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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?
I graduated in 2001 from a private Catholic high school that I actually liked quite a bit. However, there were still "problems". Let's ignore the obvious social stuff (which, to a very large degree, can never be fixed) and the fact that I just like smaller schools better.
What was there to hold my interest? There was a Drafting class that I found fascinating, but Drafting 2 was never offered because they couldn't get enough students. I got up through Physics 2, and we had Calc. But I liked computer and the only computer classes were typing, how to use office, and a very basic C++ class (all of which I knew by that time by teaching myself). The rest of the classes tended to bore me (except the ones on the history of the Church, because that was stuff that I hadn't heard before). The only other class I remember really liking was the Econ class because the teacher did a fantastic job (but most other students though it was boring... it was Econ after all). I kind of liked Psychology, but the teacher for that was terrible and while he seemed to be interested in the subject, he wasn't an enjoyable professor (quite dry, by the book, do this, do that). Some other teachers were just terrible (the Calc guy was as stiff as a board and just about killed my interest in Math). There was also Accounting and Business Law which appealed to me. But nearly every one of these classes I liked had a good teacher (important and hard to control) and was optional or had other more common substitutes (so if you didn't go looking to take it, chances are you wouldn't).
There wasn't much in the way of arts classes at all that I remember. If they were there they were purely optional. You had to take Gym. They did offer some interesting things (like Ballroom Dancing, which I regret not taking).
I didn't have nearly as much problems in College because I got to take the classes I was interested in (CS) along side requirements (some of which, like Sociology, I found interesting). High schools have become VERY focused on getting you into college (and every grade before on getting you into that next grade). My HS was college prep too (they advertised that). To a certain degree, I wonder how well anyone who goes through a decent American HS is prepared for the world. They seem to be like middle school now. It's EXPECTED you'll go to college. If you don't, you're either in a no skill job or you go to trade school. How about offering a metal shop class? We didn't have that, but it would have been fun. We were too college prep for that. No wood shop.
I'm not going to claim I know how to fix 'em. It's complex. But I know they did very little to encourage independent learning in the core classes unless you had a FANTASTIC teacher or you already liked the subject. Otherwise, it was "strictly business". And the less advanced your school (like a poorer one), the worse that all might be.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
My Story.
I was a junior in High School, about 10 years ago. One day I had intense nausea and a sharp pain in my back. I went up to the nurses office to seek assistance. I was promptly denied any assistance, as I did not have a "hall pass".
Realizing my situation required medical attention, I left. I proceeded towards my car in the parking lot, with the intention of going to the hospital to get the care I needed. I was intercepted by campus security. I ignored their pleas for me to return to campus, and continued towards my car. Eventually I was physically stopped by a mid 30s campus cop, a female about 5' 4" with very short hair. I told her I needed to go to the hospital, and that I was leaving.
The officer beat me up (as in a fistfight), kicking my knee out and using her baton. I was incapable of fighting back in my condition, and made no effort to do so. She dragged me back to campus, where I was made to sit in the office until the end of the school day. No one ever spoke to me or the officer regarding the incident, but she did stay nearby to insure I did not leave. No medical care was ever offered, despite my requests that they now call 911.
After school was released several hours later, I went to the hospital and was treated for a kidney stone.
What is wrong with our schools is that this can a) happen and b) get blown off completely; as it is obviously my fault for seeking medical attention and since I was a student, I must have started the fight with the rent-a-cop.
~Rebecca
- Maybe not all people are want the jobs that requires a high-school education.
- Maybe some people are just stupid and would rather do meaningful work then spend time being spoon-fed academic work that won't use anyway.
- Maybe it's PARENT'S faults: not holding their children to standards such as completing their homework and actually understanding the material, which in turn makes the kids' grades lower and makes them despondent about school.
- Perhaps the parents aren't being very involved and interested in the children's school work, and the kids are taking the hint from their parents regarding how important school is.
My general point: If the roles of all parties involved were clearly defined, it would be meaningful to discuss who's screwing up. But the idealized roles aren't clearly defined - there's no known single formula for successful public eduction. So it's not rational to assume the schools are the parties with the problem.
Actually, it's about the six lessons.
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
Great points! Although even the college educated Americans (who would be a fairer comparison) seem to be far less knowledgable on these topics. Part of it could be interest as well ... it's quite common to discuss things like Religion and Politics over dinner with friends in Europe, while these topics are often taboo here.
Also, I don't know if we can predict future world leadership just by population figures. By that measure, countries like Germany, Japan, and South Korea would have never achieved the industrial and intellectual lead they have/had enjoyed over much of the world (outside the U.S. that is). Sure, we probably won't be the #1 in terms of GDP in the future, but we certainly could make a concerted effort to regain the lead in per capita income and quality of life measures that we endanger by allowing the rest of the world's quality of education surpass our own.
