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What we covered:
– A recent report from the University of California San Diego revealed that 1 in 12 incoming freshmen were not proficient in middle school math – basically, anything above arithmetic with fractions. Their existing remedial math course was too advanced for these students, so they had to design even lower remedial remedial math courses. Even crazier, over a quarter of these students had a perfect 4.0 GPA in their high school math courses.
– It’s not just UCSD. This is everywhere. A similar thing happened at Harvard, too, having to add remedial support to their entry-level calculus courses. It’s like that movie Olympus Has Fallen, except this time it’s Harvard. It’s a catastrophe.
– How did things get this bad? Teachers and administrators face relentless pressure to inflate grades, and during the pandemic many universities went test-optional, removing the only signal that reliably correlated with actual math readiness. That decision simultaneously elevated high school grades to the sole gatekeeping metric, intensifying incentives to inflate them.
– This has all coincided with the advent of LLMs, which make it increasingly easy for students to cheat. The result was predictable: grades became untethered from real competence, and multiple cohorts of students entered college without ever having to demonstrate foundational math skills.
– Teachers have to play both good cop and bad cop, and there is no avoiding the latter. If you refuse to play bad cop at all, you eventually end up playing it constantly. The best teachers are strict from the start and ease up later, once students understand that hard, honest work is non-negotiable.

Timestamps:
0:00 - Introduction
2:11 - Freshmen math collapse: 1 in 12 UCSD freshmen don't know middle school math
6:45 - Remedial remedial math: UCSD created remediation for remedial math
8:40 - Inflated grades: 25% of remedial-remedial students had perfect GPA in HS math
10:06 - Test-optional admissions removed the last objective metric
12:13 - Pandemic inflation: GPAs skyrocketed
14:37 - Removing tests pressures teachers to inflate grades
16:52 - Grade-grubbing: endless negotiating, complaining, accusations
19:01 - Then vs. now: parents, tests, accountability
27:38 - Crisis opportunism: "Never let an emergency go to waste"
29:33 - No tests = no knowledge requirements
33:28 - Elite collapse: Harvard has the same problem
36:31 - No enforcement means no standards
37:40 - LLM cheating is trivially easy
38:25 - Catching a cheater and turning him around
48:46 - Cheating is like taking mob money. Now you’re in, you’re never out.
50:41 - Assessments must be done in person
55:06 - LLM cheating is often obvious yet hard to prove
57:17 - How to prevent cheating on long papers
58:28 - Start hardcore, then lighten up gradually
1:01:37 - Good teachers play bad cop when needed

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The raw transcript is provided below. Please understand that there may be typos.

Justin (00:00) Welcome to the Math Academy podcast. I’m Justin Skycak, Chief Quant and Director of Analytics at Math Academy. And I’m here with our founder, Jason Roberts, to weigh in on the question that’s been on every math educator’s mind for the past several weeks. Why are college students incapable of doing even middle school math? A recent report from the University of California, San Diego, revealed that one in 12 incoming freshmen were not proficient in middle school math.

Basically anything above arithmetic with fractions. The kind of stuff that most of us have mastered by the age of nine or 10. This came to light because their existing remedial math course was too advanced for these students, which meant they had no choice but to design an even more basic remedial math course to deal with the situation. Even crazier, over a quarter of these students earned a perfect 4.0 GPA in their high school math courses. Wow. If you thought grade inflation was bad, this brings it to a whole new level.

And this isn’t just the UC San Diego problem. This is happening everywhere, including at Harvard. Yeah, Harvard, the most prestigious university in the United States, maybe even the world. They’ve recently had to add remedial support to their entry level calculus courses. As Jason points out, it’s like that movie Olympus has fallen, except this time it’s Harvard. So how did we end up here? How did things get this bad and what can we do about it? Let’s get into it.

Jason (01:32) Awesome, we got a proper intro this time, so you know what podcast you’re listening to.

Justin (01:39) Yeah, we’re legit now. got a 4k recording. We got good mics. We got a real intro. At some point, we’ll make an outro, maybe some intro music or something.

Jason (01:52) Yeah, you maybe sing a song for us or something?

Justin (01:55) Yeah, I don’t I don’t buy that. That’s an advanced mover.

Jason (02:01) Okay, fair enough. Okay, so what do we got on deck? know you usually write down a few ideas.

Justin (02:10) Yeah.

So, well, I mean, one thing that’s been kind of going around for the past month or so, I guess we’re kind of late jumping on it, but it’s still such a interesting story is the whole stuff at UCSD that one report about many, like many of these college students, like actually not knowing middle school math, just a big WTF. ⁓

Jason (02:33) Wasn’t

it like 12, almost 12 % of them or something? 11.8%. For me, 11.8 sticks in my head. 11.8 % didn’t know.

Justin (02:43) Yeah. Well, let me, why don’t I just pull some quotes from the report. Just to, I guess probably good to give a little summary of the background for everyone is not aware of this report.

Jason (02:59) Also UCSD is University of California San Diego, which is, it’s just, guess, ranked the sixth best public university in the country. So that’s, we got a lot of universities, so that’s pretty good. You know, it’s tough to get into UCSD. I know that, ⁓ you know, my son didn’t get in a lot of really top-notch kids from math academy program at Pasadena High School. Didn’t get in. you know.

Justin (03:03) Yes.

Jason (03:29) passed the AP or aced the AP calculus test in eighth grade. I didn’t get in. So, okay. So tell us, give us some quotes.

Justin (03:35) Yeah.

This

report actually explains quite a bit of that, the whole, well, we’ll get into that, but anyway. Okay. So here’s, here’s the spark notes. These are direct quotes. Um, I wanted to pull direct quotes because this just sounds so ridiculous. Like if I don’t give direct quotes, then it just sounds like I’m making shit up. Like these are okay. Quote between 2020 and 2025, the number of students whose math skills fall below high school level increased nearly 30 fold.

Moreover, 70 % of those students fall below middle school levels, reaching roughly one in 12 members of the entering cohort. so to one in 12, yeah, so that you said 11.8%. I think I saw that number in the report too. But yeah, so one in 12 of the students entering UCSD in the first year, 2025, they don’t know middle school math.

Or not even like high school math, like middle school math, like grades six through eight.

Jason (04:42) So they’re struggling with fractions, with anything above arithmetic with fractions. They can do fraction arithmetic coming out of fifth grade, can probably calculate a percent.

Justin (04:52) Yeah, yeah, we’re talking below algebra one.

Jason (04:56) Well, algebra one is actually a high school course. That’s a freshman high school course for most people. So we’re talking below pre-algebra, below seventh, eighth grade math.

