Is the school system flawed?

[NegaWiki]

The U.S. school system is awful. I'm part of a program that helps integrate freshmen into "normal" high school life, as in, your grades really matter now. Scores went up when we had these programs four days out of the week, but I had to explain to them that grades really matter. About half of them know this, and that got me to thinking "do we actually prepare these kids?" Then I realized how stupid it is to judge kids based on their most idiotic, hormonal stage in life. Mess up during freshmen year and it'll take straight A's for three years to repair the damage to your GPA.
I learned recently that the program was only held once a month. When we experienced a new test change. And they wonder why our test scores went down.

 

[aba1]

You can improve the system with less people per class. However, this would cause a decrease in efficiency of these schools. It's a balance between Quantity and Quality. Oh and types of people are also a factor in this too.

This is true but there are usually at least 2 sets of say 6th grade classes anyways so why not split them based on learning styles? One class for hands on visual learners and another class for book and audible learners.

This could be useful. However, this would cost them time and money. Both that are finite resources to allocate them in such a way. Especially money currently.

It shouldn't cost that much it would just require some of the teachers to be a little bit more creative. Even if it did cost a good bit it would be a investment for our future our childrens future or grand kids future. We should never sacrifice progress because we are too cheap to spend money where it is really needed. If literally half the populations education is being sacrificed that is a HUGE issue. I agree money doesn't grow on trees and the organization of something like this would not be cheap but it could be slowly implemented. Maybe open one school see how things go there are many ways to approach the situation. The problem is the people who run the schools are the same people who never had the same issues with the schools.

If we just roll over and make up excuses things will never get better it is better to try then to just give up without a effort.

 

[Dastardly]

The school system is flawed because it expects you to understand and learn things at certain points of your life. If you learn things quickly and excel at school, you get good grades, but unless someone notices, you advance at the same pace as everyone else. If someone does not notice, you can feel like you are held back.

(So that you know, I'm currently a public school teacher.)

Right now, school is structured around what is financially convenient for the businessmen and politicians running the show. As teachers, we know it's not ideal. That said, it's also not quite as bad as you think.

While some students are academically more advanced than their cohort, that doesn't mean they're more socially/emotionally advanced. That being the case, it's often not a great idea to promote students beyond their grade level. (Of course, the reverse of that logic is used to promote students who technically failed. And while I despise it on principle, I also recognize that if we held these students back, it would only mean 7th grade would contain half the population of this country.)

But it comes back to convenient math. For one, group kids by age. Next, you take the list of "Things You Should Know When You Graduate" and divide it into 12 equal parts. That's the big problem. The curriculum gets too cluttered too early on, because it allows things to be broken down into equal portions by year.

Just because students are capable of handling new material doesn't mean it's appropriate to introduce it. Too many kids get "good at school," because it's all been boiled down to standardized tests (notably NOT written by teaching professionals) that can be "gamed." As a result, we cheer when students get familiar with the material, rather than pushing them to get fluent in it. We move on to the next concept as soon as the middle of the pack gets just knee deep.

---

So basically, our testing system promotes only the lowest level of thinking. Our test-happy culture means we teach too many things, and not deeply enough. The same thing in true of promoting kids who excel at school -- we're using superficial measures to make a decision that has way more implications than we're considering.

Those stories of 12-year-old kids going to college? That shit is stupid, and those parents should be ashamed of themselves. It's not helping the kid grow as a person, just as a "look at how good we parent" sideshow.

Stay in your grade. Use that extra time to learn other things on your own. Make friends and learn to navigate the social world as well as the academic world. The worst thing we can do is constantly surround ourselves with people as smart and dedicated as we are, because we never learn to live with the REAL world...

 

[malestrithe]

During the later years, the efficacy of certain projects will be assessed and rated by a review board (to ensure that the individual school educational standards in these fields remain up to the national standard) based on both a gradient standard (Does it work like it should?) and a national/state bell curve (How does it stack up to the other projects students in the same field have completed around the country/state?)

