Kindergarten Needs Walmart Has Many Of These Items In Stock: Fill & Download for Free

I’m gonna play my favorite game then.PokémonYeah you read that right. A game for 7 year-olds.But not one of the easy new ones. Nope. I’m gonna go oldskool on this one. Pokémon Red.Why? Meh who knows. Maybe I like a challenge. Maybe I’m suicidal. Maybe because the question doesn’t say the gun is loaded.Anyway here we go.I choose Charmander at the beginning, making the game so much harder. Or is it? Most people know that the first gym is Rock and the second gym is water. My lil Charmander doesn’t face to well against those types. But let’s save that for later. After burning a whole forest down to ashes due to Charmander’s Ember attack it is time for Brock. Yeah his name has literally his favourite type in it. He has a Geodude and a Onix. Everyone can make it past the Geodude but the Onix is a different kind of challenge. It has Bide. What does that do? It waits two turns taking damage and blasts it back into your face with even more damage. So what to do? Use Leer 6x. If you don’t attack Bide will do zero damage. After that just use Tackle while he doesn’t use Bide and you’re set.The rest of the game? Give me 10 likes and I’ll continue this :)EDIT: Ow wow I never expected anyone to be interested in this. Well here you go folks ;)Where was I? Ah right I just slammed Brock in the face with some rocks. From here on out I continue the journey to Mt Moon, but not before I have caught myself a Nidoran Male. Why? I will come back to that later. For now let’s just say he’s my plan to defeat that awful Watertype Gymleader. Misty. Ugh. She is the first main obstacle.After switchtraining my Nidoran Male to evolve into Nidorino and giving that creature a meteorite or something like that we have our final teammember. Nidoking. Yeah. Nidoking is actually all I need but let’s keep my Lil Charmander too. Or actually Charmeleon by now. After burning a forest down, smacking someone in the face with some rocks AND switch training my lizard boi has become a little bigger and better.After lighting up a cave and disturbing the sleep of the local bat population we are out of the cave and find two wanna-be Bruce Lee’s fighting eachother. They teach us their Kick or Punch. Thanks guys, good fight! Now it’s time for my rival. We Punch and Kick him with Mega intensity and training Nidoking with some disguised Team Rocket members we have to save someone who made himself a Pokémon. Out of all the awesome dragon/flying/fire Pokémon out there this idiot decided to make himself a lousy crab. Yeah I understand why you want to become human again.Now it’s time for some swimcompetition against Ash’s other companion. By now I should probably tell you what I consider ‘beating’ or ‘failing’ the game. By beating the game I mean beating the Champion and Elite Four without any whites out. By failing I mean getting whited out. Or whiped out. Or whatever they called it back in the days. Let’s just say failing means not getting my Pokémon get beaten up till dead.With my strong King and lizard boy at pretty high levels by now this gym should not be that hard right?WrongThese starfish can do some damage alright. Let’s first use Charmeleon. After punching the first starfish to death he is able to land some damage on the second one before being hit by some bubbles and fainting. Now it’s time for my King. With one Kick the star is close to extinction but it uses some more bubbles. AND CRITS. Oh my. At only a slivver of health my King defeats the starfish. I almost died. I need to take this challenge more seriously or I will end up like my Charmeleon. Death by bubbles/bullets.If this answer can get to 20 likes I will continue this. I hope you liked it so far, you might have seen that my writing got a little less neat and more ‘trying to be funny’ ish. I don’t know what you guys like better but the second part I wrote for people who have knowledge of Pokémon, since I suspect a lot of people reading/liking this answer know what I mean by ‘starfish’, ‘crab’ or ‘bats’ as long as I give the location. If I’m wrong please tell me so and I will go more into detail instead of describing the game funnierEDIT #2Since I’ve got 34 likes already let’s give you some more!Let’s see, I defeated Misty. The bubbles almost killed me but oh well.After clearing up a robbery and finding a daycare… wait… this daycare is for Pokémon? Not people? Ohhh right I forgot. Every 10 year old is fighting firebreathing dragons instead of playing tag or watching tv. Their parents are either making a living as hikers, fisherman or bug catcher or joining an evil organisation. Even the hospitals are for Pokémon instead of people for crying out loud.Anyway after some guard doesn’t let me through a portal to a city there is no other way than down. Through a underground passage we reach the city of Vermillion, where a giant cruise ship awaits us. Before entering the ship there is a cave, dug by some moles. After using a special spray to repel the weaker moles you can find a super mole. Three combined moles at lvl 31 for you. Pretty neat huh? But we don’t need it now, we have King and Lizard boi. The MVP’s.To enter the cruise ship we need a ticket. Luckily the guy that turned himself to a crab turned out to be pretty famous so we can enter. On the ship we decide to meet with the captain who is seasick. Yeah. Uhu. The CAPTAIN of a ship gets sick from sailing. I guess he applied as a Hiker but didn’t like the dark caves and after that even team Rocket didn’t want to give him a job, although they seem to take everyone who passed Kindergarten.After rubbing his back we get the HM for cutting some tree down. The captain would be better off as a Ninja but that doesn’t make money apparently. After cutting a tree down that is the size of my leg we have to fight a lieutenant who fought Pokémon in a war. This will be tough…After Lieutenant Surge realized none of his good attacks could hurt my King we decide it’s a good idea to continue our journey in the darkest cave ever. Apparently having a lizard with a fire on his tail doesn’t even light it up. After spending hours bumping into walls, crawling down stairs and beating a lot of trainers who miraculously can see in the dark we find… the entrance again. Damn.I decide to see if the molepeople can help me. At the end of their cave there is a guy in a labcoat who gives me a CD with some instructions. After plugging it in the TV and make Charmeleon watch it he suddenly knows how to light up caves.After this we easily find the end of the Dark Tunnel and a haunted town awaits us. In the graveyard stands some prick who apparently is our self-proclamed rival. He’s crying like a bitch and it seems he blames us for killing his oversized pet rat. After sending his other Pokémon to the afterlife too it seems this whole place is haunted by ghosts. We can’t progress any further, as some invisible entity blocks the way.Since these ghosts don’t like us very much we decide to head West in search of a place without ghosts. Maybe some flowers will do our scared minds any good?I asked for 20 likes and you delivered! As i began writing there were already 34 likes so let’s keep that up! 20 likes in 2 hours! Thanks! I will continue writing this if we reach 60 likes!EDIT #3Thanks for the appreciation! Let’s get right to it!After heading West in search of some weed to calm our haunted mind we find the same city with a different guard. He still doesn’t let us in but he mentions something about being thirsty. Apparently Water Gun isn’t drinkable in this game so this poor basterd must be on the verge of dehydration by now. Oh well, down it is. Another underground pathway makes me think Saffron City is like the North Korea of the Kanto Region. Guards everywhere, no possible entrance to the city and to go to other place it must be underground, as quite as possible.After reaching the possible capital of Kanto, we first pay a visit to the Walmart. It is here find the final piece of the puzzle. After obtaining this, defeating the game with the King of all Pokémon and making it out alive seems almost do-able. But first we go to the rooftop. There is a roofterrace over here and we buy some lemonade. Apparently beating the crap out of other trainers can earn you a fortune in this world! We head downstairs to a clerk who sells some more CD’s. One of them had the number 7 on them. Since that is a magical number we decide to buy it and have King watch it. Maybe a magical King can help us survive! After watching the instructions to the end I notice something different about King. His horn got bigger! He learned Horn Drill. This will be the final piece of the puzzle.You see, the first generation of Pokémon games had a few… how should I call it… extra’s. If you gave a Pokémon an X Accuracy in battle he will never miss. They are like scope lenses on snipers or like… glasses.So we stock up on these things. Why? Horn Drill is a move that instantly kills the opponent. And now we can’t miss it! Hooray!After that we have to celebrate. What better to celebrate with than some Weed? At the bottom of the town there is lab that grows it. An old man in a poncho is standing at the entrance. I think the poncho might be the only thing he’s wearing because he rambles on about young girls. Upon entering I understand what that pervert means. This place is filled with girls! Well women were always interested in pharmacy. Upon approaching them to buy some weed they tell me this is a weed lab disguised as… a Pokémon Gym! Those girls are clever! But they GIVE me free weed if I beat them? Economics isn’t their finest subject I see. All of their Pokémon are genetically modified plants. Luckily I have a firebreathing DRAGON by my side now! My lil Charmander grew wings! Unfortunatily, despite some experience with burning forests down to ashes, that would mean our weed is up in flames too! Time for the new strategy! Death by Horn. Within 18 seconds the plant Pokémon dissolve into the ground again and I am given some free weed as a reward!With all the money we got so far we head into the casino to double it! In the corner there is a shady guy who walks away and… disappears?We find a hidden staircase and now we are standing in the headquarters of the maffia.The boss, Giovanni Al Capone, must have heard from me. After all he challenges me to a duel! After burning his hideout down he gives us. Some weird toy. Well I expected a job offer but too bad. I never finished Kindergarten so I understand.After that we head West once more. There is a giant fatso blocking the way but I discover a house really far away. Upon reaching it the owner tells me she is hiding for her abusive husband. We are given a CD to fly away and mind our own business. Come on lady! Just FLY AWAY! Fly to another region and you will be free to live your life as you want it!Anyway, ever since I was a little kid I dreamt about flying on a dragon! So up you go Charizard!Wait… He can’t FLY? He has wings for christ sake! I hear laughing above me and there is the abused women. Flying on a bird the size of her shoe. Damn these physics are unfair.We decide to buy a doll instead and head back to the graveyard. To just be a nice fellow we give the thirsty guard some lemonade and he… lets us in? North Korea must pay really crappy if I can buy him with some soda.This town is weird so we head back to the graveyard with some weed. After lighting up and inhaling we begin to hallucinate. The weird toy we got from Giovanni Al Capone projects the entity blocking the way as a ghost with a skull on his head. Or it could be the weed. The ghost rambles about some child it wants to find. Terrified I grab my pokeball containing the dragon to burn this place to ashes. The doll accidentily falls out of my backpack as well. The ghost… starts to cry. It picks up the dolls and returns to the afterlife.Now I see what he wanted me to not see. An old man is being attacked by some