Huh? Don't mind me, I'm just the new guy.
My dad is back teaching in a southern Colorado highschool after a 15 year break...the big things he complains about are:
1) No real disipline....students are disruptive and can pretty much do anything (non-violent) that they please because the school district fears lawsuits.
2) Actual teaching becomes secondary because of the babysitting requirements.
3) What actual teaching is done is totally scripted by the administration (the teachers have a very narrow guideline to follow) and basically amounts to programming for the standardized proficiency exams.
4) All the students are treated as if they are university-bound. He feels that this leads to a swiss-army approach that does a marginal job at best.
My personal experience coming out of the same school in 1992 and going directly into an engineering program is that I was not prepared academically or mentally for what I ran into at Colorado School of Mines. Looking back at it now I wish I had worked several years (or done military service) before ever considering engineering, and considering what a job that school was doing then, I would have better off dropping out at 16 and working and getting a GED....the education (or lack thereof) would have been the same and I would have had at least some money and life experience under my belt before tackling engineering....
1. When the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is no longer your friend.
2. Do not eat iPod shuffle.
I'm not sure where your evidence for this is. I've known a lot of private schools, all of which were non-unionized, and they were all considered to be far superior to the public schools located in the same areas.
Additionally, most of them paid teachers significantly less than public-school teachers. On paper, they should have sucked: non-union, basically no job security if you pissed off the wrong person, long hours, low pay. And yet, they routinely got more qualified instructors -- people who were actual experts in their fields -- and graduated students who went on to be more successful. Why is this? I don't have a totally pat answer for you, but I think that most of their success is because of the institutions themselves: people are willing to go and teach there, even though they're not unionized and the pay is lower, because they're good places to work. Class sizes are smaller, teachers get more freedom to plan lessons and curricula, and the perceived 'quality' of the students (interest, motivation, background education) is higher.
In my experience, unions and the job security that they offer don't do much to attract the best talent. If anything, they attract the mediocre, who are seeking a job that it's difficult to get fired from. Improve working conditions, and you'll probably find more people willing to work who really know their subject and want to teach it. Throwing money at the problem, which is what the unions generally ask for, is not a solution.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
- Many parents expect the schools to fix their poor parenting skills
- Disruptive students cannot be easily removed from an otherwise productive classroom
- Suing the schools for any perceived slight (such as having a dress code dictating no long hair or earrings for males)
- Basing school budgets on how many children can get federal handouts via school lunch programs
These are just a few of the reasons that schools are less about learing and more about jobs and promote more dropouts.
School lunch programs are a prime example, if the child would starve or be less than properly fed without a school lunch program, then shouldn't the child be removed via child protective services from the parents during summer because the parents admit that they cannot feed the child and need schools to provide free food.
Many states education programs are funded by:
- how many students attend school each day (daily attendence)
- how many students are on school lunch programs (federal per student subsidy)
I have to agree with maxume. Teaching in public schools in Japan, I have a pretty good feel what the average Japanese student is like; they're pretty much the same as the average American student. You've got bright kids and kids that you can see will drop out at the first instant they can. It's just that in Japan, high school isn't required (and there are still a large number of drop outs from them).
At any rate, the average Japanese person does not know more about American history than the average American knows. I'm also sick of reading and hearing about how crappy American schools are. They aren't.
Gatto suggests there is a lot more uniformity of soul-breaking methods (see his six or seven lesson schoolteacher essay, linked by a previous poster) http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt and he suggest that in the face of such conformity of methods any diversity of content is mostly irrelevant. Unfortunately, those who have most bought into the system are busy shaping it for the next generation. What matters to many in control is to see their kid be broken the same way they were broken, so the kid will do well enough in school to move into a conformist slot in society. However, they do not see this as "breaking" a kid -- they see this as "making" them. There is a tension here between forcing a child to become part of a hierarchical and corrupt and bullying rank-oriented "society" versus helping them find their niche in a free expressive artistic "culture". One path seeks to make children all the same -- a standardized commodity; the other to amplify their differences to help them be the best they can be. Consider novel after novel where the aristocratic executive is trying to break their child to take on the family business which the child abhors. Granted, the schooling system tracks a few percent to be elite managers, but even they are often just as trapped in the system and the mythology that drives it as everyone else (the myth of scarcity and need for conformity to keep the industrial machinery running smoothly). This site: http://www.whywork.org/ is about the future -- and it is not the one compulsory schooling prepares people for.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
To go a step further, I think the now-universal sense of entitlement kids feel can be traced directly to their parents. Baby boomers have pretty much had their cake and eaten it too and definitely show a strong sense of entitlement and arrogance in regards to the culture, wealth and values they feel they created. In the most basic sense, they are still kids and treat their kids as friends, not as kids. Their kids now expect the same luxury as their "friends" despite not having lived and earned it.
