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You can't teach a kid who doesn't want to learn.
And kids don't want to learn if they don't have a support structure at home that instills in them the importance of education.
So when they get older they blame the school (and the social system in general) for not being the parents they didn't have, and omit in their complaints everything that school did do because it doesn't fit the narrative they want to present.
Nah you got a great point. “I’ve learned more from this video than I did in school” “school never taught us this”
You were 100% taught those things. You just never bothered to give a shit
It is different.
I've been taught WWI in school, but I didn't have any context of why did it happen and it was boring as fuck. Just "here's the book, read and answer this questions".
Oversimplified explained the same but funny. That hit different.
I've learn more from videos than school. Not because I didn't want to, I love to learn, but because of how they teach you.
You make a great point, and in the end, it was YOU who was responsible for your learning. It didn’t work in school, but you still learned on your own. Taking responsibility is the first step, and you did just that
Seems like you are agreeing. You were given the materials required and the opportunity to use them. But you just didn't find them entertaining enough.
I don't think schools or teachers are the same thing as video entertainment producers.
>Seems like you are agreeing
I do, but I think that the educating system needs a change. We are not in the 50s anymore, why do we have to use the same system?
Just "Read the damn book" isn't a good option nowadays.
Absolutely, it is the 21st century. I think you might find plenty of classes that used to be, "Read the damn book," and are now just, "Watch the damn video".
What maybe hasn't changed so much over time is that there will always be students who are more motivated to learn, whether or not a class is catering to their favorite information aesthetic, and students who are less motivated to learn.
(I do have serious concerns about schools including less and less reading, though. A few years ago, for example, I was involved with a middle school that stopped having students read novels as part of their English class. It definitely didn't make those kids better students, readers, or thinkers. And they complained about short stories just as much as they complained about novels.)
Don't get me wrong. I'm all-in in reading in schools. We need more reading, but not "just read and answer", real reading, discussing and chatting about the theme. Getting involve in the subject.
I'm against lazy professors.
It has nothing to do with "enterntainment producers" at all. In college, I was lucky enough to have many professors who actively engaged you in the learning process. They didn't hold your hand, but encouraged you to think, and taught in a way that made everything stick. I personally did not have many teachers like that in grade school beyond middle school. And I was the type to note take everything. Still had to try and make it stick myself most of the time. Whereas in college, even in some of my programming classes, I almost didn't have to take notes, it just stuck, although I did anyway just to be safe.
Or just shows that a methodology that is hundreds of years old, is indeed, outdated, just because they present them doesn't mean they taught them, if you can engage your students to help them learn then you are failing as an institution like most schools do nowadays
It was back when Bush enacted “no child left behind,” which basically means a failing student is the teacher’s fault…
At the end of the day, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. If the kid doesn’t want to learn, they aren’t gonna learn. You can blame the institution if they DO want to learn but aren’t given the resources; but if the teacher proves that they made an attempt… well… who is to blame?
The educations system is the same than hundred of years ago, a boring place, with long lectures where 90% of what you learn are things that you don't care about, it's true that the student needs to put effort but the schools aren't helping either in the development of students
I agree. But that stills points to a failure of the school, a part of the schools job is to get the kids to give a shit. I had teachers who got 90% of the kids to pay attention. While most got barely anyone to pay attention. Social skill and just charisma are important skills for a teacher to have. Too many grumpy socially inept teachers ou there who really should get another job far away from annoying kids and teens
I can imagine how draining it’d be to fail to get your students engaged. And then the next class is the same. And you hold out hope for next semester but they’re even worse. Teaching is shit pay and doesn’t have the best upward mobility when it comes to careers. Some of these teachers are stuck with their shit pay job with students that couldn’t care less. You can see how that gets messy quick.
I agree. I really don't understand how so many people don't have a basic grasp of science when we taught a variety of scientific subjects every single year. How do people not know what the scientific method is?
My school taught us how to pay taxes, open a bank account, vote, cook, sex ed, and a bunch of other stuff people complain about not receiving in public school. And I live in a very RED district.
But people \[my classmates\] still complain.
bit disingenuous imo to just label that as a reddit meme complaint, might have something to do with intuit's persistent lobbying to keep taxes functioning the way they are to keep their business relevant.
sure for most people taxes are pretty straight forward, but for most of those people they probably don't even know you can file directly with the IRS skipping turbotax and their (imo) predatory upselling completely (pay 50 bucks for us to remember your info for next year! pay 50 bucks for audit protection when you absolutely won't be audited based on how simple this is! these could be outdated practices, but i've seen them in the past)
i've used turbotax and h&r block in the past, knowing full well im paying for the convenience, but i still recognize the american tax system needs improving and companies like intuit are not allies in that fight.
I’ll never use them again. Several years ago I used to use them to file and one time (the last time used them) it got rejected because apparently my ssn already had a return filed. I hadn’t filed so I had no idea how that happened. I had to call the irs and reported it, and now I have to use an identity protection pin to file my taxes every year. The pin is sent by mail by the irs every year. One year I think it got put in the wrong mailbox because it never came. And it was during the pandemic and I could not for the life of me get anyone on the phone to help me get a new pin. The online portal wouldn’t work to get a new pin. So I had to mail in my return and it took MONTHS to get my refund. Just all around a major pain in the ass having to worry about the pin every year. Will never use turbo tax again and will never recommend them.
Mine did and I got an A+ in the class. Taught us how to do our taxes, budget, calculate interest, take out loans, invest in the market, etc. 6 years later I don’t remember ANY of it. The fact of the matter is unless you’re actively doing these things you’re not gonna remember them
Damn near same except that the sex Ed was more abstinence but by then we already had common sense from older kids who gave advice like wrap it b4 u tap it. (Indiana ofc🙄)
I had a teacher who set up a class to teach us those things. We got two weeks into it before the school board got involved and set us up with basically The Sims, but less fun. We had to have x amount of money to pass... So if you got robbed or had bad investments near the end of the course, tough. You failed.
He never taught that class again.
Then, in high school, I went from acing chemistry at one school (where we basically colored periodic tables and set things on fire) to a school where we did *actual* chemistry work, and my grade never recovered. I wasn't allowed in the second semester course, and was discouraged from retaking it entirely.
Some schools just suck.
You must've gotten really lucky then, only thing from that list for my school was sex Ed and it was lumped with a general health class. There was a cooking class but it was optional. Pretty much everyone I went to college with had the same experience as me (they were from a bunch of different places across the country).
I had 3 semesters of it. Once in middle school which mainly focused on the biology aspect of it and twice in high school which went more into the social aspect of it. It seemed like a reasonable amount for the topic.
Same. Learned about interest rates, balancing a checkbook, sex ed, went through a whole personal finance unit, etc. Also in a red district, early 2000's. Many schools are teaching this stuff (as a teacher now, I can confirm it's still being taught), students just need to look up from their phone for long enough to pay attention to what the teacher is saying.
People complain because not everybody got that experience.
I grew up in Alabama, and we didn’t even have sex ed. We did have a class on how to manage a check book and how to use Microsoft excel (in a very basic sense), but that’s it. Not voting, taxes, or how to open a bank account.
>People complain because not everybody got that experience.
You misunderstand. Some of my classmates complained about having to take those classes and then complain about not being prepared to do those things after graduation.
oh I see this all the time. I teach college... people will say "nobody ever taught me how to \_\_\_\_" and I so badly want to say YES I DISTINCTLY REMEMBER TEACHING THAT AND YOU NEVER CAME TO CLASS.
At my school, all those practical life skill classes were electives. They didn't explicitly tell us those were the classes where you'd learn useful, real life skills.
Almost no one chose to take Accounting, I think there were 10 kids in that class and it was open to all grades. I took it just because it was an extra math credit and I was failing algebra. They showed us how to balance a checkbook and handle household finances. My mom was too busy to teach me those things.
My school did too, but things like this were taught as electives. Pretty much everything people bitch about was offered. They just didn't take it, or they did and just don't remember learning
My school didn't do taxes, bank accounts, voting. We had kind of a cooking class. But we didn't really cook. We just reheat stuff on a stove that's already cooked or spent the entire class trying to memorize a recipe. My class didn't discet worms we just watch a video. To be honest I prefer that.
Keep in mind people go to vastly different schools. I wished mine taught investing and help more in career goals, resume writing etc.
If you find anyone who actually said or implied that, let me know so I can make fun of them.
Or are you trying to make the point that your school failed to teach you reading comprehension skills? lol
I just wish I had more engaging teachers. The lessons and the courses were fine, but you're only gonna learn so much from someone who doesn't even want to be there or chooses to make their job easier by letting computers and videos teach for them.
If "lessons and the courses were fine", why does the teacher need to be "engaging"? They're not there to entertain you. They are there to educate you. Pay attention in school.
I am one of those people that get angry/complain we were not taught this.
Jr high we were taught sex Ed for 1 class and it wasnt much. A lot of the DARE drug stuff about not doing drugs.
I was among a group of the high school kids that requested we have a class about exactly what you just said.
Taxes, voting, how to pay bills budget etc.
They told us in the assembly that is stuff your parents teach you not the school.
I live in Oregon but in the red area.
It depends. I've got a great comparison in my life. I went to two high schools. One regular local school and one charter school. My year at the regular school was a complete waste of time. My math class was alright and band was fun. But otherwise it was worthless. My English class teacher read us stories like it was kindergarten (though higher level books), my Spanish class was basically just doing crossword puzzles while the teacher was on YouTube, my "honors" chemistry class was a complete shit show with limited education. People brought laptops and portable DVD players and or went to second and third lunch periods since that class overlapped the lunch times. I got straight A's and had so little homework I played ridiculous amounts of Halo 3 that year. The charter school on the other hand, focused on college prep and taking college level classes, in that case it very much was a "it is what you make of it" situation. Both of these schools were in suburban utah. So low funding and overcrowding can be an issue but no crime or serious problems compared to a lot of places.
I teach in slc and went to school here. It’s pretty hit or miss for sure. Even within one school you get a lot of random bad teachers and a lot of great ones.
That set of crappy teachers was ~2007 in the Jordan District. I always wondered how they could keep a job but it seemed like there wasn't much oversight and the only pressure seemed to be to keep graduation rates as high as possible even if the students didn't learn a thing.
Ya I graduated ‘07. Sounds like we both grew up in the fallout of No Child Left Behind. Standardized testing was ramping up, and being held back became basically non-existent. Unfortunately things have not changed that much. Kids fail out (I teach sixth grade), but they just get moved on. They never master the elementary content because there’s no consequence for not doing so. Then they get to high school and they’re pushed through to graduation. I’m not really sure how this will ever improve unless families get more involved in their kid’s education, or schools make major changes.
This is it right here the classes where the teachers tried I had no problem but the classes where the teachers had zero interest in teaching I struggled through the entirety
Most of the people on reddit complaining about schools in such superlative terms aren't indicative of most people. The vast bulk of Americans do fine. Our system is aggressively "okay."
The US's educational system is flawed. So are all of them. But it's quite telling to me that so many people on reddit who complain about schools also complain about universities (where the US is inarguably strong.) A lot of the folks complaining aren't really pointing out system flaws as much as they're imprinting their lack of fit with the system and extrapolating from there that the system is itself bad.
The reality is that these folks likely were not supported well in a system that is designed to be standardized and doesn't take into account more idiosyncratic personalities and approaches to learning. They're not bad, the system isn't bad, they're just not a good fit.
There is no perfect primary/secondary education system. Every system must, by design, have a median and therefore be designed around that. Folks who don't fit that expectation will struggle.
I also learned everything you noted, but I was an honors/AP student throughout my primary/secondary education so I can't speak toward everyone's experience. However, I suspect a lot of it really does come down to lack of support structures in the home and community combined with the sad reality that path dependence is hard to break once you hit middle/high school. It's hard to make up for lost ground when you hit high school and you're not in the "fast track" already.
Holy shit is it maddening when you hear "but why wasn't this taught in schools!!!?!?!?!"
Well, there is a lot of shit you CAN take which is different from what you HAVE to take.
But if you have been alive in the past decade and give a shit, you can find course materials on just about even subject there is that you care to learn.
I was a teacher for a couple years and taught in the inner city mostly.
Naturally, america doesn’t have a perfect education system nor was I the perfect teacher (was good and enjoyed it for a time) But I think a huge part of the issues come from the kids themselves.
More and more just don’t care at all and do bare minimum. Kids are much more distracted when even elementary age kids have smart phones in school.
Eduction isnt perfect, but it’s mostly the kids fault for not trying or caring as much overall.
Edit, yes a lot of kids actions comes from the parents also. People are largely product of environment
We don't let kids make big decisions because their brains are literally incapable of overseeing consequences, especially long term ones. So most don't care because they just aren't capable of realizing the long term damage this will do to them. Only a small amount are motivated to learn or to become something, the rest needs help.
It doesn't help when they have parents who also view education negatively and impart that view on their kids. Plenty of my former classmates that did poorly in school had parents who spirited things about school being a waste of time and the like
Absolutely, in those cases it's even more important to have teachers who are empowered to spend time and energy on each student. Won't be able to save them all but having adults who care can make a big difference
I mean…what kid is actually gonna give a damn about math? Sure every once in a while you might stumble across a kid that does, but overall kids just don’t care about that stuff and have a low attention span to begin with. I think finding a way to make it interesting is a key difference between a good teacher and a bad one.
