The State Of Schools In America
alius42
Join Date: 2002-07-23 Member: 987Members
Join Date: 2002-07-23 Member: 987Members
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<a href='http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html' target='_blank'>The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher</a>
You can argue that highschool prepares kids for college but that is mostly not true, the curriculum of highschool doesn't apply to most of what you learn in college. The fact is you do not have to step foot unto a campus until you are 18. At 18 you can register in a community college, get 2 years done there and transfer to the college of your choice as a Junior with a guranteed spot if you meet grade point requirements. Doing this actually gives you a staggeringly higher chance of getting into the college you want to than trying to do the typical directly from HS to college thing. Also taking into account that the drop out rates of freshmen in a instatution like UCLA is enormous it's actually a more viable option. So I personally think public schools are useless.
You could easily homeschool yourself or your child and have them be fully prepared for college. And the idea that they will be socially inept because they didn't go to school is a bit flakey considering the fact that there is nothing to stop them from interacting with other kids outside of a school enviorment, and if homeschooling became a general practice it wouldn't even be an issue. As it stands it is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
PS: very good article.
<a href='http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html' target='_blank'>The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher</a> <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
I posted that a while back, myself. I love it.
As for schools in America, I have nothing to, but schools in Canada are being dragged down, as well. The only time I ever use some of the math I learned was in the final exam of the year I learned it, then I just forgot it. The school should focus on teaching USEFUL things.
That's the whole point. You are supposed to learn a little about everything so you can decide which subject you would like to study after high school.
I can't really say anything else because I have no experience of americas schooling system.
Might give some of you hope, maybe not. Considering grades have been in the dirt the last few years.
However when the number one cause of peace-time deaths amongst US soldiers is pulling Coke machines on top of themselves you do have to wonder exactly what is being taught <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
In the school district I grew up in, this year 25% of the students didn't show up on the first day of school.
Schools can be very good for the whole or really bad. Think of the impact a single great teacher has had on you, and then think of a really horrible one. Many things are school sanctioned, some are as simple as being down to the very teachers decision of what and how to teach.
There is a lot of failure at there in the system of schools. And frankyl, there are almost to many to discuss them all. We really have to look at one at a time.
There are federal problems, like school grants, budgets for special programs and assitance for other cases.
There are local problems, like levies(taxes for the school), bad hireing problem, and no solid education program for many areas.(FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, in WISCONSIN ITS NOT MANDATORY YOU ARE TAUGHT THE CONSTITION......yikes)
I just started college myself, its a late night class, so we have an EXTREMELY diverse group of people both in race, sex and age. Some of them were never even required to study our goverment infrastructure. We all wonder why we have bad leaders and people in office and this is why!!.
And then it comes down to the final level, the teachers and the parents and yes...even the students themselves. A lot of apathy is what I see from all sides.
On a good note though, and a positive way to finish.... I have seen many more good schools than bad, and more good teachers than bad. I beleive the eduction system is fine, but our ethics and morals are really gone anymore. We teach histroy that is false, we teach polictally correctness over truth, and we teach feelings and emotions over solid fact.
There has to be a balance between being a logical person and a humanitarian. I really guess I just want everyone to be a renisance thinker... ah well.
rofl, that reminds me. The town nearby delayed school for seniors by one day in an effort to curb freshman hazing.
Linguists have studied the problem of literacy (which arguably has a large and invariably indelible impact on a school system's success) in America at least, and found that children in poor families were exposed to a third or so the vocabulary and verbal interaction with their parents as did children from middle-class families. They also found a direct correlation between the lack of exposure and literacy at later ages (sorry, I have no link, I learned this in a linguistics class at my university. I also read it in the newspaper somewhere, maybe the NY Times). The problem with America's school systems, which arguably have both very strong top-notch schools and very poorly performing schools, is not just a problem of bad administration/management and a lack of funding or poor teacher salaries; it is a lack of proper education of adults that are parenting their children on how to adequately prepare and train their children to excel in the school environment.
BTW, all my teachers hate me because I'm sarcastic and have a superiority complex (if there's a thing like that).
Aside from that you cant categorize ALL of Americas public/private schools into one group, some are better than others, depends on the staff/student complement.
How about teaching them over and over again?
They taught me how to add four times, subtract three times, multiply three times, divide two times, and the basic theorems and postulates of algebra three times. Plus, it doesn't help that I learned all these from my parents before I learned them in school. Not only do they teach things repeatedly, they teach them too late to make a reasonable impact on a children's memory.
Plus, they also don't teach at all. Grammar should be taught around 5th grade. Grammar, not spelling. So we don't have a generation of people (sadly, we do) who use there/their/they're, are/our, two/too/to interchangeably.
