I feel sorry for American School Students

[Evil Top Hat]

Your an idiot.

The irony, it is delicious!

OT: America's education system is flawed, but the there isn't a single education system (that I know of) in the western world I would describe as good.

 

[keve4433]

Lunches are just the start. At my school we had to take extra days off because they couldn't afford to pay teachers for everyday this year. Of course we could still afford to put 1080i HD tv's in every hall and three more in the lunch room so they could televise the morning announcements...and for the love of fuck don't get me started on the teachers. >.>

Thankfully this was my last year! =3

 

[Kryzantine]

First, we would have to change our education paradigm:


Second, there's plenty of ways to change education for the betterment of society. The problem is all of the money that goes into it, and how we have politicians messing it up. That's a rant for another time. My view, based on how our educational system is lacking is to adapt our students to different standards, similar to Montessori. We lose a lot of divergent thinking, and the public system spits out people for factory jobs.

There's more ways, it's just incredibly difficult to get anything new into the system that allows a smarter population in general.

I... must vehemently disagree with both the video and your post, which is basically an extension of the video.

I mean, the video seemed pretty good, and I was waiting for the big reveal at the end, only for that reveal to be the belief that kids think much less creatively the further they advance in the school system. It was carefully worded to imply this, when the only comparison was kids between kindergarten and 2nd grade, I think, it's been a bit since I saw the video. But we have a biological explanation for that, which is the loss of about 2/3rds of synapses in brain neurons between the ages of 4 and 6. In fact, very young children are the most creative people on the planet. It has nothing to do with a repressive education system, merely biology. And I can say that in my high school, I was doing a lot of creative work and not only encouraged, but required to connect multiple points that had seemingly little connection, and to create a convincing message about the connection. For instance, I had a geopolitics teacher that asked his freshmen world history students to compare the Mongols to Al-Qaeda, to teach them about terrorism as a military strategy; never mind the crazy papers he asked us to write. A geology teacher asked me to use prospect theory to figure out mining investment riskiness. Most English classes do this all the damned time.

No, the problem with education in America is not just the overall lack of funding, but where that money is going. I don't know which idiot decided it was a good idea to fund public schooling based on the taxes collected of the area that the school covers. It creates good public schools in high wealth areas, where the wealthy can afford private schooling, and creates bad public schools in poor areas, which rely on public education to get their youth out of said area and move on to better things in life. That story of the woman in Ohio who defrauded a neighbouring school district (which was a very wealthy area, btw) by sending her kids to the school there illegally (she lived in a neighbouring district, one of the poorest in Ohio and known to have a much worse school)? That's common across America. It's one of the saddest realities we face. Thankfully, I went to an inner city school that received a lot of extra funding from the city and preferential treatment, while admitting kids from across the entire city (of course, they had to be tested in 8th grade to be allowed admission). But this isn't everywhere, and in areas where the infrastructure is relatively poorer, and which relies on taxes collected from a small, economically poor area, the schools suck. There is no advancement there. The only advancement is in areas of high economic growth, areas which need this public advancement less.

So in a way, it's about preparing most people for the factory (or in this case, office) workforce, but it's more because the places that can even prepare people for the top positions are unavailable for most people geographically.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Le snip.

NO i'm not in anyway trying to dictate peoples lives and just think schools should take more responsibility in teaching their students about being healthy. A 600ml coke bottle contains 65g of sugar which quickly becomes fat when you sit down all day at school. Now you might enjoy not being able to see your feet but its such an easy problem to fix but due to an immense amount of ignorant people its becoming more unlikely by the minute

It's not the schools responsibility, it's the responsibility of the individual. In lower age groups, it's different, but in teens people are responsible for their own diet. If people are too stupid to look after their bodies, that's their own issue, but it shouldn't be handled with such sweeping actions that affect perfectly sensible healthy people.

