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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?
There's no doubt that dropout rates are a major U.S. problem, but the ABC article would make one think that dropout rates are on the rise. Nationally, this just isn't true. Between 1972 and 2004, dropout rates have fallen drastically. For all ethnicities, they are now almost half what the rates were 30 years ago (note: the full article that references this table can be found here)
This doesn't mean that isolated cities (such as Detroit and Baltimore) that have experienced serious economic problems and urban blight are better than 30 years ago, they are likely worse, but to characterize the problem as a national "epidemic" is completely ignoring the truth. Our school systems, teachers, and local governments have been working hard to raise graduation rates nationwide. And the data supports their assertion that they are seeing some success. Sure, there are MAJOR shortcomings to our public school system, but there has been major progress that shouldn't go unrecognized.
Huh? Don't mind me, I'm just the new guy.
They'll just try to teach you a bunch of evil stuff about Darwin and other Godless Commies.
(At least, that seems to be the current American zeitgeist.)
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
"What's wrong with our school system that so many kids prefer working 40 hours a week instead?"
NEA
Disclaimer: I am Canadian, but I feel it's a similar situation up here as well.
I just graduated from high school last June. I am 17 (I turn 18 in about 10 days) years of age and work for a small local business doing tech/IT stuff. I think that a major factor would be that it has been pushed [forced?] into a lot of people's heads that they need to make a lot of money to be successful.
So I think they figure they can beat the competition and start working earlier. This does make sense to me, sort of. As if you are responsible enough with your money, you can gain from working early. If you put it away in a bank account and later into a Savings Bond or similar, you'd have a much larger amount of cash in the long run compared to someone who finishes school and then gets a job and starts saving/investing.
Anyway, that is my take on it.
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.
"You can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."
-Now I may be an idiot, but there is one thing I am not sir, and that, sir, is an idiot.
Given that most high schools are run as assembly-line institutions with often ridiculous learning-hindering schedules, policies and rules, and given the absurd amount of time routinely wasted in high school classes, this is hardly surprising. I'd estimate 20% of the time I spent in high school classes was even remotely productive.
/Practically never studied
//Graduated with a 3.9
///Didn't learn what an imaginary number actually was until college. Why the high school teacher couldn't just say "the square root of -1" eludes me. Our instructions were to use a calculator program to find it.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
The world needs ditch diggers too...
Why waste 4 years of your life in high school, 8 more years in college, just to be told that Americans are too stupid to make money even in menial IT work and end up serving fries for minimum wage anyway?
Or at least, that's what we've been telling our teenagers for the last 4 years, as we put their parents, aunts, and uncles out of work so that we can make more profit in India. Is it any surprise to anybody that maybe they'd rather earn an additional $80,000 in their lifetime rather than waste time in high school when their future is dim no matter what they do?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID= /20061110/LOCAL/611100452/1006/LOCAL
What's wrong with our school system that so many kids prefer working 40 hours a week instead?
You mean "What's wrong with our school system that so many kids prefer working 40 hours a week for wages that look nice when you're 18 but are shit when you're 40 instead?
Trolling is a art,
They teach to (low) standards. The advanced students cannot get ahead (i.e. get bored) without spending money. The remedial students get frustrated (i.e. give up). The middle students become so accustomed to being made sure they aren't left behind, it doesn't properly prepare them for college, or the real world. That in a nutshell, is what is wrong America public schools.
Lowest common denominator.
What's really sad is a lot of recent grads won't understand either the math or the implication of that statement.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm
John Taylor Gatto argues that American education fails to properly educate because it was not designed to educate. It was designed to create good consumers.
I think public education is severely broken in the US, for many reasons:
* single-classroom style -- many students learn in ways that do not work with a single classroom and oral lectures, which is the style almost all high schools use. Almost never are students allowed independent study, and even if they only learn from reading, they are still required to sit in class, which is a complete waste for them
* forced attendance -- by forcing people to attend, there is no motivation to make the most out of it. There is no real opportunity cost to being in the classroom, making a high percentage of people there unmotivated to learn.
* low pay -- financing education on the local level means limited funds to attract highly educated and highly functional people. While most high school teachers are extremely motivated and devoted, the simple financial reality is that jobs that pay 20-40K/year do not attract top quality people. This is part of a larger issue of simple limited resources put on education
* separation of teaching from learning -- mostly in real life, people become experts and learn things when they turn around and teach others. Almost never are high school students given the chance to teach what they learn, and almost never are their rewards for them in teaching others.
* national curricula -- teachers have almost no flexibility on what they teach or the ability to customize lessons for what students really need to learn. Learning is an interactive process that drawn a person to a new understanding from their current one. Set teaching standards eliminate the ability of teachers to understand what their students know now and customize the lessons for maximal learning.
* lack of content applicability -- most lessons in high school are useless and disconnected from real world applications. They are abstracted and meaningless for students who dont experience how to apply what they learn. Mostly, high school has become a babysitting exercise to keep people out of the work force as long as possible to remove competition for existing workers.
In sum, kids dropping out makes sense to me. High school is not helpful to them. This situation will only continue as virtual communities continue to form and become more organized and effective.
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.
Students are learning only enough to correctly respond to the tests. Teaching them how to learn and apply their knowledge went out the same time vocational classes stopped being taught. My Dad graduated from the 8th grade and he knows a lot more than the typical high school student. I didn't bother going to high school. I taught myself by reading whatever I wanted -- mostly science, history and fiction -- for four years at home. I got my associate degree in four years since the adult high school diploma program would've taken five years. (I then got kicked out of the university during my first year since I was playing too much Magic: The Gathering -- but that's a different story.) Schools are not teaching high school students that learning can be fun but can also be hard work. These days it's just a pain in the ass filling out all those stupid little bubbles.
Mark my words: someday, Science will prove that wearing one's pants too low allows precious brainwaves to escape via the rear vent hole into the atmosphere, carrying with them all hope of a future. Mark my words and mark them well.
.nosig
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
There are a lot of things wrong with the school system and high school is just the first time that you can effectively and easily do something about it. Paul Graham describes several of the problems with school in this essay, but it boils down to: schools are full of disrespect for students and busy work and forced curriculum, rather than open to interesting learning opportunities. School feels like jail and freedom...well...looks pretty good.
Theres a book about unschooling that I've been reading and would probably encourage my kids to try it, if only I were the type to have kids:
The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education.
The preface and a couple of chapters are online at that site. It speaks volumes to me about what my high school wasn't: interesting, a collection of information that is still catalogued in my head lo these many years later, and self-directed. Oh, and being a dork in high shcool didn't help the comfort level. At least I had a few good teachers.
While there is plenty, at least arguably, wrong with our schools, the most likely reason people would drop out of high school to work is that there is something wrong with our economy where increasingly families can't adequately provide for children while they are in school; the economy that has been doing well in aggregate terms hasn't been doing well in distributional terms.
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.
- 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.
Its that the system forces people to stay at school for far too long when some people obviously don't want to. I left school at 16 - like everyone else in the UK - and then chose to go to college (which here is 16-18) and now I'm just finishing my degree.
I honestly would have hated to stay at school for another 2 years, school is almost intrinsically crap. It has loads of people who are pretty much forced to be there but don't really want to learn and don't have any enthusiasm, they make school unenjoyable for everyone, is it any wonder that a lot of people just want to leave?
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
Boys don't want to be feminized, and that's what our schools do. You'll notice most of the dropouts are boys. That's why the dropouts live shorter lives--they're boys, and they generally take up the more dangerous jobs, including crime.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
The problem is with education in the United States.
I am not talking about the education system (i.e. k-12 public schooling). I'm talking about parents not trying to teach their children in the home before they even start kindergarten. Too many parents here are just letting the public schools teach their children everything they need to know. That should not be the case. The parents should be the first educational source for our children and the public school system a secondary educational tool.
Public school should supplement (and insure a certain level of) a child's education. As a minority, I see all of my minority friends and my minority in-laws teaching their children math (e.g. multiplication) and such before kindergarten whereas some of the... "non-minority kids" are seeing multiplication for the first time in second grade, and they're falling behind because of it. If the minorities focused on teaching their children proper English as well, they'd come out ahead!
Never let school get in the way of education, seriously.
WHile I agree that religion should be kept well away from school, I don't see this as a problem. Other than the fellowship of christian athletes, I saw no religious influences at my high school (of course, I lived in a blue state so there was no evolution/creationism battle). Its hardly the number 1 problem.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
It doesn't say the national average or any other meaningful statistics. It's just those 100 schools.
The other thing is that I hated High School as much as any of those kids interviewed. I prefered ditching and programming my Apple II at home and subsequently learning math by discovery - NOT boring lectures. But, when I skipped, my parents rode me very very hard about it. There was this family value regarding education - we must have it.
Yeah, it sounded like those kids in TFA had parents that valued education, but if this "trend" in dropouts is in these 100 schools, then I have to point the fingers at their peers. Just about all of my peers had intentions to go to college and on to some sort of grad school (just about everybody wanted a BSME, BSEE, MS**, JD or MD). So, I had a lot of peer pressure to graduate and go to college. That's just me.
Typically high school dropouts earn $19,000 a year.
Let's see:
- PS3 payment: $50
- Camaro payment: $800
- Camaro payment late fee: $50
- Camaro insurance payment: $300
- Camaro insurance payment late fee: $50
- Beer: $100 - OUI payment to the court: $200 - Baby payment to her mama: $300
- Other baby payment to her mama: $300
- Rent: see Camero
Cool. It works so long as I never get old or sick.
My opinion on this topic is that current problems in education are a result of not treating students with proper respect. Some will consider this statement completely backward, thinking that students should be treating the faculty with more respect. However, I think students perceive that standardized test grades are the only thing that matter to the schools. Whatever talents or interests a student may have, only the grades matter -- not the student as a person. This perception by the students is demeaning to them. They are only worth the grades they earn. In that case, I completely understand why they would want to leave school, go to work, and be "graded" on real-world tasks, not academic standardized tests. Treat the student more like a rational, sensitive, and valuable person and I think you will see them enjoying their education a little more and staying in school. Of course, it also helps to find ways to make the subject matter interesting. I've also seen far too many faculty who repeat the same tired old riff year after year. Keep it fresh, folks.
Ouch! The truth hurts!
When you show up and work 40 hours a week and try to do a good job, people actually appreciate it. They'll even thank you for being helpful and doing a good job. It's rewarding and satisfying. Work is an accomplishment. And they pay you.
No one thanks you for going to school. You're forced to go there. No one appreciates your contributions. There are no rewards. School is a process that a person goes through. No one cares about you at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of the process.
I don't think a big increase in funding so the teachers can have a lower health-care co-pay is the answer.
I can't think of a single problem that has come up in education that has been really and truly solved. Gun violence? Make it illegal to wear a trench coat. Weapons in schools? Let's not let that honor-roll senior - with a plastic knife...in her car...off site - graduate. Accountability for bad teachers? NEA: Like hell. Actually testing students to see where they fall and what needs to be done to help them? Oh, that's discriminatory. Respect the opinions of others? Certainly! We'll respect any opinion we already agree with. Anything else is pure racism, in'nit?
No. No, it can't be fixed. Nor can it be done away with, there are too many special interests swilling at the public tough.
...by John Taylor Gatto. Just by coincience I started reading one of his books yesterday.
Gatto "climaxed his teaching career as New York State Teacher of the Year after being named New York City Teacher of the Year on three occasions. He quit teaching on the OP ED page of the Wall Street Journal in 1991 while still New York State Teacher of the Year, claiming that he was no longer willing to hurt children. " -http://www.johntaylorgatto.com
His books explain how there is a hidden cirriculum within the US compulsory schooling system. One example is that children are taught that things are disorderly. The current school system teaches math then switches to grammer then music etc. There is no connection or continuity between the dozens of topics that kids are taught during the day.
Take a tour for yourself.
Simple people talk of people, better people talk of events, great people talk of ideas.
In recent years, schools have had their curriculum shifted to cover the materials that are on the standardized
tests. In increasing amounts, due to schools' funding being dependent on students' performance on the standardized
tests, the curriculum has become simply memorize these facts, which you will be tested on at the end of the year.
There is no incentive to excel for most students, there is very little critical thinking taught.
I believe that this change has caused many of the students who are less likely to go to college ever to become
completely disenfranchised with High School. They see, and in my opinion, accurately, that High school has nothing
left to teach them, because after spending eight years learning how to memorize crap, and spit it back out on a test,
how much more can they teach you?
I abuse commas, I cannot help myself.
How about comparing these large (and apparently largely unsuccessful) school districts with school districts that are better able to educate kids?
Are there differences between the two sets besides sheer size?
Differences in student backgrounds? In student motivations?
Perhaps urban environments create social or economic factors which demotivate the student population?
Without some basis for comparison, the article is little more than a hype job. It's quite possible that the school district itself is not the core source of the problems being seen...
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
This is a special time for everyone because media ubiquity is reaching a head. It's possible now to find out things happening anywhere in the world just a few minutes after they happen. In many ways it shrinks the globe.
I'm a Generation-X'er, sandwiched in between the days of the baby boomers and unending patriotism (I call these the "my country right or wrong" days) and the Generation Y types (as in "why", as in "why bother".) Generation X is the first generation to grow up with computers and all that they entail. We have the distinction of being the first generation that can program a VCR, but we also are the first generation to grow up in disillusionment. We grew up knowing that the CIA imports cocaine and that our government sells arms to foreign countries and then goes to war with them a handful of years later. X is the first generation that doesn't believe [statistically] that the government has our best interests in mind.
Generation Y, then, is the product of our cynicism. It seems to be a generation of depression, while the Baby Boomers are the generation of ignorance and hypocrisy. Most baby boomers are still in denial about their role in handing over our freedoms to corporate america, and are busy blaming it all on the permissive society X'ers are trying to build. Y'ers don't much see the point in, well, much of anything. They're even more disillusioned than we are; at least X'ers didn't grow up in a time of utterly prevalent school shootings.
That's the overall societal issue that I think is increasing the dropout rate, but there are several other extremely compelling reasons why school is a sad joke and why kids don't want to be there.
One of them is that the economy is in the toilet. Things are probably going to get a lot worse before they get better, and let's face it, while kids are easily led, they aren't necessarily stupid. Besides, the average adult is easily led as well. I know that when I was in high school, I too dropped out and got a job. In my case, it was because we were poor, and if I wanted money, I had to go out and earn it. This is a pretty minor reason but it occurred to me early on.
Another is that school's purpose is not to teach you, it's to train you. The scholastic benefits of school are utterly secondary to the primary purpose. Our school system was designed to produce factory workers. Once upon a time, that was what we needed, but now we have less and less factory jobs (although, go back a point; we may have more of them in the future, though our quality of life will be next to nothing compared to what it is now) and we're still producing factory workers. Think about the qualities that get you through school with the least effort: you should be a conformist, because the nail that pops up gets hammered down. You need to get up early and show up early, or you get in trouble. You need to do precisely what you are told or they will kick you out, send you to an alternative school, and basically put you on the fast track to incarceration. The school system is designed to erase as much individuality as possible. Kids are getting wiser to this sort of thing as time goes by and they get access to more and more media at earlier and earlier ages.
And of course, the administration is complicit in the whole program. They want things to run smoothly and their primary goal is to avoid problems. Meanwhile, programs like "No Child Left Behind" are so obviously designed to produce mediocrity that it's almost unbelievable that no one seems to have noticed. I mean, I was in GATE as a kid and even THERE they told me that I couldn't do certain things because I wasn't old enough. Now, those kids who are most likely to excel will get even less attention than they always have, because the time must be spent with the children least likely to succeed by teaching them skills that they will never even use effectively. The system is designed to produce automatons.
So, why are so many kids dropping out? M
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Thanks a million for that essay. It was awesome.
"They" being administrators and politicians. Our poor teachers have their hands tied behind their back when it comes to discipline, teaching styles, curriculum, and pretty much everything else that could make them an effective teacher. Now throw in some long hours, low pay, and more ridiculous requirements and you've got a sad sad state of an education system.
I dated a teacher for a while and have friends and relatives that are teachers. I was shocked to see some of the treatment. The pay is low enough as it is, and yet they are still expected to purchase their own supplies, decorate their own room, and pay for more training classes that are requirements. Again, the hours are long...at school at 7:00 or earlier. Sure, they get to leave at 3:00 or so but then spend the next four or five hours grading papers, making tests, coming up with projects, etc.
I've seen many a teacher with such high ambitions and such a desire to teach our kids only to get completely frustrated by not being allowed to teach (rather, they must regurgitate some lesson plan crammed down their throat by an administration or even worse, prep the students for a test that really doesn't refect if they've learned anything or not), frustrated by not being able to discipline their students, or even to feel threatened by their students.
Will our teachers ever get treated better? Unfortunately I haven't seen any indication of such in many of the states I've lived in. Has anyone else?
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
(1) Everyone (administration, parents, teachers) hates--HATES--the kids. As in "this school would be fucking perfect if it wasn't for all these god damn high school students everywhere!"
(2) Public schools make no profit. Because only things that make a profit matter (Right, Slashdotters, open marketeers, yes, yes? Hmmmm?) they are a tremendously poor investment and have no money relative to just about anything else in the world.
(3) Nobody in the U.S. things education is necessary anyway anymore. Science is for the godless commies, and lack of knowledge won't hurt your career, you're owed a great career because you're American and white, no matter what your level of education. And if the world won't give it to you, you'll bomb the fucking world, not try to keep a bunch of kids in school or something.
--
Those are the problems with the American high school system.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
They'll just try to teach you a bunch of evil stuff about Darwin and other Godless Commies.
Content aside, the problem is that actually teaching has become really difficult these days in schools. With the (non-funded) requirements put on schools by "No Child Left Behind", Bush has recreated nationally the same mess he made as Governor of Texas. Kids aren't being taught in school, they're being made to memorize, and they're trained to take a specific test, which hasn't even been proven a valid metric.
Maybe if the teachers were actually allowed to teach the kids, they could actually engage them appropriately and keep them in school.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Tenure Can't tell you how many losers with teaching credentials I had to suffer through in my California High School days. Most should have been fired some arrested. Big difference from Canada. All though I will say I had one, Mr. Rosen, for 4 years of math, 2 for chemistry and one for physics and he was the reason I went on to college.
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
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.
The system is just a symptom of our culture.
At the root of it all is that we extol having instead of being. Preening moralists grandstand about other people's business, i.e. gay marriage, instead of holding themselves to their own moral codes. These dimestore demagogues are driven by their own emptiness, guilt and greed.
Political and religious leaders, media figures, CEO's and celebrities reap huge rewards while oiling the gears of an economic machine that grinds down the poor, the hard working poor and increasingly the middle class. They smile for the cameras and perpetuate the myth.
Who you know or what family you came from, or how rich your family is seen to be vastly more important than being competent or ethical.
Structurally, schools are way too large. Gigantism has long been an American obsession, but it is not the way to make teens feel like they are a part of something worthwhile, and do not offer a safe haven for growing and learning.
Teachers are not honored in our culture. In addition they are often saddled with parental responsibilities when unparented students are foisted on them.
Consumerism, pushed down our throats from birth is the true American religion. Newscasters are just now drooling over the upcoming post-Thanksgiving spree. Buying, having, wanting and getting make for a deeply unsatisfying moral code, especially for a young mind coming to terms with adulthood.
