Thoughts on the education system.

[Reaperman Wompa]

Slowly and steadily failing, the gaps between the smart and the dumb becoming greater, so if you put into a dumber class becauseof one mark you are put with the kids who failed by 40.

Also it's less about "molding" minds, today it's about making money while dealing with annoying kids. Also standards are dropping everything getting dumbed down for students unable to understand harder subject matter, the entire class going from Romeo and Juliet to twilight. (hasn't happened but good enough example)

Continued is students behavior, kids spending less time focused on work as they have to work around the problems created by other students, the teachers being forced to compensate on exams because they were unable to fully teach the course.

Watch Idiocracy, pretty much gets it right.

Edit: Also useless knowledge clutters up a persons mind and they might miss out on something they want or need to learn.

 

[poleboy]

Ha well we here in America already pay a pinch more than 50 % of our income in taxes (unless your poor then you pay nadda) so a extra 40% would pretty much be more than we make.

Seriously...? I thought it was much, much lower. What the hell do they spend all that money on? For the roughly 60% we pay, we get free medical care (mostly), free dentist until our 18th birthday, the dole...

Looong post about Canadan education

You have a lot of good points. The education system has indeed become muddled with lots of irrelevant crap. However, I have to disagree with your suggestion of cutting the "artsy stuff" out of English classes. Literature teaches children important lessons about life in ways that more formal education does not. To me, an interest in books is very much an interest in learning, and if you reduce the use of books in schools to purely textbooks, you are teaching children that books are boring and factual.

Think the Wal Mart of education.

Does that not sound horribly wrong to you? Our entire society is more or less based around the idea of class mobility. Completely privatized shcools would kick that idea right back into the 18th century.

 

[shadow skill]

Much of what Americans (and probably everyone else) is taught in schools is left floating in space. Take history for example we are taught dates and major events. But we are not actually taught what historical events mean. While dates for specific events matter, it's far more important to understand how those events are all connected to each other. Taking this a step further the different subjects are also connected to each other. Take music for example if you want to understand Rap music from an academic viewpoint you would also have to look at the history of the people creating the music in the first place! If you want to really comprehend the difference between the music that black people made during the sixties and seventies and the music they make now you need to know what has happened to them in the past thirty years. Hence the understanding of a specific art form is directly linked to the history of those who created it.

Let's throw in some physics and geography; want to know why natural gas is typically transported via pipelines across land? The answer is that the physical properties of Natural Gas make it more economical to use a pipeline to move the material across land. Want to know part of the reason Europe must all but bow down to Russia right now? It's because of some geographical considerations, namely the fact that important fuel lines run through Russian territory. What this means is that European nations are to varying degrees dependant upon Russia for things like natural gas and oil.

We're never taught these kinds of things with any sort of practical examples like the rudimentary ones I provided above. Essentially we end up with people who while knowledgeable in various subjects are all but illiterate because they are not really able to synthesize information using the knowledge they do have. In short in America we are taught to read, rather than to comprehend what we read. It's why we are so obsessed with tests (Though the Chinese and Japanese probably have us beat in this obsession.)it's easy to create tests to gauge whether people can simply regurgitate unprocessed information; it is infintely harder (And not surprisingly more valuable to a student who can actually pull it off.) to create tests to gauge the ability to synthesize knowledge from said information.

Oh and if you want to get children to focus on school try rewarding them with money for good test scores and behavior, but especially good scores. There is absolutely no incentive for children to sit in these classes and pay attention. We need to give them a good reason to do so. Don't agree with me, ask yourself this: Do you work for free?

 

[Lord_Ascendant]

the entire public school system is totally arse-fraked anyways. Math is totally useless except for basic things you need to balance checkbooks etc. Science should be individualised, not generalised. English should be more grammer and spelling as well as writing in various forms. Foreign Language is a joke, who in their right mind remembers any high school spanish they took? Gym is just a way to torture fat people. Health-related classes are good, but it depends on the teacher. If they are those people who want to you hate yourself for being fat, they arent teaching they are fools. Unless you are rich and can afford private education or colledge at an ivy leaague college you probably wont have as much knowlege as you would with just a high school dilploma and a bacheors degree in liberal arts. Thats about it for now.

 

[thedoombreeder]

Gods, me and my secretary were yammering about this very topic at work... Like all day long, since we had f**kall to do.

