in a much more permissive way.
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So something about the culture and the mentality has changed.
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I think part of it is that there is just people have fewer kids.
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And so there's a lot more invested in these like fewer numbers of kids that people have.
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And you see that in everything.
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You see that in the number of activities and the amount of time that people spend.
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Even as women have entered the workforce in large numbers at this point,
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women spend more time spending time playing games with teaching their kids than they did in previous generations.
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So there's just like a lot invested in them.
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So it makes the stakes really high of like,
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I don't want anything to happen to them.
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So I think there also was a shift with like the crime wave panics of the 80s and 90s too.
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There was a lot of emphasis on local news about this kid getting kidnapped down at the blue.
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And I think that led to a lot more protective parenting as well.
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So it's a whole host of reasons why we've had this shift.
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But I try to push my own comfort zone with my kids doing things that are a little bit risky even,
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because I think it's important for kids to be able to
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manage their own risk levels without always having a parent jump
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and don't do that it's not safe blah blah blah
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but um there's no doubt
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that i raise my kids in a more restrictive way than i myself was raised yeah
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but you're already probably still out of step
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because most of these helicopter parents around like where i live
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and others nobody's gonna leave the house probably till like 13
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14 in terms of yeah i mean granted i live in a rural area right
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so it's also a little different see this is why where
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you live matters it really does i will tell you some of the parents
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that do the best job of this are like New York City because I know New York City parents where,
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you know, if you're a teenager,
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you're riding the bus in the subway around the city,
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you're going to school on your own on public transit from the time you're certainly in high school,
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even middle school.
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And I feel like there's a lot more independence baked into that culture.
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Yeah, that culture than there is in most of American life.
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Makes sense.
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Yeah.
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I remember when you meet like an 18-year-old New York kid,
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you're like, you're like 30, dude.
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Yeah, there's so much more,
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yeah, together and like self-sufficient than your average.
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Very true.
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There's a few other elements here.
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Oh, yeah.
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We wanted to put this up here.
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D6, we're always keeping an eye on other countries.
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What are they doing?
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This is an interesting one out of Israel.
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Benjamin Netanyahu has unveiled ...
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We're speaking of different systems.
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Their system, they have unveiled a sweeping summer AI initiative where students will be trained in GPT,
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cloud tech, and more before matriculation exams while also closing wartime gaps.
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The education minister says over a billion shekels will be invested,
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with July counted as a full but optional school month.
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And Bezal Smotrich is framing it as freeing parents to work while delivering real learning, not babysitting.
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So it's like a national Vision 2040 system where all of Israel's future will be shaped through AI and training in GPT.
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Not really what I would want to sign my kids up for over the summer.
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Sounds appropriately dystopian for that country.
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And then in terms of hours,
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there was this great bit from Tim Dillon.
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Let's put this here on the screen.
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You may have missed it.
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Melania Trump doing this event at the White House with the queen consort,
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Camilla, where children are all donning VR headsets for,
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quote, AI-powered cross-cultural educational program.
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Friggin' dystopian.
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Melania has been on this weird,
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like wanting to put AI in the school systems and like this is her thing this time around.
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And I, yeah, I don't know.
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No, thanks.
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Good on that.
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Thank you.
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I'm exiting.
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That's that.
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Those are the, if those start showing up in public schools,
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that's where I'm going to go private.
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That's why we need the ability.
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There is a line.
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If we need to.
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There is a line.
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That's my line for sure.
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Oh, you start to put GPT in a five-year-old's face?
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No, no, no, no, no. All right.
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on this vein.
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We've got a great guest standing by, Zach Exley.
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Let's get to him.
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About This Lesson
In this lesson, you will engage with the critical topic of societal challenges as exemplified by recent declines in U.S. reading and math scores. Through this exploration, you will practice your English speaking skills while absorbing essential vocabulary related to education and societal trends. By the end of this lesson, you will improve your comprehension and pronunciation through techniques like shadowspeak, enhancing your ability to articulate thoughts on complex issues.
Key Vocabulary & Phrases
- Test scores - Numerical evaluations of a student's understanding in subjects like reading and math.
- Decline - A decrease or downward trend in performance levels.
- Exacerbated - Made worse or intensified, especially in relation to problems or challenges.
- Generational - Referring to a period of time spanning a single generation; often used in discussions about long-term trends.
- Educational Opportunity Project - An initiative that provides data on educational performance across various school districts.
- Socioeconomic divides - Differences in social and economic factors that can affect education and opportunities.
- Localism - A political idea that centers on the local community's role in governance and decision-making.
- Comprehension - The ability to understand and grasp the meaning of spoken or written information.
Practice Tips
To effectively implement the shadowing technique with this video, focus on speaking along with the speaker in real-time. The tone of the delivery is serious yet informative, which calls for a measured pace. Here are some tips to enhance your practice:
- Listen to small sections (15-30 seconds) several times before attempting to shadow. This allows you to familiarize yourself with the speech pattern and vocabulary.
- Repeat the key vocabulary either aloud or in writing. This strengthens your recall and helps integrate the words into your active vocabulary.
- Pay attention to intonation and emphasis. When a point is made more strongly, make sure to replicate that in your shadowspeak.
- After shadowing, discuss what you learned in your own words. This post-practice reflection reinforces comprehension and builds confidence in your oral skills.
- Use the content of the video as a springboard for deeper discussions with others, honing your ability to present complex ideas clearly in English.
By diligently incorporating these english speaking practice strategies into your routine, you'll not only enhance your speaking skills but also develop a greater understanding of crucial societal issues through a linguistic lens.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.
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