The sacred and the propane
Who said anything about the State? If they're organized anything like schools out here, school boards are a regulated, but autonomous independant unit of government. They have the power to tax- but they certainly CAN and HAVE been sued in civil court. Some of our most famous Supreme Court cases about civil rights and evolution started out in lawsuits against a school board.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
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.
Could you imagine if we had ONE government run auto company? Imagine everyone paid taxes and was provided with a "free" car from this government car company. The rich would say to hell with it and go off and buy a Lexus or a Mercedes, but the poor and most of the middle class would take the crap government car because they already paid for it. This is exactly what has happened to our education system and I'm always amazed more people aren't outraged. The poor go to crappy public schools because its the only choice, the middle class go to crap and mediocre public schools because they already paid for it, and the rich and some middle class send their kids to quality private schools.
The solution is to expose schools to competition... support school vouchers and school choice so that you break up the government run monopoly. The ROOT problem is the government run monopoly, and it must be addressed.
"we've never paid administrators & teachers so much ... and gotten so little"
... and gotten so little"
Corollary: "We've never paid CEOs & janitors of major corporations so much
If you think all the tax money being collected "for education" is going to my aunt, a special needs teacher in a moderately run-down school district, or went to my grandmother when she was a public school teacher, I have a used bridge to sell you. Low mileage, one owner, only driven on Sundays.
The money never goes to the line workers, I don't care what business you are talking about.
-- Terry
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?
The capitalization in your sentence is evidence for the latter.
Every time I see something like this, I get confused as to why people are confused. The public schools are no longer intended to educate. Students are required to be there. Schools are required to take students. In some cases, students that do not want to be there are required to be there, and the school does not want the disruptive student to be there either. If schools were more optional, more open to getting rid of students that don't want to learn, then they could focus on teaching. Instead, they are babysitting unwilling children. The easy fix is get the parents involved. However, the parents don't want that, it's too much work for them. They want the schools to fix the problem they created.
Do I have an easy solution? No. If I were put in charge of everything tomorrow, I'd probably do away with mainstreaming. We have schools for "gifted" students, why not schools to huddle the lower 10% together as well (excluding the truly special needs that are currently separated)? Get the top 10% the education that challenges them, the bell curve of the middle 80% will have them closer to together without the outliers, and the 10% that aren't as motivated or skilled will be put in separate programs designed to try to bring them back from the edge or at least get them ready for a vocation.
Which brings me back to something else that bothers me about the US. What's wrong with a vocation? There seems to be some stigma attached to trying to teach skills in high school, as if college is expected and that skills are taught there. There seems to be a decrease in automotive and shop classes in high schools. And there seems to be a stigma attached to someone that likes working with their hands. I've never understood that, but it is another thing that should change in the US.
Learn to love Alaska
What's always irritated me about the school system is the push to have students work for free. There are many "work experience" programs out there that require this. Certainly there's nothing wrong with having a student work in his/her arena of choice, but requiring that he or she as a volunteer only (no paycheque) is pretty unreasonable.
If I student can only get the work on a volunteer basis, fine. If he/she is able to get paid for it, even better! A lot of places will give the students some form of bonus in lieu of pay (ski passes for working at a ski-hill, etc) but it seems to me that the overall concept makes it rather easy to take advantage of young people for free labour.
I just recently started doing freelance web design, and the biggest drive for me to give more importance to working and less importance to school has been that I want to get the hell out of my house. I'm sick of my parents and their incessant nagging, and I just want to make enough money to be completely independent of them. I'm sure I'm not the only kid feeling this way.
Freelance Web Designer - Portfolio
...hasn't really changed all that much since the Eisenhower administration.
I've seen a lot of, "Here! [point-point-point] This is what's going wrong!"
It's not a failure of any one thing; the system is based on a very-old model that hasn't really been addressed in over 50 years.
In that time, various de-regulation and isolationism of independent states, counties, regions and districts have all deconstituted the original model with "improvements". After a while, these changes bring everything "out of synch".
Just the fact that nationwide statistics show certain states to have over 50% of their schools "in need of improvement" is an indicator of a greater, and very complicated problem.
Another astonishing fact is that progress has been made in Education Theory, but implementation of the new systems is slow, sporadic and even completely ignored in favor of the status-quo.
Back in the town of my alma-mater, there's a shining example of these new practises which has gained national attention.
What's keeping other schools from following this example?
If anyone is going to point fingers, keep aiming higher... higher than that... all the way to the top.
If only more folks would get involved during the primaries, we wouldn't be left with such crappy choices come November.
Please, your honor. Indulge me. I will bring this to relevance presently.
Change in education happens when a change in administration causes changes in the national priority and therefore in the national budget. If the quasi-socialized Public Education System doesn't have the funds to make change, they keep on keepin on. (and that's the problem)
This post © Copyrite Duggeek, all rights reversed.
New high school teachers have enthusiasm and ambition. High school students are experienced and jaded. Students lose and are lost.
The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.[Harry Truman]
The idea that the point of an education is to learn about the world is naive, it's to prove to employers you are willing and able to work for N years to achieve a result. If it were the former there would be no exams, no coursework and no awards of degrees.
So if employers don't care about being a high school graduate or if there are no jobs which require a high school graduate, there isn't much point going on to complete your high school education and then go on to university to rack up $150,000 in debt.
The fact that jobs are being shipped overseas says it's hardly worthwhile .
p.s. why does it cost $150,000 to go through university? Seems like rather a lot, surely with that kind of income there would be lots of colleges, academies and universities springing up and competing to reduce the costs.
Deleted
George Leonard, "Education and Ecstasy," 1968 and 1987
Neil Postman, "The End of Education", don't know date
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
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."
Then you were failing at something that school is also supposed to teach you along with reading, writing, and 'rithmetic: Self-discipline. If there's one thing that school, both high school and college, taught me, it is that sometimes you have to do things you don't want to do in order to be better off later on. Hopefully you had a parent or two that drilled that into your head where your school let you down.
That won't get you very far in a job interview. If you're not willing to do the bare minimum of what it takes to get through high school, I don't care how smart you are, I don't want you working for me. If I'm an employer looking to hire someone, there's a pretty good chance that they'll be bored to tears at some point with their job. I don't want them skipping out on me just because they have to be amused and entertained the whole time I'm paying them.
The fact is that the vast majority of kids who don't finish high school are pretty stupid. Yes, there are weird exceptions. Yes, I even know at least one. But for every one of them, there are a hundred people who are dumb as doornails who simply give up on it because they lack the self-discipline to see something that is really not that hard through. They're sacrificing their long-term economic health for the short-term gratification of not having to study, take tests, and otherwise jump through the hoops one has to in order to graduate.
A huge contributing factor to our nation's kids' lack of self-discipline is our nation's parents' lack of self-discipline. How many times have we seen parents ignore, or worse, coddle and try to mollify their youngsters who are upset about something, instead of disciplining them? How many times have we read about kids getting kicked off a football team, and the parents raising a ruckus and getting the teacher into trouble for it? Even the best educational system in the world can't do much with that kind of parenting.
We definitely need some tough love, but we're screwed if we expect it to only come from the schools.
To answer the original poster's questions:
"The question we need to ask ourselves is is our children learning?" -W http://www.amazon.com/x/dp/0743214781
I know this is the wrong place to get any sympathy, but what the heck, it's only slashdot karma I'll lose. What's wrong with the high schools in the US is they are all too dang liberal. I remember in high school I had one conservative teacher, and he was the band director. Of course no one wants to be in high school! With all the liberal teachers I had, one encouraged students to share their viewpoints, while all the other forced all their dogma and beliefs down our throats at best, and worse case scenario penalized students for having "wrong" beliefs. There was a valedictorian girl at one of the schools in the district that wrote this great paper on the 2nd amendment and the right to bear arms, and the teacher gave her an F, so she played the teachers game and wrote a paper on Hillary Clinton, and ended up with an A. Don't tell me that's not penalizing students with differing beliefs.
The next problem is the teachers are mostly under qualified. Many a days in Pre-Calculus I spent correcting the teacher when she did a problem wrong, or going up to the board and solving the problem when she got so tired of my correcting her all the time. It was a joke! When other students had problems in the class no one dared ask the teacher to try to explain for fear of getting more confused than they already were. And don't even get me started on the A+ Certification course. The official teacher was Mrs. Huerta, but she knew nothing about the material. The above conservative mentioned band director, my friend Chris, and I ended up running that class. Even the Teaching Assistant couldn't grasp most of the concepts in the A+ Certification book we were going through.
Sam
Parents.
Next question?
"Obscenity is the crutch of the inarticulate motherfucker." - cloak42
- 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)
What you just read was what just about every kid hears in most high school classes. It's simple- lectures. In too many classes we still rely on lecturing as a teaching tool.
Frankly, lecturing is outdated. It was great back when books were scarce and we didn't have the book press, so knowledge almost had to be passed in a spoken form, but these days with information available in many different (and often expensive) text books and on the web, there's no need for the oral dissertation of fact in many cases.
So what happens is that kids lose interest in the class, their grade suffers, and then go ahead and give up because they think it's "too hard", but really haven't been paying attention.
What needs to change is that classroom activities need to become more interactive, or at least visual. Don't just tell me that atoms bond together, show me. Maybe find some neat video on the web showing molecule structures and formation thereof.
Here's another example: a video I found through StumbleUpon (can't find the link right now) is of a science professor demonstrating sound waves. The part that holds the interest of the students? He uses fire. I can't remember the entire set up, but he had a speaker attached to a PVC pipe, filled that with some sort of gas, and ran holes for the gas to escape from along the top of the unit. He played continuous notes at different frequencies, and you could see the sine waves with the fire! Then he put on some other kind of music to give an idea of how the sound changes. It was, in my opinion, a really cool demonstration, and a student would be more likely to remember things about sound waves that s/he learned from that.
Yet another example: When I took Computing & Algorithms II, I had the best damn professor ever. We learned about Linked Lists in the class, and he had what some might consider an "odd" way to teach them: a Barrel of Monkeys. He used these cheap plastic toys to simulate a list linking together, and then to show what happens when doing stuff to the list, like adding a "monkey" in the middle and not connecting it to the rest. (Unfortunatly, far too many college classes fall under the Lecture Syndrome as well.)
Sure, there's only so much you can do with it- after all, I doubt bouncing digital numbers would make derivatives much more interesting. But that doesn't mean teachers should do nothing.
Sadly, part of the problem is that schools lack the funding necessary to facilitate such things, and the teachers aren't paid enough to try and do it themselves.
Furthermore (and I'm probably just ranting, now) testing needs a major overhaul. Going back again to changes from what was done in the past, too great a portion of tests relies on memorization. Formulas, dates, function calls, the lot.
Think about it- what good is memorizing all of that? It fills your head with what would amount to useless information. After all, you can memorize every function involved in integrations, but if you can't recognize when to use them or in what order, then what good are they? Okay, so you can spout when we landed on the moon, who was the first astronaut, and the famous first words, but would you be able to tell me why we went to the moon, or explain how we crossed some of the hurdles and why they were a problem? Teaching should, whenever applicable, be about analyzing, problem solving, and resource use. Not about memorizing the ratios of Pi that relate to degrees through sin/cos/tan functions.
A story, attributed to Einstein, probably sums it up best:
I think as problems with public schools persist and the clear emprical advantages of competition become increasingly clear, there will have to be more support for school choice... but it never ceases to me amaze me how tolerant people are of the government run public school monopoly that year after year achieves such lackluster results.
Shorter list: What's NOT wrong with US high schools.
;)
The fact I'm from Arkansas has nothing to do with this comment.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
I'm sure there are some here who come from more impoverished backgrounds, from families who don't support education and school in general, or have learning disabilities. But for the rest who had a rather comfortable upbringing in intelligent households, the reply will be much different from the majority of kids who drop out, and don't test out.
The intelligent ones would be bored, unchallenged by their classes and find it a waste of time. Those kids will find better paying jobs and will most likely make above minimum wage.
Then there are the kids who don't value knowledge, have had a tougher run, and don't get the educational support they need to progress. Here are a few real stories: my sister is in a math class in the local public high school were the teacher shows movies on Friday. Not math-based movies, just movies, to keep the kids coming back. No one pays attention, and she is in this class because she needs to have things repeated more than most before she remembers or grasps them. She's not unique in this learning disability (sorry, I don't know the name of it), I believe approximately 10% of the population has this. People can learn, but it takes more work, more focus, and more time.
Then you have kids who just don't turn in their homework. I don't understand it, but my girlfriend tutors kids who are doing poorly in middle school and high school, and she said some do the work, but don't turn it in. Others think their parents will forever pay for them, idolizing those effin' twats on MTV's My Super Sweet 16. Why do you need to learn with Daddy will pay for you forever?
Yes, some kids overcome all this and more, but that's personal work, or a teacher has really reached out to them. But those who look back at high school and complain that it wasn't tough enough, or didn't challenge you daily are coming from a different point of view than most drop-outs.
I'm just curious...
That is a load of crap.
I challenge you to show me one affirmative as to how this increased "socialization" has benefited anyone. I can rattle off a dozen negatives as to how the socialization enforced upon the students does nothing but to enforce a hierarchy of non-meritous rewards and priviledge, sectarian disunity ('cliques'), and "belief in the system" (that is, that authorities are always right). While at the same time the students being collectively depressed by having to be at school at all, resulting in many simply giving up and concentrating on shallow, momentary satisfactions like television.
Let me ask you something: have you ever spoken with another person at work? Yes? Is this socialization? Have you made friends with people before? Can people make friends prior to high school, and is it possible to speak prior to high school? What benefit to socialization does high school have over that of the working world? That there are 'different people'? The working world has a much broader brush of 'different' - namely, by age, but also by gender, race, and ethnicity. Unlike high school, the working world doesn't judge you (usually) on the profession of your father or mother (partially due to the higher expectations of the older adults who won't take that shit anymore). Unlike high school, there is not a predominant and perpetual fraternity of "superior", where if you wait it out you'll simply be the superior.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
We should give kids who graduate highschool on time a $1000 bonus, cash, no strings attached. They can spend it on college, a car, gas, CDs, or crack (as long as they don't get caught), whatever. Maybe kids who graduate only a year late can get $500.
It costs over $30K:y to jail people. Plus the damage they did to go to jail. Plus the lost productivity from them both while commiting crimes and in jail. Plus their reduced productivity with jail on their career record. Plus the lost productivity policing, judging and jailing them. All deducted from their value producing even $30K:y at a job, without consuming justice system resources. By the time you account for the two parallel lives, we're probably saving at least $50K:y, maybe $100K:y, for every kid who gets a legit job instead of a criminal career, for probably at least 2-5 years per person. So every $1000 kid kept straight saves probably $300K - paying for 299 kids who got their bonus who would have stayed straight anyway. Those kids get to reinvest the money in something productive (except the tiny percentage who will spend it on crack).
We graduate about 3M kids from HS every year in the US. Even if the stats in this article we're discussing weren't a 31% dropout rate just in "the nation's 100 largest public school districts", but nationwide, that means a maximum of under 4.5M kids getting a maximum of $1K each, which would cost $4.5B a year. The extra $9K a year more than dropouts that HS grads earn would pay back the $1K right away; if the dropout rate were lowered only 5 points, they'd still pay back the program in 7 years. And that's before counting the societal savings in working instead of going to jail.
Let's invest $1000 in each grad. Or waste many times more on criminals.
--
make install -not war
Man, a lot of people sure are whining about how the high school machine is interested in cranking out thoughtless droids in order for the corporate system to maintain control over helpless consumers, ruining education by teaching to a narrow test (never mind that the majority of Americans can't keep "your" and "you're" straight), or teaching kids in a way that is not best suited to them, or teaching things that "don't matter in the real world."
These are probably the people dropping out of high school. Grow up, people!
The standardized tests test for perfectly acceptable topics: basic grammar, reading comprehension, and basic math. The majority of the kids dropping out are most likely the ones who cannot accomplish these things. So if you are getting bored in class because the teacher won't teach "outside of the box", take it upon your self to learn these things, but don't quit high school! First of all, if you can afford it, you can simply switch schools. Second of all, even though you might be convinced you are a super genius, people hiring you will be a little less than convinced if you couldn't sit through four years of high school.
If your teachers or administrators are jerks, notify someone. Figure out exactly what they are doing wrong (say, not letting you leave for a medical emergency) and report them to the proper authorities. I truly feel sorry for you if you get a bad teacher that can't teach worth shit, but even if you go to a small school like I did, you'll get a different teacher next year who can explain things to you. Oh, I know, why don't expend some effort and go to a different teacher of that subject for help? When your teachers refuse to help you, provided you are putting forth an effort, go to the principal or the guidance counselor. If you don't like the way the system is being run, there are smarter ways to fix things than quitting high school.
Also, as much as you might put stock in the Great Sheeple Conspiracy, seriously, take off your tin foil hat.
I don't understand why people drop out of high school. It's free (unlike college), and it's only going to take away 1 or 2 years of your life. Even if high school is useless for you, I don't see what plans you could possibly have that would be ruined by your continued attendance in high school. It may suck, but seriously, that diploma is important.
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
First, kids are constantly inundated with an increasingly materialistic, impulsive culture. The "three R's" can't get you a PS3 on launch date, and if someone like Paris Hilton can get famous, what's the point? Being bored at school doesn't pay anything, but being bored in a menial job at least gets you a meager paycheck.
Second is that kids think that high school isn't teaching them anything, certainly not much that they can perceive as useful in the "real world". If critical thinking was part of any curriculum, they'd realize that they are penalizing themselves in the long run for a short term gain.
Then there's the parents who passively contribute to the phenomenon by not taking an interest.
The worlds first creationist museum is built in the US.
God was my co-pilot, but then we crashed and I was forced to eat him.
With the advent of the Internet, kids are frankly just learning that school is bullshit! The forces indoctrination and fear are starting to loose control as people find new ways of learning, including learning the dark history of the school system.
Young people are naturally curious. They want to explore and learn. High Schools use intimidation and boredom, as well as marginalizing viable alternatives through scheduling and censorship, to keep young people from being informed. Parochial, preparatory and public schools are not all that different. Religious schools enforce obedience to the dogma of church; Prep schools enforce obedience to whatever looks good on a college application; and public schools enforce the obedience to authority in general. Any learning outside of these constraints is rarely tolerated.
If you quietly accept and go along no matter what your feelings are, ultimately you internalize what you're saying, because it's too hard to believe one thing and say another. Go to any elite university and you are usually speaking to very disciplined people, people who have been selected for obedience. If you've resisted the temptation to tell the teacher, "You're an asshole," which maybe he or she is, and if you don't say, "That's idiotic," when you get a stupid assignment, you will gradually pass through the required filters. You will end up at a good college and eventually with a good job.
The major problem in successful teaching is just to not prevent students from being interested. Typically students come in interested, and the process of education is a way of driving that defect out of their minds. But if children's normal interest is maintained or even aroused, they can do all kinds of things in ways we don't understand. Some teachers genuinely want to help students in this way. Most school administrations don't let them.
Mass education was designed to turn independent farmers into docile, passive tools of production. That was its primary purpose. And don't think people didn't know it. They knew it and they fought against it. There was a lot of resistance to mass education for exactly that reason. It was also understood by the elites. Emerson once said something about how we're educating them to keep them from our throats. If you don't educate them, what we call "education," they're going to take control -- "they" being what Alexander Hamilton called the "great beast," namely the people. The anti-democratic thrust of opinion in what are called democratic societies is really ferocious. And for good reason. Because the freer the society gets, the more dangerous the great beast becomes and the more you have to be careful to cage it somehow.