criminals. We rescue him and he gives us a Flute. I’m more of a Pianoguy but whatever. You can’t be mad about a gift right?I will stop here for now, will continue this later. I won’t ask for likes again but it would be nice if you gave them anyway!EDIT #4Now that we obtained a strange Flute it is finally time to explore North Korea of the Kanto Region. The guard still remembers me, since he lets me through without a word. In the city we head North where not one but two gyms await us. After finding out one is just training people to fight Machokes the other one is even stranger. A criminal is blocking the entrance. Beating his boss wasn’t impressive apparently because he won’t let us enter. Now that I take a closer look at this city it seems like every house has a criminal standing in front of them. Since human rights don’t concern me I decide to visit the tallest building to get a nice view. This weird criminal actually let me pass after seeing me. This whole building is crowded with scientists and criminals. Finally they realised the truth. More dirty money is better than less honest earned money. Just look at me. I beat Pokémon up for a living for just about two weeks now and I’m already in the Quote 500.This building is weird to say the least. Teleporting to other places was always a dream of mine and in this building it is possible. Too bad they suck. They are being used to defy stairs. Those damn Americans with their lazy attitude. You can warp from town to town if you want but they use the teleportation portals to exercise less.After teleporting to the ninth floor we have another encounter with our whiny rival. After a crushing defeat he says he can’t believe I’m this weak. Yeah sorry buddy I can’t do anything about my genes. Just because you are 2 inches taller than my 4′3 doesn’t mean I am weak. After sending my dragon after him he flees rather quickly. Another scientist is dying laughing about him and gives me a Sea creature. I think it is a turtle on steriods but I’m not sure.Giovanni Al Capone got some bigger weapons than last time. After a really convincing argument from my side (Horn Drill) he agrees to show me how he got them and gives me a prototype of the Master Ball. After throwing it at Giovanni it seems this thing can only enslave Pokémon, not humans. Would be cool to keep the boss of a maffia organization as a pet though.After entering the proper Gym this time I can teleport once more. With butterflies in my stomach I step on the first one. SS Anne he I come once more! A relaxing cruise is all I want! Sadly this teleportation portal is used to defy doors this time. Well whatever works i guess. The Gym Leader’s room seems nice. A maquette of a city is layed out in the corner. It seems the dolls are… alive. Cool. This hot lady seems little weird. She mumbles something about playing with me. I’m open for anything but I came here for a Pokémon fight. Playing with me can come later. Hehe. After I defeat her 2 humaniod spoonlovers, a mimeplayer and a moth her mood is killed. Even in this game I will stay a virgin.What also is a little weird is that your Pokémon are like doves. They can only fly to places you’ve been before. No sightseeing for them. Sooo we head West. The fatso is still blocking the entrance to a bike park. I start to play the Flute to kill the time. Apparently I suck at playing a Flute because he wakes up, covering his ears and growling at me. He attacks in a grumpy rage. My Dragon roasts him to pork chops. I continue my journey but the guard insists we need a bike. Even the freshly obtained pork chops doesn’t change his mind. Alright then. Off to buy me some bicycle.My eardrums are ringing. Did I hear this correctly?He wants a MILLION dollars for a bike?Even after beating dozens of other trainers up I still don’t have that kind of money.We need to find another way to head South…I will stop here, more is coming soon! Keep the appreciation flowing!EDIT #5We do what everyone does when life gets really though. We go home.Our mom isn’t really talkative. I expected her to welcome me after such a long time but she keeps repeating the same sentence and healing my balls. Nonetheless my clothes are washed and my belly is full. Let’s see if my rival got any better.He is not home but his sister is. She apparently likes me a lot and gives me a map card of the Kanto region. Upon studying it there seems to be another way South than the bike path. We head over to the haunted Lavender Town once more.As we go down we encounter lots of fisherman. There is no boat in sight though and I soon see why. Another fatso is blocking the way. My talents of playing flute have not improved since last time because this one wakes up angry too! More porks chops! Hell yeah! Now we face the longest route of our career yet. After a week of walking and battling endless trainers we finally enter Fuchsia city. By now I have enough money to buy that bike. Shame.Tired of battling so much we decide to explore the local zoo and go on a Safari Trip! We can’t bring our Pokémon with us bit we get some rocks to defend us. Great. Especially since one of the animals here is made of rock. This will be a blast…None of these wild Pokémon feel like attacking and I find some teeth laying on the ground. Ewww! I’m not picking that up! But after taking a closer look it seems like these are made of… pure 24 karat Gold! I’m rich! Well, technically I already am rich but the rich always want to become richer. So I pick the Gold Teeth up and start walking towards a house. Must be the rangers home! It seems we are the first human ever to make it this far. The other have been eaten by lions I guess. The ranger gives me another CD, to cross the oceans. The oversized turtle can learn it and so does King! After almost drowning because King can only keep his head up, we decide to use the turtle for a more relaxing form of transportation.The ranger told me about his grandfather, the head ranger. He lives in Fuchsia City and he is described as having a lot of Strength! As we enter his house there is a slight inconvenience. He can’t talk! He doesn’t have teeth! He keeps pointing at the Gold Teeth and a tear rolls down his cheek. No way he gets my most valuable possession! But then I start thinking about my life. I have never known my grandparents. My mom is the only family I have ever known. My dad must have been a black guy because he bailed on my mom as soon as she got pregnant. This old man deserves to live a happy life and talk with his grandchildren! After giving him the Gold Teeth he gives us another CD to become super strong! As King watches it we decide to do so too. Our rival will never call me weak again!Now it’s time to beat another gym! This one is inhabited by no one. The whole gym is empty. I walk forward and bump into an invisible wall. A Ninja appears out of nowhere and attacks us! This continues for an hour until we reach a mat. A yoga mat just lying on the Floor. Suddenly a Ninja appears! He explains he has a son. Was a great Ninja but wanted to walk his own path. Wanted to become a Hiker. Apparently is now cruising the oceans. The Captain of the SS Anne! I KNEW he was a Ninja after all! After telling this Ninja about his son he becomes furious! How dare I say such lies! His son gets seasick as soon as he sees water! No way he is a captain of a ship now!He tries to make me pay for my words by poisoning my Pokémon! Luckily we defeat him quickly so he gives my King an antidote and teaches us how to poison others too. Before we walk out on him he lets me promise to look after his son! We need to cruise the ocean because Cinnabar Island has another harbor! Shall Captain Seesick be here?I continue the story later! Got to work now!EDIT #6To get to Cinnabar Island the quickest way is to cruise downwards from Pallet Town. On the way there we first pass through Viridian City. I notice a building I haven’t seen before as I was focused on burning down a forest. This town has a Gym!We enter and- no we don’t. It is locked. Alright then. Let’s search for Captain Seasick first. After saying hi to my mother and having her wash my dirty underwear we create a huge Tsunami to Surf to the remote island of Cinnabar. The SS Anne isn’t here so off to the Gym we go. Which is locked! Not again!We see some smoke coming off of a huge building in the distance. As we come closer this place is totally annihalated. Did our tsunami did this? No that can’t be. This building isn’t wet. Let’s investigate!As we enter this dump it seems like a laboratory of some kind. Everything is blacked from past fires and some kind of explosion. What the hell happened here?Throughout the building there are pages scattered across rooms. No scientists are in sight though. There is a homeless drunk but we kick him out immediately as my curiosity gets the better of me. What happened here? Did some scientist mess up? Was there a fire? Did someone put mentos in a bottle of Coca Cola?After my investigation I might have a theory as to what happened. Deep in the Amazon Rainforest scientists discovered Mew. The godfather of Pokémon. After countless experiments they create Mewtwo. A powerfull, humanlike Pokémon. I understood immediately for what cause due to Lieutenant Surge. Remember him? The guy who fought Pokémon in a war? Yeah him. Mewtwo must have been created to end it. The DNA of Mew was genetically modified to create a Supersoldier. But Mewtwo got to powerfull and broke out, destroying his prison as he departed in search of freedom and rest.As we fall down a hole in the floor to investigate Mewtwo’s prison cell we discover a key on the floor. C - - NNAB-R -YM does it read. The - are letters which are to damaged to read. I don’t know what it means since I didn’t finish Kindergarten but oh well. Let’s get out again and see if the Gym is open now that we have figured out what happened here.As we turn the key and open the door of the seventh gym a blazing heat awaits us. A scientist comes running towards me! He calls me a savior and storms off. He wants water or something. Every chamber in this gym is sealed by a yes or no question. Luckily for us we can try this as many time as we want. The scientist all storm off as each door opens. As we enter the head scientist room he is the only one who doesn’t run away. We hear his story;‘two weeks ago, I gave my key to a fellow scientist of mine who wanted to try a few new things on Mewtwo. He locked the door for our safety. With little food and water as we expected him to return soon, we sealed off our chambers when we heard a huge explosion. Everyone was carrying just the basics. A few tuna sandwiches and a bottle of water. I hand them out everyday as my employees usually forget to bring their own.’As he shows me empty bottles of water I understand what has happened. He continues nonetheless.