How can we fix it?
I really wish there were laws, that if you demonstrated an apathetic view of school, and maintained a GPA of 2.0 or less you would be kicked out.
Well, for starters, what in your opinion is wrong with it?
Two things, but they probably won’t ever happen:
Taxpayers need to look at schools as more than just a hole their taxes go into. School budgets need to reflect the needs of the school, and the wealth (or lack of) the school district.
Teachers and their unions need to realize not everyone with a teaching degree can teach. Lifetime tenure after 5 years is a joke. Teachers need formal performance reviews, and individual compensation packages; unions are way too strong for what they offer the community.
Disclaimer: I taught HS for 8 years. Classes and kids were great (for the most part) but the administration just did not seem to represent the student’s needs.
Our entire education system is flawed. It’s focus is now primarily on “tests” (which I’ll get to in a minute), and not on actual education. As is the case with just about anything else, reforms are only brought about by lobbyists and greedy politicians. The needs of the students (and, normally, the teachers) are often denied.
Tomorrow, the state of Texas sets aside a good portion of the day for our exit-level test, the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS). To put it simply, this test is a joke. I’m in the gifted and talented program, so my opinion is biased, but this is backed up by every single teacher that I’ve talked to. The only problem is, the government is convinced that this is the only way to measure teaching success. Of course, this leads to the question: “But how else can you measure overall school success?”*. Well, many people suggest simple failure ratios, or average GPA, or some other method. But this doesn’t work as well as a standardized test, because obviously, schools are different. Personally, I would actually support a standardized test that does its job. To reach the lowest standard on the math TAKS test, one must answer 25 out of 60 questions correctly. That’s just about 42%…how could a multiple choice test this poorly written actually have any merit?
*An interesting, but pathetic, side note: Schools who do better on the TAKS get more funding, and the schools who do poorly get less. Anyone see the fundamental problem in this “reward” logic?
Speaking of fundamental problems, the basis of the entire education system is flawed. We pay our teachers far too little. They have extremely stressful jobs, and have to deal with annoying teenagers (such as my friends and I) all day long. There aren’t enough motivated teachers, because not enough are attracted to the job.
There’s a bill being pushed back and forth through the legislature (it may have been passed by now, but no one’s ever sure) about changing, and standardizing the school schedule. We’d start school after Labor Day, and end in June. This doesn’t seem so bad until you look at the fact that with this program, they take out Easter vacation, and we only get 1 week for Christmas, and 3 days for Thanksgiving. Why is this being considered? The tourism industry lobbyists want more summer vacations, and schools don’t want to pay those nasty utility bills.
Discipline is most schools is lacking at best, as well. My school, for instance, barely follows its own rules. People break the dress code left and right, leave school to go to lunch, and generally ignore many of the rules. How could you fix this? Eliminate the unnecessary rules. For instance, the dress code. I can’t wear shorts at my school. Ever. There are times in the school year where it gets over 100 outside, and the guys are stuck wearing jeans. One of the major arguments supporting the dress code is that it supports a more positive learning environment, and that it helps kids to learn better, but the administration forcing us to wear jeans in sweltering heat completely counteracts that. On miserable days like that, I’d be happier, more attentive, and learn better if i could just wear a t-shirt and jeans. Not to mention I probably wouldn’t be smelling the hygiene-deprived kid a few desks over.
I’ve digressed a little bit though. Back to the unnecessary rules: these rules do much more harm than good. By having these unenforced rules, most students become more rebellious than they would be anyway. Incoming freshman, for instance, hear all the rules at the freshman orientation, but when they actually start school, they notice that “Hey, no one’s actually doing any of that”. This leads to them ignoring the minor rules, and off they go down the slippery slope. The small rules are ignored by the majority of the student population, and that leads to the larger ones being broken more frequently, which leads to the faculty becoming desensitized to this rule-breaking. It’s a vicious cycle that has to end somewhere, but this ‘somewhere’ is normally far beyond the needed level of discipline.
All of this brings us to the question: “Well, what the heck can we do to fix this?”. I’ve barely touched the tip of the iceberg. There are many more problems with our school, and the education system in general, but they’re all interrelated. You can’t fix one with working on the other. I honestly have no idea how to get the education system back on track. All I know is that what’s currently happening isn’t working, and it has to change. Sadly, whatever’s going to happen will probably take a long, long time. Enough people that actually care need to get into office, and then they need to get off their asses and actually keep their campaign promises. Education is very rarely a defining issue in an election, and is normally kept on the back burner. That has to change.
