White House proposes giving out $5,000 checks to address falling birthrates amid growing ‘pronatalist’ movement
One of Donald Trump’s priorities for his second term is getting Americans to have more babies – and the White House has a new proposal to encourage them to do so: a $5,000 “baby bonus”.
The plan to give cash payments to mothers after delivery shows the growing influence of the “pronatalist” movement in the US, which, citing falling US birthrates, calls for “traditional” family values and for women – particularly white women – to have more children.
But experts say $5,000 checks won’t lead to a baby boom. Between unaffordable health care, soaring housing costs, inaccessible childcare and a lack of federal parental leave mandates, Americans face a swath of expensive hurdles that disincentivize them from having large families – or families at all – and that will require a much larger government investment to overcome.
A big problem is that we stopped teaching phonics. School districts spent hundreds of thousands on a terrible curriculum (and this model of teaching reading had already been tried and showed not to work in the 70’s). Teachers were forced to use this shitty “whole reading” model.
The other big problem is that high school English classes don’t have students read entire books anymore. They read short passages with multiple choice questions, because that’s what the standardized tests have. When you think about what media literacy is - that’s what the point of reading books in English class is! Thinking about the point and purpose of long texts!
Jesus.
Yeah, if you only read short passages of a book… well you definitionally lose all the context of the entire rest of the fucking book.
I guess the teachers are just assigning Cliff’s notes summaries instead of the entire text now?
The attention span destroying effect of short form video content is literally stupifyjng us.
I’ve said this whole fucking time: TikTok should be banned for children. Not because its Chinese, its not like every US social media app doesn’t spy on you as well.
All short form video content is addictive, habit forming, spreads mis and disinfo, and ruins your attention span and ability to concentrate, makes you more emotionally unstable, fucks with your sleep schedule.
This has all been studied.
Brain rot is real.
Short form video content apps are the modern day cigarettes.