University level courses should essentially be more of the same but highly specialized.

In this fashion I believe we can better prepare the youth for life outside of school, hone requisite skills instead of useless rote learning, and build the critical and cooperative thinking required to be a self-motivated contributing member of the workforce.

I've spend 5 years of my life in education and the one thing that I've learned about these studies is that while they talk about children are unprepared for their adult lives, they never actually follow a student through that adult life.

How are adults doing:

We have the largest number of small business owners than any place in the world.

Although other countries are catching up, we still have the highest number of innovations of any country in the world. We excel at out of the box thinking and other countries that excel at math and science testing are jealous of that.

We also have a lot of self motivated individuals who are far more willing to take chances and be wrong at times. May not sound good, but you learn better by making mistakes.

Your suggested list of subjects per grades flies in the face of current education practices. What you are doing is training sheep by emphasizing 2 rs fundamentals. That does more damage to the desire to learn than you think.

The current teaching philosophy is something called lifelong learners. A teacher is not expected to teach a student everything. Not enough hours in a day and there will be things a student needs to know that can;t be taught. Instead, teachers instill a desire for knowledge and learning so that the student eventually learns stuff they need for their jobs.

 

[applesandoranges]

edit

 

[ChildishLegacy]

snip

I have always felt the same way and never really understood why this is. It should be impossible to fail a class when you can prove you know the material because at the end of the day is that not the point.

A ton of times I have had to compromise my work in order to meet criteria. I should never have to ruin something I worked hard on for some arbitrary check mark as long as I show them I can do it that should be enough.

I know the feeling, I did relatively badly on one of my Maths exams because I just freaked out in the exam hall due to 1 question I couldn't do, ruining the rest of the paper. If I were to be in an interview on the content of that exam, I would have had no problems whatsoever. I've never understood why students should be examined on a 1-2 hour window of performance, so many things can go wrong for a person on an exam day, yet it apparently is a perfect representation of your knowledge of the subject.

If I ever did get into politics (god help me) it would be to sort out education, because I want to pursue an academic career, and the current education system actually almost put me off it. I just got so frustrated with having to wade through piles of watered down content to actually find something worth learning.

 

[soren7550]

The main problem I have with how the school system is supposed to work is that it doesn't really teach you to be well equipped for a future in the given topic. What really happens is they teach you to pass exams. Everything is about just ticking boxes and getting the grade at the end of the year. It's all focused on unnecessary pedantry and meeting arbitrary targets.

At the end of it you aren't really any wiser or smarter. You know some more facts and you can write an essay with them, but you're not a better person. You just met the arbitrary requirements to be allowed to do it all over again next year. That's all you achieved. You absorb and regurgitate information and at the end you are given a letter that vaguely represents how much of that information you could reproduce, and if that letter is the right one then you are given the opportunity to do it all over again.

Or at least, that's my experience of the "education" system. That's why I'm done with it.

My main problem with education is by the end of it, it's aimed towards passing exams and NOT y'know, education. That's just fucked up, what is the point of getting an A level in Chemistry or Physics if all you can do is rattle off text book paragraphs and redo the same mathematical process 10 times over.

Oh, and because over here they normally do 1hour 30min exams for 4 months worth of shit, I seriously doubt that the majority of people get the grades they deserve.

These so much. From 5th grade onward, pretty much all we were doing was preparing for City and State standardized tests. My 8th grade [at least I want to say it was him, my memory is foggy on who said it] math teacher said it best: "You're not here to learn, you're here to learn how to take tests."
Hell, in 6th & 7th grades, by the time winter would roll by pretty much all the classes we had that didn't have a Standardized Test attached to it were dropped and replaced with more classes that were.

Even if I had a class that didn't have one of those stinkin' tests hanging over it, most of the time, they would be forced to throw in lessons associated with them anyway. If a class was lucky enough to not have that happen to it, it would still be crippled by lack of funds, overcrowding, lack of a proper teacher, lack of space, and/or have a teacher attached to it that taught two or more different subjects, thus the class would progress slowly due to the teacher being exhausted/unable to keep track of what should be happening/over-encumbered with work to grade/etc.