Justin (05:07) ⁓ yeah, no, you’re right. You’re right. The quote says 70 % of those students fall below middle school levels, not not at school.

Jason (05:13) They

fall within the range of a fifth grader. Fifth graders. So I coached the fourth and fifth grade math field day teams for McKinley middle school. And my son and original math, math Academy cohort was that age. And then my youngest, Aralee, when she was in fourth and fifth grade and my, my recollection is unlike fractions.

Justin (05:17) my goodness.

Yeah. Order of operations. What’s an exponent.

Jason (05:44) Right?

Yeah,

what’s an exponent? Maybe, maybe. But it was like, if that was it, was like a single positive exponent, you know? Yeah, I don’t even know if that was it. That might be something that I would push, but they were like, it’s a little advanced. They don’t I don’t know if they did negative numbers.

Justin (06:03) My deal on the dance, yeah. ⁓

Jason (06:09) Yeah. Okay. So we’re talking basic. Yeah. Basic.

Justin (06:15) So funny. I’m I’m just trying to accept. read the, I read through the report. This has been going on for a month and I’m still having like, this is some, some laws of physics are breaking in my brain, just like trying to, trying to state what this report is saying because it’s so ridiculous. Okay. Well, anyway, like, let me give them more, a little bit more background on this. so this, this is not just a this year thing. This, this problem has been going on for a while.

And so as the report talks about this whole trend of kids coming in lacking so much high school, middle school math, ⁓ it actually forced them to redesign their remedial math courses. So I’ll pull out another direct quote from the report. While Math 2 was designed in 2016 to remediate missing high school math knowledge,

Now most students had knowledge gaps that went back much further to middle and even elementary school. To address the large number of unprepared students, the mathematics department redesigned Math 2 for fall 2024 to focus entirely on elementary and middle school common core math subjects, grades 1 through 8, and introduce a new course, Math 3B, so as to cover missing high school common core math subjects, algebra 1, geometry, algebra 2.

or math one, two, and three, grades nine through 11. So basically, they had a remedial math course for students who were missing high school math foundations. And that was too advanced for a lot of the students coming in. So they had to make a remedial, remedial math course, two layers back. ⁓ And another thing they said in the report, another direct quote, few, if any students who place into math two,

That’s the remedial, remedial course now, the one that covers elementary and middle school math. Few, if any students who place into math two have successfully completed an engineering degree. Direct quote from the report. additionally, Additionally, now here’s the part that I think kind of explains why a lot of students who really had a lot of these math foundations had not been getting in in

Jason (08:22) Of course. That’s what a shock.

Justin (08:38) in recent years. So the crazy part is you don’t actually get a good signal of who’s going to be in remedial math based on their high school grades. another just a handful more direct quotes from the document. High school math grades are only weekly linked to students actual math preparation. The correlation between the average math grade and the placement result is only around 0.25 on a scale from 0 to 1. In 2024,

over 25 % of the students in math 2 had a math grade average of 4.0. So just to restate that, over a quarter of the students who were placing into this elementary and middle school like remedial math course, the remedial, remedial math course, over a quarter of them had a perfect GPA in their high school math courses. And here’s one last direct quote.

In fact, for more than two decades, the mathematics department has found that out of all available student data, the single best predictor for math placement has been the SAT math section score, with the ACT score being an equally good predictor. And guess what happened in recent years? They didn’t require those scores to be set. ⁓ yeah, so this is, ⁓ yeah, I mean.

Jason (10:01) What a shot.

Justin (10:06) I mean, when you consider all the factors involved here, the pandemic happens, there’s a ton of learning loss. And now we’re just going to say like, okay, we’re going to do like this holistic admissions without test scores, no test scores required. So there’s a ton of learning loss and we’re also not, we’re going to remove things that actually measure actual learning well. And we’re going to rely on high school grades, which are.

which are known to be inflated now, especially after the whole pandemic thing. So now we have this kind of shit show that’s happening.

Jason (10:39) Well, it’s just

utter nonsense going on. mean, there’s a ⁓ lot to discuss here. ⁓ The great inflation, think great inflation has been bad for a while. I don’t know ⁓ if anyone’s done any research on the average GPAs at high schools or especially like high schools that are ⁓

more college focused, where like a very large percent of students are going to non-community college type, know, higher education. So where parents are really hyper-focused on where this kid is going, you know, so in upper income areas or private schools. I bet you would, I bet you’d see from the 70s, 80s up through the 2000s that you see this trend of the average GPA going from like a…

a 2.3 or something to a 3.4 or something like that. You know, if I had to guess, right.

Justin (11:41) Yeah, well, I see that basically everywhere. But yeah, I’m sure especially in these schools. But yeah, there’s definitely research studies on great inflation where that kind of trend, the increasing GPA, you see that like all across the board.

Jason (11:54) It’s like they call

them like in game mechanics, they call like power creep. You know, like magic gathered. I remember them talking about like cards and more cards, more powerful. then really it’s so easy for things. Just everything just keeps inching up and power every now everyone is, you know, all power, everybody Superman, you know, and it’s like, well, how do we.

Justin (12:13) Well, the really hilarious part is that if you were to just look at a graph of this gradual creep of GPA over time, ⁓ and you actually thought that that indicated students are getting better, then you would have to come to the conclusion that over the pandemic, everybody just got way, way, way smarter and more studious and everything. Because there’s a massive jump in the GPA there.

Jason (12:39) Which is the exact opposite of what happened, right?

Justin (12:42) Yeah, yeah, exactly. It’s the exact opposite, but

Jason (12:46) Kids stopped working, doing nearly as much work, right? There was many, many fewer assessments if there were any real assessments. Teachers were kind of throwing their hands up. Kids were not participating half the time. They were kind of logging out or just kind of doing something else on their computer. mean, teachers were really struggling to get a real learning experience happening, much less holding them accountable and…

You know, there’s always excuses. Well, you know, this is hard and that’s hard and everybody’s stressed and everybody’s like, well, okay, that’s fine. But, you there are are always times in the world where there are disasters, wars, where they’re going for years. And it’s like the the students have to learn and you still figure out a way to make to make that happen. Right. And because his parents know it’s critical. And yeah, I think one thing to hit on the point of the

of the inverse correlation between the average GPA and the amount and what level of knowledge it actually represents, how that become kind of untethered. I think when you take away standardized tests, then the only thing to go on is the grades, the grades and recommendations, right? That’s right. Right? it’s like it counts for more, which means parents are like hyper-focused on it.

You know, they’re, you know, kids and parents are freaking out about the GPA because like, well, okay, maybe you only have a 3.4 GPA because you haven’t been, you’re not always great about turning your stuff in on time and you’ve got a crappy grade in music and a cop, not their best grades and I don’t know, French, but you’re a really bright kid and you’re going to crush the S A T A C T. The parents are like, well, that’s going to put you at a different, that will make a big difference.