In my early twenties I used to manage a fast food joint, while I attended college. I also spoke spanish that I learned in High School. We had a serious labor problem. Nobody wanted to work for $6 an hour and those that did were lazy, late and called in sick a lot.
We solved the problem by hiring an entirely immigrant (spansih speaking) kitchen. Productivity went through the roof, quality went up, cleanliness was impeccable and they came to work every day - usually early.
Whether they were illegal or not, I could care less - we did the proper paperwork to cover our butts so it was irrelevant. What I learned was true americans did not want the jobs, heck even I hated mine at the time. Another truth is many of the american employees were lazy, unproductive, had low self esteem and took little pride in their work.
While I may have had some work ethic and maybe you do as well, not everyone does. Even tho I hated my job, I did it and I tried to do so with pride. Maybe I was brought up differently and others are or were not instilled pride in themselves - I don't know. The fact is these immigrants came to work, were happy to work and did their jobs well, something my american counterparts failed to do.
So the next time you get a Big Mac or a Whopper in an understaffed restaurant and it tastes like crap and looks even worse, consider the fact that the kitchen is filled with stupid lazy people who really don't even deserve the jobs they do have. Go find somewhere who uses immigrants and enjoy your meal...
Just something to ponder.
Actually, Japanese education is mandatory until the age of 15. However, most students continue going until graduation because a) even if they expend no effort whatsoever, they'll get a passing grade, and b) they'd rather hang out with their friends in high school than get a full-time job (however, most kids at low-level schools in Japan work part- or full-time jobs.)
The one place where Japan excels is in their elementary school system, due of the various number of activities, clubs, and trips they get the kids involved in. Lunchtime and cleaning are a group activity. Lunch takes place in the classroom, with the kids taking turns serving the food. Cleaning the school is a student chore as well (no janitors!), with every performing an assigned task.
The place where Japan loses is in their tiered secondary education system (high schools.) They require a proficiency test for placement, and once you've been put in a low-level school, they treat you as if you can't learn anything. Worse, they expect you to behave badly and ignore the dress code, too, etc. There is almost no discipline system in place, with punishments ranging from a severe talking-to (assuming you show up), morning clean-up duty, or simply expulsion. The one good thing, regardless of level, is that pretty much every Japanese student gets to travel abroad at least once. This puts them one up on Americans, who are lucky to get to travel even out of state (distance is a factor, yes, but international flights are just as expensive in Japan, and yet the parents still pay for them to go.) On the downside, they have to pay for their high school tuition as well as uniforms; public schools are not completely supported through taxes.
The Japanese borrowed the tiered idea from Germany, but the problem is, they're not German, and obviously missed the point: German low-level schools are not prisons for the stupid, but rather vocationally oriented Realschule (welding, carpentry, etc.) The students graduate at the end of their second year so that they can then go out and get jobs with the benefit of a high school degree. Having been a student in America and Germany, and a teacher in Japan, I have to say that the Germans win on this one, with America doing well on the secondary school system and the Japanese excelling at the primary level.
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
We solved the problem by hiring an entirely immigrant (spansih speaking) kitchen. Productivity went through the roof, quality went up, cleanliness was impeccable and they came to work every day - usually early.
Doesn't surprise me at all. A lot of places I visit have a fair amount of hispanic workers. They seem to have twice the drive and work output of the equivalent native. Sad, really. That, and they actually say "you're welcome" when I say "thank you." That's more than you can say for a lot of Americans in low paying jobs.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
Funny, I find better food and service from places staffed by Spanish-speaking immigrants, by a long shot.
Go to a decent sampling of good restaurants and peak in the kitchens. The joke is that in the US, all food is Mexican food. Ask a chef for career advice, and one thing you will be told is to learn Spanish, because all your best staff will speak Spanish. Unlike a lot of others, Mexican kitchen staffs see cooking as their careers, and train themselves and each other intensively.
The best ramen house in the Bay Area I know has Mexican cooks working under a Japanese chef. All the good Italian restaurants in San Francisco have Hispanic staff. Same with continental. Go to Gary Denko's in SF, or the French Laundry in Napa, and most of the kitchen speaks Spanish.
I remember reading a biography of a chef in which he actually went back to Mexico with members of his kitchen staff to try to find out how they all learned to cook so well... and met their mothers.