To the bolded part, yes, yes you are.

agreed, by high school time it's your own damn body, if you want ot fuck it up i see as to no reason why you can't have a coke at school or whatnot, hell i drink pop all the time but if you have a decent workout throughout the week you stay perfectly in shape.

and i see you're aware of what to do with the extra amounts of sugar however alot of people don't and that is my point. Drink as much black fluid as you like, i really don't care. Fuck have one on me.

oh i get that, i'm just saying by then if the parents/system hasn't beaten it into your head already about watching what you do/eat, i think the person should be more than welcome to be a fat pile of shit, it's their body and we allow people to smoke/drink/etc.. so why can't they eat what they want? at most it makes the person coming in after you in the bathroom smell stinkier poo gases.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

First, we would have to change our education paradigm:


Second, there's plenty of ways to change education for the betterment of society. The problem is all of the money that goes into it, and how we have politicians messing it up. That's a rant for another time. My view, based on how our educational system is lacking is to adapt our students to different standards, similar to Montessori. We lose a lot of divergent thinking, and the public system spits out people for factory jobs.

There's more ways, it's just incredibly difficult to get anything new into the system that allows a smarter population in general.

I... must vehemently disagree with both the video and your post, which is basically an extension of the video.

I mean, the video seemed pretty good, and I was waiting for the big reveal at the end, only for that reveal to be the belief that kids think much less creatively the further they advance in the school system. It was carefully worded to imply this, when the only comparison was kids between kindergarten and 2nd grade, I think, it's been a bit since I saw the video. But we have a biological explanation for that, which is the loss of about 2/3rds of synapses in brain neurons between the ages of 4 and 6. In fact, very young children are the most creative people on the planet. It has nothing to do with a repressive education system, merely biology. And I can say that in my high school, I was doing a lot of creative work and not only encouraged, but required to connect multiple points that had seemingly little connection, and to create a convincing message about the connection. For instance, I had a geopolitics teacher that asked his freshmen world history students to compare the Mongols to Al-Qaeda, to teach them about terrorism as a military strategy; never mind the crazy papers he asked us to write. A geology teacher asked me to use prospect theory to figure out mining investment riskiness. Most English classes do this all the damned time.

No, the problem with education in America is not just the overall lack of funding, but where that money is going. I don't know which idiot decided it was a good idea to fund public schooling based on the taxes collected of the area that the school covers. It creates good public schools in high wealth areas, where the wealthy can afford private schooling, and creates bad public schools in poor areas, which rely on public education to get their youth out of said area and move on to better things in life. That story of the woman in Ohio who defrauded a neighbouring school district (which was a very wealthy area, btw) by sending her kids to the school there illegally (she lived in a neighbouring district, one of the poorest in Ohio and known to have a much worse school)? That's common across America. It's one of the saddest realities we face. Thankfully, I went to an inner city school that received a lot of extra funding from the city and preferential treatment, while admitting kids from across the entire city (of course, they had to be tested in 8th grade to be allowed admission). But this isn't everywhere, and in areas where the infrastructure is relatively poorer, and which relies on taxes collected from a small, economically poor area, the schools suck. There is no advancement there. The only advancement is in areas of high economic growth, areas which need this public advancement less.

So in a way, it's about preparing most people for the factory (or in this case, office) workforce, but it's more because the places that can even prepare people for the top positions are unavailable for most people geographically.

well written post but i must say in my area, in our district, it was near complete opposite, my school was one of the "richer" and more nicer areas of town, however we had the worst funding by far publicly and the only thing we had going for us was a nice track, which besides that we had near shit for everything else, but still somehow we had the best grades in our section of the state and weour academic decathlon team went to nationals 3 years in a row and got in the top 10 each time, while all the other public schools in our area were all remodeled with new equipment/rooms/etc.. and failed to hold anything against us, which shows that no matter how much funding you have in a certain area, if a kid is a lazy shit who doesn't have his heart set on education, he/she ain't gonna give a fuck and is gonna do what he has set out in his mind to do. (we roughly have a good..10-12 schools in our single district, let alone the 3 "suburb" districts in our city limits that have a good 8 other schools, so it's pretty blatantly obvious that no matter the funding if the students don't care, then they don't care)

 

[Vault101]

You don't watch the Simpsons do you?