I think the school system is almost defective by design at this point. Heck most of the free world has now decided that the whole language method of teaching English is superior because it provides a more even outcome than phonics methods did. Not a higher average, or an improvement to any group but rather that everyone learned it at a slower pace so there was less difference.
You can find far too many examples of the public school system shooting itself in the foot to appease politics.

I can safely say that learning how to reading phonetically is a horrible way to learn how to read. When I had to learn how to read, all the lessons we had to do and books we were given to read had the words written out the way they sound. If I heard right, pretty much everyone as a result couldn't spell since they were taught phonetically, so they naturally try to write out a word by how it sounds since that was how they learned to read. Granted, I'm not sure how true this is, but that's a problem I've faced all my life. My spelling was so horrendous that in 3rd/4th grade I had to be given special spelling tests that used very simple words.
Fast forward to now, my boyfriend often points out that I write out many words more like how they sound rather than how they're spelled. Like, for example I always write out 'kindergarten' as 'kindergarden', 'retarded' as 'retarted', etc. If it weren't for spell check, I would look like a bigger retard than I already am.

That's New York City Public Education for ya. ;]

EDIT: Something I just remembered. During the last two or so years of high school, we were often told that were we to go to college, the first year or two would be high school leveled stuff that we already did a bit of, since the stuff we should have known by the time we were to enter collage, we barely covered and learned about. That's right, the school was freely admitting that they did a piss poor job educating us, and that in order to learn what we should have, we were going to have to pay for it.

(unless you were like me and learned some of the things the school should have taught you out on your own [granted I'd have still been screwed since I'm horrible at math, science, and Spanish, but lucky me for not being able to afford it in the first place, right?])

 

[A Satanic Panda]

I think the only flaw in the system is that there is a lot of room for the teacher to be bad at their job. I don't know what employment philosophy my high-school had but it is damn good. Almost all of the teachers there are great people.

I don't have an issue standardized test because I think it encourages adaptability. For most people, the working world will force them to operate in a certain way, whether they want to or not. School is the best place condition students to adapt to their work, with finite results on how well they are doing.

 

[BRex21]

I think the school system is almost defective by design at this point. Heck most of the free world has now decided that the whole language method of teaching English is superior because it provides a more even outcome than phonics methods did. Not a higher average, or an improvement to any group but rather that everyone learned it at a slower pace so there was less difference.
You can find far too many examples of the public school system shooting itself in the foot to appease politics.

I can safely say that learning how to reading phonetically is a horrible way to learn how to read. When I had to learn how to read, all the lessons we had to do and books we were given to read had the words written out the way they sound. If I heard right, pretty much everyone as a result couldn't spell since they were taught phonetically, so they naturally try to write out a word by how it sounds since that was how they learned to read. Granted, I'm not sure how true this is, but that's a problem I've faced all my life. My spelling was so horrendous that in 3rd/4th grade I had to be given special spelling tests that used very simple words.
Fast forward to now, my boyfriend often points out that I write out many words more like how they sound rather than how they're spelled. Like, for example I always write out 'kindergarten' as 'kindergarden', 'retarded' as 'retarted', etc. If it weren't for spell check, I would look like a bigger retard than I already am.

That's New York City Public Education for ya. ;]

Of course phonics and phonetics are two different things... Hence there being spelled differently.

 

[Dethenger]

I think I get what you are trying to say, but you can't expect a system to be fully automated like that. A system can't encourage and inspire kids to excel. Only role models like parents and teachers can truly inspire them to be all they can be. No system will be flawless because it is maintain by flawed individuals.

Basically this. Inspired work is the best work, but the school system must, by its own nature, blanket over everybody in its care. Inspiration? That's an internal response to external stimuli, which is entirely subjective: What inspires one person will not inspire the next. The closest thing a school could accomplish, and in my experience has implemented, is meaningless competition, pitting the kids against each other and then just kind of hope they're driven to try extra hard in order to win. As far as I can tell, that doesn't really work; people who are naturally driven to succeed will give it their all anyway, and people who are drawn in by the competition aren't learning, they're competing. Any system that tries to replicate inspiration with pointless competition is fucking shit.