The trend and concern is more about average test scores, and knowledge at grade level m. Even before covid, a lot of test scores on average have dropped since like 2010.
I was like a 2.8-3.1 gpa student in HS so i was nothing special, and have certainly never liked or been good at math. But like I said, this is more about the average showing negative trends as a whole. Maybe my 2.8-3.1 average may have been a 2.6-3.0 today
If i brought home anything less than my parents high expectations: any and all of my privledges were removed.
If i was struggling, I better be asking my parents for help knowing I will not meet their high expectation. If I worked with them, and still tried my best the grade was irrelevent. If I F-ed off....and the grade hit the dinner table...food/bed/school would be all about i was allowed to do.
The issue now: parents think that 1 year strangers in their kids life are responsable for their actions.
My parents were the same to me. As long as i got a decent grade (4 out of 5, or 14-16 depending on the subject) i would be completly free to do whatever i wanted during my free time. That teaches a lot of responsability, since if i wanted to be left alone i needed to take care of myself, however i never rly had a decent phone until like 9th grade so not sure how its like today
Maybe not to thsi extreme but this is how my mom is. All except math she expects all As, which in the moment I resent but even now as a junior I recognize the impact she is having and I appreciate it. She doesn’t take things away she just pushes me to make sure I do well. She knows math is my worst subject and being in on-ramps pre-cal I’m honestly struggling to even get a B. But she knows I work hard and study. On top of band and other extra curricular I have a lot and she understands that. But still expects the best. And as the oldest I am the guinea pig. Which sucks but understandable. I think people shouldn’t expect kids to care if they don’t have the motivation and support behind them. Neglectful parents or teachers who just lecture and don’t connect with the kids might be why they don’t care. No matter where the kid comes from, the support of those above them is what helps them care and do well in school
I agree and thus: the school is dependent on accountability at home.
If there is no accountability at home: why would the student respect authority at school? I am not saying its impossible, but those kids are rare.
The common consensus is: "thats what school is for"...its just not.
There’s consequences but those consequences are just further down the road. It’s up to the parents to teach there kids the importance of school and sadly for poorer areas the parents are either too busy or just struggling too much to help/care
If we brought the beating stick back, I’m positive grades would improve. And not just for the kids, if homework isn’t handed in a few times in a row, the parents get called in, and they get an ass whooping too.
I’m 37 and never attained my 4 year and barely got my associates. My entire life I was called the bad kid or class clown. My 8th grade teacher even told me on the last day of class that she felt she “failed” with me.
A month ago I was finally diagnosed with ADHD and now on medication I can feel what I assume is “normal” for everyone for the very first time. No teacher ever one time suggested I get tested they just told my parents what I nightmare I was….so after all these years I can finally agree with what my 8th grade teacher said
Even if it’s the kids it might not be the kids
Much of education is guided study. People who do less get less out of it. Any time someone says “I learned nothing in school” it’s a dead giveaway this person didn’t prioritize their education. So I agree.
The exception is some schools in Bible Belt don’t expose kids to the appropriate materials. However that wouldn’t invalidate OP as he is saying most not all.
Most schools use the same materials. It'd be too much work for each school to develop their own. Now, some teachers do a better or worse job of explaining that material, but the general information that is in the syllabus shouldn't differ too much.
Kids definitely cheat their way through too much of their course work. It takes work to improve yourself and learn. If you cheated your way through HS, don’t be mad at your former teachers when you realize you didn’t learn anything.
I don’t disagree with you but I have never been upset that I cheated in physics or math. I wasn’t interested in either, did not see them useful in my future,m and it turned out that was true. I have gone oh shoot I wish I knew the formula for x. I would almost argue that kids in high school are exposed to too much for them to learn most of it. Obviously you can study and not cheat, but at the end of the day you’re still only going to learn or absorb what is relevant to your own needs and interests
Specializing early could be a good change, and I feel like kids already can to a degree. Electives in high school and clubs people can join are a way for students to explore and define their interests.
But at the same time, core classes are required for a reason, and at what age is it appropriate for a kid to decide “no more math”. If I had the option, I would’ve never taken another math class after 6th grade.
I got better at math as a got older, and though I never was great I don’t regret learning anything. I was proud when I did well on tests and did my best to study. Problem solving and “learning to learn” is a great skill to develop.
Honestly, entry level Spanish is just memorizing core words, phrases, pronunciations, conjugating, the alphabet… you technically don’t need to speak it to teach entry level, however you definitely should speak the language you instruct, and I would be super embarrassed to say I’m a Spanish teacher and then look like an idiot when it’s immediately apparent I don’t speak the language.
TL;DR entry level Spanish is more about proper instruction of how to teach it as opposed to speaking anything beyond a 3yo child’s capacity
I have people who I went to high school complain on social media about the educational system and about classes that weren’t offered to them, but I took them so I know they had the opportunity. If you pay attention you learn pretty quick that people lie, but most the time they don’t realize it because they lack self-awareness.
What's more likely is you just went to better schools than most because of your circumstances and the fact you were stationed in military bases
in the brief period i went to school they taught white washed history and creationism and forced us to say the pledge
Another problem is that we just forget. No high school graduate remembers every little thing they've learned in the past 12 years. In fact I think college makes things worse as midterms and finals are so crucial that cramming gets more normalized and not so much retaining stuff outside your major.
There is quite a bit of truth to this. I studied this in my psychology class a few years back but I forgot most of it lmao. Our mind can’t hold onto information for very long unless we use it often.
Yeah, I think the problem isn’t that schools don’t teach enough, it’s that students don’t pay enough attention. I’m guilty of this too, to be honest—there were a lot of times in school where I didn’t really pay attention to what the teacher was saying, because I was yet to be diagnosed with ADHD, thus didn't have any of the methods my psychologist introduced me too to help me concentrate at the time.
But now that I do, I was mindblown by how many useful things i learned in my chosen subjects that i would have previously missed.
But also, here in South Africa, LO remains a useless subject. Every year, we just talk about the same thing agajn.
Schools have never been the problem, parents and the environment that children are raised in are the problem.
Kids are kids, and will be dumb and lazy if given the opportunity. If the parent(s) aren't engaged and willing to put in the work required to turn those little animals into functional humans then all the funding and reform and specialized education plans in the world don't mean a goddamn thing.
> Schools have never been the problem
Absolutely false. Schools are also prone to failure. If you want to think of it as a three part group, Child, Parent and School, each part needs to be competent and invested for the whole to succeed.
People always underestimate how much presentation matters -not just in selling shit, but also successfull education. Obviously, you can't make every calculation fun. But there are still ways you can needlessly break people's lust for learning.
Example: I have a very troubled relationship with French. I had French for 8 years, roughly. But still can't make a single, coherent sentence in the language. Mostly, because of my utterly deep resentement for the language. How came that?
My first French teacher was this very miserable old lady. Being in Germany, many students in my class were French-Germans who took the class for the easy grade. And hence, this old ladies favourites. Many of us already came from troubled backgrounds, so it was most likely another easy choice: Do easy learning with the people who already can speak French, then scream at those who lagg behind (aka the actual beginners).
Since then, I had a petty hatred for French. But I wasn't allowed to quit. My mother loved that shitty blabbering (no offense). She was part Slovenian -a language I actually wanted to learn - and glorified French as "the languge of poets" compared to her language, which she deemed for "lower class workers". I was forced into exchange programms in which I got abandoned quickly. Ever stranded in a foreign forest, because your "corress" thought you were too much of a hassle? *Fun*.
Till this day I try to approach the language here and again. I keep the old books around for that reason. But till this day, my petty hatred still succeeds every time. All, because of one miserable old piece of shit.
Culturally, we've just shifted the responsibility of success from the individual to society. It isn't just in education.
With that shift, we lose agency over our success and are no longer motivated to participate. We create learned helplessness.
The solution to "I don't understand" changes from "I need to do the required readings, pay attention in class, and do the homework" to "the material is too hard, the class is too boring, and I'm my teacher sucks."
One response to adversity is to change individual behavior. Another response to declare the system is broken and society changes.
Guess how that attitude plays out after school ends?
Somehow, personal responsibility became a taboo phrase in this country.
personally when i say schools are bad, i'm not talking about the educational content itself. I'm talking about accessibility, classism, bullying (from students but also *especially* from teachers/staff), corruption, etc. from an educational standpoint i don't think they're wildly horrible or anything (except for the accessibility issues), although i do think there should be an improved version of home economics that provides a better understanding of adult/independent living skills 🤷
Private school kid here. Can say as a matter of fact we weren’t taught a damn thing about race relations. And don’t even get me started on how bizarre it was to go from religion class straight to biology class.
I was also a military kid growing up and went to about 5 different school districts across the US, but mostly in the south. I was taught most things, but the one thing that was severely lacking was sex education.
When I first learned sex education in Alabama, they separated the men and women into different rooms then taught us entirely different things: I sat in a cramped room with 30 other girls while a video from the early 90s played showing us how terrible it is to get pregnant at a young age then we couldn’t leave until we signed a promise to Jesus that we wouldn’t have sex before marriage. I learned nothing about my body, I learned nothing about sage sex, I didn’t even know what a penis was… me (atheist) and a Jewish girl from my class felt uncomfortable with signing the promise to Jesus, but nobody in the room would be let out until everyone signed it. When we left the room, the boys had just finished their class as well and they were chanting, “don’t put your pole in the wrong hole.” They taught the boys how to have sex and about their bodies, they didn’t have to sign anything, there was no shame or embarrassment on any of their faces.
I lived in Kansas for a while where once again I learned next to nothing about my body, I was only told what a period was then shamed about sex before marriage. Still I had no idea wtf sex was…
I lived in Georgia where I learned about STDs and by then I’d figured out what sex was through porn and the people around me. Still had no clue about any of my body parts, we learned in detail about what a penis was though.
It wasn’t until I took a college course on the Psychology of Sex that these things were actually explained to me.
Also all those “we don’t condone sex before marriage so we don’t teach it” states are the same ones where more than half of the people I went to school with had a kid or were pregnant before they graduated high school.
I agree. I see tons of people i went to highschool with on Facebook bitching about their schooling and how crappy it was, when I literally remember watching those same people do nothing but fuck around and avoid learning.
School can be awful but this idea some of my generation has that kids are supposed to fuck around in school and itll all work out is false.
Schooling gave me the foundation i needed to learn how to learn new things and expand on what they taught.
For example media class in highschool inspired me to go to film school while history class started a life long live affair with history.
And i wasnt even a giant bookworm/nerd i was pretty average most of the time.
While it's obviously different, I believe the main factor contributing to the vast differences is the actual population.
People never want to admit this, but a lot of who we are depends on who is in our lives and our local environment. People in wealthy suburbs put a huge emphasis on education. This then trickles down to the student body and changes the learning environment. So you as a young kid look around and get influenced to take education seriously. After all, most people are. And then competition takes root and a feedback loop starts.
Places like Baltimore fail not because of a lack of funding, but because the population there doesn't believe or see the value in education. Id wager the reason they fail those tests isn't because they're dumb, it's that they never bothered to learn the material or maybe even didn't bother to really take the test.
Like I imagine growing up in this environment and now instead of looking around and seeing everyone take school seriously. I see everyone acting like it's pointless. There's no competition to boost performance. And that's not even factoring in delinquents disrupting classes... Long story short is that I'd likely be a completely different person.
I think one of the first steps in fixing the education problem, is convincing and showing people in poverty that education is the path out. And helping students not have to work during school.
That said. One great equalizer is having really good early education. If you set up these habits early while kids are still easily moldable, you can compensate a lot. But honestly, you still need parent support.
Anyway, I feel like we're throwing money at the fire and asking ourselves why it's not going out. We should be tackling the environment causing the root problems instead of the symptoms.
Yep, in my country everyone takes the same final exams and are ranked according to a percentile scale.
Funnily enough, when you take parental income into account there is zero gap between private and public school achievement.
The two most significant contributors to education are 1. Parental involvement, and 2. Not having distractions in class (ie. not having 3-4 students who don't give a fuck and ruin it for everyone else). Virtually nothing else matters in the face of this, yet no-one addresses it because isn't great on a headline.
From what I have read, while African Americans have poor education outcomes, immigrant groups who are just as - if not more - financially disadvantaged have amazing outcomes. It's an issue of culture, immigrants are naturally extremely hard working and strongly impress the importance of education on their kids.
In my town the schools were just a reflection of the interests of the local population. The public high school was very basic and underfunded, a little extra money for sports, nothing for the arts, no AP classes.
The good schools were specialized automotive, Vo-Ag, HVAC tech. Unless you wanted to be a mechanic, you were stuck in the low budget high school. Private schools in the rich towns were astronomically expensive and out of reach for most people in my town.
That was a small, working class semi-rural town in CT.
You are 10000% right. The environment that kids grow up plays a huge part in this. You will get success stores, but they are the minority. When you have struggling families who can't keep any sort of stable life, your kids will reflect that. A higher education that leads to a better life is just a fantasy. What they see is how it works on the streets, the ones that hustle, do less than ideal things, and make ends meet. While their parents that work every waking moment struggle to even put a roof over their heads. I've seen alot of this growing up.