‘As I have a lot of them in stock I didn’t go thirsty. The tuna started to rot though so I haven’t eaten in a while. My employees only had to solve easy basic questions. A sixth grader could have solved them. But that is what happens when you don’t reherse old material. They can all explain the Theory of Relativity in detail and solve some complex math problems at the same time but they forget what 4 times 5 is. So anyway, wanna battle?’I too don’t know what 4 times 5 is, I think to myself as King slaughters his fire Pokémon. As we earn our seventh badge he still won’t tell the answer to us afterwards. He too has forgotten and explains something about relativity and time. We quickly make our way out as our last practice exam awaits us. The final, eight Gym.Gotta stop here, more will follow soonEDIT #7After obtaining the Volcano Badge from Blaine, the head scientist, we continue our journey once more. We leave the island of Cinnabar and Surf back to our home town. Our Tsunami destroys the rival’s house in the progress. Miraculously every other house in Pallet Town is untouched. As our Mom gives us some clothes without burn stains in them we head to Viridian City. The gym is open this time and the leader is… Giovanni Al Capone! He tells me he had this job prior to his plans of taking over the world. Now he has returned and turned his back on evil. Yeah right! His team is pretty weak against waterattacks so I don’t even need Horn Drill for this. Surf is efficient enough. As proof of his transformation to a honest lad he gives us our eight and final badge!Our incredible journey almost came to an end. As we approach Victory Road our rival walks up to us. He hands me some champagne and celebrates with me before I beat the crap out of him once more. He walks away immediately and the party is over. Way to kill the mood rival! You wanted this fight in the first place!Victory Road is a little different than I expected though. I expected a Red Carpet, alcohol, drum rolls as I walk up to the final challenges and a whole lot of celebrities. Instead it is a cave. I hate these things.In this cave there are many switches. We need our Strength from the head ranger to push boulders on them as they are quite rusty. After doing so we spot a bright light. It must be the exit! Well… no.A fireball is approaching! Oh dear! This might be the end of us since there is no water to use Surf! Instead of burning our new clothes and melting our spirit it stops right in front of us. The fireball stretches its wings and turns out to be a mythical oversized birdcreature! It is trapped in this cave as it can’t push boulders! This poor chicken! We need to free it! As we use the prototype of the Master Ball something weird happens. It doesn’t work… at first. After I threw it it lays on the ground just… wiggling. After three times it shoots forward, opens, and Moltres is caught! Silph Co needs to further develop this ball!After we freed Moltres by turning him into our slave we exit the cave and the Pokémon League awaits. After selling every unnecessary item we stock up on X accuracys and full restores. Let’s do this!By now I need to tell you about another funny mechanic of generation One. The 1/256 glitch. The accuracy of moves with a 100 accuracy should be 100% right? That’s not actually the case here. You see, to determine accuracy, a random number was generated between 0 and 255. If the number generated is LESS than 255 the attack will land. If it is the SAME it will miss. So there is a 1/256 chance that the move will miss, as the random number generator chooses number 255. Those programmers should have usedIF ‘Random generated number < = than 255Instead of IF … < than 255I don’t know code that well so don’t blame me on faulthy lines.Anyway let’s do this.We maxed out Horn Drills P.P and have some more strategy up our sleeve in case it runs out so I’m pretty confident I will live to see another day.First up is Lorelei. After taking a hit to set up the X accuracy it is just 5 Horn Drills to her face and it is already time for BrunoWe use Surf on his two Onix and Horn Drill three times to defeat the other Pokémon. By now its P.P. is depleted. Luckily we found an Ether along the way so we restore the Power Points as Agatha awaits.Her ghost Pokémon pose no threat after 5 Horn Drills once more. I am excited! I look at the masked man with the gun and smile. His cold eyes stare back mercilessly and he pulls the gun closer to my head. Two more battles left.Lance is difficult. We only have three Horn Drills left and he has four Pokémon who resist Surf. So his last Pokémon will be tough. We use Lizard boi Charizard and the Mythical Bird Moltres to wear Dragonite down before he finishes off both of them with Thunder. Our King defeats him with Surf as his HP was lowered enough.Now we seem to have a bit of a problem. We have no idea who the champion is, we are down to our last Pokémon and Horn Drill’s P.P. is down to zero. Here’s the last bit of strategy. Giovanni Al Capone gave us TM 27. FISSURE. Another one hit knock out move. We replace Horn Drill with Fissure, heal our King and face our toughest challenge yet. The Champion of the Kanto Region.As we enter this well lit room a figure awaits us. He is 6 ft tall! Because we look up into the lights only his silouette is visible. We step forwards to meet the champ but we are walking up! He standing on an elevated platform! He’s just a kid like me!Then I finally see who I’m dealing with. It’s our pesky rival. A sigh of relieve escapes my lips. Easy peasy!He has 6 Pokémon. After slaughtering two of them with Fissure he sends out Rhydon. Only one Surf and three Fissures and we live! King uses Surf! Then we read to lines that give me a heart attack.‘King uses Surf! It’s attack misses!’‘Rhydon uses Horn Drill!’I close my eyes. Tears are streaming down my face as I await the gunshot. I’m gonna die a virgin! Defeated by a 1 in 256 chance!But it stays awfully quiet. I wipe my tears, blow my nose and open my eyes.‘but it’s attack misses!’ reads my screen. Maniacally laughing while Surf doesn’t miss a second time I slaughter the rest of my rival’s team with Fissure. I look at my attacker. He knods, puts his gun down and walks away. I begin to cry once more as the door closes behind me…Well I hope you enjoyed this incredible adventure! Thank you so much for reading!I am thinking about doing Pokémon Silver/Gold/Crystal next as I enjoy making these and enjoy getting such positive feedback! If you want me to continue this with other Pokémon Games just send me a message! Follow me for updates on this! If enough people want me to create more I will continue this!Generation 2Pokémon SilverHey there! I'm back for generation 2, Pokémon Silver it is!This was the very first game I ever played so that's why I chose it over Gold and Crystal. Let's Go!We meet our old pal professor Oak in his bedroom as he is sound asleep. We wake him up, and instead of questioning our threspassing into his home he asks us the current time. Well, it is currently 18:30 in my book so he is immediately awake and apologizes to us for being late or something. I call myself Silver and we head into this new astounding world of Pokémon!Our mom has a lot more to say than in Kanto and she actually gives us a hightech mobile device. The prototype of the IPhone can call people and even listen to the radio. Neet! We have an appointment with another professor, Professor Elm. He is a little clumsy and has a quest for us right away. Apparently he is too busy counting Pidgeys to visit his old friends so we have to see mister Pokémon instead of him. Great name by the way!I once again have to choose between 3 starters and decide to pick Totodile. Here's a funny backstory for you. 8 year old me was convinced he got to choose between Charmander Squirtle and Bulbasaur so he walked directly towards the Pokéball on the right. He was extremely disappointed when instead of our Lizard boi Charmander, some freakish plantanimal called ‘Chikorita’ was the option. So he went to the ball in the middle and wanted to see them all. Little me was an idiot and clicked to fast so he was stuck with Totodile, which he had to give a name. Since he only remembered the ‘Tot’ part he just closed his eyes and mashed buttons.So yeah. we name our starter ‘Totsaldef’, as I did 13 years ago and head out to see mister Pokémon himself. We notice a redhead standing outside and lurking into the Pokémon lab. As we approach him he tells us to mind our own business and shoves us a few feet away. Such a rude Irish child! The Irish in this game have röntgen vision as he isn't looking through a window but through… a wall. Yeah, this journey starts off great…Will continue this later, thanks for readingEDITNow that we have our starter Pokémon, it's time to explore this new region of Johto. In this game there is a day and night cycle so we run into babyowls right away. After defeating a dozen of them my Totsaldef gets so fed up with this shit that he learns the move Rage. I, as a trainer, am raging myself by all these useless Pidgey wannabe's but there is a light on the end of the… route. Yeah we aren't walking in a tunnel remember.We make our way into Cherrygrove City and talk to an old man standing at the entrance. Without our permission he gives us a tour around this city which is just like any other city really. Just a Mart and a Pokémon center. The last stop on his tour is his own house. He obviously did this because he is lonely and wants a visitor once in a while. After we say we will visit him he gives us a map of this new region! Nice! As we walk away from the old man forever, because catching Pokémon is way cooler than listen to his stories, we head North to mister Pokémon.After we enter his house we are greeted by a familiar face. Professor Oak gives us his hightech encyclopedia once again and storms off to a city called ‘Goldenrod’. I don't know what that is but I want it! It must be a new prototype of the best fishing rod! Fish like a normal Old Rod but every Pokémon that you bites on the hook becomes golden or something like that.Anyway, we now get to see why Professor Elm sent us on this quest. Mr Pokémon gives us… an egg! Well, defeating all of those owly creature called 'Hoothoot’ (yeah really creative right?) has made us quite hungry. But we don't have a fire type Pokémon this time so we can't cook this oversized egg. As we step out of the house to deliver this egg to Professor Elm he already calls us. He claims there has been some disaster. He probably counted to many Pidgeys or got them mixed up with Hoothoots or something like that.Not too worried we walk back but the Irish lad shoves into me once again. This time he challenges us to a d-d-d-d-d-duel. He sends out Chikorita and we defeat it quickly. He tells me his name is Connor McConnor, the youngest son of the McConnor's.As we approach Professor Elm a policemen walks up to us. It seems the disaster had nothing to do with the counting of various Bird Pokémon. A Chikorita has been stolen from the lab! The culprit walked right through the wall, like it was a window! He had red hair and seemed foreign. We tell this policemen about Connor McConnor and he tells me he will look out for him. Yeah right. His name isn't Jenny so he will never catch a criminal!Professor Elm tells me something about potential of a Champion and wants us to continue our Pokémon journey! He gives us a few Pokéballs and wants us to say goodbye to Mom. She just talks about saving money for me. I will not give her my money! She will just buy Crystal Onix Meth and blow it away on stupid stuff like Moonstones!The first Gym is located in Violet City., but a strange tower attracts my attention. It is a monastery, to worship their God Bellsprout. Every single one of them monks has this stupid little grass Pokémon. We make a vow to make these monks see the truth. The real God of the Johto Region is Totsaldef and his line of beautiful alligators. But they get stronger the more we climb this monastery. It is time to hit the Gym to get stronger! The gym specializes itself in Flying type Pokémon. Our Totsaldef learns Water Gun after defeating the last gym trainer so this Gym Leader will have a rough time! Falkner is indeed a total pushover as his Pokémon are too low-leveled to do any harm, earning us our first Gym Badge. Now it is time to explore one of the most complex and mysterious secrets of the Johto region. Let us explore the ruins of Alph!Will be continued…EDIT #2So. The ruins of Alph it is! But first we get another call from Professor Elm. He wants us to travel the world with that egg in our bag. Like this thing isn't heavy enough already. What if some crazy guy gives us a bike again? But he insists so we have no choice but to take it!Anyyywaay we wanted to explore the ruins of Alph! Located West of Violet City, as we enter a strange presence seems to look over our shoulder constantly. The air is filled with noise, but no one is making the sound. Even the radio on my Pokégear seems affected by it. There are caves everywhere, and they go South all the way we