Basically my biggest beef with the education system in Canada is that it is a senseless punishment inflicted on all children for the sake of appearances. The idea of learning truly useless things for the sake of learning HOW to learn is ludicrous. What SHOULD be taught in school, at least in my opinion, are skills that will actually come in handy when you enter the workforce. However, if we taught people job-useable skills in highschool, we'd be treading on the college's and universities' feet and get them all pissed off because THEY can't make us pay them money to teach us basics we should have known before graduation.

The entire point behind the public education system was to free children from having to follow in their father/mother's careers. Unless you were born wealthy and had a formal education, your lot in life was that you would learn the skills of your father's trade, or be apprenticed to another person to learn his line of work. Public education meant that commoners were no longer bound to that path. But these days, instead of learning a broad range of skills to give you career options, students learn absolutely nothing.

So while it may be a slight step backwards to make the education system guide people to a specific career, it is in fact a step forward from where we are, in that right now they end up with nothing, my way they'd have at least something. And if the student is given the choice as to what path he wishes to take, all the better.

Specifics...
Math (Grades 1-8) - WHO THE FUCK NEEDS ALL THIS HIGHER-LEVEL MATH? For those who are destined to be engineers, some of grade-12 level stuff may actually be of use, but for the average person, nothing is gained by learning conics and spherical trigonometry. Everyone should learn the basics, including fractions, simple geometry, light algebra (solve-for-X kinda stuff) and a very strong emphasis on interest (basic and compounded) and other financially-relevant math processes. Added to the course should be the basics of accounting, including how to work spreadsheets and compile simple accounting forms (balance sheet, cash logs, statement of accounts). Not high-end accounting, leave that for those who wish to become accountants, but every person holding a G.E.D. in my opinion should have the basic skills to balance their own finances. That kind of mathematics has much more life-use than the ability to plot graphs on a TI-83 calculator. If the useless crap of the math curriculum is removed and the courses become more functional than the repetitive shit we go through now, an average student should learn all he/she needs by the grade-8 level.

Directed Math Studies (Grades 9-12) - For the students who feel comfortable with numbers, courses in more specialized math should be offered, but not the catch-all advanced math classes we get these days. Don't try to teach them something about everything, teach them everything about something. Specific courses for accounting and business finances would be one option, a second in higher-level geometry for the architect/engineer-to-be, and complex formulas for the engineer/scientist.

English (Grades 1-12) - English is, at least for Canada and the US, a must-know subject. Bilingual nation or not, English is the primary language in both our lands, and it is the recognized "earth" language. If anything, the English courses in highschool are too easy and direction-less. Cut out the poetry and "classical literature" portion of the course, and focus more on proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Set the more "artsy" English material aside as a separate course for those who wish to learn it, but the linguistic abilities of this nation are abysmal, and need to be corrected.

Science (Grades 1-6) - A general knowledge on basic science is a good thing. Everyone should know about electric current, mechanical mixtures vs solutions, and basic physics concepts like gravity. But how things are now, you do a generalized science course until about grade 9 or 10, then two years of being able to take a specific science (Chem, Bio, Physics). People would be better off only taking generalized science until highschool/junior high, then once they hit post-elementary they should start on a specialization. Why waste three or four years more of generalized crap? Six years of Biology in highschool will yield a smarter biologist than one with two years, but a smattering of physics knowledge. Nothing says a student can't take two or more different sciences, and for some, why waste any time with science at all?

I could go into others, but this has become a much longer post than I intended...

I agree with you on most of this reply but what would you do with the kids after say 9th grade. The kids who don't accelerate in any subject a trade of some kind or what?

 

[TheGhostOfSin]

I've never needed to re-take a test but to the best of my knowledge I would have been able to if I had wanted to, on Wednesday I shall start my third year of college and the one friend I have in the class will only be there because he was able to try the course's main exam again.

 

[Zio666]

OK I haven't read the whole topic because life is short and I have better things to do but this has caught my eye so I would like to contibute something from an english perspective.

I am currently in year 11 (the last year of compulsary school). I was on a C/B grade for science until I was very sick the morning of one of my modular exams. I missed it but still got marked down for sitting it which has now dragged my grade down to an E. In november I (and people who have already sat the exam) can retake to improve my grade but I can only do this once.

EDIT: But I can only retake modular exams. If I mess up the final one I will have to do a GCSE resit.

But the exam board are pathetic in britain. Several of my friends results have been lost.