 

[soren7550]

You can improve the system with less people per class. However, this would cause a decrease in efficiency of these schools. It's a balance between Quantity and Quality. Oh and types of people are also a factor in this too.

This is true but there are usually at least 2 sets of say 6th grade classes anyways so why not split them based on learning styles? One class for hands on visual learners and another class for book and audible learners.

This could be useful. However, this would cost them time and money. Both that are finite resources to allocate them in such a way. Especially money currently.

It shouldn't cost that much it would just require some of the teachers to be a little bit more creative. Even if it did cost a good bit it would be a investment for our future our childrens future or grand kids future. We should never sacrifice progress because we are too cheap to spend money where it is really needed. If literally half the populations education is being sacrificed that is a HUGE issue. I agree money doesn't grow on trees and the organization of something like this would not be cheap but it could be slowly implemented. Maybe open one school see how things go there are many ways to approach the situation. The problem is the people who run the schools are the same people who never had the same issues with the schools.

If we just roll over and make up excuses things will never get better it is better to try then to just give up without a effort.

There's a lot of flaws with this idea:

Most teachers have their one way of teaching, that's just how they can and know how to do their job. Let's say your History teacher teaches through reading. Done it that way for years. Much like his students who have their way they learn better, he has his way of teaching better. So the school would then have to hire at most two other History teachers. But then you're going to need at least two separate rooms for those two separate teachers to teach, since it's ungodly difficult to have two teachers teaching something at the same time in the same room. Chances are, you have a lot of students, so you have to hire even more History teachers that will need even more space to teach. You would have to do this for every subject, and there just isn't enough of a budget to hire these teachers, nor do schools have the space, nor people that can accurately determine how each and every individual student can best learn.

I went to a small high school. Had 400 students or so, and there was at least four History teachers that I was aware of, that taught different grades and different kinds of history, and yet still, the school didn't have enough teachers to teach everyone because they lacked the budget to hire anymore (plus I think it might have been a union thing, but don't quote me on that), nor did they have the space for them (out of the four I was aware of, only one had his own room). If a small school like that can't even provide the base, how would they be able to provide for more teachers to teach students in a way that they don't know how is best since even with the low number of students they still couldn't track every single damn one of them?

 

[soren7550]

I think the school system is almost defective by design at this point. Heck most of the free world has now decided that the whole language method of teaching English is superior because it provides a more even outcome than phonics methods did. Not a higher average, or an improvement to any group but rather that everyone learned it at a slower pace so there was less difference.
You can find far too many examples of the public school system shooting itself in the foot to appease politics.

I can safely say that learning how to reading phonetically is a horrible way to learn how to read. When I had to learn how to read, all the lessons we had to do and books we were given to read had the words written out the way they sound. If I heard right, pretty much everyone as a result couldn't spell since they were taught phonetically, so they naturally try to write out a word by how it sounds since that was how they learned to read. Granted, I'm not sure how true this is, but that's a problem I've faced all my life. My spelling was so horrendous that in 3rd/4th grade I had to be given special spelling tests that used very simple words.
Fast forward to now, my boyfriend often points out that I write out many words more like how they sound rather than how they're spelled. Like, for example I always write out 'kindergarten' as 'kindergarden', 'retarded' as 'retarted', etc. If it weren't for spell check, I would look like a bigger retard than I already am.

That's New York City Public Education for ya. ;]

Of course phonics and phonetics are two different things... Hence there being spelled differently.

Well shit, I just went and shot myself in the foot, proving just how stupid I am. -_-'

 

[1337mokro]

Use actual teachers is my main advice. Used to be becoming a teacher took 4 years, involved many classes about how to deal with students, how to teach your subject. Now it's all crammed down to 1 year. You basically get in, get your certificate cause they have no standards, then get thrown to the wolves, a year later you are a nervous wreck who can't teach any more.