can see. As we walk through an entrance through our right we stumble upon a room with a huge puzzle in it. Some pieces are not in the right place yet, but the puzzle is not that difficult. After completing it the whole room is shaking and the ground bursts open beneath our feet. We fall and fall and suddenly we are surrounded by Pokémon that resemble the letters of our alphabet. They were making the sound all along! Now that we completed the puzzle they appeared in front of us! Then we hit the bottom of our fall and everything turns black…As we wake up, hurt and bruised, the first time we see is a gigantic Rhydon! We scream and back the fuck away. As we fully awake the Rhydon isn't real. It's a statue. And there a dozens of them. We follow the Unown and the statues until we reach a ladder. Fresh air! The scientists outside can't see the Unown floating around them, as we couldn't either. We give them some friendly advice to play with puzzles.There are actually four of them in total, after they are solved more Unown appear. One we solved right away, the second requires you to Surf down in the Ruins of Alph and two are accessible via the underground of the Union Cave, where we have to pass through later. In crystal and the Generation Four remakes Heartgold and Soulsilver, the ruins contain way more secrets and adventures. But this is Silver and I've already given some background information about this place. It's time to show some monks who the real God is!After battling our way all the way to the top, our Totsaldef evolves at level 18 in a Croconaw! It is now strong enough to defeat the Dalai Lama, in this game known as ‘Elder’. We approach this praying uppermonkey but are stopped in our tracks by Connor McConnor, son of Connor. This makes the policemen who chases him seem like an even bigger fool as we just stumble upon this thief every other minute! He just got his ass kicked by the Dalai Lama and already has the rope in his hand, ready to use it. Just as I am about to witness my first suicide he escapes. Instead of hanging himself he just rappels down. Clever Irish punk!Now it is time to once and for all decide who is the better Pokémon! The vine whips of the Bellsprout leave my Croconaw wounded but his rage grows stronger by every attack that damages him! His wrath brings down the Dalai Lama and he bows for his new God, Totsaldef!EDIT #3Let's continue our adventure by going South! West is blocked by a weird dancing tree so we don't really have a choice anyway. Some picknickers are having lunch, peacefully in between the sheep. In sync with nature, one becomes truly himself. A line the Dalai Lama Elder could have spit if he wanted. The picknickers challenge us to battle and are quickly defeated. This one stupid sheep keeps staring at me though. He even follows me to a bridge, and watches as I slaughter some poor guy with only Magikarps. When I get ready to battle a Goldeen, the sheep steps in and tackles the Goldeen. He quickly learns he isn't that strong as Goldeen uses Horn Attack to bring him to his knees. Out of annoyance, not pity, we use Totsaldef to finish the Goldeen. The wounded sheep looks at me some more and a plan to get rid of him already begins to form into my ten-year old brain.We take the Mareep, because that is the name of this weak ass sheep, to the Pokémon Center to find him a suitable trainer. The only person in there is a fisherman, who isn't interested. Nurse Joy scolds me for my trying to get rid of the Mareep and nurses her back to full health. The fisherman is so relieved the Mareep isn't his he gives me an old rod. We run for it! Into the Union Cave! There we can disappear from Mareep! But this Pokémon isn't the dumbest one in the flock and chases after us! We trip and a Pokéball falls out of our pocket. The Mareep touches it and we ‘caught’ our first Pokémon in the Johto Region!The cave isn't well lit but we see the end of it already! Or so it seems… As we near this light our eyebrows get burned off! It is fire! Some humans watched Lizard boi and learned to breath fire like him! I give him the Phone number of Bill, the guy who turned himself into Krabby. He might be able to help them evolve further into Fire Pokémon!Now the next town. The town of Azalea. Laying at the entrance of the Ilex Forest and the end of the Union Cave, this little town is far away from other towns and city's. Entering this town feels like visiting your grandparents in the countryside during the holidays but something seems… odd. Maybe it is the member from Team Rocket standing outside of a well? Or maybe it's because there are Slowpokes roaming the streets and the people seem scared? They tell me about a well that brings them water and Slowpokes. Their tails are delicious and apart from the berries collected in the forest the only food source around here. I see a tree standing behind a house with some beautiful fruits in them. I take a bite but it tastes awful!An old man runs out of the house and treatens to kill me for eating his beloved apricorns. We explain that the taste is aweful but that seems to make him even more mad. He drags me into the house and gives me a 2-hour lecture about apricorns. These fruits are turned into special Pokéballs. After learning all about the different kinds of Apricorns and Pokéballs he finally lets us speak. To distract him we ask about this Rocket guy standing in front of the well. Apparently this is news to him as he storms off, claiming to ‘Free the Slowpokes’. Yeah right. ‘Saving his dinner’ he means.EDIT #4We walk to the well and carefully climb down. The last 5 steps we jump down because we’re ten years old after all and jumping down stairs is really fun. ‘Ouch! You incompetent insulent blind stupid Rocket guy stealing our Slowpoketails, watch where- oh. Oh it’s you’ shouted the old man beneath our feet. Kurt slipped and broke his back. We have to save the Slowpokes ourselves then. I want to finally eat something other than berries! The past 7 weeks travelling the Johto region has been harsh and I am malnourished. The only other thing someone offered me was a Slowpoketail for the ridiculous amount of $1.000.000. So yeah, a slowpoketail for free makes my mouth dripping like HM07 Waterfall alright!After defeating the commander Kurt is miraculously able to walk again and takes me back to his house. He hands us the Lure ball as a token of his appreciation and gratitude. He eats a slowpoketail but doesn’t give us any. No fair!As we step outside our rival Connor McConnor walks up to us and challenges us to a duel. His first two Pokémon are not very troubling but his Bayleef proves different. After a critical Razor Leaf leaves us with 8 hp left we have some luck and bite the neck of the Bayleef to shreds with critical damage! He then starts talking about some rather odd stuff.‘I heard you defeated Team Rocket after their return? Those damn fools! They were weak from the start! Even when Da- uhm- Giovanni was still with them they treated the Johto region different from the Kanto Region! They sent their best forces AND made it the top priority. Don’t think you are a bigshot now that you defeated them easily. Even I… No. No I’ve said too much already. Next time I will be victorious and prove that you are weak! Smell ya later!’Weird guy… Nonetheless, it’s time to do the only thing in this town that’s a bit of fun. Crushing insects! The second gym leader Bugsy awaits! He is standing under a large tree full of insects. Those creatures give me the creeps! He laughs at me when I suggest another place to battle and calls me a kid for being creeped out by some measly 4 ft tall bugs. He stops laughing when I respond with. ‘Shut up you… what exactly are you? A men? A boy? A girl? Transgender?’ Since this game was set in 1999 and people weren’t going bananas over every little thing he just shrugs and tells me he identifies as an insect. Alrighty then. Let’s fight!We have experience with burning down insects so the Metapod and Kakuna go down without a problem since they can only use Harden and my Mareep called Shaun paralyzes his Scyther. His Fury Cutter would have been problematic otherwise but now he can’t build its strength up. The Pokémon who I hate actually ends up pretty useful after all and he starts to glow after the Scyther is crushed. Shaun is evolving into Flaaffy! Awesome!Note: I apologize for the constant switching between ‘I’ and ‘we’ but I’m quite inexperienced in writing and I think it actually might benefit this story. Well enjoy the new part!EDIT #5After our resentful Mareep actually proved himself to be useful and evolved right away there is nothing left in the Town of Azalea. We make our way into the Ilex Forest, where a dude stops us. He looks frightened and stressed out. He explains that he lost the Farfetch’d of his boss. The Farfetch’d is used to cut down trees and farm Charcoal, a rare and expensive material. He would go after the bird himself but he is afraid of the big, dark, scary Ilex Forest. We choose to ignore him but a stupid tree the size of my leg blocks the way. Apparently climbing over it can’t be established without breaking the rules of physics so let’s go deeper into the forest.Soon we encounter the lost Farfetch’d but he isn’t caught easily. Everytime we approach him he flies away. Back when I was eight years old I was stuck here for 2 weeks. I trained my Totsaldef till level 44 out of boredom. But now we now what to do. Chase the bird back to the frightened Charcoalfarmer. The Farfetch’d bumps into a tree while fleeing but that doesn’t matter. The bossman is happy nonetheless and awards me a CD with the move Cut! We catch a Paras to cut down the tree and see a rather odd treehouse. It has some kind of sacred air around it. It’s a shrine made for the protector of the forest, Celebi.Fun Pokémon fact: If Kurt gave you the GS Ball, you can place it in the shrine. A level 30 Celebi will appear and can take you back into time, to battle Giovanni and give a little insight in another character his backstory. In the remakes you can also catch a special kind of Pichu at the shrine.But anyway, let’s continue. In the back of the forest a guy bumps his head into trees. He gives us TM02, the Technical Machine for Headbutt. We teach it to Totsaldef, instead of the inferior Scratch move. After trying it out on a tree, some Pokémon fall out. Different Pokémon fall out of the trees than can be found on the ground, which is interesting to say the least. We go back to Azalea town to see what else we can find!After headbutting trees so much our Totsaldef became confused (Headbutt can’t confuse so that’s odd) a beetle falls out of it. An enormous majestic beetle! We gotta have this one! But it doesn’t want to battle, it just sucks ahorn sirop out of the trees all the time. If we throw a ball he just evades it so it’s time to come up with a different strategy. Shaun. The sheep may be useful once more with his Thunder Wave attack! The Heracross is paralyzed now and can’t dodge the balls thrown at him. And so he falls under my reign, Hero the Heracross is our third Johto Pokémon!EDIT #6It’s a sheer contrast now that we walk out of the Ilex Forest. The trees were standing so tall and close together that sunlight had trouble finding its way through. The route before entering Goldenrod City is a beaken of sunlight. There even is a daycare for Pokémon! We leave the Paras there because our new friend Hero can learn Cut as well. We will never see him back but at least in the daycare he can make friends and play outside instead of being reduced to data and staying in a file in the PC for the rest of his life. It’s a more humane solution. Releasing is also an option but I think he will be happier being my slave. No other trainer could possibly live up to our greatness after all.Goldenrod City is a busy one. There’s a huge mall, a casino, radio tower and even a train station. In the shadow of the huge mall lies a bike shop. The owner is desperate