E-learning was a complete waste. My kids were done with their assigned coursework for the day in an hour, and so were all their friends. They just got together and hung out around noon every day.
My highschooler recently told me about a paper he was writing. The topic was “should kids get mental health days.” I didn’t have much of an opinion on that, but it did strike me as an odd topic for him to come up with and I was suspicious how he arrived at that topic. When I asked him if students were allowed to choose their own topic or if that was assigned to him, here’s what he said: no, we chose our own topics, but the teacher said mine wasn’t good and gave me this one instead. (Note that that approach allows teachers to teach their students anything they want without leaving a paper trail on the syllabus or course site, giving them plausible deniability if confronted about indoctrination).
I looked into it, and found that mental health days are a point the teachers unions are pushing because they want mental health days for themselves and are getting the kids to do their bidding. I asked my son what he really thought about it, and he said “probably kids will just use it to skip school”. I used that as a learning opportunity to talk about how sometimes it’s more important to play the game and make sure you write your paper the way the teacher wants you to, regardless of your personal beliefs. He’s got an activist teacher, so that’s what has to happen to get an A. It’s not a lesson I wanted to teach, but one I was forced to. To my surprise, he was more aware of the situation than I expected. He says there are entire memes being traded among students about teachers that want them to write papers on their personal opinions against the students’ will.
It gives me hope that as long as we raise our kids right, they’ll see through the BS. I’d also now call more awareness to this for any parents with kids in middle school or high school who are a bit naive like I was. If you’re not already doing it, check all the topics that your kids are writing about and ask them where they came up with those ideas. I don’t believe this is the first time it’s happened, and I believe it’s happening more frequently everywhere now.