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What's the Problem With US High Schools?
GrumpySimon asks: "ABC News is reporting that High School kids are dropping out of high school in 'epidemic proportions', with an estimated 2,500 kids quitting daily. What's wrong with our school system that so many kids prefer working 40 hours a week instead? How can this be fixed?"
It seems to be an America truism that "things get better after High School," and it wouldn't be surprising if most of you readers feel the same way. However, why does it have to be this way? What's the big problem with American High Schools where more and more children are feeling that it's better to risk the "real world" than to continue on with their education? Of course, another question that should be asked is: Is High School really the problem, or is it America's Educational system as a whole?
It seems to be an America truism that "things get better after High School," and it wouldn't be surprising if most of you readers feel the same way. However, why does it have to be this way?
I think a lot of the reasons things "get better after high school" is because of the age you are when in high school. I didn't know who I was, took people's opinions of me too seriously, and couldn't get the girl I liked to notice me. I was definitely excited to get out of high school because of how glorious college was made out to be. I didn't read the article, I'm sure it got involved to level at which i just wouldn't care, I assume that the kids they're talking about dropping out aren't then enrolling in college but it just seems like a lot of those feelings stem from puberty and the social environment created by forcing kids of those ages to interact.
I think the issue of people dropping out in this day and age is more of a problem due to the expectations of what minimum education a person is expected to have. Nowadays the minimum might be approaching a college education while in 1972 the minimum might have been what a 16 year old might have gotten. If you blatantly assume that what you had at 16 in 1972 is equal to a college education today then even if the dropouts are less the impact and lack of education is more.
I was going to say -- the use of words like "epidemic" without a shred of context tells you at least as much about the problems with education in America as the free-floating numbers do. I'm not even going to get into the ironies of "Of course, another question that should be asked is: Is High School really the problem, or is it America's Educational system as a whole?"
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
That's the problem. It really isn't about education.
In high school you are surrounded by people who either a) don't give a shit, or b) are spineless fools doing whatever necessity to get marks. The a)'s should be allowed (if not encouraged) to leave, and the b)'s are a product of the education system gone wrong. In their eyes, something is right if it is marked right, and vice versa. The actual truth is irrelevant. Neither the a)'s nor the b)'s care about learning.
High school is more about social control than anything else. "Do as we say or you have no future," is what is told, and there's sadly too much truth to it. The people who simply want to learn away from the fast majority of idiots are pretty much SOL.
Do you want to know why kids are dropping out? It's because they realize that school isn't about learning - it's about teaching to a test that's taken state-wide. These sorts of tests encourage teaching certain areas very hard, while completely neglecting other areas. Just because it isn't on your state assessments doesn't mean it isn't important. Really, these tests don't test the ability to think spatially, don't test anything above the most meager and basic algebra, and they sure as hell don't measure a student's ability to think for themself. It's ignorant to think that, by teaching to a very narrow test, we are preparing students for the real world.
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
I definitely agree here. A high school education certainly doesn't provide the opportunities that it used to (nor does a BA or BS for that matter). If we are to get in a discussion around the education levels of Americans as a whole, I'd probably agree with the use of the word "epidemic" in describing our average level of education ... particularly if measured by the average person's knowledge and competence rather than degree earned.
Whenever I have traveled to foreign countries, I always find it amazing that the average foreigner seems to know far more about American culture, government, and history than the average American. This isn't just a reflection of our schools, but of our society and families as well. I also believe the problem has gotten so bad that our leadership in industry and technology cannot possibly be maintained unless we make a large-scale concerted effort to fix education, not just concentrate on statistics such as dropout rates.
Huh? Don't mind me, I'm just the new guy.
Unfortunately there is nothing particularly "current" about that zeitgeist.
It is isn't the schools, it's American culture. The schools reflect the anti-intellectualism of the culture. Our schools suck because parents and communities are willing to blame everything but their own disinterest in education, and therefore do nothing to fix the problem.
Let me start this with a thesis statement: I go to school to learn, not to do work.
The main problem I see these days with the US educational system is the fact that students are graded upon how much work they do, rather than how much they know, or how much effort they put forth to learn.
All too often I've come close to failing in my classes because I didn't do some useless assignment, and yet, still I have a perfect grasp of the concepts that were "taught". That's not right. Theoretically, if I failed, I shouldn't know the material, right? Wrong.
Also, assignments should only be given as necessary. I have one particular math teacher who, even after every person in the class has shown that they get the material, still gives out work on it. If they've shown they can do it, then what's the point in giving out more work, and wasting time that could be spent on teaching the next concept?
Now let me move on to incompetent teachers. Any teacher who needs to rely on a book as a primary source of teaching, need not be teaching. If you can't teach the concept yourself, with minimal help from a book, then you need to go back and learn it some more yourself.