for customers and gives us a free bike. In exchange we have to ride it quite a bit to advertise his shop. Well since this bike is normally the price of a Slowpoketail we won’t complain.The biggest city in the Johto region obviously has a gym. The infamous Whitney is the gym leader, with her signature Pokémon Miltank as her ace. This girl gave me so much trouble back in the day. Now there is an easy solution to the problem. On the fifth floor of the huge mall, a man is willing to trade his Machop for a Drowzee, which can be found around Goldenrod. But that’s no fun. The Miltank is as strong because her Stomp attack gets a STAB bonus, she can heal herself with Milk Drink and if she is using Rollout, you better defeat her within one turn or you will almost certainly lose a few mons and black out. So let’s leave her alone for now.This city has an underground section as well! With some artists, gamblers, you know, the more fun people of society. It’s lively and everyone seems eager to battle! Heracross sure has fun battling his way through the underground! He levels up quite a bit. In some corner we even find a coin case. Sadly it’s empty.Let’s relax a bit in the National Park of Johto. A nice stroll with my Pocompanions! There is a Bug-Catching contest going on and we decide to join last minute. We get 20 minutes to catch the strongest bug possible! We catch, on a roll, Weedle, Caterpie, Venonat and Scyther. We unluckily lose to a guy who caught a Pinsir. For those wondering how the point system works, here’s the magic formula!The score earned for a given Pokémon in Generation II is the sum of the following:4 times the max HP of the PokémonThe sum of the Pokémon's other statsUp to 29 points based on the Pokémon’s individual values:16 points if half of the Defense IV (rounded down) results in an odd number, 0 otherwise8 points if half of the Attack IV (rounded down) is odd, 0 otherwise4 points if half of the Special IV (rounded down) is odd, 0 otherwise1 point if half of the Speed IV (rounded down) is odd, 0 otherwise1/8 of the current HP of the Pokémon, rounded down1 point if the Pokémon is holding an item, 0 otherwiseI don’t know why they give so much priority to the Defense stat, but whatever. It might explain why we lost though, as Pinsir has a higher Defense stat than Scyther. With a Metal Coat we can trade our Scyther to evolve into Scizor, but I can’t trade. Why? Some maniac is yet again holding a gun to my head. Since I want only Johto Pokémon (new region new Pokémon) Scizor is out of the question. So is Steelix, Politoed, Kingdra, Slowking and Porygon2. We have to kiss a lot of cool Pokémon goodbye.We continue our journey North of Goldenrod City when a oddly wiggling tree is blocking the way. We try Cut but this time it doesn’t work. Crap. Well, time to get back to Goldenrod City. Maybe a tree-expert might help us out. Or we can just kick Whitney’s Miltank into hamburgers.EDIT #6Well I’m back. Sorry it took a while, I’m just writing whenever I feel like it.Whitney starts off with a Clefairy. It knows Metronome, but that’s the only troubling move it has. My Totsaldef quickly blasts it back to the moon. Now the main dish. Hamburgers! I switch to Shaun the Flaaffy to Paralyze it so it has more trouble landing consecutive Rollouts. A few Growls also lowers her attack power. Heracross is next as he has the move ‘Leer’, which lowers Miltanks defense. It is now extremely easy to defeat with Fury Attack, as it hits 5 times in a row. We earned our third gym badge! The Plain badge is ours!But then Whitney starts to sniffle. And soon begins to sob uncontrollably. She’s crying like the little bitch that she is. Great. Made another girl cry. Our game is weak in this world. As we walk away to get her some tissues her second in command steps up and explains that she will stop soon. She is right. We finally get the badge we deserved, along with the move Attract. Maybe we can use it to attract girls?Next door is a flower shop. We enter, as I want to buy Whitney some flowers to ease the pain of losing. It is paid for with her own money. We got $2000 for defeating her. The flower lady gives me a bottle full of cum instead. Wait I read that wrong. It said ‘Squirtbottle’ because it is shaped like a Squirtle. My bad. It might work on the oddly wiggling tree though.As soon as we water the tree, it attacks! It’s a Sudowoodo, and we’re catching it! The Pokédex revealed it disguised as a tree to avoid being attacked. If only he didn’t do it in a cross-section. If it just stood near the other trees I wouldn’t have noticed him at all. But ‘Tree’ is welcomed as our fourth Pokémon.

In addressing your question, I want to begin by dismissing that the problem is either bad parenting or lack of school funding. The fact is that some students with crappy parents at poorly funded schools are receiving good educations. And some kids with attentive parents and well funded schools are receiving educations that are of fecal quality.Yes, having a terrible home-life is a barrier to school success. As a child I never met my father, and was abandoned by my mother for a number of years. I was shuttled from school to school and spent years in special education classes at largely minority schools. But at the age 12 something remarkable happened. I was sent to a private Catholic school for 3 years (I repeated 6th grade). This was a very financially strapped school that likely had a per-pupil budget less than half that of a public school. But what it lacked in funding it made up for in sound educational philosophy.Most students who are receiving substandard education are doing so for reasons that cannot be blamed on poor parenting or on lack of funding. Here are the 5 realities on the ground that are a direct result of bad educational philosophy:I. We’ve given up on knowledge in public schools.Our education system has gone downhill because we’ve given up on knowledge. Specifically what’s been thrown away is a respect for the value of knowing things and transmitting that knowledge to the next generation.Built into our educational standards, our teaching practices, and the curriculum foisted upon college Education students is a prejudice against teaching children discrete facts.Since the 1910s, educational progressives have forced an “everything but knowledge” prejudice into the curriculum of American schools. The idea in the 1910s was “It really doesn’t matter what a student knows since he can just go to the library and look it up.” In the 2000s, that’s become “It doesn’t matter what a student knows because he can just go online and look it up.” Those promoting the anti-knowledge philosophy today act like this is a completely new and revolutionary idea, not an idea that’s been failing for close to a century. And to the degree that knowledge is tolerated within the school system, it’s certainly not the job of the teacher to provide that knowledge, as this poster illustrates.What the educational establishment directly opposes is teachers knowing things and transmitting that knowledge is not valuable. The only value comes from the teaching creating an environment where the student constructs that the knowledge from scratch.If you really think the second way of doing things is better, let me ask you a question. If you wanted to learn Brazilian Jujitsu, would you prefer to take a class from Royce Gracie……or would you rather go in the backyard with your cousin and construct your own knowledge of grappling?Now this anti knowledge educational establishment often tout such noble goals as critical thinking or problem solving.Here’s the problem with that, something the deans of progressive education could not have known when Woodrow Wilson was president. Neuroscience has been able to find no evidence that non-domain specific critical thinking exists. Every critical thinking task is an application of knowledge task. If you don’t have knowledge, you have nothing to think critically about. And you can forget about that whole “look it up on the -blank-” trope that’s floated around in one form or another for the last century. Without knowledge firmly embedded in long term storage in the brain, a person won’t know where to start looking up information or have any basis to know whether that information even makes sense. It takes knowledge for a person to even be aware of what they don’t know.One of the problems with that is that a lot of “professionals” educated in educational theory lack REAL KNOWLEDGE. Once I was talking to a colleague about the movie Pearl Harbor. My colleague, who as BA and MA degrees in education, admitted to not knowing what happened at Pearl Harbor. When I tried to explain it he asked, “Didn’t we drop the atom bomb on Pearl Harbor?” So at that point I felt obliged to explain the timeline of WWII. Then he asked me “Where do you get the picture of the little Japanese girl with her clothes burned off?” He was referring to a famous picture from Vietnam. In all honesty, this individual is far from being the most ignorant professional educator I’ve met.The two biggest challenges to the MOST IMPORTANT educational reform we could make are (a) the anti-knowledge educational establishment holds only it’s philosophical beliefs with a religious fervor. (2) If we went to a knowledge based curriculum, you’d have a lot of people with BA, MA and Ed.D degrees who lack even basic knowledge about history, science, literature and art. How can they pass on knowledge when they don’t have.The prejudice against the transmission of knowledge is directly harming the reading comprehension skills of children.Knowledge is absolutely essential for reading comprehension. For example, researchers gave a difficult reading passage to 2 groups of students: advanced readers and struggling readers. You’d expect the advanced readers to do better, but the reading passage was about baseball. The gifted kids weren’t baseball fans, but the kids with learning disabilities were fans of the game. In this case the struggling readers did decisively better than the Brainiacs. Why? Because their background knowledge to comprehend even a difficult reading passage. And without background knowledge, even gifted learners struggled. The fact that we’ve so dismissed knowledge creates a two tiered system. Middle and upper class kids are presented with knowledge out of school and succeed in school. Poor kids enter school without such knowledge and fall further behind.Our current system where knowledge is dismissed at “factoids” and “trivia” is directly harming our students.II. We’re ignoring a literacy crisis.We are facing a full blown literacy crisis in America. We can lay part of the blame on how we’ve taught reading in the past (as a high school teacher I have no idea how reading is being taught now). When I was earning my credential the only method taught was Whole Language, and most Whole Language experts completely rejected using phonics. When I took the required reading methods class 20 years ago, the instructor would roll her eyes whenever the PH-word was uttered in class. I became legally qualified to teach 1st grade without knowing how to teach a child how to read. I wasn’t alone.Mind you I spent thousands of dollars and thousands of hours earning my credential.Another part of that crisis was referenced in item 1. The system I’m part of is doing a pretty lousy job transmitting knowledge to students. Knowledge is absolutely essential for reading comprehension. For example, researchers gave a difficult reading passage to 2 groups of students: advanced readers and struggling readers. You’d expect the advanced readers to do better, but the reading passage was about baseball. The gifted kids weren’t baseball fans, but the kids with learning disabilities were fans of the game. In this case the struggling readers did decisively better than the Brainiacs. Why? Because their background knowledge to comprehend even a difficult reading passage. And without background