 

[Toasty]

Another British perspective!
-our schooling system is also a load of crap (suprise suprise)
Im in year 13 doing my A2's -roughly equivalent to the last year of high school before going off to university(for the americans)
-since i came to this country (from america) 4 years ago, basically each year has not been aimed towards lwarning for the sake of knowledge, but just the techeres instructing us on what we needed to know for the exam at the end of the year (one's that always were really important for future, getting into uni etc)-so school seems to be about passing the exams and not about learning something new.
-that was for GCSE'S General Certificates of Secondary Education - i think) this happens in year 11. see Zio666
-I then began to do A levels - where you have to learn entirely NEW material and ahve a much better understanding of it. that the general understading of the material you where tested for at GCSE Level and that you had hadbeen taught watered down versions of the same stuff for the last 5 years or so.

 

[nmmoore13]

I suck at quoting so bare with me root of all evil.

Businesses don't take. Its a trade. I give you money you give me this. Parents want to pay for a good education. So the schools will supply. Its simple supply and demand. Your example is strange. I guess I would just say buyer beware. Why are they buying shitty education?

Yes, privatised schools can have their own agendas. You CAN make a school that doesn't allow jews in. Why not? Its their business. Now, its probably going to fail because they get no jewish customers and very little people want to go to an anti semite school.

The public gets what the public wants, and the public wants... GOOD EDUCATION.

I meant diversity in types of schools. There would be lots of different kinds of schools.

My comparison to Wal Mart was only to the effect that in a private business system, there are still business's that will provide the cheap product.


Just take a look out America's colleges. They're some of the best in the world. They are private businesses.

 

[Northery]

My opinion is that every child is different and the problem with today's education is that children are forced to learn based on a pipe line. This contradict human nature since we are all different and we all like and prefer to do different things. Why would you try to force a child to learn a subject he does not care about when we all know the second he leave that class room it's all going to fall out of his head.

I do agree that education should be mandatory up to a certain point...2+2=1394..wrong. There should be a system that takes advantage of a child's strong points and develops them further.

 

[BallPtPenTheif]

In America they barely teach economics. Usually it is a section that is passed over during "Social Studies" or "History". Considering we are a capitalist country you'd think the economy would be our bread and butter.

 

[shadow skill]

In America they barely teach economics. Usually it is a section that is passed over during "Social Studies" or "History". Considering we are a capitalist country you'd think the economy would be our bread and butter.

If they did that people might figure out that the system is nonsensical.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

I suck at quoting so bare with me root of all evil.

S'ok...we all learn...Ooh...that's rather appropriate.

Businesses don't take. Its a trade. I give you money you give me this. Parents want to pay for a good education. So the schools will supply. Its simple supply and demand. Your example is strange. I guess I would just say buyer beware. Why are they buying shitty education?

Because they can. Trust me, I sell tat to the public everyday. As long as they THINK they're getting a bargain, you can fleece them for every penny. And business take ALL the time. Look at how much Starbucks charge for bean juice and hot water.

Yes, privatised schools can have their own agendas. You CAN make a school that doesn't allow jews in. Why not?

Well, there's that whole anti-semitic thing, and the press, and a number of other things.

Its their business. Now, its probably going to fail because they get no jewish customers and very little people want to go to an anti semite school.

But if you don't SAY it's Anti-Semitic and just go with it, then you can get away with an awful lot more.
I.E. Dupont employees have the lowest rate of cancer around. Why? Oh, they ask if you have cancer in your family at the interview, and if you do, bye!

The public gets what the public wants, and the public wants... GOOD EDUCATION.

Wrong way around. The public wants what the public gets. Why do you think Big Brother is still in syndication?

I meant diversity in types of schools. There would be lots of different kinds of schools.

But not if the big schools, with lots of nice profits and high marks, buy up all the little ones. Please see Starbucks, Mcdonalds etc.

My comparison to Wal Mart was only to the effect that in a private business system, there are still business's that will provide the cheap product.

BUT, the cheap product is worthless when it comes to education. GOOD TEACHERS COST GOOD MONEY.

Just take a look out America's colleges. They're some of the best in the world. They are private businesses.

England's colleges FAR surpass American college. A degree here is worth a PhD there.

And that's without mentioning Penn & Teller's Bullshit on College Life.

 

[BardSeed]

I decided that I wanted to take A-level physics this year. I discovered that although the subject wast taught in my school last year, this year they decided to split the subjects between three schools. If I wanted to take physics then I had to try and get from one end of the city to another in 15 minutes or less. How fucking ridiculous is that!? We have perfectly good science teachers right here, why can't they do the teaching?