BTW You know who has the final say in the content of the majority of school textbooks?
The Texas School Board. I think that says it all right there.

but theirs soo little meat in thease gym matts.....:/

 

[GodofCider]

The reason why i bring this subject up is because i have recently been watching Jamie Oliver's food revolution. I was completely stunned by the reaction of the superintendent (i'm not really sure how important this position is) and how he is allowed to make a universal decision in regard to what children eat.

This just proves to me that the American education system fails at the most basic fundementals.

Please do NOT take this as an attack!!!

See...maybe you should reword things so it doesn't sound like an attack. This superintendent is only in charge of one school district, not all school districts. So saying you feel bad for American students. So you should really say you feel sorry for these students because of this case. And this is one example and not necessarily indicative of the entire school system across all of America. This one case proves only that school district in question has problems and highlights possible problems that could be nation wide.

Also, I do believe you that you weren't trying to attack, merely showing your out rage and sympathy for the students you saw. But there will be others that will use this as another launch point for an verbal attack on America.

Also lastly, I agree there are problems with the American education system but it isn't the food...well not just the food, sometimes the food was good and healthy. But the problem is underfunding and won't be solved with tv chefs coming in and making a salad.

Thankyou for giving me a little more insight into the subject, i understand that a TV chef such as Jamie Oliver can't fix everything. Our Schools (public) aren't great either but i was hoping for a much more mature response and that is why i mentioned it wasn't an attack. Perhaps i could of constructed my wording in a less offensive manner, nevertheless i do believe that all education systems can learn from each other rather than aggresively blocking them out.

Yeah, don't get me wrong, their are problems with the school system in America, but the problems for one district are vastly different that the problems in another. In the case of laws and schools, America shouldn't be looked at as a unified Nation or Country but rather a continent of different States with an over arching Federal Interstate Business government because that is what we have. So the problem in urban California are going to be vastly different than the problem in suburban Indiana and rural Kansas.

And with that eloquent statement you've resolved a majority of these kinds of complaints.

Native Vermonter here. Generally speaking, teachers are paid well, school lunches are buffet style(I often made a salad), economic assistance was available to low income families, and the overall education...was pretty good.

The only thing I can offhandedly think of that could have used improving were the musically inclined classes. You never really got into them unless you openly expressed interest in learning to play an instrument.

 

[GraveeKing]

Oh I agree... Then again, I feel sorry for ALL Americans, their country is.... a lot of things less than positive. Though it seems the people themselves are really nice, it's typical that only the worse people get in power and ruin it for the rest.

 

[Vault101]

Out of all the things that are a problem, the food is the least important thing to worry about, trust me.
This 'you must go to college' mentality is so pointless. The US needs better internship opportunities imo.

yeah Ive always wondered about this

I mean is there some kind of shame in being like...a plumber or a carpenter? I dont know how much they earn in the US but here in Australia its not bad pay wise...hell people working on the mines earn LOTS just for drving a truck

I mean you could argue that my job is no less tedious/boring than say...working in a supermarket, but because I go to a nice office everyday its not considered shameful

(just to be clear I dont hate my job, or find it tedious or boring, in fact its pretty good)

anyway no education systm is perfect but Ive alwyas found it interesting that in America its no college = no life where as here there isnt that ingrained push to get into university if its pretty obvious its not for you

 

[Nyaliva]

You think that's bad? Teachers NEVER get fired here even if they are friggin sex offenders!

Guess what! We have the same problem here (Australia)!!!!11 we have sickos that pull their wiener out in front of young children and get let off but if you don't pay a parking fine then jail awaits you....

...That shouldn't be the case, you need a blue card to be a teacher in Australia (I live there too) which is checked every year and if you are a sex offender involving children you are immediately disqualified from having one (even if it's just having child pornography on your computer). However, I do believe that there are about a million things in both our's and America's education systems that need to be changed.

Extra point: Teachers get paid bugger all and have to work extra, marking homework and stuff outside of class time and not get paid, so if someone doesn't like working with children WHY THE HELL BECOME A TEACHER!!! And by not liking working with children you're only hurting them and their education, so again, why? Just something I've wondered for a long time.

 

[redspud]

We may have a crappy education system but we are number 1 in confidence.

You know what that means!?!