But when that’s removed, you know, you got in this. So then I think teachers get put in a bad situation where they’re like, they feel this pressure. We’re going to ruin my kids for the future. That C or D is going to ruin my kids future. Right. And teachers don’t want to be the bad guy. Right. They don’t want to be. And they certainly don’t want to have endless grief from the parent and the grade grubbing from

you know, lot of the kids and the complaining and this, you know, the complaints go to the T, you know, to the, you know, the principal or whatever. And so teachers are just like, fine, everybody gets a B plus or above. don’t, don’t, whatever. You know what I mean? Like I don’t get paid enough to deal with this constant, protesting and lobbying and accusations or whatever. And so, and so that would kind of, that would kind of

causes that power creep. Now, some of the teachers might themselves just be really soft. Be like, I don’t know, they tried and they were wonderful and you A minus. You know what mean? But others who might have been a little more reasonable, it’s like, okay, well, this kid did not, I mean, they didn’t learn a lot. They don’t know the material that well, but you know, whatever. I mean, if I give anything less than a B minus, I’m gonna have like endless negotiations with.

Parents and maybe a visit from the principal because he’s or she’s getting all this heat Screw it fine. Whatever man. You know what? Whatever

Justin (16:05) Yeah, it’s like you remove the test scores, SAT, ACT scores. And now you just put a target on the teacher’s back basically. Cause they are now like the gatekeeper to this one metric that everything depends on. And now they’re just getting lobbied left and right because like it’s, I mean, there’s one metric. Everyone’s going to focus on that. And they’re going to, you know, that there’s like, it ultimately comes down to like a pretty much a human’s decision. And if you can lobby the human enough, then.

or just annoy them enough. Just make it so that the easier option is just to give a higher grade. Just make their life hell unless they give a higher grade. Then you’re going to get that metric to budge a little bit probably. And blending into it budge a lot.

Jason (16:50) Yeah, it’s

like governments don’t negotiate with terrorists. Because not the parents of the scares, but anytime you open a negotiation channel like that, the negotiation will continue forever. Like that tactic works. Right?

Justin (17:08) Yeah.

Jason (17:09) It’s not that a parent sending an email to a teacher is terrorism, but okay, if sending an email to a teacher who says, know, I think my son deserves a B and not a C for blah, blah, blah, and sends you a five paragraph email that CC the principal and chief academic, you know what I mean?

Justin (17:30) If

do that to get from a C to a B, then why not just do that again to get from a B to an A?

Jason (17:34) You

need to keep it and then you can that happens enough and it doesn’t have to have that much before it’s so painful. It’s such a horrible experience for the teacher. That they’re just like I don’t know they’re just the. They just throw their hands up there like what I mean I guess.

Justin (17:50) It’s not

just one email, you can send an email every single week. can just be a real pain about it.

Jason (17:56) conferences,

know, they have to continue. Yeah, they’ll just be less. It’s like a relentless effort. Now, it may only be a minority of students. It probably is minority of parents. Right. It could be like one or two out of 30. But every quarter or every other quarter, it’s brutally painful. It makes it horrible experience. Okay. So the point is

It’s not like, teachers are just doing a bad job. Teachers live within a framework, within an ecosystem. Principals live within this ecosystem, right? If parents can complain, complaints with the school board, complain, you know, whatever, then superintendent, the principal, everybody is like held accountable to this endless.

you know, negotiating and nitpicking and complaining and accusations. And so I think it’s kind of a, it’s kind of a cause of two things. One, it’s have it’s email, right? Cause back in, you know, when I was in high school and eight in the eighties, like there was, if you wanted to speak to a teacher, I mean, you just didn’t do it ever. We didn’t have, we didn’t have like parent or whatever. I know we have, I can’t really call them in here Pasadena was like an open house or something. And you go and.

It’s like, it’s like an October or something. It’s after school started and you kind of, go and you sit in your teacher’s classroom for 15 minutes and they say, well, in European history, we did da da da da. And then you go over, okay, well, in physics, we, you know, and a couple of, you know, one or two parents might ask a question and then you show them. So you haven’t, so, but you might have that. We didn’t even have that. My parents had no idea who my teachers were. They didn’t know. We just got a report card and that was it. You know what I mean? And so.

And then of course that coupled with social media where parents can just take it to a higher authority being the authority of the internet.

Justin (19:57) Yeah,

they can escalate if they really want to. Yeah, they can blow the situation up.

Jason (20:03) blow it up. so and you know, most parents are pretty reasonable and they don’t have time for that stuff. And they’re just like, whatever, you know, unless it’s in really egregious situation, you know, where, you know, I, was just something that was completely unacceptable. And the parent was just like, Okay, we got it. This is not okay. Most parents are just like, you know, deal with the detail, the kid like, like, you got to just get your stuff in on time, you got to double check with the teacher when to do and you got to, you know, if something happened that was seemed unfair, you’re like, Okay, well,

What’d you learn there? You better check at 11 o’clock the night before that something didn’t change in Canvas that the requirements of the thing, just because you thought you knew at three.

not really fair, I don’t think but you know, that’s how life is. Right? Most parents kind of reason that most most parents are busy with work and other kids are just like, don’t get time to inclination to want to like, fight with a teacher about something like this. But some parents do. Anyway, the and then of course. ⁓ But but it doesn’t take that many, right? It doesn’t take that many. I if you get mugged on the street, walking home one night.

You don’t get a mug 30 times, like one time. like, you know, I think you’ve had enough.

Justin (21:19) Scar tissue in there. We’re just like, okay, how can I just avoid this situation in the future?

Jason (21:24) Yeah, that was horrible experience. I’m not going on that street or I’m not going to walk at night or I’m going to make multiple whatever it is, right? they pick your pick your example, you know, you don’t have to say someone says, well, you know, because some a lot of people are just they hate confrontation, they hate conflict. I don’t love it. I’m sure most people don’t. And so it doesn’t take a few of these really horrible interactions to make you just say, I’m to do everything I can just avoid this nonsense. OK, so that’s one that’s that kind of covered that.

The second, of course, is the removal of standardized tests.

which is a really big part of the problem because if there’s no standard, then teachers can kind of make up whatever they want, right? And that’s how things become kind of untethered because you don’t have a baseline. You know, what is baseline? And it’s like, okay, because if you had those things and it’s public and everybody understands what they mean, I mean, it’s not just some like a…

grade level common core test that means nothing that the given eighth and 10th grade they do in California and take them and I don’t know parents don’t even necessarily might see them, might not. They don’t count for anything. It’s just something that the administration might look at, but it’s a SAT, PSAT, SAT, ACT is the mean in the US and pretty much who’s foreign, who’s not either, who’s in other countries, listen this, we’ll say those are our standardized tests that kids take.