knowledge, even gifted learners struggled. The fact that we’ve so dismissed knowledge creates a two tiered system. Middle and upper class kids are presented with knowledge out of school and succeed in school. Poor kids enter school without such knowledge and fall further behind.But there’s one challenge to literacy that is even more profound than the two previous things I mentioned. Kids aren’t reading because they have grown unaccustomed to reading…at least passages of any length or difficulty. As recently as a few years ago, there were students (mostly girls) who brought novels with them to class. When they were done with their assignments they would take out a book and start reading. I haven’t seen that in a couple years. Instead, I’ve got students who want to know if they can go on their phones when they’ve finished their assignment. That brings me to the next item.III. Most students are distracted by electronics.Smart phones are ubiquitous on campus and they’re having a negative effect on student learning. I’m in my fifties, and I imagine that quite a few readers are too. Imagine going to school every day with your entire record collection in your pocket, with your favorite toys, with your favorite games, with a pocket TV that has access to your favorite movies and TV shows, with a device that allowed you to pass notes undetected, with a device that allowed you to cheat on tests and assignments. Smart phones are all that and more. And they’re also highly addictive.According to CNN, smart phones are distracting adults to the point of being a hazard.A study of pedestrians in midtown Manhattan found that 42% of those who entered traffic during a "Don't Walk" signal were talking on a cell phone, wearing headphones or looking down at an electronic device.Adults are walking out into traffic because their attention is glued to their phones. It’s even worse for kids. In a letter sent to Apple by managers holding $2 billion in Apple stock including California’s retirement plan, it was pointed out that these devices are too addictive to be responsibly used by unsupervised minors.The average American teenager who uses a smart phone receives her first phone at age 10 and spends over 4.5 hours a day on it (excluding texting and talking). 78% of teens check their phones at least hourly and 50% report feeling ‘addicted’ to their phones. It would defy common sense to argue that this level of usage, by children whose brains are still developing, is not having at least some impact, or that the maker of such a powerful product has no role to play in helping parents to ensure it is being used optimally. It is also no secret that social media sites and applications for which the iPhone and iPad are a primary gateway are usually designed to be as addictive and time-consuming as possible, as many of their original creators have publicly acknowledged.So kids are coming to school with devices so addictive that they stare at them for more than 4 hours a day. Under the best of circumstances, these devices are distracting. But in many cases the student is so desperate to get a hit of smart phone that they ask for frequent bathroom passes so they can get out of the classroom and text. Every teacher I know has stories about students they’ve caught using smart phones to cheat on tests or assignments, multiple stories.A colleague of mine recently conducted and experiment. She had every student turn off the vibrate on their phones, set the volume at full, and set them on the table. Every time the phone issued a notification , the student had to place a mark on the white board under the correct category.She sent me a photo of the results for 2nd period.It would be easy to say that this represents the typical level of distraction for an hour with a class of 38 students, but that’s not quite true. This experiment didn’t factor in the distraction from videos, music and games.IV. We’ve thrown discipline out the window.Last week, a colleague and I were heading back to his room to work on a lab when we noticed a young man hanging out in an area where he didn’t belong. We asked the young man where he was supposed to be and he made disrespectful comment that ensured we would need to talk to him. During the course of a 5 minute interaction he repeatedly refused to identify himself and directed profanity at us. I stayed with the kid and my colleague went to get security. When security arrived he called my colleague a “f***ing rat.” Here’s the thing I want to make clear. At no point did I or my colleague lose our cool or raise our voices. We remained calm and professional while this kid fired profanity at us. And the kid himself didn’t lose his cool either. He seemed to be enjoying the fact that he could direct profanity at an adult without fear of consequence. And sure enough, there was no real consequence.Our politicians have thrown discipline out the window. Literally. There is nothing more corrosive to the learning atmosphere than defiance. Defiance is when a teacher gives a direction and the student refuses.Teacher: “Johnny will you please take your assigned seat.”Johnny: “No. I want to sit here.”Teacher: “You don’t sit there. You need to go back to your assigned seat.”Johnny: “I don’t f***ing like that seat.”Exchanges like that happen every day in American classrooms, usually it’s a lot more extreme than that and profanity is frequently more colorful than what is described in the imaginary exchange above. All too often, it escalates beyond crude language.There’s been a left-of-center driven war on school discipline since well before I started teaching 20+ years ago. Over the last decade the so called “school-to-prison pipeline” has become the buzzword du-jour of those who think teachers need to put up with bullying and defiance. Some how holding kids accountable for their behavior is pushing them towards prison. My personal belief is that the pipeline to prison runs through uncorrected poor impulse control, and nothing we’re doing in schools today helps with that.If you have any common sense at all it makes sense that a kid who’s gotten in the habit of defying teachers, disrupting class, and damaging school facilities is already heading down the path of self destruction.While I feel sorry for the young delinquents that are allowed to matriculate without developing impulse control, I’m really worried about the potential danger these policies represent for students and school faculty. Andrew Pollack, who lost his daughter at the Parkland High School massacre has done extensive research into how district enabled Nikolas Cruz to repeatedly disrupt and defy teachers and ruin the learning environment for fellow students. Here’s what Mr. Pollack learned about Cruz’s 7th grade behavior:Sept. 3: While reviewing [a] homophones worksheet, when another student mentioned the amendment that talks about ‘the right to bear arms’ Nick [sic] lit up when hearing the word that related to guns and shouted out “you mean like guns!” he was overly excited thinking that we were going to talk about guns. Nick later used his pencil as a gun … shooting around the classroom.Sept. 4: Nick drew naked stick figures (showing body parts, sexual) and drew pictures of people shooting each other with guns.Sept. 11: After discussing and lecturing about the Civil War in America Nick became fixated on the death and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. He asked inappropriate questions and was making shooting actions with his pencil. Some questions he asked were “What did it sound like when Lincoln was shot? Did it go pop pop or pop pop pop really fast? Was there blood everywhere? After the war what did they do with all the bodies? Did people eat them?”Sept. 16: When we began to read the Odyssey Nick paid partial attention (in-and-out) until we came up to the gruesome scene when the giant eats Odysseus’ crew members, only then Nick was interested in the lesson and got my 100% attention.Sept. 27: Another student also informed me (once Nick was escorted out of class) that Nick asks him all of the time “How am I still at this school?”Oct. 1: When talking about figurative language and onomatopoeias, Nick shouted out “Like a gun shooting.” Nick will find any excuse to bring up shooting guns or violence … He got frustrated and said “I hate security, I hope they die.” Then he stated to me, “F- -k you.” I called security to pick him up immediately.Oct. 15: Spoke to his mother … We discussed that he should not be playing violent video games and that he should be put in a different school that can help with his behavior and emotional issues. We also discussed his obsession with guns/violence. She stated that he is interested in buying a BB gun from Walmart and was asking his mom, repeatedly, if he could get the gun, promising that he would “just shoot at trees.”Oct. 17: Nick began reading the last couple of pages out to the students, intentionally trying to ruin the book for everyone else. I asked him to stop and he told me that he dislikes the book and then he stated, “I like guns” can we talk about that. Then he continued to read the book out loud again.We can see the pattern of behavior that Nikolas Cruz exhibited. This kind of behavior is not surprising to me. I’ve seen similar behavior as both a middle-school and high school teacher.Now here’s the BIG LIE the anti-discipline “reformers” are telling the public.“We’re just replacing suspension with other tools.”So what tools are they talking about. Let’s go back to how Parkland handled Nikolas Cruz, specifically what were the “tools” they used aside from punishment.On Nov. 4, after two months of gathering “data” for Cruz’s “Functional Behavior Assessment,” teachers were sent his “Positive Behavior Intervention Plan.” The plan included helpful tips, like:If Nikolas destroys property at a lower level,Calmly let him know he has not followed one of the expectations. Remind him what he is working for.Prompt him to use a cool down pass and walk away to diffuse [sic] the situation.If Nikolas engages in major disruption/property destruction:Let Nikolas know, “you’re getting too loud. I need for you to get back into control by using a cool down pass or calming down at your desk. If you get back into control, you can stay in class. If you continue, I’ll need for you leave [sic].”Walk away and do not pay attention to his behavior.Do not argue with Nikolas or engage with him.When class is over, Nikolas needs to go to his next class and behavior plan should re-set with able to [sic] earn reward breaks again.So the “tools” were basically to allow Cruz to be a jerk to the teachers and to the other students, with mild warnings. The teachers were told to ignore his misbehavior and not engage. These are only tools if you consider ignoring your car’s check engine light to be a tool of auto maintenance.We all know how well that worked out.As a teacher working in the system, the only additional “tools” I see being used are processes that allow students to get away with their misbehavior until the problem can be passed on to someone else.V. We’re ignoring the fact that there is a crisis facing boys.It’s no secret that a lot of boys hate school, and it starts early. At the age when children start kindergarten, boys are a good 1 to 1.5 years less emotionally and mentally developed than females. This has always been the case, but the consequences are more profound.As progressive educational policies have put American students further and further behind, educational leaders have decided to front load more math and language arts into earlier years. Where kindergarten used to be about colors and farm animals and lining up in a straight line, now students are learning math and reading in kindergarten classes. Kindergarten today has become what 1st grade was when I started teaching. And that is developmentally inappropriate for boys. Predictably, they’re acting up.So we’re taking 4 and 5 year old boys and trying to make