Is the school system flawed?

[Torrasque]

So I had a thought today while watching a video featuring Neil deGrasse Tyson (which you can here <url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSJElZwEI8o&feature=context-vrec>here if you want)
I think there is a fundamental flaw with primary school. Elementary, jr. high, high school, whatever you want to call it.

The way primary school works (in Canada at least) is that it is divided into 12 grades, and you spend 1 year in each grade. You start when you are 6 years old (usually) and finish when you are 18 (usually). This means that when you are 12 years old, you are in grade 6. The way that teaching is facilitated, is that you are taught by someone that knows the material (usually, lets not get into a discussion about bad teachers) and expected to understand it. There is of course variance in teaching methods, how well you learn things based on those teaching methods, and if you study at all. The point is, when you are in grade 5 you are expected to be able to learn and understand grade 5 material. If you do well, you learn the material and get high grades. If you do poorly, you do not learn the material and get low grades. If you completely fuck it up and learn nothing, you might even be held back a year to try it again.

I'm sure all of you know this, after all we've (probably) all taken school before. My problem with this system, is that not everyone learns at the same pace and that the system expects you to be able to learn the material. When I took some psychology classes, I found out that most of primary school is set up because of tests done by psychologists to figure out the cognitive growth and capability of children as they grow up (how smart you are based on what age you are) as well as some trial and error; "oops, 12 year olds can't do trigonometry, we'll try that again in a few years". For the most part, that is a pretty good system. The problem with that system, is that it doesn't push students to do better and excel, that falls to individual teachers and parenting. Parents push their children by getting them to aim for higher grades. In the end, the motivation comes from an outside source rather than an internal one. Even when students are pushing themselves to get higher grades, it is to satisfy their parents and teachers; or it is a competitive spirit against their fellow classmates. The only internal motivation a student can truly develop, is the motivation to learn and assimilate knowledge.

Re-reading this, I think I have been a little vague with my position, so I'll just say it again here:
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.

inb4 "OP thinks he is a genius and that everyone else is an idiot", I'm honestly not thinking that at all.
I would love for you to tell me that I am wrong (or anything else you think about my thought) since I think failing at something is the greatest way to learn. But that is a topic for another thread, lol.

 

[Fappy]

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.

 

[Broady Brio]

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.

 

[IndomitableSam]

Many parents these days are starting their children late in kindergarten just so they are a little more aligned with the standard norm. It's a fair option and quite a good one, in my opinion. I was a school librarian working with students from preschool age through grade 12, and those young students who started a bit older clearly did better. There's something on the parents side of things that can be done. (Don't get me started on the failings of parents, though.)

On the school side - schools are too rigid in teaching philosphy - children's learning habits should be identified and they should be divided up as per habits. Visual learners in one class, those who learn by listening and those by doing. You probably could still fill multiple classes with groups of similar students. Children should also be held back if they haven't learned the material. I grew up when kids were held back and there was a bit of stigma, but it was a huge benefit to the individual in the long run.

Also, when I was a kid there was a program called Enrichment. It identified the smarter children through a series of tests (IQ, cognitive, etc) and those children were then pulled out of some regular classes during the week to be taught higher-level material. It was discontinued when I was in 6th grade, so I never found out why, but I did really miss the challenges it came with. This should come back.

The school I worked at the most was a private school, so classes were smaller and more focused. Most children really did excel in smaller classes - I say a ratio of 15:1 max would be appropriate. Maybe once the students are older (13-14+) a ratio of 20:1 would be acceptable. No more than that.

Also, the amount of homework given these days to meet standards set by the provinces, states, or countries is way too much. I never had homework as a kid. I barely even had any in middle school, and often in high school I got it done during class breaks. When I was working at schools, I would often see kids in grade 4 or 5 spending an hour or more on homework. This is wrong. Kids should learn inside of school, and do chores/family time/play outside of school. Only when you hit middle school or have big term-type projects should you really have to work extra time. All this homework is teaching kids that the mandated time they are given to get their work done in is not enough and they must sacrifice their own time to continue working.

... Obviously I have issues with adults working overtime, too.

I could go on and on about this, but I think I"ll leave it at that.

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

I have dyslexia,
needless to say I wasn't doing as good as the other kids in subjects like Math and English.
The school system pulled me aside and taught me how to do the problems in a different way that I could understand, they also took more time with me and made sure I learned the material.

They taught me good learning habits and my grades skyrocketed, I never had much of an issue getting good grades after that. Including throughout college.