(apologies to Chomsky)
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
Larges public school districts = black kids
Also, Nationally, 68 percent of state prison inmates are dropouts.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
It starts in first grade, when teachers discourage parents from teaching their children to read or add. Many schools still don't teach reading at all (See Spot Run is NOT reading.)
Then classes full of propaganda..I remember history as being disjointed, with nothing really relating to anything else. Later I realized that it was because they left out everything the current administration or religious types didn't approve of.
And on and on.
One of my sons is an electronics engineer now--and hasn't been in a school since 4th grade. He and I had a blast blowing stuff up when he was growing up, and he taught ME electronics.
School doesn't hold a candle to the internet and a pile of stuff to do stuff with.
You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say will be misquoted, then used against you.
The problem is, in fact, the American education system as a whole -- but not the quality of the education received.
It's a well-known fact that some young adults just don't get along with their parents. It's insane and totally incorrect to think that the two parties have to like each other at all once the child has developed their own personality, and this does, in fact happen quite often.
The American education system is set up such that, unless you are EXTREMELY motivated and fairly bright to boot, you will never get a college education without massive financial help from parents.
Case in point, students at my University, even with 100% tuition scholarship and 100% of the maximum Stafford loans, are thousands of dollars short of the bare essentials required to attend class (tuition, housing, books). Add in things food (on-campus dining plan for the cheap, grocery store if you've got a bigger budget) and you've increased it by another almost $2500 a year. Want to ever socialize, ever? A few thousand more over the course of the year.
Students are left with several choices: work (a part-time job would cover the rest of housing and 2 meals a day with no socializing), or ask your parents to give you money.
For someone who can't ask their parents, and knows they can't afford college in the first place as a result -- why bother finishing high school? There are no skills actually produced in a high school classroom anymore, and students realize this.
When was the last time you saw a school teacher presented in a positive light in popular media? What is the social status of high school teachers? What is the expectations we place upon teachers? Slightly above janitors.
What are the expectations of the parents? Do they demand performance? Is performance in entrance exams central to one's future?
Watching a lot of anime, I'm always surprised at the level in which study and test performance is placed. In the same manner It's integrated into the culture to an extent we never see. In the same fashion reading, bookstores, librarians, and bibliophiles are given elevated status (consider "Read or Die" or Nodoka in Negima). On the other hand the US has a distinctly anti-intellectual focus in popular culture, coupled with an adulation of career paths such as sports or entertainment with less chances of earning a good wage than the lottery.
I was lucky, I went to the top magnet school in Chicago and had very demanding parents. Dropping out, or even skipping grad school was not an option.
My father was a member of the WWII generation. He joined CCC in his teens, joined the Navy in '42, and at some point, probably after the war, got a GED. This did not harm his career one bit. We were solidly middle class growing up, and that was when middle class meant that Mom didn't work unless she wanted to get something "extra" for us.
There were a few kids in my school who didn't do college--they decided to do trade school and become plumbers. One guy was going to run a Domino's Pizza outlet (they were expanding quickly in our area). Word was, the Domino's guy would have to work hellacious hours, but that he'd pull down close to 6 figures, which was twice the promised starting salary for an engineer. The starting sal for engineers was a lie, at least in my case. I don't know what became of the Domino's manager.
Now, I'd like to think that these kids are dropping out because they think they have better ideas, but chances are they are either dysfunctional or just really, really need the money and have no hope of going to college.
It's really hard to say. Statistics are just dry numbers. I'd like to see some interviews with these kids. Are they bright and on the ball? Is this becomeing the social norm for their area? Don't forget--there are vast swaths of "fly-over" country where a decent house costs a FIFTH of what a decent house costs on the Blue Coasts. If this is just a regression to the cultural norm of the early 20th century, it might not be as dire as some people think.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
It's appropriate that this question appears following the death of Nobel Prize-winning economist Milt Friedman, one of the founders of the school choice movement.
On Charlie Rose almost exactly a year ago, Friedman drew this analogy: The government identifies a proper subsidy -- let's say, food. So does it subsidize the *producer*? That is, does it give money to farmers or grocery stores, and tell them to provide food to people who live within a certain geographic area? Of course not -- that would be absurd. It subsidizes *consumers*, by giving them vouchers (we call them "food stamps") that they can then use to shop around and look for the best value.
The entire model we have set up for education is terrible, from theory to practice.
Allowing a quasi-government monopoly to exercise near-complete control of our most precious resource -- our children -- is INSANE. The monopoly will try to do what ANY monopoly does: Freeze the status quo and defend it to the death.
We will never make any REAL progress in education in this country until we understand that our Public School model has some real problems of a systemic, organizational nature, that can't be solved simply by throwing money at them.
- Alaska Jack
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.
And where does that attitude come from? Lemme back up; I think there are enough parents and enough community members in nearly every community who care. If there are anti-intellectual sentiments in America these days they stem from two arenas. First, the breakdown of the family: if they have an unstable home life or lop-sided gender influence, why would they care about school?
Second, the socialistic trends in American government tend to lessen the importance of education. Why go to school when you can drive a corvette off minimum wage? If the parents never needed or wanted an education, why would their children? Do other countries (i.e., Japan) oversuppliment the portion of their population who fail in their education? Hardly. They haven't the resources for it.
What this country (US) needs to do is scrap the abomination of the Federal Education Dept./Board/Plan and give the power back to the people. Those neighborhoods who care should adopt and pay for the certification of some international education standard. This eliminates the need for force, helps eliminate national debt, and rewards those communities with parents who care. Heck, a system of 3rd party certification works for the universities -- why not for the other schools as well? The second thing they should do is scrap the minimum wage law altogether and let people get paid what they're worth.
The Internet has made general education obsolete. You can learn so much more with a quick search than you could ever hope to in a classroom. Now the question: Why are only 40% of our students smart enough to realize that? ;)
it is my opinion that without parental involvement in formative developmental periods, independent learning cannot be a part of one's repertoire of choices during adolescence. i was lucky. my parents actively encouraged me to love knowledge and to gain it outside of the regimens of my immediate environs. i think that situations similar to mine become increasingly rare in a growing culture of willful ignorance.
although the educational system in this country may be broken, it is merely a part of this problem.
The AntiJoey
I'm going to guess public (though I might be wrong!) I think a big problem with public schools is that there is almost no accountability. Teachers can't be fired and don't neccesarily care what administrators or parents think... Administrators aren't responsive to parents because they don't have to be (and can't do anything even if they wanted to).... and then there's the old Mark Twain qoute, "God made the idiot for practice, then He made the school board." Absolutely no one is in charge, and if something terrible happens, there are no consequences.
Another of John's books is "Dumbing us Down." There are other authors out there who have the same opinions, are better writers, but don't have John's inside experience.
Don't worry: My generation is retiring soon, and they will start letting the prisoners out early to earn money and pay the taxes necessary to support us old folks (who might have to depend on the Medicaid/Medicare/Social Security plans that have been so mismanaged by the government). Then the "dropout rate" will be encouraged rather than disparaged.
Since the USA workers will be too ignorant to earn high wages, look for more immigration in both the low-paying and high-tech areas. It's a real win for business and government. Business wins because they can pay 75% of what they would have to pay a US citizen, Government wins because the salaries earned are in the higher tax brackets, the immigrant wins because what he sends home is significantly more than his family would have if he were living and earning in his own country.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
Sorry, I couldn't help you with that question. I've never set foot inside a public school except to vote. With the exceptions of 3rd, 4th, 9th, and 10th grades, I was home-schooled by my parents, mostly my stay-at-home mom. Those other four grades were private schools. (That does really annoy me when I have to fund everyone else's poor education by my tax dollars, but that's something else entirely beside the point.) But it's not that home-schooling is for everyone either. It really takes dedication on the part of whoever is going to do the tutoring. Not to mention that the student needs to be able to focus and learn much on his/her own. Oh, and concerns about socials skills are over-rated. Not only do you get to avoid all the really messed-up things that happen in public schools (granted, I've only *heard* about them, never experienced), but any well-balanced kid is going to make friends regardless.
Patience is a virtue, but haste is my life.
The effects of NCLB were an issue that candidates ran on in 2004 school board races in major cities. The gist is that since schools don't have the resources to meet the test score standards, the only way to hit those targets is to force underperforming students out, boosting the average.
And that's reflected in part by these statistics. I'm sure un(der)funded mandates like NCLB aren't the only factor here. But it definitely is one of them.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
First off...the phrase "It gets better after high school" reflects the social and personal changes that a person will find when they go off to college or enter the work force and encounter more mature individuals.
The phrase does not reflect, nor is it meant to, the current educational conditions of high schools.
Yes, there are problems with high school academics. Lots of problems in some areas, not so many in others. But kids wanting to leave school, which is generally boring, in a shortsighted decision to get a job isn't surprising. How many short-sighted decisions did you make when you were that age.
My Sysadmin Blog
Voters don't want a better school system.
After all the economics of all schools systems are dismal. Children and schools aren't profitable investments. At this point in time, the system is designed as a kind of state-run babysitting service and the voters like it that way.
We are conciously chosing not to invest in our future and ensure the social and political stability an education gives back to a society.
Prisons solve the social problems really well so there's no reason to worry.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
The problem exists not just in schools, but in our society as a whole. It grew when we decided that a world without morals would be a good thing; and that the best successes in life are the people who make the most money.
"Let's just teach kids facts; not how to live or how to get along with other people." We are amazing. Right? We're Americans. We deserve every good thing. Right? Isn't that what every commerical and billboard tells us? "Get 'this' now! Faster, better, more convenient for you... because you deserve it." "Believe in yourself, because you are so great." "Do whatever you want, there are no rules. People are just glorified animals, so it doesn't really matter if you kill them, or rape them, or hate them." "You deserve to be free. Morals are bad because they will restrict your life. Don't let anyone else tell you otherwise; and if they do, report them to the media so everyone can laugh at them for having some stability in their lives." "Love is just a feeling, so it doesn't really matter if I divorce your mom. It doesn't matter if I beat her or have an affair - I can do what I want." "Let's censor every religious conversation or symbol because people might get offended; they shouldn't be able to think for themselves. On second thought, let's just censor anything to do with the Bible because it's just a stupid book that restricts peoples lives."
50% of people in America who've been married have also been divorced. Half of kids have a single parent. That parent is busy trying to keep their family from starvation or trying to please their boss at work. There's no time for kids. Even people with two parents... most of them start out in a daycare from day one and it just gets worse from there. The teachers at school are only there 'cuz it's their job, and most of them don't even enjoy it. Why would they care anything about their student's lives? Minors aren't stupid. They know when someone really cares about them, and more often then not they only can get that from their friends. Friends are a big deal. It's the most attention they ever get from someone; and even that is often bogged down and destroyed by pressures to do drugs, smoke, become an alcoholic, become addicted to porn, etc. And why not? Why would they even want to be alive? No one else gives them any hope or gives them a reason to live. So let's just do whatever we want and destroy our lives, because *nothing really matters and no one really cares anyway*...
When you begin teaching people (not necessarily even from just a textbook, but with our lives and our own behavior) that there is no right or wrong, there is no guaranteed truth, and they can do whatever they want with no real consequences then what else would you expect? There is freedom within boundaries; outside them lies only chaos. Suicide is up, drug use is up, alocholism is up, divorce is up, emotional problems are up, videogame sales are up... all because people are trying to escape reality. And why not? Reality is trash. The best you can hope for in reality is to live a long time so you can make money, buy stuff, hope it satisfies you, and eventually die.
The system is based around one that focuses primarily one one style of teaching. People that are visual or prefer interactivity normally get out in the cold. Often times these are the people who drop out. I went to 3 high schools and all were pretty much the same experience. In my senior year I went to a 4th which was an Alternative school program (no not for drop outs as it is commonly considered to be) Things were radically different there. Teachers were on a first name basis, the curriculum focused on real world skills while focusing on academic requirements for the state. Also there was an internship portion. If there was no available internship you had to create it. This was the case with me. at 17 I was learning how to interview and deal with people in the buisness world. If those types of things were taught to students early on in high school ( that is get a taste of what is to come) I think it would motivate them to do better. Sadly we use teaching techniques that really have not changed much in the last century. It is still largley text books and facts cramming. College is pretty much the only place you can expect to get the needed education. It is more specialized which is good. But High schools don't do more than provide facts. We do need to know the history of this counrtry, we need to know math, we need to know alot of the things we are taught in high school. But there need to be options to learn real world skills. basic skills that we will need out of high school. Some schools are making the changes toward these practical skills. Alot arent. This is where the problem lies. Most states do not care enough about the educational processes than they do about the financial. We want to produce good laborers? Then our educational system has to improve with it. It needs to focus on Conceptual thinking (not just 2+2=4 but why does it equal that), practical application of learned skills. This is up to educators to figure out and understand what those practical skills are. They need to see the need for something in buisness and industry and adapt accordingly. my .2 cents based on my own experiences.
My own experience was a blend of conventional and unconventional education. This is largely why I feel the way I do. I have seen what can happen when things are different and adapted for the student. When the person is more important than the system then everyone wins.
What's wrong with American Education you ask. . .
:|
That's a good question. Unfortunately, it's likely to only be answered correctly by those who are
currently a part of the system, but lack the ability to force any changes upon it.
However, everyone has an opinion so my thoughts on it follow.
1) Schools no longer teach subjects. Educators are required to follow a curriculum that maximizes the
potential for the school district to increase their exit exam scores. It basically boils down to
only teaching the students what they need to know to pass the standards exam.
2) Schools no longer have the ability to discipline students to any useful degree. Unless the student
is violent, schools are absolutely forbidden to touch a student for any reason under fear of lawsuits.
Even if the student IS violent, the campus police or another designated group are notified to deal
with the issue.
3) School priorities are a bit backwards. Easy to see what the school considers important when it pays
a high school football coach upwards of $90,000+ per year while a high school physics teacher barely
pulls in $45,000. Then again, winning the National Science Fair competition does not bring in any
money for the district, while becoming State Champions in football does.
4) Environment. Would YOU want to sit in a facility as unsecure as an American High School these days ?
Seriously, Chemistry is bad enough without the ever-present thought of some nut-job showing up with
an Uzi.
5) Money and the lack thereof. Many schools can't afford to add additional teachers / classes / facilities
to reflect todays needs. Those who live in the poorest areas do not receive equivalent education that
their mid / high income bretheren do. The cycle of poverty is tough to break.
6) A dim future. The reality of education past high school is dismal. In order to obtain a degree worth
anything, the student will go so far into debt it's sad. Not uncommon to see debts of $100,000+ for
graduates of a college program. Take that outlook with the current line of thinking that job prospects
without a college degree equal low skill/wage work, and you end up with a " What's the point? " attitude.
I've been out of High School now for nearly twenty years. In that time, I haven't seen any improvement in the
system as a whole. In fact, it appears to be getting worse. I've lost count of how many times I've run across
stories in the education system that made me say " I'm glad I graduated when I did. I can't fathom dealing
with the BS that goes on in schools today. "
No specialization.
No individual attention.
Too many students per teacher.
Bullying is allowed under the pretext of free speech.
School administrators often lack any kind of sociology or psychology skills.
Teachers often get paid poorly.
Institutions and teaching materials are out of date and or poorly maintained.
Funding problems (just to keep the schools open)
And these were only problems that were present when I went to highschool school 15 years ago.
Today they have all of the above plus:
Real threat of serious harm or injury.
Severe mental abuse.
Lack of art and music education.
Lack of physical fitness education.
I would rather work too than suffer from PTSD at the age of 16 in Highschool! lol
The article makes it sound like a HS diploma is some kind of magical shield against societal problems:
Dropouts are more likely to face poverty, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Typically high school dropouts earn $19,000 a year. High school graduates earn $28,000 a year on average.
If you drop out of high school, your chances of running afoul of the law increase.
and others...
But correlation != causation. Being a tool who is likely to run afoul of the law is correlated to lack of a high school diploma, not the other way around. Capability and drive and good judgement are correlated with success, and also with surviving high school.
It upsets me when people play fast and loose with logic like this. The solution is to cure societal ills, not to encourage people to finish high school. If there were a mechanism in place to teach kids good judgement and drive, we'd end up improving graduation rates AND poverty rates, recidivism rates, drug use, violent crime, etc. Encouraging tools to finish high school will only increase the number of tools with HS diplomas.
Had I known at 16 I could have dropped out taken a GED and entered college or JC and transferred to another school I would have. And graduated at 19-20. Instead of lame ducking my last year.
High school is just not that challenging or general requirements for that matter in college.
First, I am not making an argument that socialization is good for individuals - or that it is even good at all. I am saying schools are designed to socialize people (particularly to submit to authority) and that is their primary purpose. If that is so, then individuals have to answer the question: why stay in school?
This is mythology. There is a perpetual fraternity of "superior" in the U.S. We have wealthy and powerful families like the Kennedys and Bushes. We have secret societies that serve to connect the powerful with other powerful people, e.g. Skull & Bones. Even if you go down to the level of a typical corporation, people at the C-level tend to be white, male and come from priviledged backgrounds. Sure, there are exceptions, but in the main, we don't live in a meritocracy. The socialization that is the primary purpose of high school is to get you used to this fact, inculcate deference to authority, and create the mental framework where the caged believe they are free while doing what they are told - a necessity in a society like the U.S.
I'm not arguing that this is good or this is the way the world ought to be. I'm simply stating this is the way things are. Further, some people don't even have the wherewithal to go through this exercise because they don't even have the basics, and this is going to have some major long-term consequences.
I've read a lot about the quality of high school education, but what part does poverty play? /no income family would the immediate needs of the family make dropping out a necessity for a single parent family with younger siblings perhaps a macjob is preferable to seeing your family barely make ends meet.
in a low
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
For those reading this post and don't know about Milton Friedman... he was a Nobel Prize winner in economics that absolutely revolutionized monetary policy and made many other major intellectual contributions. Later in his career he became a fierce advocate for school vouchers and school choice. (Google Milton Friedman and read about his views on schoool choice, it is well worth your time.)
My mom mentioned that when she first saw the ugly mass of blocks composing the building, that she thought it was a sewage treatment plant.
Ironically, she wasn't that far from the truth.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Some cultures value education, some cultures value wealth, some cultures value physical prowess. Americans value fame, and to a lesser extent, wealth. So it's not really surprising that kids are dropping out of school left & right. Why should they? American society as a whole does not reward intelligence or education.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
And what education could have helped this? She was actually beat up by a rent-a-cop AND a kidney stone....with the kidney stone doing most of the heavy lifting.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Do you think that self-discipline is especially malleable? Are you familiar with the concept of hyperbolic discounting and intertemporal bargaining?
High school used to be full of extra-curricular activities that could give students an opportunity to participate in things they really enjoyed, and therefore motivate them to continue to suffer through the rest. Due to budget cuts, most of these programs have been cut, and the ones that remain often require the students to shell out extra cash that poorer families may not be able to afford.
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$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
there are ways it could work, consider something like this:
Each student takes each class twice, students taking it for the first time are r1, second time are r2. material is presented faster and harder than normal. r2 have an obligation to teach r1 students and are tasked and evaluated as such. this creates an almost 1-1 ratio between students who see material the first time, to those who see it a second time. r1 students' evaluations help contribute to the grades of r2 students. over the semester, r1 and r2 students are set into different pairs and groups to cover material and complete assignments. r2 are additionally tasked with harder problems that are only solved with mastery of the material.
