My Issue With Public Schools

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My biggest problem with public schools is that they make people ignorant, period.

Back when I was a student in one (slightly more than a year ago) the teachers cared more about having students pass standardized test's than they did about the students learning anything. I wonder how many total hours I spent from kindergarten to graduation I spent studying for tests like that? I know it's a lot of time wasted.

And an education like that is very poor preparation for college coursework. One of the things I noticed last year when I started college was that I could no longer get away with just going to class, studying for 10 minutes before for my tests, and then getting A's. And that really effed up my GPA last year (literally).

The difference is huge. In high school I was expected to memorize material and pass exams, then forget it and move on to the next thing. In college I'm expected to thoroughly know the materal, and be able to display adept knowledge of it whenever called upon.

Also, as far as my math skills go, I never learned anything in public school. My math skills are perhaps at a sixth grade level, if that. And even though I clearly needed (and even sometimes recieved) extra help with my math, I was always simply passed along to the next grade. As a result, I'm finding passing a college Algebra class to be nearly impossible.

And I'm not going to lie or be modest here. I was a very dedicated student when I was in public school (I have no choice be to be even more dedicated in college )...even though I had problems with math I was always excellent at English and Art and I graduated with honors.

It always seemed to me that many of my classmates never cared about school or learning, and nothing was ever done in any way to change that. For most of them, school was a party and an excuse to socialize, the learning was never considered important. And watching my sister and other kids I know go through the same high school I went to and not care about their future outside of it later (because there is one whether they believe it or not) is very sad.

I agree with you 100% Dessie. I graduate high school two years ago. I think the older members of the forum fail to realize how bad the situation at the schools are.



Schools only care about getting the most kids possible to graduate. As a result, they lower the standards so basically anyone can pass without much effort. Preparing them for the 21st century world would require a lot of hard work, effort, and resources.

In the early 80s, the average school economics class required a group of students to buy a small stock based on what they were taught and record how it went throughout the year. The students were evaluated not based on how well their stock did but how they explained why the stock did good or bad. This has a lot more real world applications than memorizing facts.



It is not only poor preparation for college coursework, it is poor preparation for life in general. College is closer to how it is in the real world. The material requires a lot of understanding and application. There are still tests but at least the tests in college are more interesting (almost all are free response and no multiple choice is allowed) and seem to serve a purpose.



The reason why students do not do good in math is that math is heavily reliant on mastery. It is imperative to have a solid understanding and foundation before moving on to the next step. But students are allowed to pass only knowing 70% of the material. So, over time, their understanding is full of holes. Eventually, the gap is so large that they fall right through.

Math is not hard. It is not impossible. It only is hard when a student does not have a solid foundation. I want you to look at this website. It explains it pretty well in one of their videos:
Khan Academy



Who wants to bubble in a test all day? It is hard to care when kids fail to see how the knowledge they are learning will benefit them. In a way, they are right not to care. To tell you the truth, I never cared about school either. I just cared about getting out of there and getting into a decent college. At least you had the insight to care.

Interestingly, my high school econ class did something similiar. We used a website where you could "buy" and "sell" stocks and it changed when the real stock market did. Most of the grade was based on how our stock did though...I didn't do a very good job.

The tests at the college I go to kind of vary. I've had some professors who give only multiple choice tests, but those tests tend to be like 100 or 150 questions long. I've had other professors, especially one who comes to mind, who never gave multiple choice exams, only research papers/essay exams, so that we would have to really show that we know what we're talking about.



That website look's like it might be pretty helpful. Lots of algebra videos....Thanks.



I'd like to see the way schools teach kids change. I don't know how they'd do it, but there has to be some way right?

The only reason I had any insight to care is that my parents tried so hard to make me care and make me understand that education is important. I also confess, I had one or two really really great teachers in high school. Especially one of the English teachers (who I consider to be a friend now), who also helped me see how important it was (and who helped me realized how much I love writing). Most of the teachers I had sucked, but I did have a few that I could tell truly cared.

If I'd been a less reasonable, more NT, type teenager I think I probably might've ignored them all completely. And I wonder what I'd be like now... I also realy do like to learn things, to know things. Many of the things I'd wanted to learn weren't taught in a classroom in a public school. College is giving me a little bit more room to decide what I want to study.

Yes, unschooling is not the best method by itself, however unschooling (tangential learning) in combination with a core curriculum which has some liberty to be deviated from in favor of temporary fixations and then returned to is closer to what I think would be a good educational model. Unit studies as part of the core curriculum also help, in my case at least, to develop fixations about the historical periods and inventions and what not and help to provide methods of research that allow for the kids to learn more when they do develop their own fixations.