I do have a friend who didn't have things quite as easy, nobody really bothered to give him extra time. I think it depends partly on how dedicated the teachers are. I had some awesome teachers.

 

[aba1]

snip

Thank you I have been saying this for years. Elementary and High school was a nightmare for me because I have ADD and am a heavily visual/ hand on learner. Nothing is done this way with the odd fleeting exception everything is geared directly at people who learn through reading or listening. I had to struggle through school and it wasn't until I got to college that I could finally start to do well.

The only reason I am good at basic math I suspect is because of RPG's and card games like yugioh and magic teaching me to do math quick and on the fly to process further events and all that was hands on. Ironically I was always discouraged from all those things.

Honestly going through school there was so many kids in my grade we had enough for three classes how hard would it have been to split us based on how we best learn. We really need to implement a system like this.

 

[senordesol]

We Americans have a very similar school system to the OP. Is it flawed? (Waits for the hysterical laughing to die down) Oh my, yes.

My main problem with it, however, is that it's inefficient and very little of it (outside of college) has any bearing on my day-to-day life. Why did I have to learn what the hell a pyloric sphincter was (and agonize over a test on it) when my career is in software? Now yes, no one knew what my career would be and if I remembered today what the fuck an epiglottis was, then what's the harm?

But I don't. And it will never be important for me to know it again. So I spent hours studying something that would be irrelevant forever to me the day after the test. In short: a waste of fucking time.

If the educational system is wasting your time, then it can scarcely be called an education system at all.

But there is hope; you see, we live in the information age where any rote learning is readily available, so I propose the following changes:

Elementary school (G1-5) should be geared toward basic math, reading, and written skills (with some rudimentary history, science, and arts).

Middle school (G6-8) Should be about establishing what the basic interests in each student are (Science, Technology, Art, Business, History, etc.)

High school (G9-12): Should be about the specialization of skill sets (to be pursued at will by the students) such as mechanics, engineering, medicine, programming, literature, acting, etc.

These classes will be geared more towards adapting students to practical careers in these fields via various issued and self-directed projects. Students will be expected to strike out on their own to learn much of the requisite material for these projects and grades will be determined both cooperatively and individually (Such scores provide a more complete picture for potential employers regarding how capable a student fresh out of high school is).

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.

 

[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.

 

[Jamieson 90]

I think the problem you find is one you said yourself, all children are different which is where the problem lies, you cannot expect the system to cater to every single individual, especially in a classroom of thirty plus. So you have to say well most 8 years old should be able to do this so that is how we will test them.

Rather interestingly I would like to hear what people think about the school starting age. Here in the UK most children enter year 1 at 5 years of age, I turned 6 pretty quickly since my birthday is in October but some don't till say around about June or August. In other countries though it is much later, even as late as 8 in some Scandinavian countries if I hear correctly and apparently they do better on tests too. So do we start too early in the UK or not? I wonder.

 

[Broady Brio]

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.

 

[Scrustle]

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.

 

[Pinkamena]

I don't think that the only source of motivation is impressing parents and teachers. What drove me (and everyone else I knew) to get good grades, was because we wanted to get into the best university we could after we had graduated. It is the same thing that drives me now that I am in the academic world. Better grades means more opportunities.

 

[Powereaver]

The one thing i really tend to dislike about learning general is its still ROTE learning... and i personally hate sitting around for long periods looking at papers and blackboards and writing into books.. im much more a practical hands on person and i wish they would add a lot more variety to the learning tree then just ROTE learning.

 

[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.

 

[Yopaz]

Well, a school system will always be flawed because it doesn't accept the individuals. You could make a system that were more lenient on people, but what would that show? We have limited capabilities and the school system tries to grade our capabilities. Over here we have the opportunity to improve our grades from high school if we're not accepted into any higher education. We also have the opportunity to learn a profession in high school rather than academics. When we're 15 we get to decide if we want to become a chef, a mechanic or try to get some higher education after high school. Not everyone fits into school so only 10 years are mandatory. I would say even that is a little too much, but after that they're free to decide their future. We're also not held back here and we don't receive grades before we start the 8th grade to keep from pressuring kids that are too young to handle it.

I'd say it's functional, but it's still flawed. The problem is that there's not enough resources to see individuals in the big schools and the small schools often have the worst teachers who can't get jobs anywhere else.

 

[NightHawk21]

See I sort of agree with you. My problem with school was always that it was too easy. In elementary and through grade 9 I was pressured by parents to get good grades and combined with the simple material I managed to do it pretty easily. In grade 10 I realized I could still pull better marks than most everyone so I stopped doing work and my study habits got very sloppy, and pretty much stayed like that through high school. This came to bite me in the ass a bit however when the system is not stupid easy and you actually have to do work. I'm still trying to get them back on track but its been two years and its still difficult to not just say fuck it and stop.