Such a teaching method would work best in technical areas, such as math, science, or CS - where discreet jumps in understanding are required to progress. less technical areas, such as art, literature, etc. would not be suited for this. some benefit would come in mixed disciplines like history and social studies.
the whole concept of grades and how testing would happen would be different in this type of environment, and it would mostly only work with students who had made an active, personal choice to want to be there and want to learn.
it would also require removing the student-vs-student competition that currently happens in high school, and rather getting to a point where the real goal was getting everyone to understand all they could about a topic together.
why do you post AC?
That the taser hadn't become wildy popular back then, otherwise you might have been stopped through, ugh.. persuasion.
AccountKiller
White-collar work, and real University, don't require mandatory attendance.
If I'm busy working on a project for another class, or there's some other reason I don't need to be in a particular place, I'm free to not attend. At my white-collar job, I'm free to skip meetings if there's a demonstrable need -- I'm free to make that decision. I'm responsible for my attendance, and I make the final decision, not some random bean counter who likes to line up pencils on an otherwise clear desk.
High school is blue-collar learning, forcing what should be independent intellectual stimulation into some Ford-styled assembly line of basic-skills people who know little but how to solve the problems that standardized testing gives.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Here's the best summary of the whole thing.
m l
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/04/25/1438249.sht
I'd say more, but my guild is raiding.
Public school really didn't teach me a damn thing and I'm not exaggerating. It was a place that would watch me while my mother worked so she could eat out & buy shoes for herself. As a baby sitter, it was fine. As an educator, to say it was lacking is an understatement.
During my sophomore year in high school, we actually took an entire day to learn how to read an analog clock. I didn't require school instruction to figure out how to read a clock... and... I had it mastered by age five. Every class was like that. Always scratching the surface of a topic over and over again... never actually teaching anything. So much of school is about trivial things like not talking to your classmates, being silent, and sitting still. I don't find it a very effective nor social environment.
I'm one of the few that realized if I want to learn, I'm going to have to do it myself... outside of school. As a taxpayer, I'm furious that we are forced to pay for something so broken. The states are literally lobotomizing our youth by wasting their most precious learning years. You don't need school or teachers to learn. You need an interest and a way to get answers. Period.
The are filled with US students.
God Be Gone
Why drop Out?
I did, and it took me 5 hours (GED) to do what the drones did in 4 years. I'm now a (fairly)well paid IT consultant and going to college full time for my EE. Granted I took a couple of years off and partied and then joined the military for 4 years, but damn if I'm not more mature and well off than the "typicals" that went through the hoops.
I'm fighting The War on Drugs!
You went to the hospital. They saw the kidney stone. You've got a doctor's word that you had a legitimate medical problem. There's your proof.
Would it stand up in court? You bet.
Will it now, 10 years after the fact? I don't know. If I understand correctly, medical records only have to be kept for 3 years after you turn 18.
But at the time, yeah, you had all the proof you needed.
trying not to troll here but doesn't japan have its own high school dropout (of the ninth floor) problem or have they relaxed that some??
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
And a poor education system isn't the crux of it. Admittedly, much of the US has a craptastic education system. If I have the money, my children will be attending private school... The level of learning and time spent with each student is much higher. There are many other factors, however...
1) Passing high school is by no means a free ticket to a better job. Why not get started earlier, building up your experience within a company, and taking the teaching they give you so you know your job better and by the time you would have graduated high school you're making a few extra bucks an hour?
2) A high school diploma these days is a JOKE. Whats it going to get you? A job as a receptionist? Oh thats right, many receptionists these days not require some sort of certification as well.. Yay, all that schooling for extra schooling to learn how to handle legal documents and answer phones. You have to look forward to another few years of schooling in either a certification program or a degree program to hope to get a job.
3) Lets move on to college.. Okay you stuck through 4 years of high school and got your diploma. Thats 4 years you didnt make much/any money. Then you stuck through 4-6 years of university where, again, you didn't make any/much money. Now you have your bachelors and no viable work experience... Guess what, a bachelors, again doesn't assure you a job! My bachelors won't get me jack for crap as far as a job goes. In fact, a few of the jobs I've applied for said that because of my bachelors I was OVER qualified and they could get someone else for less money.
4) Now we've wasted 8-10 years that we could have put toward working. Hey, even in retail that can pull you up to a nice salary position with management making 60-100k a year. Most people would be pretty happy with that. All it takes is time and a little ambition. How many hours is this person working a week? Probably 40-50. How many hours a week would the college graduate expect to work, earning less money thanks to less experience? Probably 40+ hours a week as well. Its not until you get your masters/doctorate that you start to become WORTH something, really. Then your weekly work hours start to drop and your wage goes up significantly because you're in the minority. Not anyone can take your spot for less pay and do it competently. But, you're going to have to spend an extra 2-6+ in a grad school, again making little to no money, in order to achieve that degree.
Is it worth it? For many, you bet it is! I'm pursuing my doctorate now, but I have a few years yet to go. I look forward to it every day that goes by. But higher education simply isn't for everyone. Some people hate it and they would like to or NEED to have money right now. Its near impossible to start a family while attending university unless your family is helping out BIG time... And not everyone has that comfort. Not everyone even has the money to strive for higher education alone, the reason they wanted to get into the work force early to begin with! It often takes 7-10 years of extra schooling just to firmly establish your worth in the job market after high school is over... and even then you can't be assured you'll have a job. Look how many Computer Science majors on Slashdot complain about not using their degree. You might go through all that end up in human resources or a beat cop or something else that you could have gotten straight out of high school.
Its not just the educational systems short-comings you have to blame for this. Its the way society runs. High schoolers would, for the most part, be a lot better off if they taught more work-skills types of classes beyond the average 'reading, writing, and 'rithmatic' that they learn how. High school and college serve better for social networking these days than enabling kids with the tools they'll need for the future.
...they want to be able to use a library without being tasered by rent-a-cops.
have courage
What's wrong with our school system that so many kids prefer working 40 hours a week instead? It's not a school system problem. It's a hunger problem, oh I'm sorry, the correct term is "food insecurity" now. I'll quote the now famous: "It's the economy stupid!"
Is there a life after education that doesn't involve working at least 40 hours a week? Outside of winning the lottery or being independently wealthy anyway, most of us have to work for a living. The only variable is the rate of pay, which is usually commensurate with the quality of life you enjoy after you're out of school.
breed a bunch of K-12 workers, who don't care about college education, while importing H1-B's to do the work of those K-12'ers who didn't want to go to college. Sounds like the U.S. government is turning on its citizens by turning them into cretins.
So, should we blame the government that it had to dumb down the K-12 programs or should we blame the kids that have no sense of personal responsibility/self-discipline to get through high school and enroll in college?
Really - before you go any further - where does the blame lie? Or better yet, where do _REALLY_ personal responsibility and self-discipline begin or are taught?
I'm really sick and tired of hearing how victimized kids are in the United States. Yes, programs have been dumbed down, but on the account of what? As a God damn reaction to someone's bickering, lobbying, bitching, complaining, etc - to the government/board of edcuation, etc. and by voting people in who are more agreeable with what irresponsible parents think about the US educational system.
The desire to learn, be responsible and disciplined comes from "within" - and that "within" is shaped on a clean slate when you're at a very young age. Not at 17 or 18, or later in life. I'm not saying it's easy to raise children. I'm just saying blaming the government for your lack of doing this is preposterous.
You reap what you sow. If you don't like it, next year, sow something else or reap the same crappy crop again.
'A lie if repeated often enough, becomes the truth.' - Goebbels
I tend to believe that the education that we got in the 70's is probably better than what the average kid gets today. For starters, our nation was willing to put money into education. Now, education is being slighted due to events such as Reagan's and Bush's monster deficits combined with more tax cuts, pushing inititives such as No Child Left Behind but with no funding. In addition, back then, we were focused on fundamentals, with out parents pushing education. Now, it seems that more parents due not care as much.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Lower the voting age to 12.
Let anyone who wants to work do so.
Make high school optional.
How we know is more important than what we know.
http://newton.nap.edu/html/howpeople2/ch2.html I'm guessing that the bulk of slashdoters will agree. However, I think this article needs some percolation.
Money is the root of all evil?
This is a brief overview, the full assessment I (and my team mates) made (about 8 years ago) comprises well over 50 pages of text.
When it comes to pastry theft, I take the cake.
... like our society's expectations for our public school system.
Instead of preparing students for adulthood or college (yes, they can be -- and usually are -- different), we have assigned our public schools as the surrogate baby-sitters, keeping our children occupied, but not placing much more in the way of expectations on them.
This is a parental problem -- and by that, I mean a problem with the parents. There are parents who want to ensure that their children are prepared for college, and they are moving their kids to private schools, or home schooling them, or moving to homes situated in the better school districts.
However, that only prepares kids for college, and may or may not prepare them for adulthood. Especially an unimaginable adulthood.
It used to be that kids could get a glimmer of how to be an adult be emulating their parents, who in turn were following their parents down life's pathways. This includes a lot more than simply careers, things like social standing, moral behavior, and how to deal with life's challenges.
But when both parents are scrambling to make sense out of a world that is radically different from anything they were prepared for, it's no surprise that kids are set adrift in life.
I have no answers, I only understand the problem.
Because the smart students have started realising education is pure bullshit.
x t.html
27. Education is slavery, it enchains the mind and makes it a resource for class power. When the ruling class preaches the necessity of an education it invariably means an education in necessity. Education is not the same as knowledge. Nor is it the necessary means to acquire knowledge. Education is the organisation of knowledge within the constraints of scarcity. Education 'disciplines' knowledge, segregating it into homogenous 'fields', presided over by suitably 'qualified' guardians charged with policing the representation of the field. One may acquire an education, as if it were a thing, but one becomes knowledgeable, through a process of transformation. Knowledge, as such, is only ever partially captured by education, its practice always eludes and exceeds it.
Wark, a hacker manifesto http://subsol.c3.hu/subsol_2/contributors0/warkte
Infinite time means everything that can happen, will. You being you is absolutely incidental. You do not exist.
What's real? Reading/Writing: Fiction. Nuff said. Science: Consider all the untested theories that could be taught. And some proven things seem more unlikely than anything religious. Not everything being taught in schools is as "real" as you might think.
..who will be making more money than the average IT slave in 10 years
since they have a union and work that can't be outsourced....
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
Meanwhile the teachers have been 'educated' by the same system. They care nothing about teaching the students but if, God forbid, one of your actions should appear (in their fantasy world) to be an infringement of their constitutional rights, they'll scream like hell about it. The teachers of course think nothing of dressing like hookers and wearing T-shirts with obscenities emblazoned across them. (Of course not, they work for a government establishment and so their freedom of speech can't be restrained.)
Every morning the students all chant the Pledge of Allegiance. And periodically through the day they're encouraged to chant bizarre things like "I must express who I really am", "I have the right to be whoever I want" or some such American-style psychobabble. You probably think I'm making things up at this point. Maybe my wife is making this stuff up when she comes home from work, but I doubt it. This is what it means to be educated in California.
I also do voluntary work with kids in the area, trying to encourage an interest in science. The sad thing is that there are plenty of younger kids who have great potential. But so many of these kids have next to no chance of going anywhere with that potential.
Of course not all of California is like this. I live near an enclave of rich white-skinned people whose education district seceded from the surrounding city. House prices are through the roof there because apparently you can learn things in the few schools they have.
Still, a lot could have happened in the last ten years. Maybe it's like this in Britain now.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Well, I should warn you my school was in a very wealthy suburb. When I first started going there I was AMAZED at the parking lot. Not only do most of the kids old enough to drive have cars, more than a few had BMWs and such. There were Civics, but they were usually rather new. The school had cash to hire a very good staff.
I agree with you completely though. If I had this experience at my school (didn't get the kind of classes I wanted, to a degree) what chance does the local high school have? Some of the local public schools were VERY nice and could compete to a very good degree with my school thanks to the local population's relative wealth. Then again, the HS I would have gone to at the time (they since built a new, very nice one) looked terrible and like it was falling apart and unsafe in comparison. That was one of the major reasons my family went with the school we did. It seemed quite a bit safer than the public school I'd have gone to (not to mention the academic record of the two schools).
There are reasons for some of this (I blame teachers unions for some of this, since they fight so hard against any kind of reward system for teachers who do a good job). There is the fact that everyone in the US must get an education. If they don't want one? Too bad, stick 'em in the schools anyway. You can't screw up or be apathetic enough to get kicked out of school. If you can opt out somehow (like to a trade school), most people probably don't know it. Those kind of kids need to be out of the school (whether they want to go learn welding at a trade school and start their future, or just deliver pizzas the rest of their life and give up on school).
But like I said, I'm not claiming to have the answers. Just giving my experience.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I'm British and have no experience of the US system apart from what gets rammed down our throats in terms of films and dramas (not flaming there but cultural imperialism is real!). Compared to my schooldays US schools seem to be pretty harsh and cruel places. From my TV-based impression, the culture of the US high school is heavily polarised between 'jocks' and 'nerds' with little inbetween, the bizarre 'prom' ritual (which must be quite distressing for a large number of people at that age), getting a car when you're 16(!) (or not, in which case you're a poor 'loser'), no uniforms so status clothing counts for a lot, junk food in the canteen, and in tough inner city schools metal detectors for foiling gun and knife attacks. It all looks really unpleasant to me and I'm not surprised people don't like being there. I once saw a book where the theory was put forward that for many years in the US the public education had been deliberately downgraded because it was of little benefit to the country to have too many educated people running around. Who's going to flip burgers or join the army to get placed in danger if they have other options?
I honestly don't really know but this is my impression from afar.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
Video games and welfare. Kids these days spend too much time playing games or chatting on the internet so they get too far behind in school. It's also too easy for kids these days to get welfare, specially pregnant teenagers. Society is breeding a generation of lazy people.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Media spin my ass. Are you asking for someone to report that, to quote Lewis Black, "We took our school[s] from the truly shitty shitty shitty, to stinky farty smelly?"
Considering there are about 16+ million high school students ( http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/p20-533.pdf ), it should not be surprising to hear that an estimated 1 or 2 students don't make the cut out of a 30 student class. That was certainly the case when I was in high school over a decade a ago. Moreover, is anyone really -that- surprised that our larger school districts, which were the focus of that article, pull in the largest dropout rates?
Moreover, that ABC article is not even accounting for grade inflation, problems with standardized testing, and lowered standards. We're arguably giving diplomas to more and more people who probably wouldn't have received them 20 or 30 years ago.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Did anyone consider that there are plenty of kids dropping out and going to work because they _have_ to in order to support the rest of their family? How many times have you seen young kids going to work to help mom and dad pay for the rest of their (some inordinate amount of) siblings? Maybe if mom and dad would get "real" jobs instead of relying on having more children so their welfare pay is higher their older children could afford to stay in school.
That said, I too think the US education system isn't great. The kids I've seen "grow up" since I've been out of high school seem stupider and stupider by the day.
Not original, but I totally agree; Stupidity isn't illegal, but maybe we should remove the warning labels from everything and let the problem solve itself.
During elementary, middle, and high school (and part of college) you're required to take core classes like English and History. Often the material taught in these classes has no relevance to what you will do after high school, and it's usually taught without depth -- just cover enough material to get by on the state exam. Case in point: AP World History. You cover ~8000 years of history in a 1-2 year period, and most of that is forgotten weeks after the final AP exam. It doesn't help in life.
Instead, students should have the option to make most of their classes on a particular subject -- for example, math or computer science (obviously my two favorites). In my experience, many students already know what field they want to work in after college, and rather than treating all students like they don't have any idea what they're good at, high school should be a time to focus primarily on one area of study.
That doesn't make sense. It sounds like you just want to push your religious agenda and blame everything on the secularists.
If you believe this life is all there is, you're still going to plan for the future (while you're alive) and work for the advancement of society (for your family and friends, after you die). In fact, it's much more important if you don't believe in an afterlife.
Do you seriously believe that there are people studying science or working hard because they believe they'll be rewarded for it in the afterlife?
Hands in my pocket
So my country can be free...you must grab it by the horns, then we'll have a big party...
Insinct is stronger than Upbringing - Irish Proverb
This was 1996- right in the midst of the drug abuse and School Shootings era in America. There was good reason for the rent-a-cop to be there; there was good reason for the draconian lockdowns many schools had at the time. There was *NO* reason for not making an exception for illness, there was *NO* reason for the Independant Study course to be unmonitored without a teacher.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Throughout most of my life I was an anti-social person. Most of my friends went to other schools or didn't go to school and the few friends i did have at my school were social outcasts too. After 2 years of sitting in high school classes designed for people at the bottom of the learning spectrum and being forced to endure pep rallies and other non-sensical activities, I had enough and quit. Did my life turn sour? Did I start dealing drugs and go on welfare? No, at 16 I enrolled in community college and had my GED by the age of 17, a year ahead of the people in my grade. Along with that community college was a much better enviroment for me with no useless high school crap and only 16 hours a week in classes. I had my AA degree at 19 and transfered to the state school of my choice. I currently sit at 21 years old 1 semester away from graduating with my Bachelors, a year before everyone who was in my high school class.
Essentially what i'm trying to say is that people do not need high school. Their are so many options a person has now for their education. If you quit high school to sit on your couch and play videogames, more than likely you will not make much money, but if you quit high school because the enviroment treats you more like a number than a person, and continue to progress with either going to a community college or a technical college, you will be successful.
That'll keep kids in school. Even useless high-school is better than having your legs blown off in a pointless war.
I think the problem is the education system as a whole. The system is set up to produce cogs. It is entirely possible to have low or failing grades in all your classes in high school and hear not a word about it from any teacher or authority figure. Some of the more concerned teachers (who are sadly few and far between) might give you the "not living up to your potential" speech, but thats about it. However, if you are late to class, talk when you aren't called on, don't sit in your assigned seat, you get reprimanded in front of your peers, detention, etc. Do it too often, and you can expect suspension, parent-teacher conferences, and so forth. In some districts, if you have too many unexcused absences you are held back a year, regardless of GPA. I could go on and on, but I think the agenda is pretty clear.
Also, this is something worth mentioning. A friend, a high school physics teacher, gave me a piece of advice. If you are ever going to vote on a ballot measure that relates in some way to education, and aren't sure what is in the kids' best interests, look and see where the Teacher's Union stands on the issue, and then vote the opposite.
"Why go to school when you can drive a corvette off minimum wage?"
Ok, a little math here. Minimum wage in California (higher than most states) is $6.75/hour.
40 hours a week = $270
4 weeks a month = $1,080
12 months a year = $12,960 not including taxes
Hmm, not alot of money to buy and drive that corvette. Perhaps it is a used one?
The price of a new Corvette is $43,690 min. With a five year loan at 0% interest (minimum wage earners have the best credit) the monthly payment is $728.
Leaves that minimum wage earning, Corvette driving person $352 a month to cover taxes, food, shelter, clothes, energy, as so forth. I guess you could drive a Corvette on minimum wage. My mistake.
Dammit, wasted all that time at school when I could be driving a Corvette on minimum wage. What a fool I was!
Schools don't pay you money to work, you usually find yourself paying them instead. In today's material world the choice is clear to the uneducated youngster.