Spoiler

[youtube]T4AnrwSdmLc[/youtube]This happens :/

EDIT: video isn't working here is the link. Click Me [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4AnrwSdmLc]

 

[ckam]

Also, feel sorry for Japan too.

 

[triggrhappy94]

We're pretty fucked up, there's no denying that.

The California education system is escpecailly fucked, because people thought Arnold knew how to govern. He bankrupted a state, who's economy is better then most countries.

 

[akavirian_getsu]

I've read through some comments here and I've also seen that movie I posted earlier (Waiting for Superman...you should go check it out...seriously..) and, you know...apparently if you don't learn in the USA schools...you get left behind..nothing wrong in that, in theory. Of course there is corruption and hypocrisy and other stuff that permit the student or pupil not to learn...no doubt in that sadly.. On the other hand you have Romania (my home country)...in Romania there is a lot of corruption...A LOT of corruption...but that's not the point..the point is that there is so much corruption that pupils and students who don't even deserve to be in school...are going well with medium to high grades...just so they pass..and at the end, they get diplomas and everything..but they have absolutely no idea why there are in school even...they are being passed on from one year to another...they don't learn 1 single bit..and at the end they get their diplomas, they finish school..alongside me who learned and struggled throughout school, they get better jobs than me because they have more diplomas and better grades because their parents paid the teachers to pass their children throughout school. They basically steal every opportunity for us people who actually learn and want to do something with our lives. And that's not the worst part. Those who actually want something and don't get it here because of the corruption usually end up going abroad. Now, the worst part is that of the country. The country ends up to be ruled by mediocre, unprepared people who have no idea or understanding of what they are doing (idiots with diplomas). They basically rip normality from every day with corruption which leads on because they can not open their eyes...because they were thought in this stupid, corrupt system. One last thing (and I hope i didn't bore you..): our minister of education doesn't even have the equivalent of the American SAT (the BAC in Romania) which states that you finished 12 grades of school...(this rule applies to most of our governors)...sad but true...

 

[Vykrel]

There are so many problems in our schools that aren't getting fixed, and they're all usually the result of too much politics. The lunches are just the tip of the iceberg. For example, now in Pennsylvania (where I live), school budgets are being cut, leading to awesome newer teachers being let go while old lazy ones stay. It frustrates me sometimes.

same things happening here in Florida :/ theyre laying off my last english 4 teacher after her first and only year. there are only 4 english 4 teachers in total, probably 3 or 2 next year... but they arent laying off any of the like 10 math teachers.

i dunno about you, but i consider english to be quite a bit more important than fuckin calculus and trigonomics

Haha well I have pretty opposite views. Being an Electrical Engineering student, nothing prepared me for college more than my one math teacher and his awesome calculus class. As for English, well, I didn't really have any good English teachers and learned it just fine on my own.
Regardless, though, a good teacher is a good teacher no matter what subject they're in, and I hate that we're losing them.

the thing is that in my school, there are so many different math classes, with so few students that actually enjoy math. every math class i had taken was just full of students with D's or F's, myself being one of them almost every time. i HAAAAAAAAATE math

 

[Vykrel]

There are so many problems in our schools that aren't getting fixed, and they're all usually the result of too much politics. The lunches are just the tip of the iceberg. For example, now in Pennsylvania (where I live), school budgets are being cut, leading to awesome newer teachers being let go while old lazy ones stay. It frustrates me sometimes.

same things happening here in Florida :/ theyre laying off my last english 4 teacher after her first and only year. there are only 4 english 4 teachers in total, probably 3 or 2 next year... but they arent laying off any of the like 10 math teachers.

i dunno about you, but i consider english to be quite a bit more important than fuckin calculus and trigonomics

You could have fooled me based on the spelling and grammar in your post

Also Calc and Trig are *very* important to the engineering professions, which is one of the few high-paying careers available to anyone who applies themselves.

dont be a smartass, ok? this is a forum, so i dont care about grammar. as for spelling, i didnt misspell anything.

before you mention all the missing apostrophes, i leave them out on purpose. the only time i use proper grammar, capitalization, and punctuation are when im writing by hand, or sending someone important a message that i wish to look more professional. you are not worth it, so i dont bother.

and thats one type of profession. i certainly dont think that it warrants 8 or 9 different math courses throughout high school, half of which being REQUIRED for graduation. im not saying they are not important classes... they just arent important for the majority of the students. imo, there should only be two required math courses in high school (Algebra and Geometry) and the rest should be electives.

