Substack Q&A: Natalie Wexler of "Minding The Gap"

Until people understand and realize that the government is not here to help and they should be removed from the process. Parents are also to blame for a lot of these kids' behaviors going off the rails and the parents are powerless. I remember reading somewhere where the youth was turned against their parents and they bucked authority. That's right, it was prior to WWII and the guy's name was Hitler. History does indeed repeat itself and we are watching it happen before our eyes.

Nothing will change until parents change. My daughter is a high school teacher and it is heart breaking what she tells me. She has developed a classroom baskets for kids to put cell phones in with charging cords. She tells the kids no phones into the baskets and they get plugged into chargers. If a phone call comes in she lets a kid answer it. Why? Because the kids come from one parent families and the oldest child, her students , are the contact point for emergencies their younger siblings. The mother, often has a lower end job and leaving work or even answering a phone to deal with a child can lead to losing a job. The students getting their phones charged and knowing issues will be dealt with reduces phone use in class. Other parents simply don’t care if homework is done.

We need phonics for decoding but then we also need to teach content so that what the children read has meaning to them.