It could be that students in private school are just nicer and richer (explaining why teachers want to work there, and why students are more successful later).
2 006461.pdf
Multiple studies have shown that there is almost no difference in education outcomes between public & private schools - public schools do slightly better in math, private schools do slightly better in reading (2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress, 2006 Department of Education Report).
See here: http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pdf/studies/
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Having suffered through the public school system myself and now being subjected to watching my sons do the same, I have one question: Hey George, where the hell are my vouchers!!
Public school is just like any other monopoly, when there is no consequence for bad performance you settle down to the lowest common denominator. I know many PS teachers that will argue with me. However I have yet to find a job where I can work 6 hours a day for 6 months a year and have job security that's second only to congressmen while making pretty decent money. On top of that, teachers that teach and teachers that don't teach get exactly the same reward. Eventually the BAD teachers figure this out and act accordingly. Sure, some (maybe most) PS teachers work hard and do their best. Unfortunately it's completely at their own discretion. Most of us don't have any option if we wish to continue getting a pay check.
Ditch the NEA and put teachers on a pay for performance plan. If the kids pass standarized tests, they get a bonus. If they fail, well, maybe we need some new teachers..... Oh, and let's have a few referendoms on the tests. The BS they pass out these days might make you a great social worker but very little else.
In Illinois at least, students with sickness/medical problems or other problems that do not allow them to make it to school but are not bad enough for them to get a note saying they can't go at all are given the options that they can drop out, drop the semester and have to go another year, or not miss ANY more school.
Both myself and others have encountered this problem. They are threatened with a fine ranging from $25-$75 depending on how much is missed.
My mother retired a few years ago after having been a teacher (special ed. and fourth grade) for about thirty years. Your description is dead on although you neglected to mention dealing with unreasonable/uncaring parents. My mom's told me some real horror stories.
The government should NOT be in the business of education.
m l. php?Category=7
Private schools educate people for about HALF (on avg) the cost of government schools. And typically the private school students tend to receive a higher quality education for lower cost.
http://www.cato.org/research/education/testing.ht
http://www.theadvocates.org/ruwart/questions_list
Libertas in infinitum
I browsed through a bunch of the comments and, time after time, found myself reading that this quasi-epidemic is the result of a lazy, unintellectual population living in a country with a poor education system. First off, as a son of an ex-counsellor / ex-teacher / current principal, as well as a prospective pursuer of a Master's in Teaching, I am quite aware of the broad spectrum of problems that are facing our educational system. I cannot deny that, but I also feel that there what we have is not a total waste. Secondly, as a recent college graduate, I am not far removed from this same system which we are discussing. While I admit that there is a large problem in the drive of many of my peers from high school, not to mention the apathy of far too many of those getting post-secondary degrees, I do not feel that it is an innate laziness, as was claimed in many threads above, that is the root cause of it all.
I am currently living with a girl (not in a relationship with her) who has recently decided to drop out of college. When asking her what the cause of this is, she has said time and time again that it is to make more money. After all, working part time in a small restaurant does not bring in a great deal of cash. So, if she takes a higher paying job now and begins working full time, she sees that her income goes from about 200 a week to almost 500. By year's end, she figures, that gain in 15,000 dollars will be well worth it. Some of our mutual friends made the same move in high school by dropping out to work for the immediate cash, and indeed, at the moment, life seems pretty good for them in comparison to her.
This shortsighted, more now, instant-gratification mindset that my generation seems to have is more the root than a general sense of laziness and apathy, IMO. I try to tell her that, with my degree, I am making 15,000 a year more than a woman in my office with twenty years of work experience, all because I have a degree and she does not. I then point out that, if my career keeps along its current path, I will be making about 30,000 more than her in a few years, while she will be staying at the same pay scale, give or take a bit of adjustment for tiny annual bonuses.
Sadly, many people don't see that connection between being poor for a few years in the promise of increased income as being worthwhile. I want it NOW, they say, not realizing how the net gain will be cancelled out within a couple of years from graduation.
I won't touch on multi-lingual issues, stagnant educational structure, or anything else, as that would push this long post to the realm of the ridiculous.
I'm with you on most of your post, but, this point. Where they heck did you get YOUR corvette from where it can be had by a min. wage earner??
My C5 in 1997 was over $36K, and I got a decent deal on it!!!
A base model today is over $40K I do believe....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I shall quote Paul Graham here. [Source]
"Public school teachers are in much the same position as prison wardens. Wardens' main concern is to keep the prisoners on the premises. They also need to keep them fed, and as far as possible prevent them from killing one another. Beyond that, they want to have as little to do with the prisoners as possible, so they leave them to create whatever social organization they want. From what I've read, the society that the prisoners create is warped, savage, and pervasive, and it is no fun to be at the bottom of it.
In outline, it was the same at the schools I went to. The most important thing was to stay on the premises. While there, the authorities fed you, prevented overt violence, and made some effort to teach you something. But beyond that they didn't want to have too much to do with the kids. Like prison wardens, the teachers mostly left us to ourselves. And, like prisoners, the culture we created was barbaric."
The abc news article is useless so I can't address anything specific in it, but to answer the general question of what's wrong with high school -- I want to say it is the culture.
I hated every day of it. I both took abuse myself and watched it heaped on others for being black, supposedly gay, poor, or simply there. The teachers consistently did nothing. They saw people psychologically and physically harassed and did not say a word. I did not go to a school in the city or a ghetto. It was a bucolic, predominantly white area with a school of about ~1200 students.
And yet for everything that happened to the people I know, we ended up as functioning adults. Functioning adults with anorexia and whatnot, but we didn't drop out, went to college, got jobs, etc.
The people who were the ones dealing out the unpleasantness, however, did not. The people who should have walked away psychologically unscathed are the ones who dropped out high school or college and led uninspiring, financially challenged lives.
What would an exit poll on how much people liked high school reveal? What kind of person enjoys it? How do the scores correlate to success [in its many shades] and contentment later in life?
Does any of this even matter if high school is just a holding pen for still-immature, dangerous people who can't fully contribute to society yet?
I know how to fix this.
/sarcasm
Let's bring back corporal punishment!
Yay!!
Well, I'm probably the exception, but I can tell you why I decided to drop out of high school.
:). I read Wikipedia almost every day for fun. I chose for the longest time not to have a TV, preferring books instead (my fiancee likes TV though, so we have one now). Clearly, I like learning stuff.
:)
I absolutely hated every minute of it (except hanging out with my friends). The things we were being taught were almost completely irrelevant to anything happening in the real world, the pace of actual learning was tediously boring, yet we were saddled with ridiculous homework assignments that were obviously designed to keep us busy first and possibly teach us something second. Most kids just cheated off of each other or did a divide and conquer strategy (you do the fill in the blanks problems, I'll do the multiple choice, etc). I'm sure I could have "applied myself" more and all of that. However, I did not (and still don't) see the point. If someone assigns you a fool's errand, are you smarter to complete it successfully, or to avoid it in the first place?
When I dropped out (toward the beginning of Junior year, or 11th grade), I spent the next year reading about 50 books, mostly non-fiction (my parents were pretty tolerant, and they sensed that I was actually learning something).
I have since taught myself Linux, Perl, PHP, C, SQL, music theory, piano, etc. I have a full time senior level programming / sysadmin job as a result (of the computer learning anyway
So what happened? Shouldn't high school have been really easy for me? What was my problem? I was pretty popular, had a good group of friends, did well on standardized tests. Why couldn't I get good grades?
Because high school was slowly but surely rotting my brain. While I liked my teachers all right as people, the whole enterprise seemed to just be based around giving us some reading material, which we were supposed to parse and look for the relevant keywords so that we could parrot them back, as directed, on multiple choice or fill in the blanks tests. Yeah, there were some essay questions too, but it was the same basic idea. The amount of drudgery involved was just overwhelming.
Some people warned me that dropping out was a mistake. For many people it might be. I would be extremely cautious to recommend dropping out of high school to anyone. However, for me it was one of the best things I ever did. I got out of teenage jail almost two years before my other cell mates, and actually learned a lot more in the same amount of time. Eventually, in a roundabout sort of way with several false starts, my self directed reading and technology learning landed me a job in the dot com days. I have not been unemployed for more than two weeks since I joined the workforce of the real world in 1999.
Each job I've had (mostly) involves doing real work that is actually used by real people. Ostensibly, most of the things I did made the company a better place to work. Success brings rewards, and failure has consequences, neither of which are arbitrarily decided by someone developing a curriculum to keep you busy so you don't bother your parents or light off firecrackers or smoke pot or whatever else teenagers would do if we let them do what they wanted. I guess you could say the biggest thing that was missing in high school for me was the feeling that any of these stupid assignments I was doing served any greater purpose than allowing the teacher to compare my paper to their answer key.
Paul Graham put all of this far more eloquently than I did here, in his essay Why Nerds Are Unpopular.
Paul Graham, if you're by chance reading this, I want to thank you for writing that essay. My only complaint is that you didn't write it when I was a teenager
Of course that was 20 (yikes) years ago, so perhaps my reasons were different from what is being tracked now.
I was first enrolled in public schools in San Francisco, California during the 70s. I was lucky to be an advanced kid, moved ahead in kindergarten to gifted/AP classes because my parents taught me how to read, write and perform simple math before I started school. I loved school and found it extremely stimulating but by the time I reached high school things started taking a turn for the worse.
California passed Proposition 13 ("People's Initiative to Limit Property Taxation") in 1978, and although its long term impacts can be debated, effects in the classroom were pretty clear to me. I went from class sizes of 25 to 40; we frequently had no textbooks (ah the smell of freshly "dittoed" paper); equipment was shoddy and never replaced; teachers were visibly overwhelmed. I went from being a smart, attentive kid to being a really bored kid who found nonsanctioned extracurricular ways to be engaged.
If I had the resources to transfer to a private or specialized public school might I have reengaged or was I just headed for delinquency regardless? Who knows, but when I dropped out in my senior year I promptly enrolled in our local community college and took classes while working for the next 5 years. From there I went on to obtain my bachelors and masters degrees -- college gave me much more of what I needed in terms of structure, challenge and independent growth.
My parents weren't happy that I dropped out but their take on it was that the school system wasn't providing me with what I needed, and the college system might. I definitely wasn't ready for a 4 year program (either in terms of academic preparation or in having goals to achieve) but just taking college level classes and having the time to try things out was invaluable for me. Work alone would not have provided me with what I needed.
I'm not entirely comfortable with the standard track where kids plow through high school and go straight to the 4 year college. It seems like they are expected to know what they want to do in too short of a time. Granted, some do -- and some just spend a lot of time partying, being a waste of tuition payments, and end up in less than satisfying jobs wondering "WTF am I doing with myself". There's a lot to be said for growth using other exercises, like traveling or learning to support oneself.
It's not enough to track the dropout rate; you have to know what people do when they drop out. It actually makes me curious to know how many people fulfill their reqs for masters or doctorate and then never complete the thesis work...
Science is about what is, not what we believe or hope. -- Dr. Lonnie Thompson, glaciologist, Ohio State University
I've sued a state university (successfully!) before.
It is possible. I didn't even have a lawyer.
>>
What's wrong with our school system that so many kids prefer working 40 hours a week instead?
>>
40 hours a week at McDonalds for 3 weeks buys you a PS3. 40 hours a week at school for 3 weeks does not buy you a PS3 today, but buys you a PS4, a PS5, a PS6, and a PS7 over the years... but kids have a really, really poor understanding of how the discount rate works. Thats why we make the decision for them that they're going to go to school.
I wonder if we shouldn't just start paying kids to go to school. More than we do already, I mean -- my high school paid me about, oh, $40,000 or so if you count the merit scholarships to college I got as a direct result of it. But some kids can't see as far as college. OK, we know they can see as far as a paycheck two weeks from now. A billion dollars thrown at a random big-city public school system is mostly money wasted -- why not throw a billion here, a billion there, and offer hamburger-flipping wages for improving their own test scores.
>>
While there is plenty, at least arguably, wrong with our schools, the most likely reason people would drop out of high school to work is that there is something wrong with our economy where increasingly families can't adequately provide for children while they are in school; the economy that has been doing well in aggregate terms hasn't been doing well in distributional terms.
>>
Given that poverty is on the decline your understanding of the word "increasingly" is at odds with how I generally use it. Yay welfare reform and a booming economy. Anyhow. The overwhelming majority of the kids spending 40 hours at McDonalds (or, more accurately, in the gray economy) are not buying food or pencils with the money. Even in schools in "economically depressed" (why is poverty a mental condition? On the second thought, that might be unintentionally revealing) areas, the kids who are skipping class to work or dropping out early to work always seem to have sneakers which cost more than my wardrobe, etc.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Dude, what minimum wage are you looking at? Please, introduce me to these Corvette-driving minimum-wagers that are all over the place. Also, by "oversuppliment" are you refering to welfare (Japan has it [seikatuhogo]) or minimum wage (once again, Japan has it [saiteichingin])? Last I heard, most people working minimum wage barely got by on two jobs ($5.15/hr comes to $10,712/year working fifty-two 40 hour weeks).
Anti-intellectual sentiments run rampid in America and they are different from anti-educational sentiments, which are what your points are about.
If neighborhoods paid for their own schooling, rich ones would have the best schools and poor ones the worst. What are the smart kids from the poor schools supposed to do? Should the get a loan to go to elementary school, middle school, high school, and college? Why should they bother when they can become crack dealers and shoot you and take your Corvette?
I'm pretty sure a few Slashdotters keep a 5.5-kilowatt home generator in
pssshhhhh. Lightweight.
Karnal
4.4% unemployment rate right now. If you can get the job you want, why stay in school?
Half of high school graduates go to college, and half of them graduate. And many college graduates get jobs that don't require degrees too.
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
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.
I think you overestimate the power of money.
I'll tell you MY problem with HS. (I'm currently a junior at Bothell high school, WA)
we're forced to take bullshit classes with bullshit teachers.
I WANT to drop out, I really want to. but I also want to go to a good college where I can LEARN things that I want to learn. I have nothing against learning, I love learning, I just feel that high school is doing a bullshit job of it. if there was some way for me to drop out of high school and get into the college I want, I'd do it in a heartbeat.
there's lots of teachers don't even TEACH.
math? the standard math books have you follow the steps in the book, and the teacher doesn't even have to know a lick of math. And the "core math" books don't even do a good job. (fortunately I'm now finally taking a college math course with a decent teacher (in HS, but for college credit too) but I had to get through three years of agonizingly slow paced "core" crap to finally get here.)
english? teachers assign drawing homework, and despite what they think, grading me on how pretty a picture I draw from a shakespeare play isn't teaching. When we read novels where a lot can be learned, teachers just give us quizzes to make sure we read it, and then maybe have us write an essay based on what the teacher has to have us do, wanting everybody to have the same cut and dry response. They rarely to never talk about the deep stuff, I'd like a teacher to talk in-depth about the catcher in the rye, but the teacher doesn't. I had a lot more fun reading the book a year ago (before we had to in class), and the teacher didn't teach me ANYTHING about it that I didn't already think about when I read it a year ago. (to be fair, in 9th grade, the teacher I had did a pretty good job with animal farm, but that's one book out of how many?)
I ask, why should I draw a pretty picture of macbeth when I could be learning more programming?
and I'm not even saying I want an over-specialized education where I never branch out and learn something unrelated to the field I'd be in, I'd want to take lots of unrelated classes that I'd find fun to learn about, misc. science classes like psychology, etc..
but I don't want to be restricted by the education system.
for example, everybody's required to get one "occupational education" credit to graduate, and the options in HS are crap. the only computer related classes are bullshit stuff like how to use microsoft office, or "video production" (the point of the class is to spend the whole year using a green screen everyday. they don't learn much else.) thinking about those options, why don't they just give me a few dozen oc ed credits? because I've learned plenty via the internet. but no, I have to take some retard class. beginning programming with C#? the teacher's horrible. (btw, who the hell decided C# was a good first programming language?)
fortunately, I was able to get the credit filled with summer camps I've taken at digipen. hmm... a college.
I understand that they want everybody to get a broad education, then let us choose what we want to do with our life. But I could be in college right now, getting the education I want, rather than this education the school district wants me to have.
As a high schooler myself, I'd like to post a students perspective. While I have never seriously considered dropping out, the thought has crossed my mind. I'm not a bad student. I get decent grades and I'm in our schools gifted program. And while this is seen by students who do not achieve academically as an advantage, it quickly turns into an antagonistic quality. For simplicity, and because I'm a forensics freak, I'll break this down into three points of analysis: 1] High school culture is not as brutal as the movies. It's worse. While I consider myself to be in less of a predicament than that of others, high school is a social hell for all students. A lot of this has to do with valuing: students are tagged almost like pieces of merchandise in a school. A good athlete? Add 20 cents. Funny? Add 5 cents. Good grades? Add 15 cents. The problem is, it is the first time one really experiences failure. A C, a bad season or a bad joke. This failure is magnified by the intense self-labeling of worth. There are two causes: the first is simple life experience: it is a changing point. The second is labeling. While this cannot be actively eliminated, steps could be taken to change it. Equalizing opportunity for high education, to some extent, would definatly help. A lot of the labeling is just the reality of high school, though. 2] Expectations. High school is the best part of your life. Right? Slowly, this lie is giving way to a message of the reality: it's the worse four years of life. I won't elaborate, sense my first point was so long. Thanks for reading thus far, just a few more sentences. Not just personal expectations, but those of others. 3] Personal values. This is a time of the development of not only social opinions, but political ones as well. Being a non-apathetic teen is hard. The fact that equal access demands are ignored until one gets a member of the ACLU to speak on your behalf is aggravating. Figuring out what you believe is hard enough, but the treatment of these ideas as worthless only magnifies the hell or high school: especially for those that care. I would extend on this and talk about apathy... if I cared :).
Leprosy is caused by a microbe that eats away at the nerves. The leper does not die because of the microbe, but because they literally kill themselves... without noticing it. Our high schools are a leper, and a number of things are dozens of microbes eating away at it's nerves. I've named 3. Discuss.
As a public high school student in the US, I have seriously considered dropping out. I'm not your stereotypical pot head or alkie, but more of your bookish nerd.
here's a list of personal grievances I have with my school:
1) The building itself is disgusting. Built in the '70s, my public high school suffers from faulty plumbing. This causes toilets to back up randomly (for which we're not dismissed) and ceiling tiles to become breeding grounds for mold. This mold then causes allergy problems for me and ~1500 other people.
2) Staff doesn't give a shit about students. My locker is in such a place that I can't get to it in the allotted time between classes. I've asked for a different locker (they told me they had exactly 1 locker per student, yet a locker was found for the new girl who moved to my area) or a permanent hall pass so that I could be 1 to 2 minutes late to certain classes. The staff in charge of locker assignments basically ignored me. As a result, I have a 70lb+ backpack that I have to carry around with me at all times.
3) Make the policies reasonable. The Internet agreement form that basically says 'no pr0n, sign here.' is poorly written in such a way that it grants the school district the right to monitor all communications on the Internet to and from me, even out of school. Since cell phones, land lines, DSL, Cable modems, WiFi, and My home computer systems allow for communication over the Internet, the school would have the right to monitor those devices. (If I had signed the form of course -- I'm not stupid.) This form is 'required' for use of any school computer system according to the main office, and I have been threatened with detention if I don't sign it. This is interesting, as my English class, C++ programming class, and Video Production class all require use of an in-school computer connected to the LAN. What are they going to do? Kick me out of three of my classes and fail me for the year... and then do it again next year? *loop*
4) Make food better. The school cafeteria has a monopoly on what students eat. This year, the budget requirement for the cafeteria was that it must make a profit of $1.50 per lunch. Lunches cost the student $2.10. This means that the students are getting a $0.60 meal full of carbs, cheese substitute, and ketchup -- definitely not healthy.