 

[manaman]

We don't really need threads that are attack troll threads.

Ha ha ha, hypocrisy.

I too am not familiar with the show. But it is the United States: public schools are underfunded; and eating healthier is more expensive, especially when it is done on a mass level.

The US spends as much if not more then many other nations that are seen as "better" (and yes better does deserve to be in quotes). I would actually say public schools in the US in many areas are over funded. In fact when you rule out the poorer inner city and urban areas the US education system is top notch. We score as well if not better in many areas then the top nations of the world. It's just like the murder rate in this country, you start adding in the poorer inner city and urban areas into the picture and everything quickly looks like crap over all. The problem isn't nearly as bad as everyone lets on. Throwing money at the system won't fix it when the problem mainly lies in the socioeconomic barrier in this country. A problem that before the recent fucking with the education system was being addressed in those areas. Especially in New York City and Chicago.

It's also interesting to note that the population of the US is closer in size to the entirety of the European Union then to any one nation. You could just as easily compare the US to the entire EU as you could to any one member nation, interestingly enough the figures are not looking quite as bad at that point. Add the fact that the US still dominates the list of top colleges and it's starting to look like we really just need to stop bitching about something that isn't in nearly as sad a shape as fear mongers want you to believe and stop wasting efforts on reshaping the whole and just start fixing up those parts that could use improvement.

 

[fragmaster09]

My school (I live in the UK) is making people scan their fingers to pay for food in a COMPLETE dick move. I'm just glad I got into 6th form in time, because now I can hop off to Tesco if I get hungry.

same here, pointless, what's wrong with cash? i now have to get my parents to add money through the internet, when before i could just pick up a few quid, walk in and buy whatever...

didn't know it was national, just thought my school or at most my city

 

[fragmaster09]

Oh I agree... Then again, I feel sorry for ALL Americans, their country is.... a lot of things less than positive. Though it seems the people themselves are really nice, it's typical that only the worse people get in power and ruin it for the rest.

i find the opposite, their country and resources outmatches the UK's but their Leaders are quite often dumb as a Dodo(and David Cameron is too, so we aren't innocent, as well as the MP's claims for everything wasting tax payer's money), and it tends to rub off, at least on to Xbox Players (mostly those who play CoD), because in my experience, 9/10 americans have been a)seemingly no more mature than a 6-year-old, b)racist or c)loud,obnoxious and rude, the 1/10 that i have met (through online as i have never visited the Americas), have been much like the 5 or 6/10 that you get when i set my search preferences to only the UK(obviously we do have some people like that, but i guess that they are less likely to be prejudiced because i'm from the same country and not posh(posh people are generally disliked))

so in short, they have a GREAT country, but they RUINED it by selectively breeding horrible people and leaving nicer people out for some reason

Disclaimer: i am not saying that all Americans are nasty people, that would be very racist, i'm simply stating that the vast majority of my experience with Americans(all of whom were male Xbox players(mostly while playing the latest 3 CoD titles)) has been negtative, with one squeaky kid saying i was homosexual (which i'm not, but there is nothing wrong with it, so it's not a good insult), inbred with my mother (which would be disgusting and wouldn't happen EVER, especially not if i was homosexual), and called me an extrememly racist term for black people (began with an 'N' and had two 'g's), also, when i told him he was a racist homophobe, he screamed "what's wayswist? i'm wayswist? what's that?"(actually saying the 'w' instead of 'r'), i don't think he understood 'homophobe'.
that kid was probabaly the worst case i have dealt with, but some Americans are respectable, kind, amusing, funny, all the nice people, it's just i havent met them

sorry for the wall =]

 

[Acier]

What's with all this hoo-ha about firing new teachers to keep th old shitty ones? My school was forcing retirement on the old teachers to get new ones. New teachers often have much less pay than old ones so you get 2 for the price of one.