What good is living in the country that prides itself on freedom if you’re too moronic to comprehend it?
Have you ever thought that maybe some people just aren’t motivated properly to go to school. In grade ten and even part of grade nine, I had difficulty caring about school and really alot going on in my life, and I wasn’t even in that bad a situation compared to many people, my GPA would have probably been around that point aswell, had I been kicked out I never would have amounted to anything. Kicking people out of school because they aren’t trying doesn’t solve anything, it just creates more uneducated people.
Plus they clearly do care at least somewhat if they still attend school, there really isn’t that much they can do to force you to go, if you really didn’t want to go to school then really what can they do to force you.
We pretty much have that here, except we have a week break in march and winter break is a couple days longer usualy around 10 days, usualy getting out of school about the 23rd and starting about a day after new years. We start after labourday and we finish in mid to late June.
I don’t really see whats wrong with more tourism and less utility bills either, since utilities are coming out of taxpayers pockets, and tourism helps the economy and again gives more money to the tax pool. Not to mention the amount of polution caused by cooling the schools during the summer (although I guess the tourism industry will probably be counteracting that since all those people will be driving their SUV’s more)
I think the problem there is if people don’t care about going to school, then they don’t care enough to drop out, because honestly, what else is there?
Canada is the same. I agree totally with monkeyman on everything he said: they don’t use common sense to make rules, and take joy in enforcing it. I thought that when I entered grade 10 this year I would have more freedom, but the teachers still act as if we are very small and dim children that need to be stuffed information down the throat. I entered a local school, saw it was crap, and got into homeschooling. It does diminish the amount of shit you have to wade through to get highschool over, but you can do much much faster. I have only one test, a few books to read and I’m done.
I would suggest home schooling to anybody who is self-motivated.
I’ve basically lost all faith in public schooling…people are way too different to be subjected to the same standardized tests and curriculum and expected to learn anything as a whole. The No Child Left Behind doesn’t help either, it just allows the slowest students to set the pace for the entire class. I agree with Danni that home schooling would be the best way to learn anything.
I think we need to be more open to alternative learning styles.
For me, sitting in a school for 6 hours, surrounded by moronic kids who didn’t do their work, distrubed your learning area, and just caused problems everywhere was a problem for me. Also, I didn’t like how slow the class would go. I don’t want to sit for an hour to learn something I can teach myself in about 10mins.
Realizing that, and a lot more stuff, I decided to look for an alternative. Now, most people when they hear of an alternative school, they think of bad kids, druggies, alcoholics, gangsters, pregnant teens, and kids who are just bad, but that is so wrong. I will admit, some alternative schools are like that, but not all.
I discovered M.E.A.D alternative. I read about it, had a friend who goes there, and he told me about it, and it was what I wanted.
At this school, it starts at 9am, and goes till 12pm, Monday - Thursday. We only go through 3 during school, which are reading, writing/English, and math. After those are out of the way, we have a core time.
The ‘Cores’ ate our school are pretty much a small class room. Each core is ran by one teacher, and can have 1 - 10 kids in the core. This gives a very family like feeling. You get to know your teacher very well, and the students in your core become your closest friends. Not only that, but because the core is so small, the teaching is very direct and heads on. If one kids has a problem, the teacher can work with just that kids, or all at once, depending on who needs help.
The teaching system is very different, if the teacher notices that we aren’t liking how something is being taught, they wills top, and ask the kids how they want to be taught. We pretty much make up our own lesson plan that fits to our learning styles.
I would continue writing about the Core program, but i’m not in it anymore. I went to GSL.
Gsl, is me teaching myself everything. I go to school every Thursday, and my teacher goes through all my work, then I get more work to do at home that week. This way, I can teach myself my own way, that I know works, and can go through work as fast as I want. In fact, I was able to get a year worth of math done within a month. =p
The GSL program isn’t for everyone though, its for dedicated kids who can be able to take their work home, teach thyself the material, and finish it without being told to do so. I like it, cause I can assign myself any class I want, go home, and start working on it.