5) School starts too early for it's own good. I have to be in my first period class by 7:28AM. I have a 45 minute bus ride to my school. The usual shower/brush teeth/contacts routine takes me about half an hour. This means, I have to be up and out of bed by about 5:45AM. Notice that there was no time for breakfast in there.
6) Teachers get paid if they teach or not. A situation that I have come across all to often is a teacher passing out some papers, saying "learn this, test tomorrow", and then not taking any questions. This is why I have a 60-something percent in my chemistry class.
7) "Pay attention". I'll pay attention to whatever I feel has the most pressing need. If we're learning a concept in math that I've already mastered and I have an assignment for Spanish due next period, Spanish takes priority over math. Sorry.
8) Compulsory Education. When you require the youth to go to school, you require all of the youth. This includes clowns and drug dealers, who would likely be somewhere else (read "not disrupting class") if they weren't required by law to be in school.
9) Stop it with the dumb kid routine. I've spoken with my C++ teacher about computers and seen her eyes glaze over. But 10 minutes later, I'm getting the shut-up-you-know-nothing routine. Thats why I'm aiming to be the BSFH.
-jX
Don't you just love politics? It's like a comedy of errors.
I was born in 1950, grew up in an orphanage, dropped out of high school at 16yo, went in to the USMC at 17yo [Honorable Discharge], current gross annual income $100K+.
... Money, money, money ... Expectations, Expectations, Expectations ... and a duo-class culture ruled by too many stupid fools, and exploiting many semiliterate citizens, with dejure-plutocracy, corporatist-communism, and religious-televangelism.
... no better than existed prior to the 1970s.
...) ...).
...) and no college degree. I am reasonably well read, and I have been known (in meeting) to correct scientist and engineers in applied technology when they stretch (beyond their schooling/experience) into my areas of curiosity and interest. However, I am still shown little respect by many in management when they discover they have a degree, but I don't ... some after trying to get me fired have even retired sooner than planned [I am good and hard working].
... learning fits me as I need ... whatever I need. I wish that the technology available today was available when I was in grammar and high school. I could have learned to cope with my learning disabilities much sooner, I was never told I had learning disabilities until I got tested by a college entrance counselor in 1974.
I have a street-degree on America's Educational and Economic systems failures. Location, location
What makes some expensive private high schools work extremely well? What makes many public high schools fail? Discover recurring performance and success high schools then mirror the process in public high schools. Currently we have Green-Pelsey/Crow separate and unequal school systems based on socio-economics
Is part of the problem that administrative+overhead for public schools is used to identify the cost-per-child education? I think that is unfair and a fraudulent lie to the USA public. Remove the administrative+overhead from the equations for both public and private schools, and determine how many dollars get to the children's education in the school building+classrooms (Principle, teachers, cafeteria, learning+teaching materials (not school boards, building projects, furniture, utilities, roofing
I now have over 162 Semester hours (humanities, mathematics, electronics
Education never fits me
THE USA Educational system is broke, because limp-dick politicians and special interest like Education in the USA just the way it is for producing an exploitable dogmatic (refuge of semiliteate) patriotic (good, but sad) workforce. We are not giving kids or their parents much to look forward too as a future that values Learning or many other things available only to the wealthy. We need to give all our children (citizens) in the USA a high quality education through high school [performance dependent] to college BS and MA paid in full.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
I dropped out of high school because it came with a horrible sense of futility and desperation. Sitting in class for 7+ hours per day to learn things that I honestly DO NOT CARE about. By the time I was part of the way through my 2nd year, I had enough. I was making more than any of my teachers with my freelance writing career, and didn't see the point of sitting through that hellhole for another 2 YEARS of my life. High School is a waste of time, and I have no regrets about quitting it. Teens would do better to pursue their own passions and find out what they personally enjoy doing or what they are skilled at.
Whoops, I meant *financially* independent. Financial independence equates to responsibility (well, in some regards) and certainly freedom from parental control (combined with the legal age of 18). If they don't pay my rent, they are powerless in controlling me because they have nothing to take away. I definitely don't want my parents out of my life, just out of a lot of it.
Freelance Web Designer - Portfolio
The main problem I feel are teachers that lack a real understanding of their subjects, high school teachers aren't necessarily the best in their typical field. Any idiot can get a teachers degree, forced to learn the standards behind "teaching and learning." This lead to student teachers having to assign basic cut and paste assignments and tests, just to get by and then maybe do a little real teaching. The classes taught by actual KNOWLEDGABLE teachers were always the best, Science classes taught by people who love science. English teachers that are also writers, history teachers that are history buffs. The enthusiasm and knowledge these teachers had almost always lead to an excellent class. Even if it was a basic lecture and test style class, with a good teacher it didn't matter. This is why I feel that arts education is in such a sorry state at the moment, it's very difficult to hold something based on expression back by ignorant state and national standards. But at the same time, it's very difficult to 'teach' somebody how to teach an art, they have to be skilled on their own. That's the reason why I feel I had the best time in my drama class in high school. We had an excellent, intelligent teacher, we were given freedom over what we performed, and we taught and helped the students new to acting. We learned.
I agree with it being disingenuous, but there are a TON of other reasons for kids to drop out. The figures shouldn't be the only reason we have issues, here. My guess is that they're the "fringe" people that don't feel like they belong, or they have responsibilities like parenthood, that force them to get jobs. I don't think that perfectly adjusted, well mannered, Ralph Lauren wearing teenagers are dropping out of school. I've worked with various populations and in one position I worked in an Emergency Department. A lot kids that I saw were absolute trash, pregnant and 15 and not going to school. Yeah...what we're missing out on is mandatory birth control for certain income brackets. (Of course I don't mean that, I'm just being hateful...in a funny way.) There is no good answer for this, we've been combating it for years. Some people just don't want to go to school. I hated school when I was a kid, but I'm finishing my BS in Public Health, Administration, now. Things change. If I had to do it all over again, I would have dropped out and taken the GED, applied to college and started my life EONS ago.
I know nobody, especially not Slashdot moderators, will ever read this comment, so I'll post it with my karma bonus.
The American education system suffers from the lack of a saleable product.
In the past ages, having a high-school diploma really meant something - that you knew basic math, history, science and English. The courses took real learning to complete, and thus even a lowly high school diploma told an employer you had an education. Yes, the real point of school was still to produce good sheeple, but at that point job markets demanded reasonably educated sheeple.
Only smart and dedicated students went on to university, where the education would allow them to rise a full societal class in terms of income. The extremely dedicated students creative enough to do real research got admitted to graduate school. Normal kids started working jobs, making money and supporting themselves.
Nowadays, however, the high-school diploma has lost all value and the bachelor's degree has begun losing its. High schools teach no vocational or even financial courses whatsoever. I, at 17 years of age right now, shall have to learn banking and investing from my parents and grandmother (who, thankfully, all handle their money quite well). The expectation, rising ever since the GI Bill (though the GI Bill was a good thing), that everyone will go to college leaves no real incentive for high schools to educate. After all, they can blame their graduate's failures to win admissions to Stanford and MIT on underfunding, the envied magnet school next town over, poverty, the parents or even the students themselves, because the school is not accountable to the local job market.
Top it off with politicians taking this obvious issue and spinning through each excuse the schools make up for their poor performance, not only to avoid confronting the real problem but because each successive scare issue over schools allows the politicians to avoid confronting the economic change that underlies all of it. Generation after generation, white men in suits tell us what's wrong with our schools, so they can keep sending jobs to Mexico and India instead of educating Americans. Nowadays a high-school diploma shows nothing other than the student's willingness and ability to slog through endless hours of busywork for no real reason or profit - exactly what modern business and government want to see.
The bachelor's degree has only begun to lose value very recently, but it's still losing its value. As ever-more Americans attempt an education that can out-earn the dying high-school diploma, they flood the job market with bachelor's degrees. And what happens when supply exceeds demand? The value of the commodity in question - in this case bachelor's educated American workers - drops. In the process, "savvier" young folks start taking master's degrees and Ph.D's solely for their financial value. Someday these, too, will bring in only a little more money than lower education and will burden young people with much more debt.
One thing is clear: Advanced degrees cannot demand high salaries while the high-school diploma falls in value. A house with a decaying foundation cannot stand.
The solution? In my opinion, we should once again make public high schools accountable to the local job market, as well as to the state and national university markets. Most universities will eagerly tell an inquirer how much money their graduates make - even for specific departments or majors. Given that high schools teach only General Education, they have no excuse not to supply such data to parents and students. Indeed, the better public schools already enjoy bragging about which universities their graduates attend.
However, many public schools no longer serve a substantial labor market. I know that Bethlehem Central High School here in Delmar, New York, USA does not. On some level, we have to bring back the high-school diploma jobs that once existed in most towns and cities of the country. Right-wingers are
Education has not changed and the percentages may look bigger... The amount of people that are going to go beyond with there education will stay the same. It's all the other filler people who don't care that are bloating figures. Who is to say there is an epidemic when the people that will excel are going to excel regardless. It has always been this way, there are just more people now. Some put men on the moon well the rest pound nails with blunt objects.
Is that what these high-school dropouts are doing, working 40-hours a week instead? And if so, does that mean there's something wrong with our school system? Am I being overly cynical in thinking that producing drones to who enjoy working 40 hours a week is the very purpose of our school system?
That's a fairly leading question. After all, just because lots of kids drop out doesn't mean it's the fault of the school or the education system. Some kids are going to drop out no matter what the school or school system is like.
That said, I think there are lots of problems with America's educational system, and by saying that don't think I mean to imply that it's exclusive to the US - in fact I think any public education system will suffer from most of the same problems. US schools are too focussed on regimentation. Students are forced to be far too competitive. Teachers are too often mediocre or worse. And worst of all, the courses, the rules, the schedules, the subject matter, almost none of it is individualized to the student.
One size does not fit all when it comes to education. A multitude of students are not properly addressed by the education system. Some portion of those students drop out. The rest waste their time until they graduate.
I had a discussion about this the other night with my mother (who has taught about 30 years in both private and public, and successful and at risk schools) my sister, and my sister in-law (who are both experienced teachers). The biggest problem that they face and the biggest differentiator that they see is the parental involvement factor. If the parents are not supportive at home, the child has no chance. Of course there are other factors that determines the success of a child in school, but if the child lacks parent-instilled values for education, they have little chance of being successful.
I had a long discussion with them about the merits of privatizing the school system. I think that it would improve schools, but the problem is that it would increase the gap between classes. Education opportunities would begin to depend on the riches of parents.
I argued that the way colleges are set up shows that it can be privatized. The problem with this is that not everyone attends college. Our system of government depends on the education of the people. If school were not free (or required), the people would not be able to make informed decisions (think of the current situation just much worse). One of the foundation principles of democracy is the necessity of an educated people. It is the reason for the libraries, the preservation of the arts, the freedom of the press.
People need to be educated. The foundation for that is in the home in a family. Fragmented families leads to neglected children. Neglected children make poor decisions. The destruction of the family is making the country stupid and stopping the progress of the nation. We are falling behind because the family is being destroyed in the United States.
You will not have the problem of having teachers that cannot keep control of the class.
It will make the act of getting an education mean something again.
Actually getting an education will have a positive affect on your income level.
It will make having an 'education' a real viable commodity for the person and give them the ability to get the 'good jobs'
It will force the Parents to actually 'Parent'.
It will lower taxes.
It will make it easy for people who do not want to work at learning happy.
We will all finally have a way to judge each other that has nothing to do with color, sex or race.
Please take my comment with the correct amount of sarcasm, humor and seriousness. I know its a pipe dream but it would do all the things I said it would do.
"The only difference between Genius and Stupidity is, that Genius has its limits."
The sad reality is that most US high schools are holding pens for the vast majority of students until they are of legal age. I missed 100 days of high-school over 3 years yet still graduated in the top 10%, scored 1400 on the SAT, and earned a scholarship to a top private university. If only I knew what I know now.
What I know now is this. If you are stuck in a typical US high school that has problems in the areas of crime, teacher quality, student behavior, etc.... drop out and start taking classes in a community college, or on-line, or horrors, teach yourself at home. When I skipped school, I went to the local college library and read about things I was interested in. I suspect that many of these kids that drop out are dropping out because high school for them is a monumental waste of time and insult to their intelligence and other abilities.
I'm 41 now and have three children. They dropped out of the compulsory public education system before they attended their first day of kindergarten, because they've been educated at home since day one. The oldest is now in college with a full scholarship, actually getting paid to attend, scored 2400 on the new SAT, (yes perfect score) and the other two are doing just as well.
The solution? End compulsory public education.
I was so happy when I got out of highschool, mainly because the teachers there didn't want to teach, and the students didn't want to learn because they realized the teachers didn't want to teach. That and the fact that most of highschool is spent "reviewing". You learn one thing in a class, then it is beaten to death, then next year your teacher takes half the year reviewing that thing you learned last year, and then near the end rushes another thing for you to learn.
Klingon Software is not released, it escapes, inflicting terrible damage onto the enemy as it does
forgive a foreigner for asking, but do you guys have any sort of Vocational Education topics? in South Australia, there is the VET (Vocational Education and training) topic offered in years 11/12 which are run in conjunction with TAFE. this allows people who are not university material (plus, unis are funded differently, no big upfront payments) to start learning a trade through an apprenticeship or traineeship whilst still below the school leaving age.
Kids! Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt it in your home!
What this country (US) needs to do is scrap the abomination of the Federal Education Dept./Board/Plan and give the power back to the people. Those neighborhoods who care should adopt and pay for the certification of some international education standard.
n ell_Ross_Team_Leader.cfm
And those that don't care can teach creationism and have a hell of a football team. Much like now. Frankly, I think we need more and better national standards -- much like much of the rest of the world.
As a disclaimer, one of my former bosses is promoting math and science at the DOE within No Child Left Behind today and for all NCLB's problems I don't think she's moved to the dark side. Listen to one of her talks here:
http://www.asme.org/Education/PreCollege/Pat_OCon
I agree with this, but it was on both sides of the issues-- My history teacher was conservative, and he would lead discussion on current events. My science teacher was liberal, and he would talk about fossil fuels, global warming, and how we were all going to die, heaping liberal blame on the Bush administration for doing nothing about it. I remember most people were pretty happy though since his discussions often took away from class time actually learning something (though he justified his teachings by saying this was "a class of life".) To the person who said that school should introduce people to different viewpoints -- yes, but one viewpoint should not be taught as academic truth and endorsed by an authority figure. Also, WHEN in class should one discuss political views? While you're discussing themes of poetry? Free body diagrams in physics? Does how to solve differential equations relate to the superiority of the conservative (or whatever) viewpoint? The basic body of knowledge that one learns in high school is supposed to be politically neutral, based on rigorous proof and general agreement, etc. The only time political viewpoints should appear is in a logical reasoning class or something. Unfortunately this is often not the case.
I've got to jump in here and call B.S., sorry mate....
:)
1. If you're 'gifted' then you should be able to self-start, and get the education you need without being reliant upon being spoonfed by your public school.
2. Many special needs kids are also gifted, but if we toss them all into a backroom with one 40w lightbulb and no support, they're much less likely to bloom than your 'normal' kids.
3. Perhaps you don't care for any socialist policies, but most of the world has discovered the immeasurable benefit of certain social programs, such as assuming all kids have a right to an education and a certain quality of life that in generations past has likely been denied to certain groups.
4. The people who "might help benefit society", by and large, are not the 'gifted' ones... people with high IQ and low EQ (the traditionally 'gifted' group) tend to perform quite well in academia, but quite poorly 'in the real world'. Special needs kids have as much chance of having high EQ as any other kids... so, how about we put kids with low EQ into underfunded programs? Seriously though, if your school can't provide support to some 'gifted' children, don't blame the special needs kids, blame your district, your politicians, and last (but certainly not least) get involved -- start a program for 'gifted' kids on your own dime, or coordinate a bake sale or something... i.e. Don't complain about what you see as a problem -- DO something about it!
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. - Dr. Seuss
If this teacher's best effort to stop a student from being disruptive was telling him to behave and then threatening, "If you do not stop disrupting the other members of the class, I'm going to have to send you to the office," then that teacher is not worthy of respect s/he feels the students should show. Teachers need to speak the kids' language, teach in ways that engage them, approach behavioral issues in educational ways not hierarchical ways. At the very least, this teacher should have pulled the student aside and asked him, "can you think of a reason why doing what you're doing might not be the right thing to do?" Put the onus on the student to tell you what s/he's doing wrong and to figure out how to correct themselves.
As long as teachers simply approach behavioral issues by giving students a choice between getting in trouble or continuing to have what they see as "fun", there will be kids who feel the "fun" is worth the risk of the trouble. Teachers need to help teach students why certain behavior shouldn't be "fun" or at least why it isn't appropriate at certain times.
Kids respond to reason and discussions and problem solving a lot better than they respond to punishment and threats of same.
Make classes case-study? Why not start it at an early age? I'm serious. I learned more in college in case study classes than I did in all my other classes combined. And only half of what I learned in case-study classes came from the professor.
Many of the comments here aren't focusing on the real root...Bureaucracies...
Schools are bureaucracies and as such process large amounts of average people. When presented with problems, bureaucracies tend to come to a screeching halt. "Special needs" kids just like "gifted" kids are round pegs in a square holed bureaucracy. There isn't enough of either group to justify their own school in a community and you can't just ignore them and let them drop through the cracks of society. I don't buy the notion that there is nothing that should be done to identify the correct level of a child and assign them appropriate work for that level. One solution that has never been explored to my knowledge is the elimination of the classical grade levels you have in schools and place children in classes according to their educational ability. Education should be a tailored experience to each student. If a student is good at math but poor in English, it makes little sense to hold them back in math because they are poor in English. That is what established grade levels do.
B.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
Don't forget our national 'No child moves ahead' mandate. It is often referred to as 'No child left behind', but if one child moves ahead of the rest, they by definition leave the rest behind, and that has been made a strict and public taboo.
I volunteered to teach a class for about 45 students at a local high school. Mind you, we're talking about an extremely wealthy highschool. At the less well to do schools things were far worse. While I was there I taught PE to school kids.
Based on this experience, I'd like to share a teacher's perspective on what happened.
Unfortunatly, a lot of kids really do use sickness as an excuse to get out of class, leave, and basically do whatever they want. Imagine for example that someone started yelling "Rape!" every time there was someone around them that they didn't like: At first it works, then it gets old, then it gets ignored, then they get treated like a liar every time they try it. Suddenly if there really is a case of rape, no one comes to help. The boy who cried wolf screwes things for everyone who has a genuine problem.
From the administration and security guard's perspective, I'm pretty confident that they genuinely regret the way they handled things. Perhaps they even wanted to appologize. The problem is that we live in the most lawsuit happy country in the world and an appology of any sort amounts to a confession of guilt and the end of their carreer.
In my experience when people fight each other to get on top, everyone loses. Sure you could get a million bucks by sueing a teacher. But they expect that, and they will treat you like dirt to save their own ass. If they weren't affraid of you, I bet they would treat you a hell of a lot better.