SAT and the ACT, you can take either one. Usually you take one or the other depending on, and it doesn’t really matter. They’re pretty similar. I think of the longest time it was more like a West coast thing was, or Midwest thing was like a ACT. Like when I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, which in the East coast, Southeast, and I never heard of the ACT. I don’t what that was. Where my wife Sandy, who grew up outside of Chicago, took the ACT. They all took the ACT. Whatever. Anyway, so you would look in…

When you would look at these universities, I remember I had the Fisk guide to colleges and had all the major colleges and universities and you’re like, what was their average ACT and SAT score? Right? And you’d be like, okay, well, it’s an 1100 here, it’s a 1200 here, it’s a 1250, it’s a 1300. You you get up and you’re like, well, okay.

Justin (23:46) Hey,

you serious signal based on like what colleges are going to like really kick your ass when you like Caltech MIT. Yeah. You look at the.

Jason (23:55) Like there’s no shot like you’re not even well because you would take the PSA called the pre SAT or PSA T these students in 10th grade.

Justin (24:04) I

that one. I don’t know if are they still doing that? Yeah, your kids take it.

Jason (24:10) Yeah,

I can’t. think they did the PSAT and then they have like an eighth grade one. You can take an eighth grade. I remember a bunch of our kids taking that in eighth grade, the math academy kids and they all did really well on the math. So was really cool to watch that everybody just crushed it. And I was like, oh, that’s cool. But the PSAT was like a slightly shorter version. Didn’t take like two and a half hours, like maybe an hour and a half or something, but it gave you a really close idea. Really.

is pretty highly highly coordinated with you can get on the SAT. And I remember instead of out of like 1600, I was out like 160. So if you got like a 125, that was like a 1250 or something equivalent, you know, roughly. so, and so they’ve given parents some idea of like where their kids were going to be, you know, ballpark in terms of the colleges they could potentially shoot for. Because if you’re going to

If you’re getting a 1250, well back in eighties and nineties, okay, well you could probably get into some really good. Lerarch colleges. You could get into like a Williams or a have a further William and Mary and things like that. Probably not, not an MIT, not a Harvard, not a Princeton. That’s another that you’re going to be the 13 mid 1300s. Low to mid 1300s. If you’re going to get an MIT or Caltech was like, I remember there was like a 1390 or 1400. That was the highest of that. No, that all those scores have risen. That’s a whole nother score.

They power creeped and everyone’s like over 1500. That’s a whole, that’s, don’t know. I think there’s a discussion about what happened there. But anyway, the PSAT was, so that was, that gave everybody a sense of what was going on. And so parents weren’t living in sort of this fantasy that their kid was going to Stanford when they would, you know, oh, my kid has mostly A’s in ninth and 10th grade, but then they get in the 1150 on the, or, you know, or whatever they, you know, or 120 on the

PSAT and you’re like, well maybe that’s gonna be tough. It’s a, you know. And then there was the rise of sort of like the prep courses, the Princeton review and stuff, which was a totally neat, I hadn’t heard of it. I just remember a friend of mine telling me that a friend of his was that guy who, he’s like, yeah, he was a year older who did so poorly on the ACT, and that’s right, that his parents,

Justin (26:20) Mm-hmm.

Jason (26:36) signed him up for an SAT course that he had to do every Saturday morning for like four hours. I was like, what, wait, what is he doing? I’m like, that sounds horrible. I would never do that. I would never get up at eight o’clock on a Saturday and go to like a four hour, but he did. And of course it made a big difference in a score, but nobody that I knew other than that one story prepped for the SAT. took, nobody bought prep books.

Nobody went to court. Now I know there were books, because I do remember there being like these SAT vocabulary. know those books did exist. And it might have been my bubble that nobody did that. There might have been people who are my age who like, Jason, I’m your age. And I went and everybody was doing it like, oh, could have just been me. Error in my area. I was just, you my mom, my parents were divorced and my mom might just had no idea what was going on. she was like, can we do it? Maybe there are other people who are. But anyway.

Yeah, so everything’s changed. So when the SAT and the ACT sort of got removed, so here’s the thing though. Like there were a lot of people in education who were trying to remove these and the pandemic was their final, was their excuse that they needed. This wasn’t like, hey, you know, maybe we should just not do the SAT because testing is gonna be difficult because of

distancing, social distancing and whatever. you know, it’s just, gotta, we just gotta be practical here, everyone. We gotta understand we’re in in in a public health, global public health emergency. And we’re just gonna have to change some things up. I know it’s not ideal, but that’s just it. There are a lot of people who have been pushing hard for this for a long time.

Justin (28:29) Yeah. And they’re just like standing around, waiting around salivating, waiting to pounce on whatever event like they can take advantage of.

Jason (28:36) One thing that we say

in politics is it never let an a, I was like, never let emergency go to waste or something like that. Or, know, and, and that happens all the time, you know, on any side of the aisle, you’re tired, you know, whatever they’re trying to push through. Like they’re waiting for it. Like I think, you know, when you’re like the Patriot act that came out for nine 11, do you think it was like a, don’t know, a hundred page bill or 200 page, something like this. then, you know, it had all this, all the kind of

Tony and things that kind of got pushed out after the FB 9-11 and the watch lists and the, you know, the, I don’t know. I don’t know exactly what was in the bill, but always kind of things have violated really, um, civil liberties of everybody that was waiting in the wings. They didn’t write that in a weekend. They were like, Oh, here’s our time. Here’s our chance. Here’s our chance. Right. Okay. So, so this thing got pushed through the, like, we’re not gonna.

You know, and all the, and all the, all the schools kind of, everybody kind of fell, fell in line. And then, and then what happened is, okay, if we don’t have standardized tests, then nobody really has to like, prep for things, make sure they know this stuff. Teachers don’t really have to worry as much about holding kids accountable for learning what they need to learn so they can do well on these exams. They can let in lots of students who really otherwise wouldn’t be in the schools.

know, and kids, so it’s just like, okay, we can, we can change how, how we admit people who we admit. And, ⁓ and that’s essentially what happened. And, and that combined with the, and of course, the great, you know, they kind of work in concert, the great inflation, the lack of accountability. Yeah, the lack of signal. Yeah, lack of

Justin (30:25) You know,

another- ⁓

Jason (30:26) Like

why do you these kids, got 1400s, you let these kids get like, we got like a 910 on their SAT, why are they in? They don’t have to answer that question. Like, oh, they both got three, three, seven, three, eight GPAs.

