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The people who complain about the education system being pointless and monotonous are the ones who do not do well in it. You rarely see a kid who got a 4.0, aced their SATs or APs, competed and won academic competitions, etc. talk about the pointlessness of "public education". (Though I am sure a string of anecdotals talking about everyone here was the valedictorian and thought school was boring is now forthcoming)
So whats the point? That lots of the people complaining (maybe even the majority) about public school are doing so because they were not successful at it.
There is clearly room for improvement but instead of talking to the sour grape crowd we need to find out what could be improved from those who were successful at it.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lkb0714
...You rarely see a kid who got a 4.0, aced their SATs or APs, competed and won academic competitions, etc. talk about the pointlessness of "public education". ...There is clearly room for improvement but instead of talking to the sour grape crowd we need to find out what could be improved from those who were successful at it.
That is due to the fact those kids acing ACT and SAT were NOT educated in conventional 'joe-average-USA-public-school'... Honestly the only ones I know who consistently perform this well, were Singapore 'Public Educated' Americans. Worked well for many of my ex-pat friends. Their kids got FREE full rides in USA Ivy Leagues and now have GREAT international employment.
USA edu has LOTS to LEARN, BUT band-aids will not solve the problem, and LISTENING and ACTING on improvements is not a core value of USA EDU 'good-ole-boy' (tenure track). I don't think the US teachers Union will be listening past the point that Singapore tells them that each teacher will have 50 students from 7 AM till noon, and ANOTHER 50 students from 1PM till 6PM. + each class for 1/2 day on Saturday. Requires less than 1/2 the infrastructure of USA EDU and a WHOLE lot less administrators
The Singapore system comes with it's own set of problems (like 5th graders in the hospital with ulcers, knowing their test scores will determine their 'streaming' ... academic vs vocational.) Not for all, but effective for many. (Of course more 'strategic nations' will have done the research YEARS AGO to be training their youth and equipping businesses for FUTURE careers / technology). Bio science was targeted in the 80's as a field to have prepared staff and companies TODAY! THAT does not happen in USA EDU... We train as we did 100 yrs ago. Seems the economy / skill set might call for improving that model.
BTW, We (USA) now have to issue Green Cards for Machinists and toolmakers and CNC programmers. We shipped those high paying careers to the very counties that are now trouncing US. We also do NOT have new graduates from High School capable of the math skills required to do these jobs. A friend that has a manufacturing company and hires about 50 kids / yr, says it would REALLY be nice if they knew how to read a tape measure, before scrapping a pallet of veneer plywood at $80/sheet. Then they react with the typical 'entitlement' syndrome... "Where is my RAISE?" 9.19 USD per hour (January 1, 2013)
Washington, Minimum wage
It wasn't worthless for me. I took 2 years of typing and that was invaluable. Yes, the rest was a waste of time and I was a good student. Really, you learn almost everything you need to know by 4th grade or at least you did in the 1960's. We could read and do math! More than a lot of high school graduates can do now!
If your definition of "a lot" is about 0.05%, then yes, you are correct.
The people who complain about the education system being pointless and monotonous are the ones who do not do well in it. You rarely see a kid who got a 4.0, aced their SATs or APs, competed and won academic competitions, etc. talk about the pointlessness of "public education". (Though I am sure a string of anecdotals talking about everyone here was the valedictorian and thought school was boring is now forthcoming)
So whats the point? That lots of the people complaining (maybe even the majority) about public school are doing so because they were not successful at it.
There is clearly room for improvement but instead of talking to the sour grape crowd we need to find out what could be improved from those who were successful at it.
Hahaha, I actually graduated in the top 10% of my class and got very high scores on the SATs. I knew how to play the game. I think that the ones who do well in school recognize that it's a game and are able to get through with little effort. Of course there are also kids who work extremely hard for their good grades... but a good number of my "smart kid" peers were just savvy at getting through the system. Intelligent, yes, but not exceptionally hard workers, and I doubt many of us retained too much of the useless information we learned for the tests. The game was memorize, analyze, regurgitate, forget, and on to the next thing. I remembered things that I was interested in, which was a small percentage of what I learned.
That was back in the 1990s, though. Based on the crap my exchange students bring home as homework (word searches in the 11th grade.... really??), I think that what they're learning now is probably even less useful than what I learned 20 years ago. Judging by the large number of former teachers in our homeschool group, I am pretty sure that I'm right... if anyone should be for public education, it's teachers, right? And yet I know a LOT who won't let their kids step foot in a public school. To me, that speaks volumes.
Hahaha, I actually graduated in the top 10% of my class and got very high scores on the SATs. I knew how to play the game.
I graduated towards the bottom of my classes. I knew how to play the game. To me, getting really good grades meant someone lost the game. Why get an A when you can graduate with a C? I was bummed out if I got a B because it meant I spent too much time studying - time I could have been spending partying with my friends.