them do what 1st graders did 20 years ago, and they can’t focus. Sometimes they misbehave because what we’re asking them to do is developmentally inappropriate. So then what happens?We put them on drugs because they’re acting like little boys being asked to behave in ways boys were not meant to behave. The fact is that in many ways, the schools have made being a boy against the rules.Let me begin with this picture.Above you see a picture of 2 dogs roughhousing. When he was young, my now 9-year-old yellow lab loved to play that way with his best friend, a dog that lived a few blocks over. Sometimes the growling was quite loud and even got carried away. But these two dogs have continued to display genuine affection for each other for 9+ years. And my lab was never better behaved than after a nice long roughhousing session with his best friend.Little boys are a lot like young dogs.They need to roughhouse and burn off energy and it helps define relationships. Doing so makes it easier for them to behave themselves during those times when they need to sit still and do something boring. I would go so far to say that rough-and-tumble play is a biological necessity for young boys.So when I did a search using the terms “student roughhousing” the first entry that came up reflects America’s school system’s view of rough-and-tumble play.And the anti-roughhousing prejudice is also directed at parents.The things about roughhousing with boys is that it usually works out for the better. Guys who get into school yard fights often end up being close friends afterwards. This isn’t limited to humans. Primatologists observing apes in the wild show that adolescent male chimps who physically fight are usually better friends after, and a frequently seen grooming each other within hours of the altercation.When I went to high school in the early 80s, we had a basketball coach who, if he saw that 2 boys had a beef, would make them lace up the gloves and do a few rounds.In every case, a few controlled rounds turned enemies into friends. Now, the teacher who made 2 boys box each other would lose his credential. After all, nothing is worse than violence.But there is a tendency in education to believe there are no biological differences between boys and girls, and that the male desire to whack and wrestle is a result of socialization. And if we somehow socialize boys to want to whack and wrestle, then we can socialize them to want to not roughhouse. The expectation is that through proper socialization, we can make little boys act like good little girls.Our curriculum is just as geared towards girls as our behavior standards. Right now we’re starting 5 year old in academic study, even though it’s developmentally inappropriate to have 5 year old boys learning math and reading. And God forbid a boy a reads a story about sword fighting or writes a story about trench warfare. He’s likely to be sent to a school psychologist and told to read Amilia Bedelia. So it’s no wonder that too many boys come to hate school and lose interest before high school.

Here are the 5 realities on the ground that are a direct result of bad educational philosophy:I. We’ve given up on knowledge in public schools.Our education system has gone downhill because we’ve given up on knowledge. Specifically what’s been thrown away is a respect for the value of knowing things and transmitting that knowledge to the next generation.Built into our educational standards, our teaching practices, and the curriculum foisted upon college Education students is a prejudice against teaching children discrete facts.Since the 1910s, educational progressives have forced an “everything but knowledge” prejudice into the curriculum of American schools. The idea in the 1910s was “It really doesn’t matter what a student knows since he can just go to the library and look it up.” In the 2000s, that’s become “It doesn’t matter what a student knows because he can just go online and look it up.” Those promoting the anti-knowledge philosophy today act like this is a completely new and revolutionary idea, not an idea that’s been failing for close to a century. And to the degree that knowledge is tolerated within the school system, it’s certainly not the job of the teacher to provide that knowledge, as this poster illustrates.What the educational establishment directly opposes is teachers knowing things and transmitting that knowledge is not valuable. The only value comes from the teaching creating an environment where the student constructs that the knowledge from scratch.If you really think the second way of doing things is better, let me ask you a question. If you wanted to learn Brazilian Jujitsu, would you prefer to take a class from Royce Gracie……or would you rather go in the backyard with your cousin and construct your own knowledge of grappling?Now this anti knowledge educational establishment often tout such noble goals as critical thinking or problem solving.Here’s the problem with that, something the deans of progressive education could not have known when Woodrow Wilson was president. Neuroscience has been able to find no evidence that non-domain specific critical thinking exists. Every critical thinking task is an application of knowledge task. If you don’t have knowledge, you have nothing to think critically about. And you can forget about that whole “look it up on the -blank-” trope that’s floated around in one form or another for the last century. Without knowledge firmly embedded in long term storage in the brain, a person won’t know where to start looking up information or have any basis to know whether that information even makes sense. It takes knowledge for a person to even be aware of what they don’t know.One of the problems with that is that a lot of “professionals” educated in educational theory lack REAL KNOWLEDGE. Once I was talking to a colleague about the movie Pearl Harbor. My colleague, who as BA and MA degrees in education, admitted to not knowing what happened at Pearl Harbor. When I tried to explain it he asked, “Didn’t we drop the atom bomb on Pearl Harbor?” So at that point I felt obliged to explain the timeline of WWII. Then he asked me “Where do you get the picture of the little Japanese girl with her clothes burned off?” He was referring to a famous picture from Vietnam. In all honesty, this individual is far from being the most ignorant professional educator I’ve met.The two biggest challenges to the MOST IMPORTANT educational reform we could make are (a) the anti-knowledge educational establishment holds only it’s philosophical beliefs with a religious fervor. (2) If we went to a knowledge based curriculum, you’d have a lot of people with BA, MA and Ed.D degrees who lack even basic knowledge about history, science, literature and art. How can they pass on knowledge when they don’t have.The prejudice against the transmission of knowledge is directly harming the reading comprehension skills of children.Knowledge is absolutely essential for reading comprehension. For example, researchers gave a difficult reading passage to 2 groups of students: advanced readers and struggling readers. You’d expect the advanced readers to do better, but the reading passage was about baseball. The gifted kids weren’t baseball fans, but the kids with learning disabilities were fans of the game. In this case the struggling readers did decisively better than the Brainiacs. Why? Because their background knowledge to comprehend even a difficult reading passage. And without background knowledge, even gifted learners struggled. The fact that we’ve so dismissed knowledge creates a two tiered system. Middle and upper class kids are presented with knowledge out of school and succeed in school. Poor kids enter school without such knowledge and fall further behind.Our current system where knowledge is dismissed at “factoids” and “trivia” is directly harming our students.II. We’re ignoring a literacy crisis.We are facing a full blown literacy crisis in America. We can lay part of the blame on how we’ve taught reading in the past (as a high school teacher I have no idea how reading is being taught now). When I was earning my credential the only method taught was Whole Language, and most Whole Language experts completely rejected using phonics. When I took the required reading methods class 20 years ago, the instructor would roll her eyes whenever the PH-word was uttered in class. I became legally qualified to teach 1st grade without knowing how to teach a child how to read. I wasn’t alone.Mind you I spent thousands of dollars and thousands of hours earning my credential.Another part of that crisis was referenced in item 1. The system I’m part of is doing a pretty lousy job transmitting knowledge to students. Knowledge is absolutely essential for reading comprehension. For example, researchers gave a difficult reading passage to 2 groups of students: advanced readers and struggling readers. You’d expect the advanced readers to do better, but the reading passage was about baseball. The gifted kids weren’t baseball fans, but the kids with learning disabilities were fans of the game. In this case the struggling readers did decisively better than the Brainiacs. Why? Because their background knowledge to comprehend even a difficult reading passage. And without background knowledge, even gifted learners struggled. The fact that we’ve so dismissed knowledge creates a two tiered system. Middle and upper class kids are presented with knowledge out of school and succeed in school. Poor kids enter school without such knowledge and fall further behind.But there’s one challenge to literacy that is even more profound than the two previous things I mentioned. Kids aren’t reading because they have grown unaccustomed to reading…at least passages of any length or difficulty. As recently as a few years ago, there were students (mostly girls) who brought novels with them to class. When they were done with their assignments they would take out a book and start reading. I haven’t seen that in a couple years. Instead, I’ve got students who want to know if they can go on their phones when they’ve finished their assignment. That brings me to the next item.III. Most students are distracted by electronics.Smart phones are ubiquitous on campus and they’re having a negative effect on student learning. I’m in my fifties, and I imagine that quite a few readers are too. Imagine going to school every day with your entire record collection in your pocket, with your favorite toys, with your favorite games, with a pocket TV that has access to your favorite movies and TV shows, with a device that allowed you to pass notes undetected, with a device that allowed you to cheat on tests and assignments. Smart phones are all that and more. And they’re also highly addictive.According to CNN, smart phones are distracting adults to the point of being a hazard.A study of pedestrians in midtown Manhattan found that 42% of those who entered traffic during a "Don't Walk" signal were talking on a cell phone, wearing headphones or looking down at an electronic device.Adults are walking out into traffic because their attention is glued to their phones. It’s even worse for kids. In a letter sent to Apple by managers holding $2 billion in Apple stock including California’s retirement plan, it was pointed out that these devices are too addictive to be responsibly used by unsupervised minors.The average American teenager who uses a smart phone receives her first phone at age 10 and spends over 4.5 hours a day on it (excluding texting and talking). 