Often times teachers aren't actual teachers even but students or native speakers who were hired because they were cheap and there are great shortages because of the work pressure of managing 40 ADD kids. In short how do you expect educators to educate when their education is lacking? It's like expecting a novice car mechanic to learn about cars from a botanist. The botanist MIGHT know something about cars, but without actual education the job will always be done poorer.

So my suggestions Classes of 20 kids. That sounds like a good compromise. Reinstate the former education of 4 years and spend time on getting teachers accustomed to the class room before they actually start. Make sure you teach the teachers how to teach. Knowing is not Teaching. If you hire a crappy mechanic you get a crappy car job, if you hire a crappy teacher, you get crappy education.

PS: Not talking out of personal experience, just hear say from friends and family that teach.

 

[BRex21]

I think the school system is almost defective by design at this point. Heck most of the free world has now decided that the whole language method of teaching English is superior because it provides a more even outcome than phonics methods did. Not a higher average, or an improvement to any group but rather that everyone learned it at a slower pace so there was less difference.
You can find far too many examples of the public school system shooting itself in the foot to appease politics.

I can safely say that learning how to reading phonetically is a horrible way to learn how to read. When I had to learn how to read, all the lessons we had to do and books we were given to read had the words written out the way they sound. If I heard right, pretty much everyone as a result couldn't spell since they were taught phonetically, so they naturally try to write out a word by how it sounds since that was how they learned to read. Granted, I'm not sure how true this is, but that's a problem I've faced all my life. My spelling was so horrendous that in 3rd/4th grade I had to be given special spelling tests that used very simple words.
Fast forward to now, my boyfriend often points out that I write out many words more like how they sound rather than how they're spelled. Like, for example I always write out 'kindergarten' as 'kindergarden', 'retarded' as 'retarted', etc. If it weren't for spell check, I would look like a bigger retard than I already am.

That's New York City Public Education for ya. ;]

Of course phonics and phonetics are two different things... Hence there being spelled differently.

Well shit, I just went and shot myself in the foot, proving just how stupid I am. -_-'

Don't beat yourself up you were educated phonetically. Take that New York.

 

[AquaAscension]

*Post*

No, you're right. Basically, school does not cater to everyone. It caters to the "average" student (which is just about no one, by the way, considering how different people are). Education is very messed up right now because it is highly, HIGHLY based on standardized tests (at least in America). This approach stifles creativity because most teachers HATE teaching to the test. We really do. What's worse is that schools get very highly punished if/when they don't meet the mark. In fact, did you know that, if schools do not have 100% proficiency by 2014 under No Child Left Behind, those schools could be closed or their entire teaching staff could be fired so as to fire other people? At first glance, this sounds like a good thing, right? If the tests (which are supposed to measure what a student is learning) are not being passed, then the teacher MUST be at fault. No. This system is ludicrous. It places an unfair burden on students, on teachers, and on schools.

I think that education needs not to aim for how much people "know" or how much they can memorize as these are the lowest hanging fruits on the tree of learning. We need to get rid of tests which are one shot and somehow determine the effectiveness of the entire school. It's silly to put so much emphasis on a number. Who cares if you don't know a number off the top of your head? That's what the internet is for. I'd prefer that people are taught how to ask "Why" or "What if" or "How are these things linked". In this way, we're following a biblical proverb by NOT simply giving students knowledge like it's fish. Instead, we're teaching them to stretch out their fingertips line fishing line to hook the wisdom of the world that's adrift all around them. We'll teach them to inspect it, clean it, eat it OR (possibly most importantly) throw it back if it smells too fishy.

I'm going to go ahead and make the incendiary claim that Fox news is only as popular as it is because not many question what they see on TV. In fact, I'll go one step further and say that the fact that Fox news is popular is proof that our education system has failed a great number of American citizens.

 

[aba1]

You can improve the system with less people per class. However, this would cause a decrease in efficiency of these schools. It's a balance between Quantity and Quality. Oh and types of people are also a factor in this too.