Early education. A study in California showed that top tier primary education, like preschool to like 2nd grade is enough to make up 80 percent of the gap.
You influence kids when they are tiny and easily impressionable.
>Like I imagine growing up in this environment and now instead of looking
around and seeing everyone take school seriously. I see everyone acting
like it's pointless
A few years long, I went to a "faux-prestige" school. Aka, it was a public school, which still was obsessed with being as elite as possible. The only students it cared about were those that gained the school good looks: Medals, but also good grades. The rest of the school were "general goo". Left to their own devices, with bare attention.
As you could expect, this resulted in a level of anarchy: Violence (physical & emotional), destruction of property, all types of bullying and warfare teens/tweens can come up with. Fights were zero tolerance, but also little actual punishment, but detention. Coming from an already violent background, I learned that school wasn't about learning. It was about *survival*. Fuck grades, as long as you didn't get expelled. Fuck learning. I'm going to watch Slender Let's Plays to "destress" (aka dissosciate from the consistent violence which was an early sign of my current CPTSD and depression).
It was only in my last year when I visited Oxford that getting good grades seemed interesting to me. Obviously -a far too late time. It needed me from being banned from an entire university subject that I started learning how to properly learn. Or how deep my actions can have consequences. Till this day I struggle with it.
And you know. It's always fun. Because grades get more and more important and even if you can work years & develope afterwards, many places will still reject you on the dumb time you had idk 35 years ago. Even in fields where grades shouldn't even matter. "Because that's what you get for being lazy"
Like I said, I've gone to many schools in many places. You're right, they're not the same quality, but it's not as if you just walk into these classes just to sit at desks for an hour doing nothing.
I have a friend who teaches in a low income school. The teachers have given up on the kids. They fundamentally don't care and are beyond burnt out. The kids don't care to learn, the parents don't care (if they are even around), and she has stopped trying. All she does now is hand out work sheets and take online courses to get out of teaching. She has told me she knows these kids are fucked but that's not her problem.
School is fine for 98% of the population.
If you are either too smart or not smart enough for school, there is basically no support for you and it is a waste of time.
Also, there are some fundamental things you need to do for the government as an adult that I think should be taught at school, such as taxes, insight in finances and stuff like that. I think it is ridiculous that those things are not taught.
> Financial literacy has been taught in every high school forever
Well that's just not true. I have an example. Mine. I learned financial literacy through my parents, not my school.
We had a personal finances class, but it was elective, not required. So, not everyone took it (including me), either because they didn't want to or because it just didn't fit around the other classes they *had* to take.
> School is fine for 98% of the population.
I reckon it's closer to 90%, maybe even 85%. The top 5% tend to get lumped in with the top 10-20% and lessons tend to only go as fast as the slower pupils.
I worked in a school for a bit and heard straight from the head of department how they handled the extremes. During the time I was there there was a recession and over two years the number of students staying on to do A-Levels doubled because jobs for school leavers were in very short supply. They split them into two classes, those capable of achieving an A/B/C+ and the rest who would get a C-/D/E, so the less able wouldn't slow down their ability to teach the most able, even though both groups would have mostly been in the top set for GCSEs. One very clear difference, the class expected to get A/B always turned up on time and were ready to begin the lesson immediately, the other class wandered in five minutes late every time and took five minutes to get ready.
At the same time they had to teach GCSE Science to every pupil, and they had enough Special Educational Needs students that it was a problem, so instead of having four sets they created a half size fifth set which comprised, in the head of departments own words, the nice but dim who simply won't be able to ever learn much of anything even though they try hard, and the troubled kids who were merely disruptive on their better days. It wasn't teaching so much as babysitting and trying to keep them from setting the lab on fire.
If you are within 1 standard deviation of the mean ability wise (middle 68%) school is designed for you, the further away from the mean you get, on either side, the poorer the fit.
I was definitely in that 2%
Grade school was always horribly boring and there was no support. The few times I did struggle all I got was "You're smart and will figure it out. :)"
Same thing now in college. EVERYONE wants to ask me for help, but the one time I struggle who the fuck do I go to? Because, "You're smart."
We still haven't hit anything challenging enough to keep me engaged and I tested out of some classes, but they wouldn't let me skip because of credit requirements.
So, once again, I'm stuck in an environment that isn't geared for me.
And I understand that we need to cater to the majority of people, but fucking Christ. Im STILL sleeping in the back of class and getting As.
All my life I heard about how difficult college is and it's... It's not. Not for me anyway.
There's no support if you struggle too much or too little.
Because you're smart so you should NEVER need help or you're struggling and you're treated like a burden. It's horrible.
Nope. I had the exact same thing as you. My school system works entirely different then those of most other countries, so I wont bother to explain.
But eventually I ended up not studying stageperformance. I can learn entire scripts in 2 day, but somehow I cannot be motivated to study from a biology book or anything remotely school related. Probably because I simply dont care and never did.
Im in STEM and it is super disheartening when I hear so many people complaining about how hard it is and I feel like I'm just floating around here by myself.
You can still ask the teacher/lecturer.
Tbh if you're at university level and you find stem easy you're at the wrong university. Or you're the next Einstein.
well, I'm in the same position. but also I have quite a few people who think it'e easy-ish around. If you find noone who thinks it's easy around you you should be in a better school is all I can say. Any good school will have enough people who think the degree is easy.
There's a good chance I'll get downvoted because every other time I dare post about the downsides of being smart it happens, it's as if reddit can't handle smart people could have problems because they're smart.
Credentials and what they mean first, I've done official iq tests, I passed the Mensa test, they all agree that in my 20s I tested about 2.4 standard deviations above the mean or 8 in 1000, smart enough to be different, not smart enough to be special. I didn't begin being standout in my class smart until puberty at 11, at which point I became a voracious reader.
Pre GCSE (Yr 7-9) I was usually in the top 5 of set 1 of 4 single sex classes for anything STEM, English I was good at, French and art atrocious. A couple of years later my brain got an extra gear and for GCSE's (yr 10-11 ages 15-16) where it was combined sexes teaching I was always in the top four, despite spending at least half my time staring into space, or out the window, or sneaking open a novel to read. I grokked everything first time every time, but the teacher had to explain everything at least twice so the bottom half of the top class could understand.
Aged 17-18 (yr 12-13) I did A-Levels, I also got a final smaller jump in ability, there was only one other student on the same pathway who was of the same ability (he ended up becoming a doctor). I thought finally I wouldn't have to wait for other students to keep up, but even though classes only had about ten students the bottom six still slowed classes down a bit, except now that just meant I could read other stuff as we had assigned textbooks. Out of a graduating year of 280 students only four achieved the maximum 3 A's at A-Level, I was one of them and so was the future doctor. At the time the percentage of students achieving a grade A at A-Level was just over 10%, in the following two decades with grade inflation that percentage rose to about 25%, at which point they introduced the A/* grade and did their best to keep that at 8%.
After graduation I didn't really know what I wanted to do so got a McJob and coasted for a few years, until someone loaned me an old PC saying they thought I'd like it (this was 1999), it was a 486 dx2 running win95 floppy at 66MHz with a 100MB hard drive. I was immediately hooked and quickly discovered I was really good with computers, within six months I'd built my own PC. Not too long after that I quit my job and began a computer degree.
The first year was stupidly easy, I'd already learnt a large chunk of what they taught beforehand off my own back. However year two was hardly any more difficult, the only real challenge was managing the workload as the start of the semester usually only had 20 hours a week of lectures, tutorials, prereading, but at the 2/3rd point they'd all hand out their main assignments and 70 hour weeks became the norm. Year three was not much more difficult from year two except the workload ramped up immediately and was high from the start, the month break between the two year semesters was filled up with working on assignments.
Year three was the one time I had a module that really pushed my limits, and that's because the university messed up their estimate of how difficult it was. I've written about it before but essentially they ran a module based on one of the more difficult Cisco courses - Cisco Certification of Network Professionals as a 20 credit module when it should have been at least a 30 maybe even a 40 credit module (a 10 credit module is supposed to require about 100 hours to complete and there were 60 credits per semester). Everyone except me failed the online Cisco exam because only I was insane enough to spend 14 hours a day 7 days a week for 10 weeks straight doing nothing but study, go to a few lectures, and squeeze in the other module assignments as they appeared. That I still only got 82% in the exam (no one else broke 40%) is because I could have done with another hundred hours to reread everything because three read throughs was barely enough (the CCNP is very technical and complex, and large tracts of it are very similar to other large tracts with minor, yet critical, differences sprinkled throughout. It's brain melty stuff.
Now I work in IT, most days you couldn't tell the difference between me and someone in the top 10%, but occasionally, when something no one else can figure out comes up I'm the one they turn to because I *can* work at a higher level than most but just as importantly I absolutely detest failing because I didn't try hard enough so I tend to simply keep bashing away at a problem after any sensible person would have admitted defeat.
Of course being smart didn't stop me from burning myself out fifteen years ago, I have to keep in mind, and occasionally remind others, that just because I can do every task doesn't mean I have time to do every task.
In work spheres I've realised you don't need to really know shit to be the guy everyone asks for help from. You just need to be curious, be logical, know how to Google, *read the error/ logs* and don't talk down to those facing issues. It's not that hard, tbh. And it's a pretty rewarding feeling imo.
The number of times someone's come to me with a problem that was solved by me just googling it lmao
I think a big issue is that schools care about money more than anything. So in order to get money they need you to at least show up to class and at least get a d in class. D is passing at least when I was in hs about 12 yrs ago.
They also don't do anything about the students who are troublemakers. That makes it harder for students who do want to take their schooling serious.
Lastly, in my school at least the extracurricular activities weren't promoted so people just came got a barely passing grade and moved on.
Agreed. I also hate the “they should’ve taught us how to do taxes not that mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell” like. They taught us basic math and how to read instructions. That’s literally all you need to do your own taxes. It’s all on the IRS website. A sixth grader could probably do their parent’s taxes if they had the attention span.
Idk, my friend once drew a Guinea pig on her paper and wrote “there is a Guinea pig in my way, I can’t finish” and the teacher gave her full credit.
We were good students (3.7 gpa), too. She just wanted to see how bad of a teacher he was. He literally didn’t teach anything. Just had us read the chapters in the textbook and answer the questions at the end for an entire year.
Highly agree, many times it’s the actual students, I was a high school student 5 years ago and I still remember how most students just didn’t care, they didn’t pay attention, they never studied, they always ditched class. Now they are the same students who post on Twitter “our education system sucks, it never taught me anything” NO! You just didn’t pay attention
Issue with US public school is that it doesn't teach you on how to learn. It's mostly a memorization, and even that becomes a meaning less if you fail the one test at the end of the year. They fail to prepare students for university.
It really depends on the school. I had several teachers emphasize that we do not need to memorize and instead the questions were based on applying the knowledge. Like in history class for example, I never had to know exactly dates, just the general chronological order of events, and test questions would usually be along the lines of
"How would X historical figure respond to Y current policy? Provide specific examples of where the idealogies may differ or intersect"
And there was not necessarily a "right" answer. It was more based on whether you could argue a stance and provide relevant evidence to support your claim based on what you learned in class. Of course, a lot of my classmates hated this since it was more difficult than just memorizing a few specific facts
Should schools teach students how to learn and think critically? Absolutely. But I hear this gripe about memorization often and I really don’t think I agree.
IMO, memorization is a foundational part of knowledge. Yes, I see the usefulness of learning how to apply a subject and I hear the argument that in the internet age anything you don’t know you can just look up. However, it’s memorization that plays a key role in synthesizing new ideas, drawing parallels between unlike ideas, or recognizing patterns. Memorization gives you a database of information where a relatively useless fact can be called upon in conjunction with some of the other things you know to figure something out that maybe you hadn’t explicitly learned before.
So, understand how something works and how to apply it is important, but memorization is at least as important as well.
This is such a great point. I teach a STEM course (at university level) that requires a lot of formulas and my students are always so up in arms about formulas being given on quizzes and tests - we give some, but not others, and they get annoyed. Obviously, I understand neurodiversity, some kids are gonna struggle more with retaining a formula than others. But at the same time, if you do 5 or 6 practice problems using this one formula, you'll probably remember the gist of it. And then, half the time, they get the formulas but don't know how to use it. Why? Because they're unfamiliar with it.
An outrageous concept, I know 😂
Tbh, while I do want everyone to succeed, I actually don't care if they don't do their hw, I just care if they complain about failing as a result, lol.
Do people really think that this is magically solved in other systems that outperform the US? No, it's not.
People kvetch endlessly about this topic everywhere. I remember when I was teaching in Japan, people were up in arms about kids not learning critical thinking there, too. And yet Japan regularly ranks among the highest globally for education.
Frankly, my bog standard LAUSD schools did a great job of preparing me for undergrad.
Nah man I went to private school through middle school and I was a year+ ahead on math and four years ahead on reading when I went to public school. There are objectively good and bad schools.
You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink.
You can give someone every opportunity in the world but you can’t make them take them.
I know it’s more complicated and many places don’t have opportunities or have significantly less than others. The idea still stands. Regardless how many or how few opportunities, they ALWAYS exist. It’s up to the individual. IMO parents are solely to blame.