All your reading ability are belong to me.
Some previous replies have captured many of my thoughts, but I will state them anyway. I believe that the problem is much bigger than the education system itself. It has already been mentioned that parents now expect the teachers to "parent" for them, and this is very close to the truth. I have several family members who are middle and high school teachers and they will tell you that many parents either side with the child in disciplinary situations or else they actually *gasp* ask what they are supposed to do to make Johnny or Jill do homework. (Maybe they should have thought of the answer to this one when making the decision to have children.) The main problem carries well beyond the education system - in my opinion. I have come to the conclusion that the idea of "self esteem" that stemmed from the '90s is the cause of the downward spiral. Real world example: My cousin - who is a middle school math teacher - told a student to stop disrupting other students in class. The student continued disrupting others a few minutes after being told to behave, so my cousin sternly said, ", if you do not stop disrupting the other members of the class, I'm going to have to send you to the office." Later in the day, my cousin was approached by the principal who said, "We've got a problem, showed up at my office and said that he was upset and uncomfortable with being in your class, because you screamed at him and hurt his self esteem." Without ranting about this much longer - after discussing this topic with my cousin, we have come to the conclusion that respect is no longer earned. That is, where in previous days if you wanted to goof a bit in high school, you could work hard, get exceptional grades, be involved, but every once and awhile take a break and do a prank or something and pay small consequences for it. Now, kids believe that they can do whatever the hell they want and the teachers just have to keep trying to work with them because they have fragile self esteem and are "entitled" to respect.
Ok, now imagine that your employer:
1. Stopped paying you.
2. Started giving you pointless tasks with arbitrary deadlines, and discarded or returned all of your work without accomplishing anything with it.
3. Demoted you so that even the janitors and rent-a-cops were your superiors.
4. Instituted security policies forbidding you from leaving the building for any reason between 9 and 5, and requiring you to get written permission from your manager to leave your office.
5. Ran 8 55-minute pointless meetings per day, in which you were only allowed to speak at the discretion of the bored middle manager running the powerpoint up front, who would almost certainly dismiss your input because it didn't fit into their prepared slides.
6. Instituted random timed competence tests every week or so, that involved filling in a form full of semi-relevant questions.
Would you still want to work there? Even if it would look *really* good on your resume if you stayed there another 4 years?
School isn't about "working", or at least it shouldn't be. School is supposed to be about LEARNING.
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
Well, if we could enforce the laws on the books, to where if you cannot prove you are a US citzen or here on a work visa...that would disqualify all the illegals taking the labor jobs, they wouldn't be pouring over into our country, and the locals that didn't want an education could make a living as they did in the past.
Not a good one, but, they could do it like the ones in the past did.
Of course, I don't expect the Dem.s in power now to have any more backbone on this issue than the Reps. did....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Think about the quality of work a volunteer effort produces compared to that where the workers were enslaved into doing it. Do you think the quality, not productivity, of one is most likely better than the other?
This is why supporting the athletic teams because they make money is a bad approach in my mind - it is an efficient improvement, but entirely in the wrong direction.
---FourChannel---
I think we see things like this because we are getting the cream of the crop. Whatever your opinion on immigration it's hard to argue that it doesn't take guts, determination and intelligence to cross the border and survive as an illegal. The problems with gangs seems to be a 2nd generation problem, doing too good of a job assimilating into our blighted urban centers. I think the big part of the problem is as you said, self-esteem. The kids that got stuck making $6/hr at mcdonalds have already been beaten down and don't see themselves ever making something out of themselves. Sure they need to buck up and develop a work ethic, but when many of them go to schools that look like The IT Crowd's dungeon it's hard for me not to feel a little sorry for them. Hell, they get shitty teachers that don't expect shit from them(1 or 2 can undo the work of legions of sincere ones), a shitty infrastructure, a couple shitty classmates looking to get out through the thuglife threatening them, a shitty family life (even the best parents aren't around because they're working three shitty jobs) and naturally you got kids thinking they're shitty. Maybe the top 5% of the class will get scholarships and the rest think they got a lifetime of burger flipping and toilet cleaning ahead of them. And you don't need a diploma for that. If I was in their position, and didn't grow up with a stay at home mom, a father that was home by 6 to read to me, consistently well funded schools and skilled teachers, I'm not sure I would have made it. Yes many of our high schools are screwed, but it's mostly the shit that happens outside of them that makes them hell.
Basically, you guys should get out more. It's a huge and interesting world out here, much more so than many imagine.
You're (on average) rich, you can afford to. My personal opinion is that there's few things more worthwhile to do with your money than experiencing the incredible variation that this world has to offer.