So, who's fault is it? Who cares.
The important question is: who's going to go out of their way to fix it.
I hope this helps. : )
Between 1972 and 2004, dropout rates have fallen drastically. For all ethnicities, they are now almost half what the rates were 30 years ago (note: the full article that references this table can be found here)
The table that parent references describes the population of 16 to 24 year olds who are not in high school and have neither a HS diploma or the equivalent certificate. That is not the same population described in TFA. TFA is talking about persons who had entered the school system and then withdrawn before graduation.
This refutes the argument that TFA is "Media spin". It may or may not be. But a rather reckless comparison of apples to oranges won't demonstrate that it is.
German low-level schools are not prisons for the stupid, but rather vocationally oriented Realschule (welding, carpentry, etc.)
:)) German term for this problem: Ausbildungsmisere.
The Realschule is in the middle of the tiered system. At the bottom is the Hauptschule. And while "prison for the stupid" is rather harsh, it's a reality that those graduating from the Hauptschule have a very hard time getting a job in today's Germany. That was different a couple of decades ago. A worker would graduate from the Hauptschule and then most likely find an apprenticeship somewhere. Today, those apprenticeships are taken by graduates from the Realschule or even the Gymnasium, the highest of the three school forms. There's a nice (as usual, long
When i was young
It seemed that life was so wonderful
A miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical
And all the birds in the trees
Well theyd be singing so happily
Oh joyfully, oh playfully watching me
But then they sent me away
To teach me how to be sensible
Logical, oh responsible
And they showed me a world
Where i could be so dependable
Oh clinical, oh intellectual, cynical...
('The Logical Song', by Supertramp)
Perhaps kids are leaving school because they've learned what they need to know in order to make a living. They've just done it sooner than expected.
Most high schools in the US are run like hormone prisons: keep the pubescent teenagers contained and under strict lock and key until their bodies have finished turning them into adults.
+++ATH0
...my reaction to the Columbine shootings was "I wish I'd thought of that".
It's the tyranny of the Marching Morons.
I dropped out of high school after my junior year, only I guess I did it a bit differently than most people. I went to a prestigious all boys college prep high school which sent 99% of its grads to college, with 10% to Ivy League. My problem with high school was it was all about test scores, theory without application, high school was all about following the rules, playing within the system with little emphasis on individuality and real challenge. The same can be said about my experiences in college as well. I decided long ago that I would do things my way, and if anyone felt there was something wrong with that... well they can frankly go fuck themselves. When I wanted to challenge myself by taking a stronger math course, my high school administrators couldn't understand the reason I didn't get an A in Algebra is because I was bored out of my mind, so I bought a pre-calc book and taught it to my self. Then I proceeded to take Calc 1 and 2 over the summer at a local university. By the end of my junior year of high school I had sophomore standing in college and had been accepted full time as an Electrical and Computer Engineering major. I found College, all be it to a lesser extent, more of the same. Many people have difficulty learning from a text book or lecture, and really most of those who are able to achieve high test scores from a "traditional" learning environment aren't really learning the underlying material, but enough facts to make it appear that they have. I find this especially true in IT, I can't count the number of co-workers I've had with master's degrees who couldn't, or could barley, cut it in real world software engineering. Bottom line is our education system is inherently flawed, and not just because of poorly designed federal programs which more or less force schools to "teach the test" in order to gain higher federal funding. In many fields there really is no place for the class room or institutions of higher learning, real knowledge is learned on the job by actually working as part of a team to solve whatever problem that job is supposed to solve. High school has become a game to get into college, college has become a game to get your first job, it shouldn't be surprising that many people see how ridiculous and irrelevant both of these institutions are and choose a different path. Apprenticeships are the wave of the future, historically they have been the only method of education with a high percentage of success.
It's, well ... ah, don't get me started on this subject. Forget it.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I'm partially kidding here, but your main points get lost because of the lack of structure.
However, let me offer you an observation: it. does. not. really. matter. what. you. study. as long. as. you. get. a. degree.
Employers look for 'advanced education' because it is generally assumed that you will have come through that because you have an at least partially functional brain. So, it seems to matter little WHAT you have studied as long as you've completed it.
Although I do agree with apprenticeships, you must be aware that the model carries more risk as you're having the work done by less experienced people. Not all employers are willing to take that risk, also because the investment in time/effort can walk out of the door at any moment.. I call that flawed thinking, that's a character decision more than anything else - but that is a consideration..
Insert
The reason mostly appears to be: Diplomas are worthless, and college is too expensive, unfocused, and has sold out to Corporate America. I see this everday being a club member at a RSO for WMU, students each day complain how the teachers know nothing, don't care, and don't properly teach their students and only care about getting a certain percentage to pass their classes so their not fired.
~ChibiSkuld~
For some reason a lot of people think "teaching the test" is bad practice. I disagree -- as long as the test is good. Should it be a multiple choice test with the teaching consisting of memorizing the correct sequence of choices? No. But if you identify all of the important topics in a subject and then teach the kids enough to answer a selection of very good questions about them, great.
Unfortunately this doesn't happen. My mom recently became a teacher and she is faced with this problem. She's teaching a remedial computer education class in a really crappy school. The problem is, the curriculum (produced by the state) is horrible. The tests are horrible. There is literally no way to pass some of the tests except by using the "memorize the sequence" method.
For instance, in one test (which I helped grade), there were three matching questions about the benefits of technology. (A matching question is where the list of questions is on one side and the list of answers is on the other. You write the letter of the answer next to the question.)
Sounds ok so far? Well, this is what the three questions were like: "One benefit of using technology is ______". Then later on, "Using technology also helps in _________". Then finally, "Another benefit of technology is ________". I'm not joking. If you put them in the wrong sequence, you got it wrong according to the answer key. Oh sure, the teacher can choose to accept any of the orderings as correct.. but when the kids get the SAME sequence of questions on the end of course test, which is graded by computer, they better know the correct order!
I'm sure a lot of people don't believe state-sponsored testing materials can be this stupid. They can. Here's another one:
18 If you have a computer problem, one of the first things that you should do is:
A. Call a friend for help
B. Read the hardware and software manuals
C. Take the computer back to the store
D. Turn the computer off
Hmm, does it depend on the type of computer problem you're having? Only one of these is the correct answer! Anybody familiar with computers should be able to come up with scenarios for all of them.
Or sometimes they're entirely wrong:
23 What technological device must be used in association with a microphone?
A. Light Pen
B. Mouse
C. Scanner
D. Speaker
The answer is D of course... but is it true that you MUST use a speaker in association with a microphone?? I have a set of speakers here with no microphone and I'm using them, so obviously not.
This one is a real masterpiece:
1 The world's largest network of computers which connects millions of computers using a combination of phone lines, cables, satellites, and other media, is known as the:
A. Archia.
B. Internet.
C. Veronica.
D. World Wide Web
Did you guess B? Guess again!
I was very sad when I realized that if I were to take the test without studying the notes, I would not get an A even though I am a "computer professional"
I, for one, work hard, and got my first job at McDonald's by impressing the owner by saying "I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty." And I meant it, even when someone did a number 2 in the urinal (ugh, that was a dark day). When i went to Frankfurt I got a tour, some guy driving us around in a Mercedes showing us the sights. He was pretty Nazi, kept saying things like, "Well, of course I as a German could never say anything like that about the jews..." and generally amusing us no end. Anyway, bottom line was, he kept complaining about the foreigners in the country (11% of Germany comes from Turkey, or something like that), even while he talked about how he hated to work, they shouldn't need to work and should get more time off. As a business owner (jlist.com) I was more than a little shocked at this. I, for one, am raising my son to respect hard work and be ready to do it himself.
You've got a friend in Japan: http://www.jlist.com
I'm trying to remember is that what it's called?
Things were definitely getting better after high school, but only in case you could pass the entrance exams to the college. If you failed then you got drafted to the army, and in the army high school would not seem to you as bad as before.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I would have dropped out too if my parents had not made me go. Kids do not like going to school. When the parents stop caring, kids stop going to school. The question is why do parents think an education would not be valuable to their children?
You can't look at high school alone to find out why people drop out of high school. You have to look at what's going on in our country, and in our economy. What you would probably find is that a lot of high-schoolers drop out because they need to make a living, or need to supplement their family's income. So it's not just high school that's the problem, it's other factors, factors that mainstream media rarely pick up on.
"I've got to stop masturbating! It makes me too lazy! Stop it, Albert. Stop it." -- Albert Einstein
I know a few teachers and one of the biggest and most influential problems is how parents handle things these days.
Say Little Johnny gets a detention/suspension for bullying/cheating/not doing homework. In the past, the school's punishment (do lines, sit in detention, sent to the principal's office) was NOTHING compared to what he'd get from his parents when they found out. Now, you get parents storming to the school defending little Johnny, swearing at the teachers, threatening action if the school keeps singleing out poor cheater/bully/slacker Johnny. So Johnny is back making other kid's lives miserable. And he learns he doesn't have to behave- mom and dad will defend his bad actions, so it must be ok.
On the other hand, suppose little Johnny is a good kid but merely lacks motivation or he struggles a bit. He gets poor grades. In the past, parents would help the kid at home, ground him from TV till he brings up his grades, get him a tutor, or ask the teacher if the kid can get any extra help. Now, the parent calls up the teacher and yells about how unfair the test is, how the teacher marked Johnny harder than the other students, the class isn't geared toward poor Johnny's speed/unique learning style. Instead of valuing hard work and effort, parents blame the school. It's MUCH harder to fail now. So kids who are struggling get pushed into the next grade where it get's even harder. Parents don't want their kid to- oh my gosh- fail!! Poor Johnny's self esteem. So Johnny has a harder time next grade- no wonder he drops out.
True story- a teacher I knew had a parent come in to the school with the kid's mid-term exam which the kid failed. The parent made the teacher go through each question and show the parent where in the class notes the exact answer is, and how it applied to the curriculum. No creative thought questions were allowed according to this parent- only memorization. Oh, and written answer was unfair, only multiple choice and true/false were ok to this parent. And the teacher didn't show enough movies in class- too many assignments. Sheesh.
The big problem is that if parents don't put a value on discipline and education and effort, then neither will the kids. Kids drop out and get a job flipping burgers and the minimum wage paycheque they get gives them more feeling of self worth, than the grades on their report-card ever did. Why get yelled at by mom and dad when I don't get straight A's when I can flip burgers for a wiz-bang $6/h.
Case in point. My parents made school the # 1 priority for me and 2 of my siblings. We did great. For the fourth kid, the youngest, my parents were too old/tired/sick of fighting with kids to drill that into him. So he isn't doing so well in school even though he's very smart.
It's the parents I tell you!
Our public schools strive for mediocrity. The No Child Left Behind fiasco is making it a lot worse. Any time you draw bright lines in the sand, as No Child does, you're going to encourage silly policies around those lines. In our school district, the result of No Child was that they dump tons of resources on the "borderline" kids around the 60-75% mark (70 passes). If you're above 75% -- hey, you don't need any help, you already know enough to pass the test. And if you're below 60%, you're a lost cause and not worth wasting time on. This policy extends up through highschool. We need to be encouraging gifted students to excel, but instead we're encouraging them to slack off and just slide by, doing just enough to pass the tests. If the gifted programs got the money and attention they deserved, we'd hear a lot less about what a third world education system we've got in this country.
The problem is public education! Home schooling and private schools are the answer!
I am certain it has nothing to do with the schools themselves but the parents I left at 16 (as my father so put it in a nice few rods for me) 'cause if you don't like it, you can leave....well I left, and found responsibility, as well as respect for myself and also had maybe more money in the end to play with (sad but true...)...so if the teenager of today sees he isn't getting the respect he thinks he deserves, he will quit school ,make his own money
and if the parents aren't cool about it, leave home and start their life.
Kids grow up way to fast these days because the parents don't take enough responsibility for
their kids actions....but this is not that big a deal as todays kids aren't further ahead
then let's say 1000 years ago...Alexander the great had his army going through Mesapotamia
at the age of 22 conquering other lands, which meant that he must have started his army at about
16 or so.....makes you wonder what his parents did!!!
One of the main problems is the quality of the schools. If schools became more competitive, then I think a lot of these problems would be reduced. Kids could choose what school they wanted, and be more likely to stay. Other schools would have to move to niche positions, such as preparing kids for jobs immediately upon graduation. Most high schools now prepare kids for college, but not for real life. Kids who realize they aren't going to college get bored and drop out so that they can get on with their lives. If they had educational options, they might be more inclined to stay in school. And, of course, at some level you are always going to have some drop-outs. That's not always bad. Some go onto great careers, and some try and fail, but get their GED and continue on with life at their own pace.
http://bgcommonsense.blogspot.com
High school was a complete waste of my time. I had a friend who dropped out, got his GED, went to the branch campus of a very good school (the same one I ended up going to) for a year, after which he could move to the main campus (assuming good grades).
If I had to do it all over again, this is exactly what I would do. Instead, I begged and begged to be allowed to take college courses for high school (and college) credit. Luckily in Ohio they have a program just for that (Post Secondary Enrollment Option); they even pay tuition and books. Still, my high school would only let me take up to 10 credits per semester, and that only counted for 2 high school classes per semester (10 college credits = 2 high school credits?!).
Point is, some are dropping out because it's absolutely worthless.
For instance: at the school I graudated from, it was not uncommon for the guidance conselors to urge students to transfer to a tech program before dropping out, or to drop out before graduation if it looked like the student would hurt the schools high (95+%) college admission rate.
So long as there is a significant number of professionals in the system who see beuracracy and administration of the district as their job (rather than educating students) we will continue to see students used, ignored, and abused - to suit the needs of the system.
-GiH
If there are no peasants then there can be no upper class after all.
"Your political system is essentially a two-party state, which encourages black/white either/or for/against binary thinking. This also means if you discuss politics in the USA, you quickly end up essentially either on the same side (in which case there's nothing to discuss) or on oposite sides (in which case you're essentially enemies) this makes it safer to drope the entire topic. In most of Europe there's more of an understanding for the *many* possible angles and solutions for any one problem. For cooperation and compromise rather than confrontation. That makes it easier to discuss such things without it turning into a competition about who will "win" the discussion."
I'm onboard with all of your points except this one. Most western nations have two-block systems, with one left-wing and one right-wing bloc. This is true here in Sweden, and it's true in most western European states.
Of course, there is plenty of intra-block conflict and friction, but that is also the case in the US, where the party system is a lot looser than in, say, Sweden. Here, we have more parties (Seven to be precise, divided into two blocks), but central control of the party structure is more strict. Our MP:s are essentially button-pushers without much real power, unlike in the states.
Hence, I really don't think the political system's structure is that huge a factor in explaning why Americans are more insular than Europeans. Your other factors, however, do - and there are probably a few additional ones we both overlook.
Okay, so what's your point? That kids aren't responsible for the choices they make? That it's all the fault of the corporations, the government, and lousy parents?
I could actually agree with that to some point, but it doesn't change the fact that regardless of what values corporations, government, and lousy parents instill in kids, they are the ones who will ultimately be held accountable for their decisions. At some point along the way before they turn 18 and are let loose upon the world, they've got to decide for themselves what is important and what isn't. We can blame everyone in the world if we want to, and working for change in those areas is certainly worth pursuing, but unless we also blame the kids—and we teach them principles such as self-discipline and long-term planning—things will continue to get worse and worse.
Yes, it is. Period. No other objective factor determines the liklihood of someone's financial success as much as education does. Maybe you think that financial success doesn't equate to happiness, but in the real world, the more well-off one is generally determines how happy one is. I could quote crime rates, drug use statistics, abuse statistics, life expectancies, divorce rates, and so on compared with income, but I'm hoping that it's pretty obvious what the picture is like.
Well, now you're starting to get it. An important part of high school and college that these "I don't need it" types neglect is what it teaches you other than the book knowledge that anyone can pick up without going to classes. Stuff like how to learn, how to study, how to work with others, and yes, how to jump through hoops when necessary.
Would I hire someone who doesn't have a college degree? Probably, depending on what job I need them for and (more importantly) their level of experience and their track record in doing what I need them to do. All other things being equal, though, I'll pick the college graduate over the college dropout. Why? Because presumably, I'll need someone with the ability to see things through, even if they sometimes get bored with it; someone who's not only willing to do the cool stuff, but who's also willing to jump through the hoops to get the job done. As for someone without a high school diploma? Not a chance. If you don't have the self-discipline or patience to even finish high school, then I have zero confidence in your ability to perform any but the most menial of tasks. Maaaaybe if I've known you for years and have personal knowledge of your work ethic and intelligence, and maaaaybe if there's something particularly striking in your work history that would change my mind, but seriously? I think not.
Dude, please tell me that you're not calling dropping out of high school "the fast track to success." If so, then you have to also believe that drinking cyanide is "the fast track to living long." Please tell me that you don't seriously consider dropping out getting "a head start in the work force." If so, then I'm not sure what to say, except that every single statistic proves you wrong. This is a fact that is accepted by pretty much everyone, and I defy you to show me any sort of study or statistic that indicates that the lives of high school dropouts in general are better by any single measure than the lives of those who get a high school diploma, or that the lives of college dropouts in gener
If a child's education does not matter to a child's parents, the schools are not going to be able to educate the child. Of course there are exceptional cases (less than 1 in 100) but that's not what we're discussing.
Isn't that the old adage, liars figure and figures lie? GrumpySimon doesn't mention that in many states, Indiana among them, the calculation of information used to define a dropout has been changed so that instead of what had been calculated at a 10% drop out rate last year is now figured at a 30% dropout rate. Same schools, same students, same raw data, different end result. There is nothing more wrong with our schools now than has been with them in the past. In fact, here in Indiana, schools are achieving at a higher standard than ever. Critics are just much more able, and likely, to point out the deficits due to the glut of information that is readily available. Take your numbers and spin them how you want. What will catch the attention of the media will be the negative information. Just like negative political advertising, it just seems to grab public attention. Instead of criticizing ask yourself, "What have I done to help a child learn today?"
I dislike stories like these in a discussion of education because I think they are not really relevant and borderline manipulative. They invoke all the worst emotions from that teenage time of life--emotions that everyone experienced and that often carry heavy baggage. It sucks that adults did not treat you as an equal when you were 16. But I'd say that's more a function of being a 16-year-old than an overall failing of the education system. A lot of adults in all walks of life do not take teenagers seriously.
IMO the best way to judge the education system is by the future adult achievements of students, not necessarily by how well it treats each one or makes them feel at the time. In fact I'd say that one of the leading problems in the U.S. society is an over-emphasis on student's feelings vs. their achievement. Being a teenager sucks sometimes; I don't think the schools are entirely at fault for that. And incidentally, U.S. high school students are typically far less rigidly controlled than the Asian and European students to which they are often compared.
Should students have a voice equal to the adults who teach and govern them in the school setting? To me the answer is clearly no. It sounds like the adults at your school could definitely have handled the situation better. No doubt, and your story is regretable--its clearly a condemnation of the people involved (particularly the nurse). I have a real hard time expanding this into a blanket condemnation of the U.S. education system though. I'd respectfully submit that this has disproportionate importance to you because you're the one who lived it.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
And while I'm at it, I might as well point out how stupid this comment is. $6,000 is a HUGE step up within the groups that you're talking about. From $21,332 to $27,351 represents more than a 28% increase. I don't know about you, but if I thought I could get a 28% raise, I'd jump through a lot of hoops.