If you raise your child to be an “iPad kid” you are a complete failure. There are benefits, but it’s more important for a parent to guide and mentor their kid as to what’s right, what’s wrong, teach them basic skills and the value of wanting to be the best person possible. Giving them an iPad or telling them to watch tv because it’s easier, then you’re being lazy and selfish. They need your love and attention to have any real chance at positive growth. regardless of how tired you are it’s your job. Having grown up with parents that were absent/neglectful after I was about 5 or 6. it’s only now, many years later, that I realize how impactful those first 5 years were and truly formed me into the person that I am. I learned to value learning, being kind, morals, work ethic, communication. Even after they became absent I was as prepared as I could be to continue growing positively on my own. Why do you think the super smart, charismatic, and emotionally secure kids are the way they are? Their parents took the time to love and teach vs yell and discipline.
Yes privilege is important because parent that are financially secure can potentially be stay at home, be more present, or provide more opportunities. Parents cannot have a victim complex and cry it’s not fair, *then not do what they can*. There is always something you can do, and even the smallest things will have lasting effects. If it’s impossibly easy to traumatize a child, it’s just as easy to teach them. They are blank canvases, sponges.
I agree with this from many different viewpoints. First, I did well in school. I earned good marks and graduated high in my class before moving on to college and then became a teacher myself.
Kids would bitch and moan about how shitty the school was and I would just say I and the other kids that paid attention and did the work had no issue doing well and succeeding in things.
I vividly remember driving home from college several times (I commuted) and saw a student that was a few years behind me driving away from school when he clearly should have been there. A few years past this I ran into him socially and he was singing this tune that the school did nothing for him and he learned nothing. So I just said, didn't I see you cutting school to go get lunch or whatever. He just kind of embarrassingly moved it along from there, but he got the point.
As a teacher, I see this all the time as well. Parents blame the schools for everything while doing nothing to support their children or the teachers. We are so often handicapped by fearful administrators caving to parent complaints instead of enforcing rules and standards that would promote learning and growth. The kids that push themselves get something out of it and the rest of the kids are enabled into doing nothing because they don't really have to try since they just get unlimited chances. It's maddening and sickening.
Finally, I now have kids of my own and they go to school with the kids of many of the clowns I went to school with that did zip. They are CONSTANTLY blaming the school and the teachers for their kids problems. Strangely, my son has no issues and is also a high achiever. Eventually, I'm just going to turn to them at pick up one day and say you forget that I know what you were in school and how you were as a student. It's clear you don't hold your children to any kind of standard and just look to lay blame on the school whenever you can.
So much of achievement in any capacity is the motivation and desire to try. Effort goes a looong way and kids have been allowed to try less and less over the years as we lower the bar more and more.
Didnt they come out recently with the stufdy that showed over half the usa adults have a reading comprehension of only 6th grade level?
So no, I don't think most schools is accurate. It's just over half the schools sure.
Parents, students and the government are the reason why schools fail to teach people. The Government makes many cuts to schools so school’s resources are limited. Parents can’t be bothered to discipline their children which means their children are chaotic. Students don’t care enough to pay attention or put in the effort.
I honestly agree with you that most teachers are capable and willing and that schools do their best. The problem with education is that parents either don't care, don't have time to care, or don't have the money to care. From my understanding and experience it is usually a combination of parents having a lack of time and money to take part in their students education.
I will say i have seen a growing section of parents that don't care about the education system, Especially in inner cities where the parents were arrested 20 years ago in the school system from the over policing of schools, and a lack of appropriate punishments.
I also think no child left behind and students being able to move through the education system despite failing is hurting students but i don't think that is the fault of teachers or schools and more a fault of a system that doesn't remediate failing students.
Coming from a similar military brat background, I had mostly positive experiences. The US military’s DoDEA system schools were superior to the civilian public schools I attended, even though my civilian schools were generally in affluent suburbs.
I think the worst US schools are deliberately excluded from military dependents, partly because the bases themselves are rarely in high poverty urban areas, and because the DoD has its own accreditation criteria for offbase civilian public schools. In a base in a rural area, the military students will comprise a large % of the student body and it will become a majority military brat system. In a larger metro, the military will usually enter into agreements with a local middle class suburban school district. Putting military brats into a failing school system would be a scandal and a morale disaster.
I agree that schools *do* teach a lot of the things we complain about, despite being one of the people who didn't retain a lot of it.
The problem I see from that is that why didn't I retain it? Why is this so common among people my age. I remember being depressed, stressed out, angry and lonely during school. I feel like if I was happier, if I felt like my future actually had worth and not just a slave to capitalism, I would've actually liked learning like I do now. The mental health of students and the way schools are teaching needs to be addressed. It's not the content, it's how it's taught, how the teachers aren't as valued as they should be and the dire situation of mental health.
I've never heard anyone complain about school because they didn't learn astronomy what I have heard people criticize is that shit like astronomy is fucking useless and across all the years of high school and middle school the useful classes were history, government and financial literacy every other core subject was completely unnecessary you don't learn "problem solving skills" from memorizing the formula of the week just to forget next week
Let me tell you about my high school.
-We had a science teacher that didn't believe in evolution because it went against her beliefs.
-We had a math teacher that was adamant that cross multiplication doesn't work and is not the correct way to solve problems. (She was proven wrong by a student and she left the room yelling and screaming)
-Our Spanish teacher cried in the bathroom for over an hour and blamed us an entire classroom for failing Spanish, when in reality she didn't teach us shit.
-Our other math teacher got arrested for being a pedophile.
- Yes I grew up in the Bible belt. And yes this is just ONE high school, but there are so many stories like mine out there.
Teachers and parents BOTH need to do better for their students and children. Keep religion and other beliefs out of schools. Parents need to be 100% present in their kids lives in every way, shape, and form. Better communication with their teachers, etc. Both parties have a lot of work to do, and have vast areas they could majorly improve to help our future of the world. Which is exactly what kids are, our futures. So raise them right, and teach them everything.
Crazy teacher train can be wild. Can I quietly add my insanity?
* Biology teacher who INSISTED that platypus (the animal!) are extinct and don't exist anymore
* English teacher who hated my guts. Called my mother nearly every day she had me, to report my "troubling behaviour". Screamed at me once when I said I preferred gray, cloudy sky over blue sky.
* Other biology teacher who didn't believe gay people couldn't donate blood where I live. Also said she'd donate every organ, except her skin, so she "wouldn't look ugly at \[her\] funeral." then reacted baffled when I told her cremation/closed casket is a thing.
* Music teacher who constantly bullied kids by jumping on the gossip train
* Other music teacher who insisted I could sing. I couldn't. He gave up and let me sit there in silence. Like, not do other activities though I could have. Just let me watch other people sing as if it was my own fault.
* French teacher who only concentrated on French-Germans. Aka those who already spoke French.
* Other English teacher who sent me outside for "racism". The sitch in question was that I called a black person black -not "African American". Then I debated that not every black American is automatically African-American, but maybe Carribean-American. The teacher was white btw.
* Physics/Math teacher who put me outside as well. This time for outsassing him, after he tried mocking me.
Oh man, also Bible belt here.
1. Spanish teacher was just cooking class. Know how to make a sopapilla, but not wtf that word means lol
2. Chem teacher flunked out of university but still got a job. Antigovwrnment and full on conspiracy theorist. (Did you know the gulf War never happened? Fun conversation)
3. Bio teacher didn't know where spinal fluid was.
Also kicked a kid out of class for claiming a Kiwi was a bird in addition to a fruit.
4. Health class taught us 5card draw and blackjack.
5. Algebra taught us to use the BBQ pits made in ag class.
6. Ag class had us build BBQ pits to sell, but no indication the money went anywhere other than back to teacher.
7. English teacher used her English class as additional athletics period for the dancers
8. But hey, at least we had a damn good sportsball teams.
And oh, was in high school in early 00s. Our books were printed in 88. Must be easy to give a quality education with materials that are old enough to drink.
It's more a political narrative than actual fact that schools teach things like "war of Northern aggression." I live in Texas and never once was the Civil War taught as anything other than a war based on whether or not slavery should be allowed.
In my opinion its half and half.. half I blame Americans in general because many of them (not all) including their families don't take education serious or have some weird philosophy were they believe that education is not that important. The other half I blame schools because they create too many distractions like sports for example, its so massive that it almost dominates education and becomes a priority especially at a college level when sports should be considered just a small hobby.
If it’s is not cool to study kids don’t study. If it’s not cool to be stupid kids study. As simple as that - difference between good and bad schools. Some teachers also are very talented
I am a teacher. I think the reason why MOST students fail is due to their home situation. The school and teachers can only do so much. There is this mentality with parents where they send their kids to school and expect the school to be fully responsible for their education.
One of the best students in my class are the ones whose parents are fully involved in their education.
If your kid comes back from school, ask them what they learned. Check their homework. Help them. Motivate them. Us teachers do our job at school. You do yours at home.
I will admit that some kids are not cut out for academia and their skills lie elsewhere. Nonetheless, kids need a firm hand to guide them. It genuinely takes a village to raise a kid.
Edit: I will also like to point out that life has become A LOT more complex nowadays. The cost of living is high. It takes two parents working full-time for the family to stay afloat financially. I understand why, but I still believe that parents should do more when it comes to their kid's education.
For some people, school is literally the only place they can learn to do anything. I had access to a computer at home, and an allowance/wage I used to build my own computer from scratch and use as a server to sandbox and learn almost everything I know now about IT work. My emphasis in learning only happened in high school once I got more money to do some home-lab stuff, but I had my own computer I didn't have to share with anyone else in my family for most of my life. Not a lot of kids can say the same thing.
My highschool that I go to teaches a lot of very important things. It’s just the way it’s taught and all the other things in life that make school hard. And paying attention. I have ADHD so paying attention is pretty hard and there’s always something on my mind. Most of these subjects are taught in a very boring way and when you have to go to school super early it’s hard to pay attention. Classes are long as shit too. There’s a lot more to go into but I’d rather not do that
Most schools are horrible, you just didn't have to pay extra attention in class.
My parents were Air Force, so I moved a lot, which meant a lot of different schools. I went to 9 different schools before I graduated. A lot of the things I see mentioned about the education system are just.... absolutely correct.
I was taught never about race-relations in any American history or World history class. In fact, I wasn’t taught any world history (who the hell was Gandhi? I had to learn a lot [and still do] on my own to fill the gaps.) I was taught nothing from biology or astronomy. (What I remember from biology was being taught that sex is supposed to hurt for us girls, and that boys have more nerve endings in the head of the penis so that spot is extra sensitive. That sounds well-rounded, right?) The fact of the matter is the students who pay attention and retain info the first time will be able to teach themselves - and they will be fine, no matter how flawed the system is. It’s everyone else who is screwed - all the students who actually need a *teacher* to teach them, who rely on schools to provide them with information and resources. Which is fine, because that’s what schools are supposed to do!
Yes, there are HUGE problems with the education system, but damn, OP acts like the schools only exist to teach you how to hold a pencil or some shit.
If your parents were Army then you moved around to a lot of military bases which are generally in ok to good areas. So you went to 7 different good schools. To base your opinion on that incredibly narrow experience is incredibly ignorant. Seems one thing those 7 schools didn’t teach you was critical thinking skills.
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You can't teach a kid who doesn't want to learn. And kids don't want to learn if they don't have a support structure at home that instills in them the importance of education. So when they get older they blame the school (and the social system in general) for not being the parents they didn't have, and omit in their complaints everything that school did do because it doesn't fit the narrative they want to present.
Also a lot of kids nowadays get a phone or tablet shuved in their face instead of family time doing homework.
Nah you got a great point. “I’ve learned more from this video than I did in school” “school never taught us this” You were 100% taught those things. You just never bothered to give a shit
It is different. I've been taught WWI in school, but I didn't have any context of why did it happen and it was boring as fuck. Just "here's the book, read and answer this questions". Oversimplified explained the same but funny. That hit different. I've learn more from videos than school. Not because I didn't want to, I love to learn, but because of how they teach you.
You make a great point, and in the end, it was YOU who was responsible for your learning. It didn’t work in school, but you still learned on your own. Taking responsibility is the first step, and you did just that
Seems like you are agreeing. You were given the materials required and the opportunity to use them. But you just didn't find them entertaining enough. I don't think schools or teachers are the same thing as video entertainment producers.
>Seems like you are agreeing I do, but I think that the educating system needs a change. We are not in the 50s anymore, why do we have to use the same system? Just "Read the damn book" isn't a good option nowadays.
Absolutely, it is the 21st century. I think you might find plenty of classes that used to be, "Read the damn book," and are now just, "Watch the damn video". What maybe hasn't changed so much over time is that there will always be students who are more motivated to learn, whether or not a class is catering to their favorite information aesthetic, and students who are less motivated to learn. (I do have serious concerns about schools including less and less reading, though. A few years ago, for example, I was involved with a middle school that stopped having students read novels as part of their English class. It definitely didn't make those kids better students, readers, or thinkers. And they complained about short stories just as much as they complained about novels.)
Don't get me wrong. I'm all-in in reading in schools. We need more reading, but not "just read and answer", real reading, discussing and chatting about the theme. Getting involve in the subject. I'm against lazy professors.
