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Bill Gates Proclaims US High Schools Obsolete
bryan sent us a story about Bill Gates' take on US High Schools. He says
'America's high schools are obsolete. By obsolete, I don't just mean that they're broken, flawed or underfunded, though a case could be made for every one of those points. By obsolete, I mean our high schools even when they're working as designed cannot teach all our students what they need to know today.'"
CmdrTaco went to high school and he still can't even edit Slashdot properly.
Hey for once Bill Gates and I actually agree. HS was fun and I did enjoy a select few classes but for the most part everything else was a waste of time generally designed to prepare students for the years ahead. Not a bad idea in theory, but for those who are already prepared and are actually interested in learning...HS life can be somewhat lacking.
In my opinion college was even worse. Here I am paying thousands of dollars per semester for the same "I'm a kid, beat on me until I can handle Real Life." stuff. I loaded up 18 credits every semester like an eager naive person only to discover 3 (1 class) of those 18 had any relevance whatsoever to my area of specialization. Once in a while another class would act as a supporting class, but more often than not the rest was just filler designed to keep me busy for a few hours every day. The result? After about 3 years of this I was sick of it...I could barely stomach a fourth. I was tired of seeing my money--earned by working--being spent on some idiot teaching an Economics class who readily admit his sole purpose at that university was to make our lives as difficult as possible and possibly actually teach something relevant to the course.
Looking back, I still feel it was a total waste of money. It made my life so miserable I didn't even have time to stop and enjoy the "college life" that many say makes it all worthwhile. It's my money, I should be able to spend it as I please...not to have someone tell me that I have to waste it on filler courses rather than something of actual use and interest to me.
In the end? I discovered I enjoyed the life of employment much more. All those years of having some teacher/professor telling me how hard life is and how clueless and naive all us students were. Truth be told, I learned most of what I use in the workplace either on the job or on my own. Not to mention I was no longer paying my boss to allow me the privilege to work--I was finally being paid to be there!
This critique doesnt happen to co-incide with the release of "Microsoft US high school 2005" does it?
As a recent former High School student, I concur. They spent so much time trying to prepare us to take a test, they didn't stop to think that maybe they should prepare us in general, and design a test that would -- test -- us. We seriously had a class everyday that was nothing but practice testing for the FCAT.
Teaching to educate the students became a lesser priority. Teaching what we needed to pass a test so the school could get a good grade, that is what happened -- and still occuring. Out of the day, at least two hours of it is being spent teaching students nothing but what is on a test. Every single day.
I feel like complaining to someone.
Proceed with Format (Y/N)? Y
That's just "broken". Something is obsolete when it is superseded by a superior alternative. I'd be very happy if current high schools were obsolete- it would mean the kids had somewhere else to go that would give them a better education. Sadly this is not the case, so "obsolete" is incorrect.
This is largely a group of Fabians out to preserve the social hierarchy. It's members include everyone from Steve Case to Jack Valenti. Anyway, I just thought you should know who that even if it is Bill advocating the ideas this time, he is really just the spokeman for a larger group.
"The most blunt assessment came from Microsoft chief Bill Gates, who has put more than $700 million into reducing the size of high school classes through the foundation formed by him and his wife, Melinda. He said high schools must be redesigned to prepare every student for college"
Hmmm. So Bill, what of the say twenty percent of the population who just aren't going to be able to make the grades to get into college? The left hand side of the bell curve so to speak.
Used to be that those folks would train for a trade or even go to work for a manufacturer or similar employer where loyalty and hard work would make up for a lesser intelligence.
Whoops - those jobs have been shipped offshore.
What of the twenty percent of the population who might have good enough grades to get into a college, but who can't afford the tuition or the loans? Sure some folks can work two jobs and attend college full time, but that's not possible for every student in the country.
Bill, before offering half baked solutions to the "education problem" try to think of one that takes all of these people into consideration.
Three Squirrels
HS education in US is a JOKE!
Yup, it seems instead of doing things like teaching kids material hard or not it's more about being reassuring and making the kiddies feel good. Don't like math, makes you feel stupid? We'll make it easier.
Then on top of that teachers have had their teeth extracted in the class room. Parents don't care and when you say their children are basically disruptive idiots (said better than that of course) the teacher gets called out because little Jonny's an angel. I have a friend who teached in the inner city for years, and she said it was terrible because you couldn't do a thing to stop the kids from doing what ever they wanted; even in gradeschool. Call their parents, you get met with disinterest or screaming, spank the kid at school and you get fired/sued.
To me a lot of the school's problems are much deeper than just the material (which is dumbed down to the nth degree, heck, I read a 2nd grade primer from the 1800s once and there questions I had a hard time answering in it) being taught, I think there's a problem in society. But don't tell parents or kids they have a problem, you might make them feel bad...
1. The US high school system is so obsessed with its democratic origins that it still strives to treat and educate every child the same. This doesn't work. Essentially, we have a system that imposes a K-12 college preperatory mindset on every student that comes through. By this, I mean that we aim to put every kid through Chemistry, Physics, four years of English, Pre-Calculus, etc. Contrast this approach with many foreign systems that break kids off at the 9th or 10th grade equivalent into the kids who want to be in hard-core academics and the kids who need real vocational training. Don't knock vocational training, either; a good auto mechanic or plumber makes more than I do teaching those "academic classes." This "all equal" mindset has placed us in a position where school districts and communities have essentially had to rig up an equivalent to the foreign system; honors and AP/IB classes that actually challenge and teach the "academic minded" ones, and regulars classes that are lax enough to allow the kids through who ordinarily wouldn't ever sit in a chemistry class.