Has anyone written the ultimate book on elementary education in the U.S.A? The title ought be be "Why Johnny Can' Think"

ruveyn

I'm just glad I got to go to school. I wouldn't have if there were no public schools (called state or comprehensive school over here). I've met plenty of people from different parts of the world who never got to go.

Yes, the history teaching does suck. We covered the slave trade and a bit about the British Empire but I taught myself most things in most classes. Our history teacher was outstanding because she actually tried to teach us (my class had some very 'challenging' students). Quite a few of the teachers I had for other subjects didn't try.

School was where I learned to be an autodidact. I'm just glad that the teachers at this comprehensive school encouraged me to do that and gave me books to take home. When I went to Catholic school, they were indifferent to me learning stuff on my own and just wanted me to try to fit in with the (mostly horrible) pupils there.

Regarding teachers that didn't even try; Sounds like a math teacher I had in high school. She'd write an example of how to do a problem on the board in a lackluster voice, which would be the extent of her teaching us. Then, when the bulk of the class (myself included) would fail the test, she'd say, "It's not my fault if kids don't want to learn." Yes, yes it was her fault, at least in part; as most of the class failed under her. Could I and the rest of the class have tried harder? Yes, I'm sure we could have. But the teacher had from the first day inspired such a sense of defeatism, no one really cared from the start. Being that it was school-wide public knowledge that she was banging the assistant principle, I can imagine why she was never canned.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Reminds me of a math professor I once had. Many teachers are just poisonous to the learning process. A teacher who makes things difficult really does not want to be a teacher. Teachers are supposed to make information accessible to the students.

I can watch videos online and read books if I really need examples. Okay, professor/teacher what else can you do? It makes you wonder what these educators truly offer students besides being a tax burden on their parents.

The two top stars in my Teaching Hall of Infamy:

1. The man who had no idea of maintaining order in the classroom and was so unprepared he would start to work a problem on the blackboard and get lost. The jerks chatting in the back row could have done better.

2. The woman whose idea of teaching was to sit reading the assigned parts of the textbook to us, raising here voivce to emphasize points that would be on the exam.

I honestly do not know which of the two was worse.

That's nothing.

I had a science teacher who would hand out textbooks (1 between 3!). And then read the newspaper for the rest of the lesson. He once let us look at an onion under a microscope.

I had a woodwork teacher who showed up drunk and then let the kids do whatever they wanted with saws and drills.

My biggest issue with school a lot of times was it was boring......not because I was lazy and did not feel like learning but because I was intelligent and had no time for some of that silly nonsense they pass off as fact. I was the person taking multiple choice tests and picking the answers they wanted me to pick even if I knew the answer they wanted was wrong.

As for math my brain and math do not seem to get along very well, not sure why......but yeah I do not feel like I really can be taught to adequetley do math. I mean I failed remedial math in college twice even though I had one on one tutoring the second time.

You beat. My condolences. Yours definitely get to sit in a lower circle of teacher hell than mine.

Still, mine are back in the 70s - if yours are more modern, we might have to weight the rating for date. Not that any of them are worth more than a mouse nest in your sock drawer.

Definitely a problem. I think overall public schools are still definitely a good thing, the trick is to eliminate propaganda. Unfortunately the rampant patriotism in the USA makes it difficult. In Canada we don't seem to have quite as much of a problem with it. One of my socials studies teachers was highly critical of Canada (so much so that I found her depressing at the time, but I've matured enough to respect what she was doing now).

You know, japanese kids don't learn about the atrocities their country committed against the chinese in WWII, back when they were sure that their emperor was deified and they were certain that Japan had a right to control all of asia, either.

Germany is perhaps a little unique in that regard. German kids learn about the horrifying things their grandparents did.

That's why in this country, when American teachers tell students about things the US had done that we're not necessarily proud of, it doesn't mean that kids are being taught to hate America, as conservative critics often maintain.
Nothing wrong with confronting the truth, as long as it is keeping with the facts.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Yeah. But even at the somewhat liberal private school i graduated from, there was no mention of US atrocities, or instances where the USA was clearly the aggressor, such as the phillipine-american war.

That was 1989-1993, so, we only had the 1st gulf war to go on, and we almost sort of bought the "liberate kuwait" line, even though we knew, for example, that George W. Bush (the president's son) was heavily invested in kuwaiti oil.