It’s more the fact that no one wants it, except the lawmakers. I wasn’t so much attacking that specific thing, so much as saying that lawmakers make worthless laws affecting the education that no one in the education system actually wants. Does that make sense? I do disagree with the bill*, but my main problem is them imposing laws that don’t benefit us.
*I favor a more year-round school, with week breaks more often, and maybe two bigger breaks…I think that would be better for morale (or whatever you want to call willingness/ability to learn)
Jerrick, both of those programs sound pretty amazing…but they only work for the people who will do it. Another one of the biggest problems with my school is the lackofteaching in the regular’s curriculum. It’s basically babysitting.
(This part is mostly towards JP and Danni): While your programs sound like they can and do work well, some people need/prefer the whole “school” thing (me, for instance). I’ll admit that I actually like going to school. I like interacting with my teachers, and having the large class discussions. I’m enrolled in the toughest program I can be in, and I’m definitely challenging myself. I wouldn’t be so quick to completely denounce public schooling. It can work well for the right people. I do agree that more alternatives should be opened up though.
unschooling is another alternative I don’t know a whole lot about but it sounds really interesting.
Get the government out of schooling. Instead, give each person a voucher for payment to take to the school of their choice. This let’s the parents be parents and lets them choose what’s best for their children. When schools compete, you win!
I like that idea! Ond I would like to clarify my earlier suggestion. If the kids who were apathetic, and stupid, meaning, they didn’t make good grades, and didn’t care or try to make good grades were simply ejected from school, I think it is safe to say their life would suck. Honestly, this is called tough love. They could still get a job doing unskilled labor, and shoot, as a garbage man they’d make more than a teacher (in Texas anyway)! So basically, they would realize how important education is, and see that their kids need id. Then after only a few generations, people would know that education is the way to succeed. I realize that this is very idealistic, but sometimes the idealistic ideas need to be given a chance to see if they will or won’t work. On a slightly different note: Teaching needs to be a lucrative job. If you could be a football player just because ytou know a lot about it. Do you think more people would play? YES because that jobs pays millions of dollars. If teacher’s made even HALF what professional athletes make, then schools would be MUCH more careful in who they pay to educate the future, and people would be eager to be a teacher. Basically, there’d be a higher demand for teaching jobs if the pay were better, and in turn, districts could be more picky in choosing the right educators for the job. There is not a lot of cometition in the teaching world. When teachers compete students win. Isn’t that what we should want?
And with the TAKS, teachers have to teach how to take the test…aka how to pass the test. If the test were well written, don’t you think that teachers could simply teach the lessons, and when the kids got to the test, they’d know what do to? Here is the basic format of a TAKS question:
What is the answer to this question?
A) Good answer; makes sense
B) Stupid answer; obviously wrong
C) Better answer; makes more sense
D) Right answer; makes as much sense as the “Better answer”, but for some subtle yet (just barely) perceptible reason, this is the right answer and the other is not.
Now the teachers have to teach kids how to look out for the “Right answer” as apposed to the “Better answer”. Because teachers’ “ability” is based on student performance, teachers worry about making sure the students can see the difference between the two answers that will work. So much time is spent on this, in fact, that often the teacher doesn’t teach the material. Therefore, the students know the difference between a Better answer and a Right answer, but alas, have no idea what the question is asking. I count myself as one of the lucky that is in the IB program. This basically means, I’m in the Texas school system, but taught from completely different (and infinitely more effective) curriculum.
Well I was pretty much gonna post everything Monkeyman said. Our school system is TERRIBLE.
One time I went to school with a timer watch and timed the time actualy spent doing useful work and learning. Turned out to be about 3 1/2 hours out of a 7 1/2 hour school day.
I have a bunch of friends who unschool and they are some of the brightest kids I’ve ever met. They just choose what they really want to learn, and learn it. It wouldn’t work for me cuz I’m rather unmotivated but one of my best friends, who was unschooled, just got into a really nice private college.
lol, this seems like a good system to me!
Who pays for the vouchers?? And why???
Should people with 6 kids get 6 vouchers? And the next person only get one, and people without kids get none? Is that fair? Sounds like marxism now.
And if I get 6 vouchers, can I sell them for crack? and homeschool my kids? Can the crack dealer pay the better school’s higher tuition by giving them 2 or 3 vouchers per child?
How does this voucher thing work, anyway? Is it like food stamps?
And where does the money for the vouchers come from?