Please don't take my comments up there to imply that everyone should be hard focused on only the courses needed for what they plan to "do." As an English teacher who pushed all the way through Calculus, non-trivial Biology, and some CS courses at the Uni, I appreciate the idea of learning for learning's sake. I also recognize that there are huge amounts of people out there who don't.
2) We've gotten "dumber." This is where the root of most of our problems begin. Go look at an application for any university. They have a section where they state their minimum SAT requirements for admission. For a University that has set their minimum requirement at 1100 (for example), there will be a fine print that reads, "or 1030 for tests prior to 1994." Why? Well, the ideal for the SAT is that the average score is 1000. Unfortunately, around the late 80's and early 90's, the scores started declining more than a normal deviation could account for. The average was closer to 920. So the SAT was made "easier." Somewhere between the 70's and the 90's, we all collectively lost an intelligence level that our prior generation had.
I see it all day long in the school system. Homework is a lesser priority; I can't even assign an out-of-class reading, because it won't get done and my lesson the next day will be worthless. Academic journals targetted at teachers have articles on how to create alternatives to homework that will actually get done, which is something I highly doubt they broached in the 70's. Standards have to be lowered; if I were to fail the number of kids who really need to fail, I'd be out of a job. And don't even get me started on the priority athletics and similar extracurriculars take over academics, or the paltry sum (and respect) given to educators in this country.
Take your normal standardized test complaint. Yes, they take away from class time. Yes, I use learning time to prep for these things. But they aren't really all that difficult, and it's hard to argue against any claim that they cover things you should already have discussed in the classroom (in most cases). I have no doubt that a 1970's era classroom, poor or no, could tackle an English or Math standardized exam with less preparation than an '05 classroom would need, and still score better. We really are "dumber" than the prior generation (I say "we" here because I am part of this group).
There are hundreds of theories on why this is the case. I'm not going to pretend that I can explain any of them. Parental involvement is lower with the severe proliferation of two-income households. The burgeoning American obsession with consumer debt both drives the previous issue and misleads students into thinking that a $25K/year job in their late 20's will allow them to have an Escalade and a nice house. The disrespect of education and school in general is an ingrained part of our culture. We are one of the few school systems worlwide t
I guess that depends on what you think the goal of an education system should be. Is it about more than turning everyone into a productive worker? I think so.
I live in the UK, so my education was fairly general in secondary school (aged 11-16), more specialised in the sixth form (16-18) and then entirely specialised at university (18-21 in my case).
During the secondary stage, I studied not only the fields of maths and science in which I'd later choose to specialise, but also history, English, modern languages, Latin (actually one of the most useful classes I took, notwithstanding the subject matter being "a little outdated"), art, craft, music, and more. This gave me a level of general background knowledge about the world, and an appreciation of what my peers were studying later on. I've found speaking several languages to at least a basic conversational level useful on any number of occasions since, so it's hardly redundant knowledge, either.
During the sixth form, I started focussing on maths, physics and chemistry. This level is the hardest to categorise in the UK; much of the material is beyond what an everyday person would need to know of, say, maths, and the focus is more on preparation for studying a related degree than anything else. It's interesting in its own right as well, of course, even if I never use the knowledge of chemistry I gained there in a job.
Once I got to university, I specialised in maths, and later CS. This was obviously very academic, yet is directly relevant to my chosen profession. Even then, though, it's important to separate this academic training from vocational training. A university course shouldn't be teaching specific tools and today's buzzword techniques, it should be teaching (a) the general knowledge needed to appreciate those tools and techniques, and (b) how to study independently, so you can learn the details of specific areas by yourself later.
It's often said around here that a good programmer can learn a new programming language in a few days, and there's at least an element of truth in that. More importantly, in ten years' time, someone with a good background in the theory and the drive and ability to study independently will still be keeping up with new tools and new buzzwords, while the Java McDegree holders will be wondering what this new language is for, and waiting to be spoon fed over-priced training materials by the commercial entities behind it.
Given what the IT industry has been doing to CS courses in recent years, essentially reducing them to vocational qualifications in buzzword subjects, they are clearly interested in propagating the use of newbie programmers at cheap rates for a few years, then trading them in (firing them) when they get too expense and hiring more cheap newbies instead. From a business perspective, this makes for a pretty good "software construction line", but you're losing the essential higher level of quality, both by neglecting proper training and by giving up your more experienced assets. Ultimately, that sort of behaviour leads to inefficient development processes (one skilled and experienced developer can easily be more productive than three newbies who each cost a quarter as much) and loss of quality (witness the declining performance and security of many modern software projects for obvious examples).
So thanks Bill, but I'd rather you didn't try to convert the rest of secondary education into vocational training from age 10. The education system is there to develop people as human beings and cultivate their skills and interests. There will be plenty of time to learn job skills on the job; save the education system for more important things.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.