Justin (30:40) When there’s only one metric, there’s no way for metrics to be inconsistent. You don’t have to worry about cross-validating the truth of things.

Jason (30:51) And you had these wonderful, amazing recommendations and they were all like, you know, in the Spanish club and the debate club and, you know, track or whatever their things were. they, you know, volunteered for a couple of weekends at the beach cleanup or whatever they were doing. And, know, mom, dad and the counselor and everybody helped on the essay and that’s good enough. Right. So the whole thing is a sham, complete and utter sham. And I, my bet.

is that the autists in the math and science and engineering programs are like, they’re seeing these kids come in who cannot do rudimentary level, freshman level stuff. And they’re like, my God, this is an utter train wreck. This is an utter disaster. And so,

I’ll bet you there were people in those departments are really pushing for this because like we just got to tell the truth what’s happening. Right. Doesn’t matter what the admissions because they’re saying they’re going to see their whole their their departments and their fields just get destroyed because if you have all these people coming in and nobody can do anything the whole thing is is the emperor has no clothes then nobody can do anything. You know maybe some people from you know from you know China and

South Korea, and whatever, who can still do math, but nobody else can. You know what I mean? Everybody else is like, because this stuff has kind of spread through a lot of the Western world. mean, we have customers from all over the world. This isn’t just an American phenomenon. As is often the case in Western civilization, stuff starts in the West. It starts on the West Coast of the United States.

It goes through to the east, the west and we and then it spreads to Europe and where else it’s like a it’s like all the pathogens, whether good or bad, whether it’s a new fashion or surfing or skateboarding or different types of films, you know, or really, really, really bad education policy. You know, all the new things like, why don’t we do this or why don’t we do that? You know, like I said, it can go good or bad, and it just kind of spreads. So a lot of that, not all of I’m not saying that.

patient zero or whatever was in California. I mean, in our case, it’s UCSD, is California coincidentally. But, you know, I’m kind of mulling here, but I’ll just say this, but it’s like, I think the thing that people have to understand is it’s not just UCSD. This is everywhere.

Justin (33:23) Yeah.

Yeah, just, mean, just another data point, ⁓ on this is, is. Harvard, right. Having to add a ton of remedial support to its calculus courses. Cause they’re getting the same kind of situation of people coming in and they are nowhere close to being able to pass a calculus course. They got tons and tons of missing foundations in high school and I’ll even.

middle school, maybe even elementary school math. like, this is, mean, UCSD is a great school. When we talk about like, but in terms of like students coming in without these foundations, like at Harvard, really? Like that, that almost seems like something you’d read in the Onion or something. It’s just incredible.

Jason (34:33) Yeah, mean, it’s like, yeah, because back, back, you know, days, days of your if someone with the Harvard unless unless they were like the the kid of a president or their parent donated a hundred million dollars to build a wing to the medical school or something, you know, or, know, whatever. mean, you had to be really exceptional.

I know that I know the level was dropped a little bit further athletes because they were division one, you know. So if you’re on the football team or basketball team or to Harvard, you probably have a little easier time than getting in if you were otherwise. And not that, but yeah, I mean, they kind of heard people would go into Harvard straight through the front door. mean, they were like, calculus was a joke. They used to, they actually tutored half their, you know, the smarter kids in their class because they could just, there’s nothing, you know, of course they get a five.

course they get like nearly a perfect score on the SAT without any prep courses. just, yeah, that’s easy. Those are the kind of people into Harvard and Princeton and Stanford and MIT and Chicago and Duke and all those kinds of people, know, but Harvard in particular. that was like just about the hardest school to get into. And to see that happen was I think that the movie Olympus has fallen. That was almost like that. Harvard has fallen and it’s just like, wow. So.

Justin (35:54) Yeah.

Jason (36:01) Yeah, I mean, it’s really scary when you get this idea that math education, which is the foundation for all sort of quantitative.

reasoning, you know, all of these, all of these different ⁓ fields, you know, and science and engineering things that are really, really matter, that people get the right answer that understand what’s going on can make progress. And, you know, as an utter, it’s an utter disaster. I don’t think people realize how bad it is. mean, I’ve been kind of, I was ranting about this to you in the early days before even the pandemic, if you recall.

Justin (36:40) Yeah. Yeah, this is,

you’re pretty early on this. it’s kind of, yeah. mean, initially, yeah, when you were first talking about it, was like, yeah, I mean, I see some of this. ⁓ But you seemed a lot more concerned than I was. And now I really understand why.

Jason (37:00) Yeah, it’s just, you know, just because at the time and you were young too, so you’re 22, 23, 24. I’ve been around a little longer than around the block a few times. And I just know that when you don’t have some kind of objective criteria and you don’t have a way of holding people to certain standards and there’s no incentive to hold them to standards, the standards fall through the floor.

They don’t just drop a little bit, they fall through the floor. And this is what we’re saying. They just absolutely degrade to the point of being, to absurdity.

Justin (37:39) Yeah. Yeah. Well, compound another factor that we haven’t talked about that I think is implicated in this is the whole, you know, LLMs, judge, GPT. It’s so easy to cheat on, on homework and stuff, like to turn it’s so easy to turn in homework that does not reflect your true knowledge level. And it’s so easy. mean, if you’re, if you’re teacher who’s getting tons of pressure from parents to like give my kid an A and you’re getting homework.

Now looks like that is completed correctly and everything because the kids just like enter it. Chat, chat, solve my problem. And then they just transcribe the steps or whatever. It’s like, I mean, it takes effort to really go in and call them out on it and collect evidence to what’s happening. So I had a kid actually, I think it was back in, in 2022. Yeah, was like right after classes returned.

to in-person in California. was the year after that. so he, I noticed, ⁓ so he was actually in the math academy program and he was, I would check on all the kids like activities during and after class. And I just noticed that like he was completing problems really, really quickly. yeah, it was like he’d do an integration by parts in like 15 seconds. And I would just be like, what?

Jason (38:58) ⁓

Justin (39:06) Wow. Really? Like that’s faster. It would take me like… ⁓

Jason (39:09) one like e to the x sine x or something. Yeah. You know what?

Justin (39:16) We’re not talking like completing them in like 15 seconds after having done tons of practice on it. mean, like he’s coming into this cold. The first first question. He’s just done a lesson. He gets the first question 15 seconds.

Jason (39:29) I mean, he was born with this information hard coded into his brain, which is really cool.