Also, it might be worth pointing out that this divides out to a little over $500 a month. Hell, even though this is less than a tenth of what I'm making right now, even as an absolute number instead of a percentage, I'd love to have an extra $500 a month!
Last, but not least, you're forgetting that this is per year. Let's see what kind of affect this "measly" $6000 has over the course of an average working lifetime, say, from the age of 18 to 65. $6,000 a year, compounded monthly at 4% interest (assuming you just tuck it away in a safe savings account or CD) over 47 years comes to... um... over $830 thousand! For someone making only $21,332 a year, that's a really nice nest egg for doing nothing other than sticking it out and getting their high school diploma! Just the interest (at 4%) alone on this $33,200. Your income would actually go up by over 50%, and you wouldn't even need to touch the money you've put away!
So tell me again how "measly" $6,000 a year is? Especially to someone making $21,332?
P.S. If that same person goes an extra four years to college and earns a degree and stays as frugal as they were, tucking away the extra money, they'll have almost two and a half million dollars at age 65 instead due to the measly $21,545 of extra income per year that the average college graduate makes over his or her high school dropout friend.
The government cannot control the illegal drug industry, which is worth around 7 billion dollars per year. How could they control the multi-trillion dollar labor industry?
Most of my friends that dropped out for work did so because their families were broke and broken. They were tired of wearing trash, driving trash, and being dependent on parents that weren't dependable. It had nothing to do with our useless school system. Many of them are smarter and more motivated than their diploma-carrying counterparts.
I keep forgetting my place. Jesus is for losers. Why do I still play to the crowd?
The number one reason is that it is considered more valuable to the culture to be working and contributing money to the family than spending time in school. Especially when some of the schools in immigrant neighborhoods are crappy and dead end.
Hispanics are the fastest growing group in most school districts.
This must be frustrating the test-based reformers. As these are taking effect, the immigration factor is negating it.
Not all immigrants devalue education. Some poor Asian immigrant groups value it extremely. And in the last century it was east Europeans.
The core Anglo culture is not that must better. As any geek know there anti-intellectualism in that culture, directing talent toward the money careers rather than the knowledge careers.
There are roughly 3 Million public schoolteachers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teacher in the US.
The total combined salary caps of the NFL, NHL, MLB, and NBA comes to 10 billion dollars (my own calculation based on the '06 salary caps, per team: 102M, 44M, 128M, and 53M respectively).
Even if we liquidated the ENTIRE salary caps of all the teams, we would produce only a ~$3300 / year increase in teacher salaries.
Athletes are overpaid. They are not the reason teachers are underpaid. Even if all the money that people *choose* to spend on sports was instead spent on being teacher fanatics, it wouldn't make a difference to the majority of teachers.
I dislike overpaid athletes as much as most, but its just a convenient 'America is so hedonistic' scapegoat to roll out.
Should we be in Iraq? I don't think so, but others do. I know we have to stay the course now, until we can get out of there without collapsing what little government we've managed to prop up. It is our responsibility as a nation, now, along with the UK.
Whether or not we should be there is immaterial. If we can afford to spend $6.4 Billion/month in Iraq (not including afghanistan) http://www.counterpunch.org/wheeler04272006.html, we can afford to spend $6.4 Billion/month extra on improving education. That could simply translate into a ~$2000/month increase in teacher salaries, or whatever else.
The average starting teacher salary is $31000 in the UShttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teacher, and this is for the people who are entrusted with the safety and education of those we don't trust to do it themselves. Spending what we do on Iraq on education, the average starting teacher salary could be greater than $50,000.
If teaching were lucrative, maybe some of our brighter members of society would choose to do it.
I would say it's a sign of high self esteem to be disdainful of a job that doesn't allow us to utilize our whole human potential. Just because there are immigrants who are desperate for jobs because U.S. and European colonialism followed by globalization stripped mined their countries of resources does NOT mean this is a good thing. The more the ownership class pays a sub living wage the more worker sabotage, sick days, and slacking off there will be, count on this as a fact. Your underpaid employees hate you, repeat this as a mantra before you go to sleep.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
When you take all individuality, personal choice, and incentive for achievment out of education, and create a vast national Soviet style education system, that is what you get (to be fair, even Soviet education wasn't as rigidly central planned as American education). School choice that is taken for granted in Europe is attacked as a "Right Wing Conspiracy To Destroy Public Education" in America. (Which is ironic, because Europeans are always stereotyped to be more socialist than Americans, yet they have more private schools and much more personal choice in public schools than the United States).
As long as the teachers unions are more concerned with creating a vast educational beurocracy that protects jobs, instead of allowing competition and personal choice in schooling, schooling is going to be commoditized, socialized crap! It isn't a funding problem (U.S. schools are #2 worldwide in funding), it isn't a problem with our culture not valuing education (otherwise we wouldn't spend to much money on it), it is that we are trying to run the educational system as a top-down dictatorship.
This fear-mongering about American education has been going on since 1983, with the publication of "A Nation At Risk." The problem with American schools doesn't lie across the board. It lies with the "have-nots" -- that segment of schools, primarily black but not only, that are truly neglected. Read Jon Kozol's "The Shame of the Nation" to see what I'm talking about. Also read Biddle's "The Manufactured Crisis" -- a book published in 1995 that elucidates how much of this "crisis" is really just, well, crap. America has one of the best education systems in the world. Unfortunately, it also has one of the worst -- and that is the one that really needs attention but doesn't get it. And America has an EXCELLENT higher education system. Amazing how well it does when it's being fed by all of these allegedly "uneducated" people the American public school system is putting out. A lot of the problems that have "arose" since, coincidentally, the civil rights movement are not really problems. They are the inevitable result of making a genuine attempt to educate the entire population fairly. Why did SATs scores drop? Not because people got stupider, but because a segment of poorer folk who had never gone to college decided they should go to college and thus they took the SAT. Disaggregate the scores and you'll see that those who were doing "well" before are doing "well" now -- actually better. Stop worrying people. Really. -An Oxford graduate student in Comparative Education
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
I think we are going to see a major shift in high school and college education in the next 10 -20 years. More and more students are going to switch to online schooling. They recently started online schooling in my state and a lot of students are trying it out. If it is successful, I think the state will really push it. At first, mainly to save on transportation, building and overcrowding costs. It will be interesting to see how this will compare to traditional schooling and how it will affect things like extracurricular activities.
I dunno if I agree about actually skipping it, but I know what you mean. Except more often then not, it's just other asshat children who are the problem, who consider every organized game a huge competition that they just have to win, and you make one mistake, and they hate you, whereas they can make as many mistakes as they want an noone gives a fuck.
It's all relative, I guess.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
1 - http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/education/jan-june
2 - If there are 300,000,000 Americans evenly distributed between ages 1 and 100, this number is realistic.
3 - http://www.ed.gov/pubs/OR/ConsumerGuides/dropout.
4 - http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/ewp_08.ht
A good example is a family I know. Parents have had the same home, some careers, same everything since long before having kids. They had 3 boys, and all three have completely different lives now that they are all grown. One stayed close to home and is a chip off the old block, going into the same profession as his father. Another moved to Japan and has been bouncing around Japan and China ever since. And the third is in a mental institution.
The point? What worked for raising you may not work for raising someone else. Children are not little robotic extensions of their parents. Whatever your definition of "real parenting" might be might just drive one of your kids into an institution. You never know.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
At the Gibalt School in Maine, they crank out world-class students, with some of the highest scores, anywhere. They even have LAPTOPS instead of school books, starting at the 5th or 6th grade. Their cost? $1024/student/year.
In DC city schools, they crank out some of the worst. Huge numbers drop out, few excell. Laptops? Don't be silly. We're just hoping they don't bring a gun to school. Their cost? $11,000/student/year.
It's about the dull stuff: responsibility, testing teachers, and NOT introducing social experimentation. Unions don't belong in school, and neither do Liberals. Because this is what they bring.
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
If you are going to have students take all these tests to pass and get to the next grade then of course you will have all these drop outs. In NY they have regents. If you dont pass the regents for each subject then you dont graduate. i hated it.
- In the US, a student who excels in one subject but struggles in another can be in different "tracks" for different subjects (say, taking AP/IB Math while taking regular English). In Germany, that same student might be stuck in Realschule (I believe this is what you referred to as "secretaries school") and have a hard time ever attending University at all. In the US, that same kid would easily go to college.
- In the US, you can move between tracks. I mean, can you really tell when a child is in 5th grade whether or not he's going to be a top-performing student? For all students? Some children take a long time to "figure out school". For instance, my sister in law's performance in high school was absolutely abysmal. Her guidance counselor actually advised her not to attend college. In Germany, attending a University would not have been an option. But I kid you not, she graduated college with a 4.0. And yes, a real 4-year college.
- In the US public schools, you are exposed to people who are some of the most mind-bogglingly dumb people ever born. No amount of advance preparation can give you a feel for just how stupid these people are. These people comprise about 80% of society, so it's important to get used to them.
Really, I don't believe the US schools are all that bad. They still graduate the smartest, most creative people on the planet, so they must be doing something right. Maybe their secret is not trying to "teach" too much. The best you can do for a truly gifted child is stay out of his way unless he is going to kill himself. A child's natural curiosity is eclipsed only by his natural fearlessness.They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
I have said this so many times.
If I ruled the world, every prison would be modelled after a highschool.
No-one would be released from prison without at least a highschool diploma.
Getting a good job as a highschool drop out is hard.
Getting any job as an ex-con is even harder.
Add them together and it's almost impossible not to become a life-long repeat offender.
There need to be programs that assist inmates in moving halfway across the country to try to start a new life far away from the 'frends' and social situations that got them put in jail to begin with.
Drug addicts in rehab are constantly taught about the connection between return to their old lives and old friends and returning to rehab.
The world needs ditch diggers too.
don't know who this big 'you' that you keep referring to. Being that this country's population growth is significantly due to immigration (I believe the Washington Post suggested the figure of 40%, though I don't know precisely), I would argue that a great number of Americans have been exposed to the variation of the world.
Although I too have a significant problem with the black hat/white hat mentality of discourse, I would caution you to not take internet forum discussions and party-affilliated websites to be an accurate reflection of how all Americans think or speak. This is a very big country and there is a lot going on that isn't covered by the media.
Having lived in a dozen U.S. states and western Europe, and traveled throughout Asia, I am aware of diversity (and I am an American). I can tell you that a Wyoming rancher has as much in common with a New York City stock broker as a Swede has to do with an Italian.
Don't forget the baton.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
I don't see what the problem is here. People are sorting themselves. The GOOD thing is that some of those that do not want the education are leaving school rather than staying and causeing problems.
"No person left behind" is a flawed system. As we see from the dropout rate, many people want to be left behind. At least these people are making the decision. Unfortunately, many people don't make the choice to leave school and their class turns into a babysitting session and even the kids who want to learn, can't lean.
The biggest problem is that we spend more per child in the inner cities where there are more classes with babysitters, and they are the most expensive babysitter
Oh yeah- the baton in the back of the knees will take down just about anybody if they aren't prepared for it. And if you could be prepared for it while experiencing a kidney exploding internally, you're a better man than I.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Care to elaborate? Or didn't your parents teach you how.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Next you're going to try to tell me to say tomahto, eh.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Comment removed based on user account deletion
the extreme regimentation brought on by 'No Child Left Behind" is finally drawing a backlash? It seems to me that this is a predictable result of dropping 'inefficient' parts of the school day like recess and drugging students who can't sit still and goggle unblinkingly at the teacher for the required 6 hours a day. Remember this story from a few months ago? Remember the horror stories elsewhere about schools requiring kids to be drugged in order to stay in school? Can you yell me that being forced to sit still and listen to the same inane lessons six hours a day, and getting drugged if you don't/can't, doesn't encourage dropping out?
Wow. Sounds like you are part of the problem ("wether they were illegal or not, I could care less. We did the proper parerwork to cover our butts so it was irrelevant"). At no time is it good argument that "no one wants the jobs". Pay decent wages for decent work and people WILL want them. Continuing to support the system by paying crap wages and supporting an illegal "slave labor" class doesn't help -- it makes things worse.
= 484). I'd even hazzard that the high immigrant rate in California public schools contributes to losses in other groups -- due to the poor quality of instruction and environment available. I, a proud Califonia public school product, refuse to send my own kids to any of the public schools here -- there's just no point. The teachers spend WAY to much of their time accounting for their large non-english speaking population and the actual instruction level is minimal.
Pride can be had in ANY job -- if someone finds it worthwhile. Pride in ownership of your job and product are essential. It's great that the "immigrant" work force has this -- since they're used to complete crap in their native country. Such feelings COULD be installed with some of our more "menial" jobs -- if they were compensated for properly. Even farm worker, construction, and service industries (the 3 big "we need illegals" industries). I have no sympathy for any of these groups. They have profitted off the public dole for far too long.
And back on topic: the huge increase in illegals also seems to account for a large amount of high school drop out in border states like California where the immigrant drop-out rate is about 45% (http://www.independent.org/issues/article.asp?id
2,500/day = 912,500/year dropping-out. This rate about 0.3% of the U.S. population dropping-out every year (at current population estimates).
But what number of students enter high school each year? PBS says 3 million students graduate this year. These are the students who make it; those who drop-out are the ones who don't make it. So, adding the 912,500/year that drop out, we're looking at an initial high school input of almost 4m students.
This back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that roughly 3/4 of students are still graduating high school.
Not that this is a high bar of achievement by any means... No way.
But at least we who weren't slacker idiots will have plenty of people serving us burgers and fries, schlepping boxes in warehouses, driving taxis, digging swimming pools, mopping floors, etc.. (assuming these jobs aren't all taken over by robots, but given the slow progress of our robotic overlords in spite of various technologists' and futurists' predictions, I would bet current crap-job laborers will have secure employment (secure from automation, at least, though immigration is quite a different story) for at least another 25 years. Needless to say, I don't share Ray Kurzweil's optimism for "20,000 years of progress in the next 100 years"...)
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
no motivation, and a ridiculous punishment system. for a kid who got kicked out for finding kid's email passwords and doing nothing with them, i know. also, kids now simply don't care about their future, but then again i dont think any kids do.
France, Germany, Scandanavia and even the UK are all much more "socialistic" than the US (as far as the government supporting those who fail in education/employment) and still have consistently better education systems and higher test scores than the US.
People from here know what a ripoff $6 an hour is, so why should they work hard? People from mexico find $6 an hour to be way more than they could make at home, so you're damn right they work harder. People from here have a higher sense of entitlement. "How can I get all the stuff I deserve as an american on only $6 an hour? This place sucks.." Mexican immigrants, OTOH, live with more people crammed into smaller houses and drive cheaper cars or take public transport. Americans never see such conditions (at least not on TV, which is where they get most of their opinions) so can't countenance sharing small living quarters or not having a lot of new clothes etc etc.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
Big congrats to your mother. That's certainly an accomplishment and it sounds like she was one of the teachers that cared. Very cool. And you are absolutely right...the parents. Egads. I was kind of lumping that into the "hands tied behind their backs" part but it really does deserve it's very own category. The stories are ridiculous...
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
It would be much easier to recruit top of the line teachers if they weren't treated so crappily though. However, I do agree with you in the fact that unfortunately you are correct in the sense there are many teachers out there that just don't care. They've got the sweet bennies that you describe and since they don't really care, whatever restrictive rules the administration impose just don't matter. Same with unreasonable parents...if it's an uncaring teacher, the parent's harassment really doesn't matter.
It's a shame...the current system is so screwed up that it discourages people that actually want to teach and make a difference yet also provides a safe haven for apathetic "instructors". It's easy to bad mouth the bad teachers, but just look at the crap an actual honest-to-goodness, caring, interested, engaging instructor has to deal with and you'll see the deeper roots of the problem.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
In real (that is inflation adjusted) dollars the minimum wage of $5.15/hour is only about 56% of what it was in 1968. You would have to earn $9.12/hour in 2005 dollars to have exactly the same earning power you would have had in 1968 earning minimum wage.
What your job managing a fast food joint demonstrated was not that US workers were lazy, but that only workers with virtually no bargaining power (because either they didn't have legal status or because they were too incompetent to hold any job) would work for $6.00/hour. And that to get competent workers at that wage that they had to dip into the illegal workers pool.
I remain contininually bemused by the news reports this year coming from the agricultural sector complaining about how they couldn't find enough workers this year because the crackdown on illegal immigration had scared away a large percentage of potential workers. But the one thing you didn't hear even suggested by the farmers was the possibility of hiring US citizens at a better wage. It wasn't that they could find workers: It was that they couldn't find workers willing to work at slave wages once you subtracted the illegal workers.
My blog post on J-List:
I caught a post on Slashdot the other day about a surge in high school dropouts in the U.S., and was saddened at the news. In Japan, compulsory education covers six years of elementary school and three years of junior high school, and during that time the basics that everyone needs to know are taught -- math, social studies, kanji, morals, and so on. High school has never been required, and there's nothing keeping a sixteen year old who has something better to do with his time from not going on past the 9th year of school. Just the same, there's a heavy stigma -- the dreaded label "chu-sotsu," meaning someone who only attained the level of junior high -- against anyone who doesn't graduate from high school, and the vast majority (96%) do go on. High schools in Japan function as a miniature version of the university system, complete with entrance exams, and competition for the best schools -- Takasaki High School and Maebashi Girl's School are the highest-ranked in our prefecture -- is fierce, requiring years of preparation. Just as with universities, it's possible for students to aim too high and fail their tests, and become a "ronin," a word which used to mean masterless samurai but which now refers to a student who is in limbo while he prepares for next year's tests.
You've got a friend in Japan: http://www.jlist.com
http://www.michaelrobertson.com/archive.php?minute _id=224
Or, skip straight to the "Free To Choose" show on: http://ideachannel.tv/
-- -pjk Perry Kundert perry@kundert.ca http://kundert.2y.net
There isn't the slightest doubt in my mind that the reason is the enormous disparity of wealth in our country, which has primarily risen since the inception of the Ronald Reagan presidency.
The people dropping out aren't the wealthier students, they are the poorest ones.
Our educational system does not provide equal opportunity. Poor and working class students have far less chance of (a) receiving a quality education, (b) being able to concentrate on school, (c) being safe from predators, (d) having proper facilities.
In inner city areas, there are high school students without classrooms, high school students who have to eat lunch at 9:30 A.M. and go hungry throughout the rest of the day, high school students who have to fear for their lives when they go to school.
In my opinion, the fastest solution would be to (a) outlaw private schools, except as a place for supplemental education, and (b) overrule the holding of the US Supreme Court in the San Antonio School District case that it is okay for our public schools to be funded by a property tax system that discriminates in favor of the richest in our society and against the poorest in our society.
These 2 steps would ensure that (a) the children and grandchildren of politicians and of the wealthiest in our society would be in the same school system that the rest of us have to live with for our children and grandchildren, and (b) rich neighborhoods and poor neighborhoods would receive the same per-student funding.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
That is the model you know and you are most familiar with.
In many human societies women have always been the ones raising the children, normally helping ech other, with little or no intervention from the father, who is engaged in other businesse like hunting, herding or warmongering.
In many modern societies noawadays we have many fmialies with a single parent, there are some countries where they manage better than others (mostly north European) which would indicate cultural diferences in regards to how people rear children.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.