How about teaching them over and over again?
They taught me how to add four times, subtract three times, multiply three times, divide two times, and the basic theorems and postulates of algebra three times. Plus, it doesn't help that I learned all these from my parents before I learned them in school. Not only do they teach things repeatedly, they teach them too late to make a reasonable impact on a children's memory.
Plus, they also don't teach at all. Grammar should be taught around 5th grade. Grammar, not spelling. So we don't have a generation of people (sadly, we do) who use there/their/they're, are/our, two/too/to interchangeably. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Don't forget where/were/wear!
Check out <a href='http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0375414827/qid=1062040795/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_2/102-1541641-0276169?v=glance&s=books&n=507846' target='_blank'>The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn</a> I'd be interested to hear if any current or recently graduated students recognize any of the anecdotes in this book. Here's a quick run down:
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->From <i>Publishers Weekly</i>
Textbook publishers are guilty of self-censorship, argues Ravitch (Left Back: A Century of Battles Over School Reform) in this polemical analysis of the anti-bias and sensitivity guidelines that govern much of today's educational publishing. Looking at lawsuits, school board hearings and private correspondence between textbook editors, Ravitch, a professor of education at New York University, shows how publishers are squeezed by pressure from groups on the right (which object to depictions of disobedience, family conflict, sexuality, evolution and the supernatural) and the left (which correct for the racism and sexism of older textbooks by urging stringent controls on language and images to weed out possibly offensive stereotypes)-most publishers have quietly adopted both sets of suggestions. In chapters devoted specifically to literature and history texts, Ravitch contends that these sanitized materials sacrifice literary quality and historical accuracy in order to escape controversy. She also discusses how current statewide textbook adoption methods have undermined competition and brought about the consolidation of the educational publishing industry, leading to more bland, simplistic fare. There is no shortage of colorful examples: a scientific passage about owls was rejected from a standardized test because the birds are taboo for Navajos; one set of stereotype guidelines urges writers to avoid depicting "children as healthy bundles of energy"; editors of a science textbook rejected a sentence about fossil fuels being the primary cause of global warming because "[w]e'd never be adopted in Texas." <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I live in Naperville, public school district 203. I went to Naperville North High School.
NNHS is rated as one of the top public highschools in the nation. We took special tests that were used to rank us globabally. I believe we were number 6 for top high school in sciences, and number 3 for mathematics. I can say that the public school system, and from my experience with what is pretty much the best in the nation, is excellent.
30 miles away is Chicago. Which is ranked as the worst public school system in the nation.
First you must look at the very first problem. You will very often see little kids singing something like, "Oh my eyes have seen the glory of the burning of the school/we have tortured every teacher/we have broken every rule/we have shot the dean of students/hung the principal as well/as we go marching hoooome." Why are they singing that? What's wrong with the kids? Nowadays they just detain them for saying violent things, but the truth remains. KIDS HATE SCHOOL. I think the most readily available reason for why kids hate school is that they are being taught things they don't want/need to learn. What is a construction worker doing learning ... the travails of Napoleon?
umm I just absolutely lost my train of thought. sorry. I'll edit this when I regain it. Wow, that was really freaky. I seriously can't type a thing about school now.
Ok. I believe that the system should teach you the BARE minimum of what is required in life. This means, gramm<b>e</b>r, basic math, a rudimentary knowledge of (human) biology, and government participation skills. A brief period of "everything being taught" should follow to sort of jog the students' minds. Then, students should be given a choice of what school they want to go to - the top of the class gets to pick first, etc. I know this isn't very fair but it's actually not so different from what happens today. (They used to do this sort of thing in Taiwan, my dad says) This way every kid picks an education after which they will contribute to society best. (or something near that. after school they can choose to repeat education in a different field)
I heard all sorts of stories about Math A and B (oh, a classic failure of school education there, folks)... like schools where 1 kid passed, and only by a few points.... wow D:
Umm, anyway, I think New York has one of the worst education systems in the US. I don't mean quality wise (well, it still might be), but rather just organization wise. The Regents Board comes up with convoluted standards, and a grand communications mishmash occurs between the Board and the actual school districts. Basically, nobody knows what to teach, and given the state of schools, they teach it badly, too. The politicians try to butter it up by throwing money at the situation but they're just making the problem worse; now every school wastes $10,000 on computer equipment that nobody uses. What they need to do is reset the entire school system, shut down the Regents Board and give out logical guidelines, and operate based on what teachers say they need, not school district superintendents (speaking of school districts, if there's a more corrupt and wrongheaded organization, I'll be darned).