Justin (39:34) I

know, which is weird because he did like really terribly on the diagnostic when he placed into the course. So it’s like, what’s going on here? And it’s also especially weird because he’s doing most of this work outside of class. Actually, during class, he’s taken like he’s he’s he’s taken several minutes for problem. He’s like goofing around with his friends. He’s one of the kids that I have to like constantly like, hey, come on, back on test. Come on, let’s go.

Um, and he’s completing most of his work super quickly outside of class. So I’m like, okay, something’s not adding up. What’s, what’s going on? Like does he, is he friends with like the smartest kid in the class and is like paying them to do homework for like what, what’s happening? But like, even then it was to a point where it’s like, okay, 15 seconds, there were some particular problems that he was doing that was like, okay, it would take me at least one minute to do this. And I’m like, how, so I,

I called him out on it. I went up to him during class and I was like, this is amazing. Like, I don’t know how you’re doing this. Like you got to tell me how are you solving this problem so quickly? Because this is like revolutionary mathematics, whatever, whatever you found, like let’s publish this. mean, I’m, I’m trying to not, not, not be too adversarial from the beginning. Right. But, and so he’s, he’s silent. He’s just like,

looking at me. It’s like his brain has just stopped. He’s like paralyzed and then

Jason (41:03) what to do in this situation. Like, you’re in the headlines kind of thing.

Justin (41:07) Yeah. And so I made it pretty painful for him where I was like, okay, why don’t we just do a problem? okay, I know it’s hard to put these things into words sometimes. So why don’t you just solve this problem for me and I’ll watch as you do it. And then, so we sat there for like two minutes. He’s just like looking at the problem. Anyway, so eventually he just comes out he’s like, I’m sorry, I was using photo math outside of class.

It’s a photo math is an app where you just like you, hold your phone screen up to the problem. takes like a camera picture of the problem and then it just parses it into into some computer readable format symbolic. And then, and then it figures out.

Jason (41:53) And that’s something like Symbol Lab or Alpham for it to actually symbolically solve it.

Justin (41:58) Yeah, yeah,

exactly. It’s ⁓ like an image processing wrapper around Wolfram Alpha or SymbolMath. not only do you not have to solve the problem, but you also don’t have to transcribe the problem over. Peak laziness. Just hold your phone screen up. And yeah, so that’s how he was doing it. ⁓

Jason (42:19) How did you resolve the situation with him and his parents?

Justin (42:22) Well, I sent an email to his parents and him just basically stating what happened. And ⁓ I told him that like, you know, what I’m supposed to do is I’m supposed to like report you to the principal for all this and like has a big impact on grades and everything like detentions. That’s a very bad situation. But if I, as long as you

do it honestly going forward, and I’m gonna be watching, as long as you do it honestly going forward, then I’m not gonna make this blow up in your face. But if you take one little step back towards this kind of bad situation, then it’s gonna blow up in your face. And that’s kind of what I do. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, because the thing is, it’s like,

Jason (43:15) That’s the Witch Head for you.

Justin (43:21) When this kind of stuff, kids are going to be knuckleheads, right? They’re going to be knuckleheads all the time. And ultimately as a teacher, you want the best thing for your kid, ⁓ in your class and you want them to learn the material. You don’t, you don’t want to like just get them into trouble. Like if, if the options are a, like you get them into trouble and now they hate you and now they’re digging in their heels and now you’ve created a whole situation.

Not only are they probably not going to learn the material because they’re too busy digging their their heels in and feeling bad. ⁓ but it’s also going to be so much more work for you. But at the same time, you can’t just let this keep happening. Well, you’re like, how are going to get the kid back on track? So sometimes there’s like a middle road. I think it’s for me, was like, it was always like, you get one strike, one offense that where I notice and I call you out on it. And if we can rectify it in time, then.

Jason (44:19) You

operate in good faith going forward. Yeah. You respect this situation. You respect me. You respect what you’re supposed to be doing. Then I’m going to help you learn from this situation and put things on a positive track. But if you continue to attempt to disrespect me in the situation, undermine your learning. Well, you’re kind of putting me in a position where I have to take this to a higher authority.

Justin (44:43) Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so there were were a couple times where somebody made a strike one, maybe like three, maybe, maybe four times just over the course of three years teaching in math academy. And only only one of those times did they do it again. And the one time that they did it again. Yeah, blew up into this whole thing. And ⁓ yeah, they actually

Yeah, they left the class the following semester.

Jason (45:15) Right. With a student who was cheating all this time, obviously they’re feeding misinformation to the system. This is something they know a lot more than they had. I don’t remember this situation. Did have to a new diagnostic, start over? how could they know?

Justin (45:31) I caught it early enough. Caught

it early enough. ⁓ yeah, I mean, well, so I was thinking about that at the beginning, like, well, okay, I don’t know how bad this kid’s knowledge profile is. ⁓ So I told the kid, like, I want to see you work out stuff on paper, actually. That was also one of the conditions that I forgot to mention is that I told the kid, you, like, part of this deal here that I’m making with you is

You need to work out your stuff on paper, no more like in your head or whatever. I want to see proof that you have actually done the work. so I would, and I also said like, and every day I’m gonna come in and quiz you, I’m gonna give you a problem actually on the problems that you’ve done and you better be able to solve it or at least like make a really good attempt that conveys that you have been learning the material. So. ⁓

Yeah. I guess like I caught it pretty early and I guess he was able to kind of like spin up on the fly and whatever, whatever kind of prerequisites he had kind of skipped out on, cheated through, or he kind of got back on the rails.

Jason (46:43) That’s

good. But then, but you really saved him. Because he was only got to a point where he had no choice but to cheat for the rest of his career in math. And he would have this shame that he’s carrying around, he knows. And he’s an imposter, he’s faking this whole thing. That’s kind of eats away at your soul when you do that kind of a thing. And he learned from this situation. It’s like, look, we all make mistakes in life. And the question is…

Justin (46:53) Yeah.

Jason (47:11) What are you gonna do to fix it? Are you gonna admit to the mistake? Are you going to try and make up for what you did? And I think that’s, and that’s what you, if you make it as an adult, if you make a path for redemption, whatever it is, whether it’s, you said something mean to your sister or you cheated on it, that’s whatever, as adult or a parent, you’re like, okay, well, this is not acceptable.

Justin (47:31) Mm-hmm.

Jason (47:41) This was mean or selfish or whatever, rude or, you know, lazy. and, and this isn’t, this is what you should, we expect more from you, you know? And, but I’m not going to like blow up your life or ruin your, you know, like go out of proportion. Cause that’s always a mistake too. When you blow things up, you do more than is necessary. You want, it’s kind of minimum effective dose. What is the minimum I can do to rectify the situation?

to the student learns isn’t just learning, I learned how to factor polynomial. I learned that using tools to fake my way is through stuff is not good at any level. And I should never do that again, you know?