 

[ChildishLegacy]

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.

I fucking love science, but I hated studying it A level, because they took the majority of the maths out of it and made it so anybody could learn how to pass the exams, probably so our education 'looked a success', when success should be judged on how well educated your students are, not how well they measure on an arbitrary scale that you made up in the first place so that they can look successful. It had almost nothing to do with giving you a better understanding of the subject, and that isn't education for me.

This is a problem with exam boards and syllabus' though, I had brilliant teachers and support, I spent most of my time in Physics lessons asking my teacher about actual interesting things in physics, and got interesting answers back. It's a sorry state when the interesting stuff isn't taught in classes and I had to ask the teacher to tell me about a subject that they want to teach.

Just take the emphasis off exams and get teachers that want to spread the word of their subject. That's education.

 

[orangeban]

Well, in Scotland the system is kinda better. In that in the third year of high school (Uh, grade 9 I guess?) you get to choose specific subjects for your Standard Grades (about to become National Fives for some unGodly reason), and I noticed that school suddenly became a lot faster at that point.

Unlike in previous years, where we moved at the pace of the slowest, it now works so that there is a set pace, quite a gruelling pace for some subjects, and if you fall behind you're left behind. I'm not exagerrating, consistent 4's (equivalent of a D I guess) will get you kicked out of a subject. For a lot of kids this seems to be a shock, a lot of kids in my years got very poor marks for History (generally accepted to be the toughest subject at my school), but for me it's refreshing, since I am NATURALLY BRILLIANT genuinally interested in history.

Edit: I had two more thoughts (I know, a 200% improvement on my original post! At this rate I'll fly through school!)

1) My motivation for getting good grades isn't from pressure from friends or schools, rather it's to avoid disappointing my friend, who is very intelligent. I'll be the first to admit our relationship is weird and unhealthy, I'm scared of her, constantly seeking her approval, terrified even more of her rejecting me, and even, even more terrified of letting her down. So, yeah, that's not exactly the kind of motivation most people should have, better pressure from teachers than that.

2) My history teacher is awesome, in that he admitted exactly what everyone says, he wasn't teaching us history, he was teaching us how to pass a history exam. You learn history in university, you learn what to write for examiners in school.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

I think that there is a problem with the system here in the UK. The emphasis in some subjects seems to be to try and cram as much information as possible into children's heads rather than try to instill any actual interest in the subject.

You have teachers (and students) getting frustrated with kids that can't read, can't remember, who just don't get it - and they just seem to assume the kid isn't trying hard enough or is naturally stupid or intentionally ignorant. I don't think that's often the case; usually we're talking about a kid who's parents have never encouraged them to read, who've had Shakespeare and books like 'Lord of the Flies' shoved in front of them without ever going through that process of reading more digestible stuff first. With a skill as basic and vital as that, the aim isn't to just give people the basic mechanics of the language; here's a verb, here's a noun, etc: the aim is to introduce kids to books they can actually enjoy. If you do that, they pick up all of the mechanics by themselves.
Other subjects have much the same problem. Show somebody how to do a certain type of equation and it's boring (it is) but show them how to use that knowledge to prove something and it becomes interesting.

The emphasis is all on preparing people for exams by teaching them to parrot the same perfect definition of an element or follow the official method for each sum. The emphasis should be on teaching people to actually think for themselves and helping them to enjoy learning for its own merit.

Another slight problem is that everything is easy until A level and then there's a sudden difficulty spike that takes a lot of people by surprise. A smooth curve would be less stress inducing.

 

[aba1]

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.

I fucking love science, but I hated studying it A level, because they took the majority of the maths out of it and made it so anybody could learn how to pass the exams, probably so our education 'looked a success', when success should be judged on how well educated your students are, not how well they measure on an arbitrary scale that you made up in the first place so that they can look successful. It had almost nothing to do with giving you a better understanding of the subject, and that isn't education for me.

This is a problem with exam boards and syllabus' though, I had brilliant teachers and support, I spent most of my time in Physics lessons asking my teacher about actual interesting things in physics, and got interesting answers back. It's a sorry state when the interesting stuff isn't taught in classes and I had to ask the teacher to tell me about a subject that they want to teach.

Just take the emphasis off exams and get teachers that want to spread the word of their subject. That's education.

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.