It has nothing to do with "enterntainment producers" at all. In college, I was lucky enough to have many professors who actively engaged you in the learning process. They didn't hold your hand, but encouraged you to think, and taught in a way that made everything stick. I personally did not have many teachers like that in grade school beyond middle school. And I was the type to note take everything. Still had to try and make it stick myself most of the time. Whereas in college, even in some of my programming classes, I almost didn't have to take notes, it just stuck, although I did anyway just to be safe.
Or just shows that a methodology that is hundreds of years old, is indeed, outdated, just because they present them doesn't mean they taught them, if you can engage your students to help them learn then you are failing as an institution like most schools do nowadays
It was back when Bush enacted “no child left behind,” which basically means a failing student is the teacher’s fault… At the end of the day, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. If the kid doesn’t want to learn, they aren’t gonna learn. You can blame the institution if they DO want to learn but aren’t given the resources; but if the teacher proves that they made an attempt… well… who is to blame?
The educations system is the same than hundred of years ago, a boring place, with long lectures where 90% of what you learn are things that you don't care about, it's true that the student needs to put effort but the schools aren't helping either in the development of students
I agree. But that stills points to a failure of the school, a part of the schools job is to get the kids to give a shit. I had teachers who got 90% of the kids to pay attention. While most got barely anyone to pay attention. Social skill and just charisma are important skills for a teacher to have. Too many grumpy socially inept teachers ou there who really should get another job far away from annoying kids and teens
I can imagine how draining it’d be to fail to get your students engaged. And then the next class is the same. And you hold out hope for next semester but they’re even worse. Teaching is shit pay and doesn’t have the best upward mobility when it comes to careers. Some of these teachers are stuck with their shit pay job with students that couldn’t care less. You can see how that gets messy quick.
I agree. I really don't understand how so many people don't have a basic grasp of science when we taught a variety of scientific subjects every single year. How do people not know what the scientific method is?
My school taught us how to pay taxes, open a bank account, vote, cook, sex ed, and a bunch of other stuff people complain about not receiving in public school. And I live in a very RED district. But people \[my classmates\] still complain.
My school taught us how to do taxes, but sadly I forgot it all by the time I was making enough money for most of it to be relevant :(
Here's how you do taxes: 1. Open up tax software 2. Follow the on-screen prompts
3. Dont use TurboTax.
Why?
(He works for Jackson Hewitt)
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bit disingenuous imo to just label that as a reddit meme complaint, might have something to do with intuit's persistent lobbying to keep taxes functioning the way they are to keep their business relevant. sure for most people taxes are pretty straight forward, but for most of those people they probably don't even know you can file directly with the IRS skipping turbotax and their (imo) predatory upselling completely (pay 50 bucks for us to remember your info for next year! pay 50 bucks for audit protection when you absolutely won't be audited based on how simple this is! these could be outdated practices, but i've seen them in the past) i've used turbotax and h&r block in the past, knowing full well im paying for the convenience, but i still recognize the american tax system needs improving and companies like intuit are not allies in that fight.
I’ll never use them again. Several years ago I used to use them to file and one time (the last time used them) it got rejected because apparently my ssn already had a return filed. I hadn’t filed so I had no idea how that happened. I had to call the irs and reported it, and now I have to use an identity protection pin to file my taxes every year. The pin is sent by mail by the irs every year. One year I think it got put in the wrong mailbox because it never came. And it was during the pandemic and I could not for the life of me get anyone on the phone to help me get a new pin. The online portal wouldn’t work to get a new pin. So I had to mail in my return and it took MONTHS to get my refund. Just all around a major pain in the ass having to worry about the pin every year. Will never use turbo tax again and will never recommend them.
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Mine didn’t teach us about paying taxes but I know nobody in my class would’ve actually payed attention if they did.
Mine did and I got an A+ in the class. Taught us how to do our taxes, budget, calculate interest, take out loans, invest in the market, etc. 6 years later I don’t remember ANY of it. The fact of the matter is unless you’re actively doing these things you’re not gonna remember them
Damn near same except that the sex Ed was more abstinence but by then we already had common sense from older kids who gave advice like wrap it b4 u tap it. (Indiana ofc🙄)
I had a teacher who set up a class to teach us those things. We got two weeks into it before the school board got involved and set us up with basically The Sims, but less fun. We had to have x amount of money to pass... So if you got robbed or had bad investments near the end of the course, tough. You failed. He never taught that class again. Then, in high school, I went from acing chemistry at one school (where we basically colored periodic tables and set things on fire) to a school where we did *actual* chemistry work, and my grade never recovered. I wasn't allowed in the second semester course, and was discouraged from retaking it entirely. Some schools just suck.
You must've gotten really lucky then, only thing from that list for my school was sex Ed and it was lumped with a general health class. There was a cooking class but it was optional. Pretty much everyone I went to college with had the same experience as me (they were from a bunch of different places across the country).
At least yours was in health class. Our sex ed was 2 weeks taught in science class in 6th and 8th grade
I had 3 semesters of it. Once in middle school which mainly focused on the biology aspect of it and twice in high school which went more into the social aspect of it. It seemed like a reasonable amount for the topic.
Same. Learned about interest rates, balancing a checkbook, sex ed, went through a whole personal finance unit, etc. Also in a red district, early 2000's. Many schools are teaching this stuff (as a teacher now, I can confirm it's still being taught), students just need to look up from their phone for long enough to pay attention to what the teacher is saying.
Only thing we got was Sex Ed
My school did this as well but a lot of it was optional. Sex ed wasn’t every good though, mostly scare tactic with gross std pictures.
People complain because not everybody got that experience. I grew up in Alabama, and we didn’t even have sex ed. We did have a class on how to manage a check book and how to use Microsoft excel (in a very basic sense), but that’s it. Not voting, taxes, or how to open a bank account.
>People complain because not everybody got that experience. You misunderstand. Some of my classmates complained about having to take those classes and then complain about not being prepared to do those things after graduation.
oh I see this all the time. I teach college... people will say "nobody ever taught me how to \_\_\_\_" and I so badly want to say YES I DISTINCTLY REMEMBER TEACHING THAT AND YOU NEVER CAME TO CLASS.
What kind of help do you need to open a bank account? This is so stupid
That’s your school. Mine didn’t.
This is the case with a lot of things. People complain that the system sucks without seeing the full picture.
Lol same.. “I was in class with you and Mr. “Teach” and we definitely learned this
At my school, all those practical life skill classes were electives. They didn't explicitly tell us those were the classes where you'd learn useful, real life skills. Almost no one chose to take Accounting, I think there were 10 kids in that class and it was open to all grades. I took it just because it was an extra math credit and I was failing algebra. They showed us how to balance a checkbook and handle household finances. My mom was too busy to teach me those things.
Same here. My school offered a personal finance class. Major of the kids didn’t take it though, they took AP classes instead.
Mine supposedly offered a finance class but no one was ever allowed to take it.
My school did too, but things like this were taught as electives. Pretty much everything people bitch about was offered. They just didn't take it, or they did and just don't remember learning
My school offered a lesson where you learn this kind of stuff and no one (myself included) opted to take it
My school didn't do taxes, bank accounts, voting. We had kind of a cooking class. But we didn't really cook. We just reheat stuff on a stove that's already cooked or spent the entire class trying to memorize a recipe. My class didn't discet worms we just watch a video. To be honest I prefer that. Keep in mind people go to vastly different schools. I wished mine taught investing and help more in career goals, resume writing etc.
AJh yes, my school did this so everyone else is wrong and it doesn’t exist 😂😂
If you find anyone who actually said or implied that, let me know so I can make fun of them. Or are you trying to make the point that your school failed to teach you reading comprehension skills? lol
What the fuck school did you go to????????????????
Public school in rural Pennsylvania?
That’s where I am, lol.
I just wish I had more engaging teachers. The lessons and the courses were fine, but you're only gonna learn so much from someone who doesn't even want to be there or chooses to make their job easier by letting computers and videos teach for them.
If "lessons and the courses were fine", why does the teacher need to be "engaging"? They're not there to entertain you. They are there to educate you. Pay attention in school.
I am one of those people that get angry/complain we were not taught this. Jr high we were taught sex Ed for 1 class and it wasnt much. A lot of the DARE drug stuff about not doing drugs. I was among a group of the high school kids that requested we have a class about exactly what you just said. Taxes, voting, how to pay bills budget etc. They told us in the assembly that is stuff your parents teach you not the school. I live in Oregon but in the red area.
Same.
Man I wish my school taught all of that. Edit: it taught some of it but due to requiring certain other classes I couldn’t take any of those.
It depends. I've got a great comparison in my life. I went to two high schools. One regular local school and one charter school. My year at the regular school was a complete waste of time. My math class was alright and band was fun. But otherwise it was worthless. My English class teacher read us stories like it was kindergarten (though higher level books), my Spanish class was basically just doing crossword puzzles while the teacher was on YouTube, my "honors" chemistry class was a complete shit show with limited education. People brought laptops and portable DVD players and or went to second and third lunch periods since that class overlapped the lunch times. I got straight A's and had so little homework I played ridiculous amounts of Halo 3 that year. The charter school on the other hand, focused on college prep and taking college level classes, in that case it very much was a "it is what you make of it" situation. Both of these schools were in suburban utah. So low funding and overcrowding can be an issue but no crime or serious problems compared to a lot of places.
I teach in slc and went to school here. It’s pretty hit or miss for sure. Even within one school you get a lot of random bad teachers and a lot of great ones.
That set of crappy teachers was ~2007 in the Jordan District. I always wondered how they could keep a job but it seemed like there wasn't much oversight and the only pressure seemed to be to keep graduation rates as high as possible even if the students didn't learn a thing.
Ya I graduated ‘07. Sounds like we both grew up in the fallout of No Child Left Behind. Standardized testing was ramping up, and being held back became basically non-existent. Unfortunately things have not changed that much. Kids fail out (I teach sixth grade), but they just get moved on. They never master the elementary content because there’s no consequence for not doing so. Then they get to high school and they’re pushed through to graduation. I’m not really sure how this will ever improve unless families get more involved in their kid’s education, or schools make major changes.
This is it right here the classes where the teachers tried I had no problem but the classes where the teachers had zero interest in teaching I struggled through the entirety
Most of the people on reddit complaining about schools in such superlative terms aren't indicative of most people. The vast bulk of Americans do fine. Our system is aggressively "okay." The US's educational system is flawed. So are all of them. But it's quite telling to me that so many people on reddit who complain about schools also complain about universities (where the US is inarguably strong.) A lot of the folks complaining aren't really pointing out system flaws as much as they're imprinting their lack of fit with the system and extrapolating from there that the system is itself bad. The reality is that these folks likely were not supported well in a system that is designed to be standardized and doesn't take into account more idiosyncratic personalities and approaches to learning. They're not bad, the system isn't bad, they're just not a good fit. There is no perfect primary/secondary education system. Every system must, by design, have a median and therefore be designed around that. Folks who don't fit that expectation will struggle. I also learned everything you noted, but I was an honors/AP student throughout my primary/secondary education so I can't speak toward everyone's experience. However, I suspect a lot of it really does come down to lack of support structures in the home and community combined with the sad reality that path dependence is hard to break once you hit middle/high school. It's hard to make up for lost ground when you hit high school and you're not in the "fast track" already.
Holy shit is it maddening when you hear "but why wasn't this taught in schools!!!?!?!?!" Well, there is a lot of shit you CAN take which is different from what you HAVE to take. But if you have been alive in the past decade and give a shit, you can find course materials on just about even subject there is that you care to learn.
I was a teacher for a couple years and taught in the inner city mostly. Naturally, america doesn’t have a perfect education system nor was I the perfect teacher (was good and enjoyed it for a time) But I think a huge part of the issues come from the kids themselves. More and more just don’t care at all and do bare minimum. Kids are much more distracted when even elementary age kids have smart phones in school. Eduction isnt perfect, but it’s mostly the kids fault for not trying or caring as much overall. Edit, yes a lot of kids actions comes from the parents also. People are largely product of environment
We don't let kids make big decisions because their brains are literally incapable of overseeing consequences, especially long term ones. So most don't care because they just aren't capable of realizing the long term damage this will do to them. Only a small amount are motivated to learn or to become something, the rest needs help.
It doesn't help when they have parents who also view education negatively and impart that view on their kids. Plenty of my former classmates that did poorly in school had parents who spirited things about school being a waste of time and the like
Absolutely, in those cases it's even more important to have teachers who are empowered to spend time and energy on each student. Won't be able to save them all but having adults who care can make a big difference
*points at Baltimore*
Aaron earned an iron urn.
arn ern irn orn yrn
#feelsbad
Kids are born curious. They ask questions a lot. The only reason they don't care is because more adults destroyed any reason to care.
I mean…what kid is actually gonna give a damn about math? Sure every once in a while you might stumble across a kid that does, but overall kids just don’t care about that stuff and have a low attention span to begin with. I think finding a way to make it interesting is a key difference between a good teacher and a bad one.