Justin (48:26) Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I like that path to redemption. That’s, that’s good. That’s really, yeah, it’s really productive. And yeah, at the end of the day, this kid not only learned the integration by parts, but also learned a very good life lesson that of course, like most kids have to learn this, that at some point, but the hard way, because kids don’t understand, like, if you, if you start cheating, like what this is going to happen in the long term, you’re to get so behind that you have no choice, but

Jason (48:31) I think.

Justin (48:55) to cheat.

Jason (48:56) Now, I

only money from the mob or something. You’re never out. Like now you’re in. Now you’re doing, you know what mean? You get involved with criminals. Like there’s no, yeah. You never XCIA. You’re never X mafia. You never X you once you’re in, there’s no way out. Right. Once you start cheating, it’s kind of until someone says, I’m going to help you off, get off this track. Like you’re addicted to a drug and I’m going to help you detox and I’m going to help you.

find a path where you can be successful and be in a good place in life. mean, the other thing, lesson that you taught him and it teaches is that you’re probably gonna get caught.

Justin (49:38) Yeah.

Jason (49:39) You’re going

to get caught. It’s going to feel horrible. It’s going to be embarrassing. And it’s like, don’t, so don’t do it. If, if, if people, if kids can cheat and get away with it, whether they’re learning, they’re learning that cheating pays crime pays. Right. And the parent and the teachers and parents just look the other way and like make excuses for it. And then you just basically undercut or undermine their whole learning path. You’ve undermined a lot of their sort of ethical development.

you’ve underlying undermined their ability to sort of you’ve distorted reality a little bit. They think, you know, realities is thing you can just kind of fake and stuff and, that’s just going to keep working. So these are all reasons to, know, just, know we’re kind of off on the cheating tangent on this, but it’s like, um, that’s a big problem now in school for LMS, you know, and it can help kids cheat in almost every subject now, or they can, I guess you had to propose that you had everything.

write your papers, your physics problem set, whatever. And I was just talking to a university professor a couple of days ago who’s interested in using Math Academy as part of his actual class. And he goes, he was taught, we just talked briefly about it, but he’s like, yeah, I got to do all, we’ve learned that just all assessments have to be done in class.

And the only thing I could think is why would anyone ever think that that would not be the case? I would never, I don’t ever believe in take-home exams. know, definitely when LLMs come in, you can’t write papers, even papers. That’s why I’m like, you know, essays that you submit to college. I mean, how many of those were just written by the kid with no editing, no help, no idea, ideation, no, you know, and how many times…

And there’s a huge range of like how much parents help. You know, sometimes parents are just like, they’re, they’re not academic or they’re just lazy and busy. Like, I’m not helping, or I just don’t believe that I should help you. And some do that. A lot of them don’t. A lot of them are just like, well, you know, I got to help them get into school and everybody’s helping. And then it’s becomes like a group effort, that kind of crap. And that’s just endemic. It’s everywhere.

I would have all essays, college essays that you get, it’s like an SAT you go and you have your essay section and there’s like, you know, five essays to questions picked two, you know, and they’re all different. It’s like when I went to school in college, University Chicago, had, I remember like our Western Civ class. So one thing University of Chicago did is they make you take like a huge amount of like what we call the common core in Chicago, weirdly.

But it was like, gotta take a you take all you didn’t get to just take some basic gen ed classes, then you’re off doing your major was like, you take everybody take a year of biology, every take a year of either physics or chemistry, every take a year of calculus, everybody had to give sociology every ticket, it was like endless. The point you just like, when is this going to come to an end? I mean, how much content character card do I have to read? You know what mean? Anyway, so my Western Civ class, I remember we would take

We would do the essays. I mean, we had to write papers, but the final exam were with those blue books, you those little paper blue books and you would, and you would write those in class and you had, was like a, you know, a two or three hour final exam period. And it was just like, you’d fill up, you know, six, seven, eight, 10 pages of a blue book for each essay question. You just write on the fly. And that’s what, that’s what you got to do for all of these.

more paper writing classes, history and English and things like that. I mean, you gotta… ⁓

I wouldn’t really focus too much on the paper writing because it’s too easy to fake. ⁓ Second, I would… ⁓

You know, it’s like, would you like, is like, there is something that’s used as much as I hated writing papers, high school and college. And I wrote so many, I just, I have like PTSD from all the papers I had to write in college, but there is value in doing that. And so if you can’t, if it’s almost impossible to tell somebody’s cheating and it takes a ton of work. So you can’t just make it count for nothing. Like, it’s just like, well, it’s just like a homework assignment. Like, how do you do it?

You without, you you have these LLM detectors, but they’re, bad because a lot of times they have false positives.

And there’s a lot of horror stories with that happening. don’t know. You have any ideas? What would you do if you were teaching? I don’t know. If you’re teaching American history or English history, you know, European history and they have to write papers and you’re like, well, I assess, I do a lot of short answer and short essay tests and it turns, but I got to write some, but they require like papers as part of the AP curriculum or something. What would you, what would you, what would you

Justin (54:40) I don’t think there is a way other than just having students do stuff in front of you.

Yeah, once you allow it to be a take-home thing, especially with the LLMs nowadays, it’s like, you just, you lose the integrity of the data. You just don’t know anymore. And it’s so hard to, I mean, you can sometimes tell, like if you’ve read, interacted with LLMs a lot, there are things that you kind of notice.

in the right, you’re already getting a vibe like, ⁓ this feels, ⁓ but that does not, that does not pass muster when you’re, when you’re, when you’re trying to argue that a student has cheated in a serious way, because there’s all these like gray lines, right? It’s like, well, you can use like, there is a situation in which you can use an LLM to, to in good faith,

Jason (55:22) ChatGP seal.

Justin (55:47) like genuinely help you produce a better paper. ⁓ But there’s a line between actually like cheating off the LLM. And then.

Jason (55:59) Well, like as a research assistant, you’re finding some, you know, looking at resources when the negotiating between this, you know, tribe and the army and American history and like, when did, you know, it says, oh, well, there was this, you’re like, oh God, I forgot about that. can research, you know, like stuff like that. Yeah. It’d really helpful, but it’s like a slippery slope. It’s so easy for them to start doing more and more. Exactly. I can just use this paragraph and tweak a few things because it’s 11 o’clock at night and I’m tired and I got to get asleep and.

Justin (56:29) And you’re trying to argue that a kid has used the LLM in a cheating off of it way that’s over the line. And you’re just saying like, wow, this kind of sounds like it’s well, it doesn’t pass the sniff test. And you’re trying to like explain this. That’s not like, that doesn’t, you need like hard, some like, yeah, that’s the thing. That’s the thing. then, and so if the kid and or their parents really want to fight against you,

Jason (56:48) not just positive.