78% of teens check their phones at least hourly and 50% report feeling ‘addicted’ to their phones. It would defy common sense to argue that this level of usage, by children whose brains are still developing, is not having at least some impact, or that the maker of such a powerful product has no role to play in helping parents to ensure it is being used optimally. It is also no secret that social media sites and applications for which the iPhone and iPad are a primary gateway are usually designed to be as addictive and time-consuming as possible, as many of their original creators have publicly acknowledged.So kids are coming to school with devices so addictive that they stare at them for more than 4 hours a day. Under the best of circumstances, these devices are distracting. But in many cases the student is so desperate to get a hit of smart phone that they ask for frequent bathroom passes so they can get out of the classroom and text. Every teacher I know has stories about students they’ve caught using smart phones to cheat on tests or assignments, multiple stories.A colleague of mine recently conducted and experiment. She had every student turn off the vibrate on their phones, set the volume at full, and set them on the table. Every time the phone issued a notification , the student had to place a mark on the white board under the correct category.She sent me a photo of the results for 2nd period.It would be easy to say that this represents the typical level of distraction for an hour with a class of 38 students, but that’s not quite true. This experiment didn’t factor in the distraction from videos, music and games.IV. We’ve thrown discipline out the window.Last week, a colleague and I were heading back to his room to work on a lab when we noticed a young man hanging out in an area where he didn’t belong. We asked the young man where he was supposed to be and he made disrespectful comment that ensured we would need to talk to him. During the course of a 5 minute interaction he repeatedly refused to identify himself and directed profanity at us. I stayed with the kid and my colleague went to get security. When security arrived he called my colleague a “f***ing rat.” Here’s the thing I want to make clear. At no point did I or my colleague lose our cool or raise our voices. We remained calm and professional while this kid fired profanity at us. And the kid himself didn’t lose his cool either. He seemed to be enjoying the fact that he could direct profanity at an adult without fear of consequence. And sure enough, there was no real consequence.Our politicians have thrown discipline out the window. Literally. There is nothing more corrosive to the learning atmosphere than defiance. Defiance is when a teacher gives a direction and the student refuses.Teacher: “Johnny will you please take your assigned seat.”Johnny: “No. I want to sit here.”Teacher: “You don’t sit there. You need to go back to your assigned seat.”Johnny: “I don’t f***ing like that seat.”Exchanges like that happen every day in American classrooms, usually it’s a lot more extreme than that and profanity is frequently more colorful than what is described in the imaginary exchange above. All too often, it escalates beyond crude language.There’s been a left-of-center driven war on school discipline since well before I started teaching 20+ years ago. Over the last decade the so called “school-to-prison pipeline” has become the buzzword du-jour of those who think teachers need to put up with bullying and defiance. Some how holding kids accountable for their behavior is pushing them towards prison. My personal belief is that the pipeline to prison runs through uncorrected poor impulse control, and nothing we’re doing in schools today helps with that.If you have any common sense at all it makes sense that a kid who’s gotten in the habit of defying teachers, disrupting class, and damaging school facilities is already heading down the path of self destruction.While I feel sorry for the young delinquents that are allowed to matriculate without developing impulse control, I’m really worried about the potential danger these policies represent for students and school faculty. Andrew Pollack, who lost his daughter at the Parkland High School massacre has done extensive research into how district enabled Nikolas Cruz to repeatedly disrupt and defy teachers and ruin the learning environment for fellow students. Here’s what Mr. Pollack learned about Cruz’s 7th grade behavior:Sept. 3: While reviewing [a] homophones worksheet, when another student mentioned the amendment that talks about ‘the right to bear arms’ Nick [sic] lit up when hearing the word that related to guns and shouted out “you mean like guns!” he was overly excited thinking that we were going to talk about guns. Nick later used his pencil as a gun … shooting around the classroom.Sept. 4: Nick drew naked stick figures (showing body parts, sexual) and drew pictures of people shooting each other with guns.Sept. 11: After discussing and lecturing about the Civil War in America Nick became fixated on the death and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. He asked inappropriate questions and was making shooting actions with his pencil. Some questions he asked were “What did it sound like when Lincoln was shot? Did it go pop pop or pop pop pop really fast? Was there blood everywhere? After the war what did they do with all the bodies? Did people eat them?”Sept. 16: When we began to read the Odyssey Nick paid partial attention (in-and-out) until we came up to the gruesome scene when the giant eats Odysseus’ crew members, only then Nick was interested in the lesson and got my 100% attention.Sept. 27: Another student also informed me (once Nick was escorted out of class) that Nick asks him all of the time “How am I still at this school?”Oct. 1: When talking about figurative language and onomatopoeias, Nick shouted out “Like a gun shooting.” Nick will find any excuse to bring up shooting guns or violence … He got frustrated and said “I hate security, I hope they die.” Then he stated to me, “F- -k you.” I called security to pick him up immediately.Oct. 15: Spoke to his mother … We discussed that he should not be playing violent video games and that he should be put in a different school that can help with his behavior and emotional issues. We also discussed his obsession with guns/violence. She stated that he is interested in buying a BB gun from Walmart and was asking his mom, repeatedly, if he could get the gun, promising that he would “just shoot at trees.”Oct. 17: Nick began reading the last couple of pages out to the students, intentionally trying to ruin the book for everyone else. I asked him to stop and he told me that he dislikes the book and then he stated, “I like guns” can we talk about that. Then he continued to read the book out loud again.We can see the pattern of behavior that Nikolas Cruz exhibited. This kind of behavior is not surprising to me. I’ve seen similar behavior as both a middle-school and high school teacher.Now here’s the BIG LIE the anti-discipline “reformers” are telling the public.“We’re just replacing suspension with other tools.”So what tools are they talking about. Let’s go back to how Parkland handled Nikolas Cruz, specifically what were the “tools” they used aside from punishment.On Nov. 4, after two months of gathering “data” for Cruz’s “Functional Behavior Assessment,” teachers were sent his “Positive Behavior Intervention Plan.” The plan included helpful tips, like:If Nikolas destroys property at a lower level,Calmly let him know he has not followed one of the expectations. Remind him what he is working for.Prompt him to use a cool down pass and walk away to diffuse [sic] the situation.If Nikolas engages in major disruption/property destruction:Let Nikolas know, “you’re getting too loud. I need for you to get back into control by using a cool down pass or calming down at your desk. If you get back into control, you can stay in class. If you continue, I’ll need for you leave [sic].”Walk away and do not pay attention to his behavior.Do not argue with Nikolas or engage with him.When class is over, Nikolas needs to go to his next class and behavior plan should re-set with able to [sic] earn reward breaks again.So the “tools” were basically to allow Cruz to be a jerk to the teachers and to the other students, with mild warnings. The teachers were told to ignore his misbehavior and not engage. These are only tools if you consider ignoring your car’s check engine light to be a tool of auto maintenance.We all know how well that worked out.As a teacher working in the system, the only additional “tools” I see being used are processes that allow students to get away with their misbehavior until the problem can be passed on to someone else.V. We’re ignoring the fact that there is a crisis facing boys.It’s no secret that a lot of boys hate school, and it starts early. At the age when children start kindergarten, boys are a good 1 to 1.5 years less emotionally and mentally developed than females. This has always been the case, but the consequences are more profound.As progressive educational policies have put American students further and further behind, educational leaders have decided to front load more math and language arts into earlier years. Where kindergarten used to be about colors and farm animals and lining up in a straight line, now students are learning math and reading in kindergarten classes. Kindergarten today has become what 1st grade was when I started teaching. And that is developmentally inappropriate for boys. Predictably, they’re acting up.So we’re taking 4 and 5 year old boys and trying to make them do what 1st graders did 20 years ago, and they can’t focus. Sometimes they misbehave because what we’re asking them to do is developmentally inappropriate. So then what happens?We put them on drugs because they’re acting like little boys being asked to behave in ways boys were not meant to behave. The fact is that in many ways, the schools have made being a boy against the rules.Let me begin with this picture.Above you see a picture of 2 dogs roughhousing. When he was young, my now 9-year-old yellow lab loved to play that way with his best friend, a dog that lived a few blocks over. Sometimes the growling was quite loud and even got carried away. But these two dogs have continued to display genuine affection for each other for 9+ years. And my lab was never better behaved than after a nice long roughhousing session with his best friend.Little boys are a lot like young dogs.They need to roughhouse and burn off energy and it helps define relationships. Doing so makes it easier for them to behave themselves during those times when they need to sit still and do something boring. I would go so far to say that rough-and-tumble play is a biological necessity for young boys.So when I did a search using the terms “student roughhousing” the first entry that came up reflects America’s school system’s view of rough-and-tumble play.And the anti-roughhousing prejudice is also directed at parents.The things about roughhousing with boys is that it usually works out for the better. Guys who get into school yard fights often end up being close friends afterwards. This isn’t limited to humans. Primatologists observing apes in the wild show that adolescent male chimps who physically fight are usually better friends after, and a frequently seen grooming each other within hours of the altercation.When I went to high school in the early 80s, we had a basketball coach who, if he saw that 2 boys had a beef, would make them lace up the gloves and do a few rounds.In every case, a few controlled rounds turned enemies into friends. Now, the teacher who made 2 boys box each other would lose his credential. After all, nothing is worse than violence.But there is a tendency in education to believe there are no biological differences between boys and girls, and that the male desire to whack and wrestle is a result of socialization. And if we somehow socialize boys to want to whack and wrestle, then we can socialize them to want to not roughhouse. The expectation is that through proper socialization, we can make little boys act like good little girls.These are the 5 factors most responsible for the poor state of American education.