This is true but there are usually at least 2 sets of say 6th grade classes anyways so why not split them based on learning styles? One class for hands on visual learners and another class for book and audible learners.

snip

There's a lot of flaws with this idea:

Most teachers have their one way of teaching, that's just how they can and know how to do their job. Let's say your History teacher teaches through reading. Done it that way for years. Much like his students who have their way they learn better, he has his way of teaching better. So the school would then have to hire at most two other History teachers. But then you're going to need at least two separate rooms for those two separate teachers to teach, since it's ungodly difficult to have two teachers teaching something at the same time in the same room. Chances are, you have a lot of students, so you have to hire even more History teachers that will need even more space to teach. You would have to do this for every subject, and there just isn't enough of a budget to hire these teachers, nor do schools have the space, nor people that can accurately determine how each and every individual student can best learn.

I went to a small high school. Had 400 students or so, and there was at least four History teachers that I was aware of, that taught different grades and different kinds of history, and yet still, the school didn't have enough teachers to teach everyone because they lacked the budget to hire anymore (plus I think it might have been a union thing, but don't quote me on that), nor did they have the space for them (out of the four I was aware of, only one had his own room). If a small school like that can't even provide the base, how would they be able to provide for more teachers to teach students in a way that they don't know how is best since even with the low number of students they still couldn't track every single damn one of them?

Derp? Did you like completely forget about the original post I mean all the problems you brought forward were solved before this began :S

We established that the example would be 6th grade and that most grades have enough students till fill 2 classes or in and around 20-30 kids each. So we already would have had 2 teachers and enough students. The only new argument you brought forward was that teachers would have to try things new which apparently is to hard? Teachers don't just start off having things planned from the get go I mean their first few years involve getting class schedule going and the second they switch grades or classes they have to do it again. In fact teachers are CONSTANTLY changing their lesson plans every year for new or changed material as well. It isn't like they would have to learn new things either they just have to create a new way of showing it :S

If your whole thing is about really old teachers who are set in their ways then they could you know leave the alterations to the newer teachers.

In Highschool it is more applicable than ever everything is already sorted to begin with. The applied/college kids are in applied/college because they need a more hands on approach which isn't really being provided. I mean it is literally already all set up all that needs to happen is plan out a new curriculum.

 

[viranimus]

There are problems yes. But the tying of education to age is a compensation for a public school system that must handle hundreds of thousands of children. Its far from perfect but in that respect Its hard to see that we could come up with something much better and still manage to have it be effective for as many students as it does.

 

[soren7550]

I think the school system is almost defective by design at this point. Heck most of the free world has now decided that the whole language method of teaching English is superior because it provides a more even outcome than phonics methods did. Not a higher average, or an improvement to any group but rather that everyone learned it at a slower pace so there was less difference.
You can find far too many examples of the public school system shooting itself in the foot to appease politics.

*snip*

Of course phonics and phonetics are two different things... Hence there being spelled differently.

Well shit, I just went and shot myself in the foot, proving just how stupid I am. -_-'

Don't beat yourself up you were educated phonetically. Take that New York.

Oh yeah? Well at least *we* can look at child porn and marry our first cousins and have kids with them!

Wait...

 

[UsefulPlayer 1]

I'm not sure what you mean about the internal motivation part. Of course its external motivation, they're kids. They don't exactly have their eye on the ball all the time. It does fall on the parents and teachers to instill the correct values.

I didn't learn to read very well in early elementary school. The reading tests were ungodly horrible back then. I would later on read abunch of books in middle school because of competition and then fell in love with reading. I blame those early years solely on the teachers. I couldn't read because they didn't teach and spent all their time yelling at the kids.

I think the system does reasonably well. I mean I was in a couple after school programs to boost my reading. I feel like those early years might need more of what you were saying, personalized learning and attention/care. But once you move into middle school and high school, the only reason you'd fall behind is because you probably didn't care. Graduating is incredibly easy if you took the basic classes.