Justin (56:59) they can turn this into a whole situation of like, because you don’t have this really dispositive evidence, they can dig their heels in and create a whole situation with the principal or with like whoever your higher up is and. ⁓

Jason (57:17) Yeah, I think

what I would do, I we, you know, I know we’re getting pretty, pretty far outside our math discussion, but I was just thinking what I would do if I was teaching, let’s say European history or an English class. And I would be like, okay, so there are, let’s say there are two major papers I want you to write per term, know, two 10 page papers or something. That’s like high school, like a senior, junior, senior high school class and two 10 page papers. And I would make you.

I would probably have some writing days in class where you would write and research things. And then we would have like, I’m gonna have a discussion with you. Okay, tell me what you got. Let’s go over this. Let’s kind of like sort of like a, almost like if you’re meeting your thesis advisor and you’re your dissertation in college. No, I’m integral to your process and I’m helping you. I’m giving you feedback and some stuff you wrote in class.

some things and then, okay, I don’t want to see all your notes, you bring it in and I’m look at your writing style and just make it really clear at being a class. Like, I’m gonna look at all your writing stuff, see all your writing, I have samples of all your writing stuff, I see anything, anything. I’m make you do a clean, start, a new project. And I’m gonna give you a great doc or something like that. would be like, I’d be really scary at the beginning and they’re like, crap, this guy is like the eye of Sauron. I’m like, damn right I am. And they’re like, just play straight and you’re great, but you mess with me, it’s gonna be bad.

Right. You kind of have to do that as a teacher. You kind of have to scare the kids to the, you don’t mess with this teacher. You do, you do a good job and otherwise it’s going to be a horrible experience.

Justin (58:50) Dan, you can lighten up as like you have, as time passes, they respect you and they are actually doing the work to learn the material. And like everyone’s in a good situation. Now this, this is the way everyone is used to operating. Yeah. You can lighten up and, and be like, turn it into somebody who they, they, they kind of enjoy class.

Jason (59:14) They do. The best teachers, we always say there was a sort of a saying that new teachers never smile until winter break. Like the first third of the year, you’re hardcore. And they’re kind like, wow, you don’t mess with this teacher. You come in, you’re like, we’re all going to be friends. And I just think of me as your study buddy, and I’m going to help you.

Justin (59:28) Yeah

Jason (59:42) Kids are like, this is a joke. This teacher’s a… And they just, they have no respect for you. And then you never get it back. And then if you try and tighten the reins later because, know, a mentor, a teacher mentor or you’re, you know, the vice principal comes and stops by and says, hey, you know, I’m hearing a lot of questions about the, you may not have control of your class and it’s really loud and you know, whatever. are you, and you try and I need you to get your control of your class. And they just can’t cause kids are like.

Yeah. I’m really mad. We got to you guys don’t respect me. I get to like, whatever. Right. And so you set the tone early, but then you lighten up. And I was when I would teach, was, I was, I could be playful. I was like a coach. I was like a hard ass coach. And then I was like, really? All right, let’s go. Come on. Yes. Good job. Right. I would be like, and I would, you know, use humor and I whatever.

But I was also like, you didn’t mess with me. I’d call you out. You come in without your homework done, I’d be like, hey.

Claire, pardon me, what’s up with the homework? Why do you need your homework? Well, we had to say, don’t show up tomorrow with that done. do, you know, they’re like, you know what mean? Like I would call it the smallest thing. You know, I mean, like, don’t do that. And then I’d be friend later, but I was like, you could tell they’d say, the bad cop can show up at a moment’s notice. You know, it’s like the Lego movie and you had the police officer and he was like Mr. Happy on one side of his face and he was like, can’t be bad cop.

Justin (1:01:03) Zerato 100 really quick.

Jason (1:01:21) And you you kind of have to do that as a teacher, think. ⁓ Unfortunately, any teacher thinks you’d come and say, well, I don’t do that. I just I’m just happy all the time. I like, I guarantee you that kids are not doing anything close to what they’re supposed to be doing. It’s just mostly.

Justin (1:01:37) Yeah, cause it’s like what happens if you’re, if you just play good cop, like all the time, a hundred percent of the time, like everyone’s going to be slightly off every day. They’re drifting off course and they’re going to end up out in left field. They’re going to end up miles away. It’s like, you just, you don’t have to play bad cop all the time, but it’s just whenever there is a slight deviation off of the behavior that needs to happen, you have to call it out. Otherwise it’s going to compound into a problem.

It’s like, you, if you, if, if you refuse to play bad cop now, you’re going to end up having to play it a hundred percent of the time months later. Right. And it’s like, you’re, just, you’re just trying to do damage control on this, on this unsolvable situation. You’re just, you’re going to lose. It’s just a matter of how, how bad do you lose? You’re trying to, you’re trying to limit your losses. But if you, if you just say, say like, okay.

Jason (1:02:17) And doesn’t work. It never works that well. Yeah.

Justin (1:02:37) 5 % of the time, I’m going to be bad cop in those moments when, ⁓ kid has not done their homework. Like give them a stern, you know, like, this is a serious thing. I don’t want to see this happen again. Like, and then you, like, you don’t, they come in the next day with homework and then you can be good.

Jason (1:02:52) or

Just like we’re talking about being mugged on Street like you only have to be drawn us to call you one time and call you out You’re just like oh god. That was terrible. I Better do my homework. I know it’s 1030 tonight and I want to watch another episode of whatever on I better do my homework as if I show up Teacher’s gonna give me it. That’s not good. Right? So so then you get

Justin (1:03:14) It doesn’t take a lot. Like it doesn’t take, you don’t have to, it doesn’t have to be like incredibly painful experience for the kid. It just has to be like, ⁓ I’m on the teacher’s bad side for these five minutes.

Jason (1:03:26) You just say, this is not acceptable. I expect more out of you if you want to stay, you know, whatever. And they’re just like, oh, you know, and yeah, you’re taking the situation seriously. If you do that early, you any, you know, and you do it a handful, then it’s like, it’s like 5 % of time, it’s like 0.01 % of time almost never happens. I’ve had a couple few times. I was like, oh, geez, you know, they’re doing my homework, right? You know, and our better

whatever I’m supposed to do, get here on time or whatever and makes life easier. because teachers will, you’d rather be teachers be a little bit intimidated by you than not respect you. If they don’t respect you and then you try and turn the reins, know, tighten the reins, then they hate you. They resent you and they hate you. And that is a just a, like I said, it’s an unsolvable problem. It’s just the year is kind of lost.

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