Maybe the problem in America is our tendency to complain. I did fine in high school and worked very hard to improve my SAT score. I learned a lot of useful information and I admit, some classes were a waste. But that's life. A mixture of good and bad.
Now, in this entire thread, I have yet to see a clear solution to whatever problems exists . Personally, one improvement that can be implemented is more vocational focused classes. If a student is not adept at biology or calculus, why force them through so many core requirements when they can easily benefit from a class that specializes in a specific trade or craft? Therefore, I think that high schools should mandate an intro science course and math through algebra 2 and geometry. Aside from learning sine, cosine, and tangent, pre-calc is pretty abstract and not useful in a practical sense. Hopefully, this frees up a student into finding something that strikes his or her interest. In a student's 3rd and 4th years of high school, they can transfer to a schedule that only focuses on a trade or two.
There is clearly room for improvement but instead of talking to the sour grape crowd we need to find out what could be improved from those who were successful at it.
I respectfully disagree with this and the reason is that the successful students are the ones for whom the system works very, very well. The teachers are often those who did very well in school, love the school environment, and teach just as they were taught. The people in the "think tanks" with the professional degrees who've not really gotten their feet wet in a classroom are often the ones who set school policy and come up with these highly improbable ideas about educational reform and they were probably the very top students in their classes but what worked best for them is often not what will work best for the others. All of the best teachers I know tended to be little rebels in school when they were young--not particularly bad kids or party animals, but they were always "talking back" to the system, even if just in their heads.
Also the reality of the system is that those who feel that they can't win or are non-competitive will stop trying and lose interest and even some good students lose interest and motivation b/c they feel that their needs aren't met. Kids who have chaotic lives at home and eat crappy food are not at their best and kids with untreated AD/HD are often founts of wild ideas and can be quite bright but they tend to get left behind in the academic environment b/c it's not suited to their temperaments. All of those are the ones I would like to ask about school improvement.
OP, that it one of the most resonant and on-point pieces I have read in some time. Bravo. I can relate so, so much. I wish my parents had the time, patience and desire to home school me. If I ever have children, which I will certainly not, but hypothetically if I ever were to, then there would be no way in hades that they'd be made to step foot in a public school, for as long as I would breathe. Talk about a traumatizing decade and a third in that prison system they call school ...
I worked in journalism for years before I had children, and honestly some of the OP's statements made me cringe. One of the key attributes of a high quality journalist is an interest and an education in many subjects. I used my education (high school included) all the time when I wrote stories. Geometry helps teach logic (think proofs). This is something I wish more journalists had. You also may be asked to write stories on medicine or the environment (biology), the economy (math and business classes), the government (social studies) etc. This is one field that expects a well rounded background in many subjects.
The best journalists I worked with tended to pursue a number of outside interests as well (those extra curricular activities the OP panned). This also is helpful if you end up doing a story on sports, the arts, schools, or even a story on everyday people experiencing life.
Unfortunately today there are many "journalists" who do lack a proper education or a desire to understand topics, and this leads to problems. We don't need more of these kind of "journalists." If the OP really found so many subjects to be intolerable, then journalism may not be the best field. Perhaps a degree in astronomy may be a better fit.
I would like to know what specific claims I made caused you to cringe. Although I clearly expressed a negative view on the education system, I thought that I made a fair effort to give my reasoning.
I imagine that one of the reasons you're frustrated with this post is because you think I am narrow minded and only locked into to my specific hyper focus (journalism). I just don't like to be spoon fed information and process it, regardless if its useful or not. I care to explore anything of interest on my own.
I read the week magazine, the ny times, try to stay up on current politics and affairs in general. I am not trying to shed light on myself here, I'm just saying I may not have a narrow focus as you think. I just prefer to go about my learning in my own way.
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We also do NOT have new graduates from High School capable of the math skills required to do these jobs. A friend that has a manufacturing company and hires about 50 kids / yr, says it would REALLY be nice if they knew how to read a tape measure, before scrapping a pallet of veneer plywood at $80/sheet. Then they react with the typical 'entitlement' syndrome... "Where is my RAISE?" 9.19 USD per hour (January 1, 2013)
. Personally, one improvement that can be implemented is more vocational focused classes. If a student is not adept at biology or calculus, why force them through so many core requirements when they can easily benefit from a class that specializes in a specific trade or craft? Therefore, I think that high schools should mandate an intro science course and math through algebra 2 and geometry. Aside from learning sine, cosine, and tangent, pre-calc is pretty abstract and not useful in a practical sense. Hopefully, this frees up a student into finding something that strikes his or her interest. In a student's 3rd and 4th years of high school, they can transfer to a schedule that only focuses on a trade or two.