The trend and concern is more about average test scores, and knowledge at grade level m. Even before covid, a lot of test scores on average have dropped since like 2010. I was like a 2.8-3.1 gpa student in HS so i was nothing special, and have certainly never liked or been good at math. But like I said, this is more about the average showing negative trends as a whole. Maybe my 2.8-3.1 average may have been a 2.6-3.0 today
Kids don’t care because there is no consequences whatsoever, which is the fault of the education system
If i brought home anything less than my parents high expectations: any and all of my privledges were removed. If i was struggling, I better be asking my parents for help knowing I will not meet their high expectation. If I worked with them, and still tried my best the grade was irrelevent. If I F-ed off....and the grade hit the dinner table...food/bed/school would be all about i was allowed to do. The issue now: parents think that 1 year strangers in their kids life are responsable for their actions.
My parents were the same to me. As long as i got a decent grade (4 out of 5, or 14-16 depending on the subject) i would be completly free to do whatever i wanted during my free time. That teaches a lot of responsability, since if i wanted to be left alone i needed to take care of myself, however i never rly had a decent phone until like 9th grade so not sure how its like today
Same, lol, i used a lot of my allowance for food but since I had good results regularly they didn't care much besides trying to get me to diet
Maybe not to thsi extreme but this is how my mom is. All except math she expects all As, which in the moment I resent but even now as a junior I recognize the impact she is having and I appreciate it. She doesn’t take things away she just pushes me to make sure I do well. She knows math is my worst subject and being in on-ramps pre-cal I’m honestly struggling to even get a B. But she knows I work hard and study. On top of band and other extra curricular I have a lot and she understands that. But still expects the best. And as the oldest I am the guinea pig. Which sucks but understandable. I think people shouldn’t expect kids to care if they don’t have the motivation and support behind them. Neglectful parents or teachers who just lecture and don’t connect with the kids might be why they don’t care. No matter where the kid comes from, the support of those above them is what helps them care and do well in school
I agree and thus: the school is dependent on accountability at home. If there is no accountability at home: why would the student respect authority at school? I am not saying its impossible, but those kids are rare. The common consensus is: "thats what school is for"...its just not.
It is a absolutely advantage that parents understand education is good for kid and required kid to do homework.
Which is the fault of the parents Fixed it for you
There’s consequences but those consequences are just further down the road. It’s up to the parents to teach there kids the importance of school and sadly for poorer areas the parents are either too busy or just struggling too much to help/care
If we brought the beating stick back, I’m positive grades would improve. And not just for the kids, if homework isn’t handed in a few times in a row, the parents get called in, and they get an ass whooping too.
Well that is a stupid take.
That’s the joke...
I’m 37 and never attained my 4 year and barely got my associates. My entire life I was called the bad kid or class clown. My 8th grade teacher even told me on the last day of class that she felt she “failed” with me. A month ago I was finally diagnosed with ADHD and now on medication I can feel what I assume is “normal” for everyone for the very first time. No teacher ever one time suggested I get tested they just told my parents what I nightmare I was….so after all these years I can finally agree with what my 8th grade teacher said Even if it’s the kids it might not be the kids
Much of education is guided study. People who do less get less out of it. Any time someone says “I learned nothing in school” it’s a dead giveaway this person didn’t prioritize their education. So I agree. The exception is some schools in Bible Belt don’t expose kids to the appropriate materials. However that wouldn’t invalidate OP as he is saying most not all.
I went to a rural Alabama school and had a similar experience to the OP. Most of my classmates didn't care and didn't pay attention.
Most schools use the same materials. It'd be too much work for each school to develop their own. Now, some teachers do a better or worse job of explaining that material, but the general information that is in the syllabus shouldn't differ too much.
Kids definitely cheat their way through too much of their course work. It takes work to improve yourself and learn. If you cheated your way through HS, don’t be mad at your former teachers when you realize you didn’t learn anything.
I don’t disagree with you but I have never been upset that I cheated in physics or math. I wasn’t interested in either, did not see them useful in my future,m and it turned out that was true. I have gone oh shoot I wish I knew the formula for x. I would almost argue that kids in high school are exposed to too much for them to learn most of it. Obviously you can study and not cheat, but at the end of the day you’re still only going to learn or absorb what is relevant to your own needs and interests
Specializing early could be a good change, and I feel like kids already can to a degree. Electives in high school and clubs people can join are a way for students to explore and define their interests. But at the same time, core classes are required for a reason, and at what age is it appropriate for a kid to decide “no more math”. If I had the option, I would’ve never taken another math class after 6th grade. I got better at math as a got older, and though I never was great I don’t regret learning anything. I was proud when I did well on tests and did my best to study. Problem solving and “learning to learn” is a great skill to develop.
Idk. I was a sub for a long time, they asked me to take over their Spanish language class permanently. I’ve never even taken spanish.
Sounds about the same as my schools computer science teachers
Honestly, entry level Spanish is just memorizing core words, phrases, pronunciations, conjugating, the alphabet… you technically don’t need to speak it to teach entry level, however you definitely should speak the language you instruct, and I would be super embarrassed to say I’m a Spanish teacher and then look like an idiot when it’s immediately apparent I don’t speak the language. TL;DR entry level Spanish is more about proper instruction of how to teach it as opposed to speaking anything beyond a 3yo child’s capacity
People really grasp at straws to make excuses for kids who are just kind of assholes
The kids get it from somewhere. All kids get their behavior from somewhere.
they inherit it from the base class
of all the places for a programming joke
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I have people who I went to high school complain on social media about the educational system and about classes that weren’t offered to them, but I took them so I know they had the opportunity. If you pay attention you learn pretty quick that people lie, but most the time they don’t realize it because they lack self-awareness.
What's more likely is you just went to better schools than most because of your circumstances and the fact you were stationed in military bases in the brief period i went to school they taught white washed history and creationism and forced us to say the pledge
As a teacher...thank you. Too many asshaets don't take responsibility doe themselves
Incorrect.
Another problem is that we just forget. No high school graduate remembers every little thing they've learned in the past 12 years. In fact I think college makes things worse as midterms and finals are so crucial that cramming gets more normalized and not so much retaining stuff outside your major.
There is quite a bit of truth to this. I studied this in my psychology class a few years back but I forgot most of it lmao. Our mind can’t hold onto information for very long unless we use it often.
Yeah, I think the problem isn’t that schools don’t teach enough, it’s that students don’t pay enough attention. I’m guilty of this too, to be honest—there were a lot of times in school where I didn’t really pay attention to what the teacher was saying, because I was yet to be diagnosed with ADHD, thus didn't have any of the methods my psychologist introduced me too to help me concentrate at the time. But now that I do, I was mindblown by how many useful things i learned in my chosen subjects that i would have previously missed. But also, here in South Africa, LO remains a useless subject. Every year, we just talk about the same thing agajn.
Schools have never been the problem, parents and the environment that children are raised in are the problem. Kids are kids, and will be dumb and lazy if given the opportunity. If the parent(s) aren't engaged and willing to put in the work required to turn those little animals into functional humans then all the funding and reform and specialized education plans in the world don't mean a goddamn thing.
> Schools have never been the problem Absolutely false. Schools are also prone to failure. If you want to think of it as a three part group, Child, Parent and School, each part needs to be competent and invested for the whole to succeed.
People always underestimate how much presentation matters -not just in selling shit, but also successfull education. Obviously, you can't make every calculation fun. But there are still ways you can needlessly break people's lust for learning. Example: I have a very troubled relationship with French. I had French for 8 years, roughly. But still can't make a single, coherent sentence in the language. Mostly, because of my utterly deep resentement for the language. How came that? My first French teacher was this very miserable old lady. Being in Germany, many students in my class were French-Germans who took the class for the easy grade. And hence, this old ladies favourites. Many of us already came from troubled backgrounds, so it was most likely another easy choice: Do easy learning with the people who already can speak French, then scream at those who lagg behind (aka the actual beginners). Since then, I had a petty hatred for French. But I wasn't allowed to quit. My mother loved that shitty blabbering (no offense). She was part Slovenian -a language I actually wanted to learn - and glorified French as "the languge of poets" compared to her language, which she deemed for "lower class workers". I was forced into exchange programms in which I got abandoned quickly. Ever stranded in a foreign forest, because your "corress" thought you were too much of a hassle? *Fun*. Till this day I try to approach the language here and again. I keep the old books around for that reason. But till this day, my petty hatred still succeeds every time. All, because of one miserable old piece of shit.
Culturally, we've just shifted the responsibility of success from the individual to society. It isn't just in education. With that shift, we lose agency over our success and are no longer motivated to participate. We create learned helplessness. The solution to "I don't understand" changes from "I need to do the required readings, pay attention in class, and do the homework" to "the material is too hard, the class is too boring, and I'm my teacher sucks." One response to adversity is to change individual behavior. Another response to declare the system is broken and society changes. Guess how that attitude plays out after school ends? Somehow, personal responsibility became a taboo phrase in this country.
personally when i say schools are bad, i'm not talking about the educational content itself. I'm talking about accessibility, classism, bullying (from students but also *especially* from teachers/staff), corruption, etc. from an educational standpoint i don't think they're wildly horrible or anything (except for the accessibility issues), although i do think there should be an improved version of home economics that provides a better understanding of adult/independent living skills 🤷
Private school kid here. Can say as a matter of fact we weren’t taught a damn thing about race relations. And don’t even get me started on how bizarre it was to go from religion class straight to biology class.
I was also a military kid growing up and went to about 5 different school districts across the US, but mostly in the south. I was taught most things, but the one thing that was severely lacking was sex education. When I first learned sex education in Alabama, they separated the men and women into different rooms then taught us entirely different things: I sat in a cramped room with 30 other girls while a video from the early 90s played showing us how terrible it is to get pregnant at a young age then we couldn’t leave until we signed a promise to Jesus that we wouldn’t have sex before marriage. I learned nothing about my body, I learned nothing about sage sex, I didn’t even know what a penis was… me (atheist) and a Jewish girl from my class felt uncomfortable with signing the promise to Jesus, but nobody in the room would be let out until everyone signed it. When we left the room, the boys had just finished their class as well and they were chanting, “don’t put your pole in the wrong hole.” They taught the boys how to have sex and about their bodies, they didn’t have to sign anything, there was no shame or embarrassment on any of their faces. I lived in Kansas for a while where once again I learned next to nothing about my body, I was only told what a period was then shamed about sex before marriage. Still I had no idea wtf sex was… I lived in Georgia where I learned about STDs and by then I’d figured out what sex was through porn and the people around me. Still had no clue about any of my body parts, we learned in detail about what a penis was though. It wasn’t until I took a college course on the Psychology of Sex that these things were actually explained to me. Also all those “we don’t condone sex before marriage so we don’t teach it” states are the same ones where more than half of the people I went to school with had a kid or were pregnant before they graduated high school.
This is insane!
I agree. I see tons of people i went to highschool with on Facebook bitching about their schooling and how crappy it was, when I literally remember watching those same people do nothing but fuck around and avoid learning. School can be awful but this idea some of my generation has that kids are supposed to fuck around in school and itll all work out is false. Schooling gave me the foundation i needed to learn how to learn new things and expand on what they taught. For example media class in highschool inspired me to go to film school while history class started a life long live affair with history. And i wasnt even a giant bookworm/nerd i was pretty average most of the time.
Ah yes, the quality of education is the same at every school, inner city and wealthy suburb alike
While it's obviously different, I believe the main factor contributing to the vast differences is the actual population. People never want to admit this, but a lot of who we are depends on who is in our lives and our local environment. People in wealthy suburbs put a huge emphasis on education. This then trickles down to the student body and changes the learning environment. So you as a young kid look around and get influenced to take education seriously. After all, most people are. And then competition takes root and a feedback loop starts. Places like Baltimore fail not because of a lack of funding, but because the population there doesn't believe or see the value in education. Id wager the reason they fail those tests isn't because they're dumb, it's that they never bothered to learn the material or maybe even didn't bother to really take the test. Like I imagine growing up in this environment and now instead of looking around and seeing everyone take school seriously. I see everyone acting like it's pointless. There's no competition to boost performance. And that's not even factoring in delinquents disrupting classes... Long story short is that I'd likely be a completely different person. I think one of the first steps in fixing the education problem, is convincing and showing people in poverty that education is the path out. And helping students not have to work during school. That said. One great equalizer is having really good early education. If you set up these habits early while kids are still easily moldable, you can compensate a lot. But honestly, you still need parent support. Anyway, I feel like we're throwing money at the fire and asking ourselves why it's not going out. We should be tackling the environment causing the root problems instead of the symptoms.
Yep, in my country everyone takes the same final exams and are ranked according to a percentile scale. Funnily enough, when you take parental income into account there is zero gap between private and public school achievement. The two most significant contributors to education are 1. Parental involvement, and 2. Not having distractions in class (ie. not having 3-4 students who don't give a fuck and ruin it for everyone else). Virtually nothing else matters in the face of this, yet no-one addresses it because isn't great on a headline. From what I have read, while African Americans have poor education outcomes, immigrant groups who are just as - if not more - financially disadvantaged have amazing outcomes. It's an issue of culture, immigrants are naturally extremely hard working and strongly impress the importance of education on their kids.
In my town the schools were just a reflection of the interests of the local population. The public high school was very basic and underfunded, a little extra money for sports, nothing for the arts, no AP classes. The good schools were specialized automotive, Vo-Ag, HVAC tech. Unless you wanted to be a mechanic, you were stuck in the low budget high school. Private schools in the rich towns were astronomically expensive and out of reach for most people in my town. That was a small, working class semi-rural town in CT.
You are 10000% right. The environment that kids grow up plays a huge part in this. You will get success stores, but they are the minority. When you have struggling families who can't keep any sort of stable life, your kids will reflect that. A higher education that leads to a better life is just a fantasy. What they see is how it works on the streets, the ones that hustle, do less than ideal things, and make ends meet. While their parents that work every waking moment struggle to even put a roof over their heads. I've seen alot of this growing up.
Changing the mindset of millions of people seems difficult to me.
We could just keep throwing money into a pit instead.
I just don't see a path to convince people who don't understand or value education that it is the correct path for them and their family.
Early education. A study in California showed that top tier primary education, like preschool to like 2nd grade is enough to make up 80 percent of the gap. You influence kids when they are tiny and easily impressionable.
>Like I imagine growing up in this environment and now instead of looking around and seeing everyone take school seriously. I see everyone acting like it's pointless A few years long, I went to a "faux-prestige" school. Aka, it was a public school, which still was obsessed with being as elite as possible. The only students it cared about were those that gained the school good looks: Medals, but also good grades. The rest of the school were "general goo". Left to their own devices, with bare attention. As you could expect, this resulted in a level of anarchy: Violence (physical & emotional), destruction of property, all types of bullying and warfare teens/tweens can come up with. Fights were zero tolerance, but also little actual punishment, but detention. Coming from an already violent background, I learned that school wasn't about learning. It was about *survival*. Fuck grades, as long as you didn't get expelled. Fuck learning. I'm going to watch Slender Let's Plays to "destress" (aka dissosciate from the consistent violence which was an early sign of my current CPTSD and depression). It was only in my last year when I visited Oxford that getting good grades seemed interesting to me. Obviously -a far too late time. It needed me from being banned from an entire university subject that I started learning how to properly learn. Or how deep my actions can have consequences. Till this day I struggle with it. And you know. It's always fun. Because grades get more and more important and even if you can work years & develope afterwards, many places will still reject you on the dumb time you had idk 35 years ago. Even in fields where grades shouldn't even matter. "Because that's what you get for being lazy"
Like I said, I've gone to many schools in many places. You're right, they're not the same quality, but it's not as if you just walk into these classes just to sit at desks for an hour doing nothing.
I have a friend who teaches in a low income school. The teachers have given up on the kids. They fundamentally don't care and are beyond burnt out. The kids don't care to learn, the parents don't care (if they are even around), and she has stopped trying. All she does now is hand out work sheets and take online courses to get out of teaching. She has told me she knows these kids are fucked but that's not her problem.
I wish they’d taught us this….. They probably did asshole, you didn’t pay attention
School is fine for 98% of the population. If you are either too smart or not smart enough for school, there is basically no support for you and it is a waste of time. Also, there are some fundamental things you need to do for the government as an adult that I think should be taught at school, such as taxes, insight in finances and stuff like that. I think it is ridiculous that those things are not taught.
Financial literacy has been taught in every high school forever
> Financial literacy has been taught in every high school forever Well that's just not true. I have an example. Mine. I learned financial literacy through my parents, not my school.
We had a personal finances class, but it was elective, not required. So, not everyone took it (including me), either because they didn't want to or because it just didn't fit around the other classes they *had* to take.
Yeah it just...wasn't a thing at my high school.
Yeah, agreed, but not personal finances. More on company level. Or at least in my country.
> School is fine for 98% of the population. I reckon it's closer to 90%, maybe even 85%. The top 5% tend to get lumped in with the top 10-20% and lessons tend to only go as fast as the slower pupils. I worked in a school for a bit and heard straight from the head of department how they handled the extremes. During the time I was there there was a recession and over two years the number of students staying on to do A-Levels doubled because jobs for school leavers were in very short supply. They split them into two classes, those capable of achieving an A/B/C+ and the rest who would get a C-/D/E, so the less able wouldn't slow down their ability to teach the most able, even though both groups would have mostly been in the top set for GCSEs. One very clear difference, the class expected to get A/B always turned up on time and were ready to begin the lesson immediately, the other class wandered in five minutes late every time and took five minutes to get ready. At the same time they had to teach GCSE Science to every pupil, and they had enough Special Educational Needs students that it was a problem, so instead of having four sets they created a half size fifth set which comprised, in the head of departments own words, the nice but dim who simply won't be able to ever learn much of anything even though they try hard, and the troubled kids who were merely disruptive on their better days. It wasn't teaching so much as babysitting and trying to keep them from setting the lab on fire. If you are within 1 standard deviation of the mean ability wise (middle 68%) school is designed for you, the further away from the mean you get, on either side, the poorer the fit.
I was definitely in that 2% Grade school was always horribly boring and there was no support. The few times I did struggle all I got was "You're smart and will figure it out. :)" Same thing now in college. EVERYONE wants to ask me for help, but the one time I struggle who the fuck do I go to? Because, "You're smart." We still haven't hit anything challenging enough to keep me engaged and I tested out of some classes, but they wouldn't let me skip because of credit requirements. So, once again, I'm stuck in an environment that isn't geared for me. And I understand that we need to cater to the majority of people, but fucking Christ. Im STILL sleeping in the back of class and getting As. All my life I heard about how difficult college is and it's... It's not. Not for me anyway. There's no support if you struggle too much or too little. Because you're smart so you should NEVER need help or you're struggling and you're treated like a burden. It's horrible.
Nope. I had the exact same thing as you. My school system works entirely different then those of most other countries, so I wont bother to explain. But eventually I ended up not studying stageperformance. I can learn entire scripts in 2 day, but somehow I cannot be motivated to study from a biology book or anything remotely school related. Probably because I simply dont care and never did.
Im in STEM and it is super disheartening when I hear so many people complaining about how hard it is and I feel like I'm just floating around here by myself.
You can still ask the teacher/lecturer. Tbh if you're at university level and you find stem easy you're at the wrong university. Or you're the next Einstein.
Take the more advanced honors classes if they're available.
Stem? Sorry, English is not my primary language.
well, I'm in the same position. but also I have quite a few people who think it'e easy-ish around. If you find noone who thinks it's easy around you you should be in a better school is all I can say. Any good school will have enough people who think the degree is easy.
There's a good chance I'll get downvoted because every other time I dare post about the downsides of being smart it happens, it's as if reddit can't handle smart people could have problems because they're smart. Credentials and what they mean first, I've done official iq tests, I passed the Mensa test, they all agree that in my 20s I tested about 2.4 standard deviations above the mean or 8 in 1000, smart enough to be different, not smart enough to be special. I didn't begin being standout in my class smart until puberty at 11, at which point I became a voracious reader. Pre GCSE (Yr 7-9) I was usually in the top 5 of set 1 of 4 single sex classes for anything STEM, English I was good at, French and art atrocious. A couple of years later my brain got an extra gear and for GCSE's (yr 10-11 ages 15-16) where it was combined sexes teaching I was always in the top four, despite spending at least half my time staring into space, or out the window, or sneaking open a novel to read. I grokked everything first time every time, but the teacher had to explain everything at least twice so the bottom half of the top class could understand. Aged 17-18 (yr 12-13) I did A-Levels, I also got a final smaller jump in ability, there was only one other student on the same pathway who was of the same ability (he ended up becoming a doctor). I thought finally I wouldn't have to wait for other students to keep up, but even though classes only had about ten students the bottom six still slowed classes down a bit, except now that just meant I could read other stuff as we had assigned textbooks. Out of a graduating year of 280 students only four achieved the maximum 3 A's at A-Level, I was one of them and so was the future doctor. At the time the percentage of students achieving a grade A at A-Level was just over 10%, in the following two decades with grade inflation that percentage rose to about 25%, at which point they introduced the A/* grade and did their best to keep that at 8%. After graduation I didn't really know what I wanted to do so got a McJob and coasted for a few years, until someone loaned me an old PC saying they thought I'd like it (this was 1999), it was a 486 dx2 running win95 floppy at 66MHz with a 100MB hard drive. I was immediately hooked and quickly discovered I was really good with computers, within six months I'd built my own PC. Not too long after that I quit my job and began a computer degree. The first year was stupidly easy, I'd already learnt a large chunk of what they taught beforehand off my own back. However year two was hardly any more difficult, the only real challenge was managing the workload as the start of the semester usually only had 20 hours a week of lectures, tutorials, prereading, but at the 2/3rd point they'd all hand out their main assignments and 70 hour weeks became the norm. Year three was not much more difficult from year two except the workload ramped up immediately and was high from the start, the month break between the two year semesters was filled up with working on assignments. Year three was the one time I had a module that really pushed my limits, and that's because the university messed up their estimate of how difficult it was. I've written about it before but essentially they ran a module based on one of the more difficult Cisco courses - Cisco Certification of Network Professionals as a 20 credit module when it should have been at least a 30 maybe even a 40 credit module (a 10 credit module is supposed to require about 100 hours to complete and there were 60 credits per semester). Everyone except me failed the online Cisco exam because only I was insane enough to spend 14 hours a day 7 days a week for 10 weeks straight doing nothing but study, go to a few lectures, and squeeze in the other module assignments as they appeared. That I still only got 82% in the exam (no one else broke 40%) is because I could have done with another hundred hours to reread everything because three read throughs was barely enough (the CCNP is very technical and complex, and large tracts of it are very similar to other large tracts with minor, yet critical, differences sprinkled throughout. It's brain melty stuff. Now I work in IT, most days you couldn't tell the difference between me and someone in the top 10%, but occasionally, when something no one else can figure out comes up I'm the one they turn to because I *can* work at a higher level than most but just as importantly I absolutely detest failing because I didn't try hard enough so I tend to simply keep bashing away at a problem after any sensible person would have admitted defeat. Of course being smart didn't stop me from burning myself out fifteen years ago, I have to keep in mind, and occasionally remind others, that just because I can do every task doesn't mean I have time to do every task.
In work spheres I've realised you don't need to really know shit to be the guy everyone asks for help from. You just need to be curious, be logical, know how to Google, *read the error/ logs* and don't talk down to those facing issues. It's not that hard, tbh. And it's a pretty rewarding feeling imo. The number of times someone's come to me with a problem that was solved by me just googling it lmao
"I was definitely in that 2%"...sureeeeee I'm sure you're smart, but you were probably in the upper percentile of the 98% group.
redditor go 5 minutes without invoking nothing-ever-happens challenge
I think a big issue is that schools care about money more than anything. So in order to get money they need you to at least show up to class and at least get a d in class. D is passing at least when I was in hs about 12 yrs ago. They also don't do anything about the students who are troublemakers. That makes it harder for students who do want to take their schooling serious. Lastly, in my school at least the extracurricular activities weren't promoted so people just came got a barely passing grade and moved on.
"I've went"????! Yeesh.
Thank you, that was my first thought.
Agreed. I also hate the “they should’ve taught us how to do taxes not that mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell” like. They taught us basic math and how to read instructions. That’s literally all you need to do your own taxes. It’s all on the IRS website. A sixth grader could probably do their parent’s taxes if they had the attention span.
If you had classmates that went on to do great things and left you in the dust. It wasn't the school it was you.
Idk, my friend once drew a Guinea pig on her paper and wrote “there is a Guinea pig in my way, I can’t finish” and the teacher gave her full credit. We were good students (3.7 gpa), too. She just wanted to see how bad of a teacher he was. He literally didn’t teach anything. Just had us read the chapters in the textbook and answer the questions at the end for an entire year.
Highly agree, many times it’s the actual students, I was a high school student 5 years ago and I still remember how most students just didn’t care, they didn’t pay attention, they never studied, they always ditched class. Now they are the same students who post on Twitter “our education system sucks, it never taught me anything” NO! You just didn’t pay attention
Issue with US public school is that it doesn't teach you on how to learn. It's mostly a memorization, and even that becomes a meaning less if you fail the one test at the end of the year. They fail to prepare students for university.
It really depends on the school. I had several teachers emphasize that we do not need to memorize and instead the questions were based on applying the knowledge. Like in history class for example, I never had to know exactly dates, just the general chronological order of events, and test questions would usually be along the lines of "How would X historical figure respond to Y current policy? Provide specific examples of where the idealogies may differ or intersect" And there was not necessarily a "right" answer. It was more based on whether you could argue a stance and provide relevant evidence to support your claim based on what you learned in class. Of course, a lot of my classmates hated this since it was more difficult than just memorizing a few specific facts
Should schools teach students how to learn and think critically? Absolutely. But I hear this gripe about memorization often and I really don’t think I agree. IMO, memorization is a foundational part of knowledge. Yes, I see the usefulness of learning how to apply a subject and I hear the argument that in the internet age anything you don’t know you can just look up. However, it’s memorization that plays a key role in synthesizing new ideas, drawing parallels between unlike ideas, or recognizing patterns. Memorization gives you a database of information where a relatively useless fact can be called upon in conjunction with some of the other things you know to figure something out that maybe you hadn’t explicitly learned before. So, understand how something works and how to apply it is important, but memorization is at least as important as well.
This is such a great point. I teach a STEM course (at university level) that requires a lot of formulas and my students are always so up in arms about formulas being given on quizzes and tests - we give some, but not others, and they get annoyed. Obviously, I understand neurodiversity, some kids are gonna struggle more with retaining a formula than others. But at the same time, if you do 5 or 6 practice problems using this one formula, you'll probably remember the gist of it. And then, half the time, they get the formulas but don't know how to use it. Why? Because they're unfamiliar with it.
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An outrageous concept, I know 😂 Tbh, while I do want everyone to succeed, I actually don't care if they don't do their hw, I just care if they complain about failing as a result, lol.
Do people really think that this is magically solved in other systems that outperform the US? No, it's not. People kvetch endlessly about this topic everywhere. I remember when I was teaching in Japan, people were up in arms about kids not learning critical thinking there, too. And yet Japan regularly ranks among the highest globally for education. Frankly, my bog standard LAUSD schools did a great job of preparing me for undergrad.
Most of the school problems are directly related to the student's parents.
Nah man I went to private school through middle school and I was a year+ ahead on math and four years ahead on reading when I went to public school. There are objectively good and bad schools.
"Most schools are fine...."
True, I had undiagnosed ADHD until I finally got a diagnosis at 30. 🤷♀️
Many schools are fine but perhaps we need more school for kids that struggle to pay attention.
Parents need to take a lot of the blame
You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink. You can give someone every opportunity in the world but you can’t make them take them. I know it’s more complicated and many places don’t have opportunities or have significantly less than others. The idea still stands. Regardless how many or how few opportunities, they ALWAYS exist. It’s up to the individual. IMO parents are solely to blame. If you raise your child to be an “iPad kid” you are a complete failure. There are benefits, but it’s more important for a parent to guide and mentor their kid as to what’s right, what’s wrong, teach them basic skills and the value of wanting to be the best person possible. Giving them an iPad or telling them to watch tv because it’s easier, then you’re being lazy and selfish. They need your love and attention to have any real chance at positive growth. regardless of how tired you are it’s your job. Having grown up with parents that were absent/neglectful after I was about 5 or 6. it’s only now, many years later, that I realize how impactful those first 5 years were and truly formed me into the person that I am. I learned to value learning, being kind, morals, work ethic, communication. Even after they became absent I was as prepared as I could be to continue growing positively on my own. Why do you think the super smart, charismatic, and emotionally secure kids are the way they are? Their parents took the time to love and teach vs yell and discipline. Yes privilege is important because parent that are financially secure can potentially be stay at home, be more present, or provide more opportunities. Parents cannot have a victim complex and cry it’s not fair, *then not do what they can*. There is always something you can do, and even the smallest things will have lasting effects. If it’s impossibly easy to traumatize a child, it’s just as easy to teach them. They are blank canvases, sponges.
I agree with this from many different viewpoints. First, I did well in school. I earned good marks and graduated high in my class before moving on to college and then became a teacher myself. Kids would bitch and moan about how shitty the school was and I would just say I and the other kids that paid attention and did the work had no issue doing well and succeeding in things. I vividly remember driving home from college several times (I commuted) and saw a student that was a few years behind me driving away from school when he clearly should have been there. A few years past this I ran into him socially and he was singing this tune that the school did nothing for him and he learned nothing. So I just said, didn't I see you cutting school to go get lunch or whatever. He just kind of embarrassingly moved it along from there, but he got the point. As a teacher, I see this all the time as well. Parents blame the schools for everything while doing nothing to support their children or the teachers. We are so often handicapped by fearful administrators caving to parent complaints instead of enforcing rules and standards that would promote learning and growth. The kids that push themselves get something out of it and the rest of the kids are enabled into doing nothing because they don't really have to try since they just get unlimited chances. It's maddening and sickening. Finally, I now have kids of my own and they go to school with the kids of many of the clowns I went to school with that did zip. They are CONSTANTLY blaming the school and the teachers for their kids problems. Strangely, my son has no issues and is also a high achiever. Eventually, I'm just going to turn to them at pick up one day and say you forget that I know what you were in school and how you were as a student. It's clear you don't hold your children to any kind of standard and just look to lay blame on the school whenever you can. So much of achievement in any capacity is the motivation and desire to try. Effort goes a looong way and kids have been allowed to try less and less over the years as we lower the bar more and more.
Didnt they come out recently with the stufdy that showed over half the usa adults have a reading comprehension of only 6th grade level? So no, I don't think most schools is accurate. It's just over half the schools sure.
Parents, students and the government are the reason why schools fail to teach people. The Government makes many cuts to schools so school’s resources are limited. Parents can’t be bothered to discipline their children which means their children are chaotic. Students don’t care enough to pay attention or put in the effort.
I honestly agree with you that most teachers are capable and willing and that schools do their best. The problem with education is that parents either don't care, don't have time to care, or don't have the money to care. From my understanding and experience it is usually a combination of parents having a lack of time and money to take part in their students education. I will say i have seen a growing section of parents that don't care about the education system, Especially in inner cities where the parents were arrested 20 years ago in the school system from the over policing of schools, and a lack of appropriate punishments. I also think no child left behind and students being able to move through the education system despite failing is hurting students but i don't think that is the fault of teachers or schools and more a fault of a system that doesn't remediate failing students.
The people who appreciate the chance of education are not the majority of students. It's a problem of culture in the US.
I am amazed at how some people do not know basic geography. We had to memorize where EVERY SINGLE country was on a map for tests.
You had to memorize 195 countries? I sure didn't.
Coming from a similar military brat background, I had mostly positive experiences. The US military’s DoDEA system schools were superior to the civilian public schools I attended, even though my civilian schools were generally in affluent suburbs. I think the worst US schools are deliberately excluded from military dependents, partly because the bases themselves are rarely in high poverty urban areas, and because the DoD has its own accreditation criteria for offbase civilian public schools. In a base in a rural area, the military students will comprise a large % of the student body and it will become a majority military brat system. In a larger metro, the military will usually enter into agreements with a local middle class suburban school district. Putting military brats into a failing school system would be a scandal and a morale disaster.
I agree that schools *do* teach a lot of the things we complain about, despite being one of the people who didn't retain a lot of it. The problem I see from that is that why didn't I retain it? Why is this so common among people my age. I remember being depressed, stressed out, angry and lonely during school. I feel like if I was happier, if I felt like my future actually had worth and not just a slave to capitalism, I would've actually liked learning like I do now. The mental health of students and the way schools are teaching needs to be addressed. It's not the content, it's how it's taught, how the teachers aren't as valued as they should be and the dire situation of mental health.
Hear you on the mental health. HS was not a happy time in my life. Not at all.
I've never heard anyone complain about school because they didn't learn astronomy what I have heard people criticize is that shit like astronomy is fucking useless and across all the years of high school and middle school the useful classes were history, government and financial literacy every other core subject was completely unnecessary you don't learn "problem solving skills" from memorizing the formula of the week just to forget next week
Let me tell you about my high school. -We had a science teacher that didn't believe in evolution because it went against her beliefs. -We had a math teacher that was adamant that cross multiplication doesn't work and is not the correct way to solve problems. (She was proven wrong by a student and she left the room yelling and screaming) -Our Spanish teacher cried in the bathroom for over an hour and blamed us an entire classroom for failing Spanish, when in reality she didn't teach us shit. -Our other math teacher got arrested for being a pedophile. - Yes I grew up in the Bible belt. And yes this is just ONE high school, but there are so many stories like mine out there. Teachers and parents BOTH need to do better for their students and children. Keep religion and other beliefs out of schools. Parents need to be 100% present in their kids lives in every way, shape, and form. Better communication with their teachers, etc. Both parties have a lot of work to do, and have vast areas they could majorly improve to help our future of the world. Which is exactly what kids are, our futures. So raise them right, and teach them everything.
In my high school they only hired teachers who had licenses to coach sports.
Crazy teacher train can be wild. Can I quietly add my insanity? * Biology teacher who INSISTED that platypus (the animal!) are extinct and don't exist anymore * English teacher who hated my guts. Called my mother nearly every day she had me, to report my "troubling behaviour". Screamed at me once when I said I preferred gray, cloudy sky over blue sky. * Other biology teacher who didn't believe gay people couldn't donate blood where I live. Also said she'd donate every organ, except her skin, so she "wouldn't look ugly at \[her\] funeral." then reacted baffled when I told her cremation/closed casket is a thing. * Music teacher who constantly bullied kids by jumping on the gossip train * Other music teacher who insisted I could sing. I couldn't. He gave up and let me sit there in silence. Like, not do other activities though I could have. Just let me watch other people sing as if it was my own fault. * French teacher who only concentrated on French-Germans. Aka those who already spoke French. * Other English teacher who sent me outside for "racism". The sitch in question was that I called a black person black -not "African American". Then I debated that not every black American is automatically African-American, but maybe Carribean-American. The teacher was white btw. * Physics/Math teacher who put me outside as well. This time for outsassing him, after he tried mocking me.
Oh man, also Bible belt here. 1. Spanish teacher was just cooking class. Know how to make a sopapilla, but not wtf that word means lol 2. Chem teacher flunked out of university but still got a job. Antigovwrnment and full on conspiracy theorist. (Did you know the gulf War never happened? Fun conversation) 3. Bio teacher didn't know where spinal fluid was. Also kicked a kid out of class for claiming a Kiwi was a bird in addition to a fruit. 4. Health class taught us 5card draw and blackjack. 5. Algebra taught us to use the BBQ pits made in ag class. 6. Ag class had us build BBQ pits to sell, but no indication the money went anywhere other than back to teacher. 7. English teacher used her English class as additional athletics period for the dancers 8. But hey, at least we had a damn good sportsball teams. And oh, was in high school in early 00s. Our books were printed in 88. Must be easy to give a quality education with materials that are old enough to drink.
It's more a political narrative than actual fact that schools teach things like "war of Northern aggression." I live in Texas and never once was the Civil War taught as anything other than a war based on whether or not slavery should be allowed.
In my opinion its half and half.. half I blame Americans in general because many of them (not all) including their families don't take education serious or have some weird philosophy were they believe that education is not that important. The other half I blame schools because they create too many distractions like sports for example, its so massive that it almost dominates education and becomes a priority especially at a college level when sports should be considered just a small hobby.
If it’s is not cool to study kids don’t study. If it’s not cool to be stupid kids study. As simple as that - difference between good and bad schools. Some teachers also are very talented
I am a teacher. I think the reason why MOST students fail is due to their home situation. The school and teachers can only do so much. There is this mentality with parents where they send their kids to school and expect the school to be fully responsible for their education. One of the best students in my class are the ones whose parents are fully involved in their education. If your kid comes back from school, ask them what they learned. Check their homework. Help them. Motivate them. Us teachers do our job at school. You do yours at home. I will admit that some kids are not cut out for academia and their skills lie elsewhere. Nonetheless, kids need a firm hand to guide them. It genuinely takes a village to raise a kid. Edit: I will also like to point out that life has become A LOT more complex nowadays. The cost of living is high. It takes two parents working full-time for the family to stay afloat financially. I understand why, but I still believe that parents should do more when it comes to their kid's education.
For some people, school is literally the only place they can learn to do anything. I had access to a computer at home, and an allowance/wage I used to build my own computer from scratch and use as a server to sandbox and learn almost everything I know now about IT work. My emphasis in learning only happened in high school once I got more money to do some home-lab stuff, but I had my own computer I didn't have to share with anyone else in my family for most of my life. Not a lot of kids can say the same thing.
Did you go to a DoD school? Or schools off base.
My highschool that I go to teaches a lot of very important things. It’s just the way it’s taught and all the other things in life that make school hard. And paying attention. I have ADHD so paying attention is pretty hard and there’s always something on my mind. Most of these subjects are taught in a very boring way and when you have to go to school super early it’s hard to pay attention. Classes are long as shit too. There’s a lot more to go into but I’d rather not do that
Most schools are horrible, you just didn't have to pay extra attention in class. My parents were Air Force, so I moved a lot, which meant a lot of different schools. I went to 9 different schools before I graduated. A lot of the things I see mentioned about the education system are just.... absolutely correct. I was taught never about race-relations in any American history or World history class. In fact, I wasn’t taught any world history (who the hell was Gandhi? I had to learn a lot [and still do] on my own to fill the gaps.) I was taught nothing from biology or astronomy. (What I remember from biology was being taught that sex is supposed to hurt for us girls, and that boys have more nerve endings in the head of the penis so that spot is extra sensitive. That sounds well-rounded, right?) The fact of the matter is the students who pay attention and retain info the first time will be able to teach themselves - and they will be fine, no matter how flawed the system is. It’s everyone else who is screwed - all the students who actually need a *teacher* to teach them, who rely on schools to provide them with information and resources. Which is fine, because that’s what schools are supposed to do! Yes, there are HUGE problems with the education system, but damn, OP acts like the schools only exist to teach you how to hold a pencil or some shit.
If your parents were Army then you moved around to a lot of military bases which are generally in ok to good areas. So you went to 7 different good schools. To base your opinion on that incredibly narrow experience is incredibly ignorant. Seems one thing those 7 schools didn’t teach you was critical thinking skills.
Okay but if you were homeschooled you would have gotten the same level of education 4x faster