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High School Students Forced To Declare A Major
i_like_spam writes "As reported in the NYTimes, high school freshmen at many high schools across the nation are now being forced to pick a major. Starting this Fall, 9th graders in Florida will have to choose to major from among a set of state-approved subjects, while some students in Mississippi will have to follow one of nine designated career paths. High school administrators hope that having students declare majors will lead to greater student interest in school until graduation. College administrators think otherwise: 'youngsters should instead concentrate on developing a broad range of critical thinking and communication skills,' says Debra Humphreys from the Association of American Colleges and Universities."
The obsession with the FCATs is insane. Everything in the schools revolves around them. Some administrators in one school even "anointed" kids' desks before the test with holy oil, hoping for higher scores.
I see this as just another attempt to do that - all of the "majors" will certainly be things the FCATs focus on. This is just another way to raise artificial indicators of the success of the schools at the expense of a real education.
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Isn't it the case that other countries force their students to pick a career path beginning in high school? I thought this was how other countries, especially the Indian and Chinese government, were able to turn out so many engineers/scientists...by narrowing the focus of education early on.
I agree with the idea that students shouldn't be all lumped into the same category. If you're destined to be a scientist, why spend half your high school career studying unrelated subjects? Cram all the knowledge in now, while your brain still has a huge memory capacity. That way, college is reserved for deeper study of a subject, not review of stuff you should have learned in high school.
Also, high school curricula are pretty much aimed at the lowest common denominator. It makes sense to separate those who are interested in learning from those who are interested in using up oxygen. Ever wonder why college degrees are almost required for any corporate job? Because high school doesn't give you enough preparation to do a "real world" job. This would also prevent people from being forced through college who otherwise don't need it. There are very few non-menial jobs you can get anymore without a degree, and some people, while qualified for a job, are not suited for advanced study.
The counselor (a woman) proceeded to tell me I had better decide right away what I was going to do with my life, what my career would be. "How do you expect to support a wife and family?" she asked pointedly.
That just further reinforced my impression at the time that at best adults were clueless idiots, and at worst dangerous.
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Amen, brother.
I majored in Physics in college, only to find that I was exceptionally good at explaining things in our campus planetarium and observatory. After two years of friends, family, and planetarium patrons telling me I should become a teacher, I took the plunge and added Secondary Education to my major.
I met with my new adviser who told me, "You have a lot of ground to cover -- you've missed two years... I just don't know how you're going to make it up in time."
Then I attended my first class. Every test -- EVERY test -- was based on the bold letter definitions in the text book. Hell, in one of my "advanced" classes (500-level (I had to get "special permission" to take it as an undergrad)) the professor handed out the final exam on the first day of class. She said, "Have this back to me by the end of the semester. It's really hard, so I figured I'd give you the whole time. Again, bold-letter definitions and requests to copy and paste -- err, transcribe -- huge segments of text from the textbook into the space provided.
My most memorable experience was coming from a Stat Therm in the morning. The prof in that class said to us, "I realize nobody has the book yet, but the first 10 problems are due tomorrow. There's a copy of the book in the library, so not having the book is not an excuse." I went from that to my education class, wherein the prof said, "Here's a 90-page novella that I think is nice. Please read it by the end of the semester and write a paragraph on what you thought."
I can't tell you how shocked I was when the hands went up and the litany of childish grunts from ALL of the other students began:
These are the people to whom we trust the education of our children.
Ugh.
I am an educator. I am not a teacher, but I work at a public school to further the education of the students. (I'm the tech geek). My wife is a teacher. I am also a parent, My son isn't old enough yet to go to school, but when he is, I agree with you, If I can afford it, he will not go to public school.
I think there needs to be a distinction between "educator", "Teacher", "Administrator", and "F'n state department of Ed".
The vast majority of teachers really do care about the students, and about teaching the students what they really need to know, and making them well-rounded individuals. As a whole, so do educators... however, as a general rule these days, teachers don't get to teach.
No Child Left Behind (or NCLB as it's known) has forced massive numbers of assessments on the students. There are literally over 5 different assessments that have to be done on the students at the school here, at least twice a year. These assessments sometimes take over a week to do with each child in the class individually. During this time, the teacher is often out of the room, assessing a student, and so can't be teaching the class.
Then there's the "Warm fuzzy shit" that has to be taken care of, because kids just aren't getting it at home.
Then there's the attitude (often "enforced" by administration) that homework is a burden on students, and it takes them away from their social life/basketball/etc. So you can't keep kids after for academic reasons.
Then there are the parents that threaten to sue the school any time their kid gets kept in for recess for slugging another kid (and the school has it on camera)
Please, do me, the rest of the country's educators, and the kids a favor... Be active in education. Find out when your local school board meets. Go to the meetings, inform yourself about the issues, talk with the board members. volunteer at the school.
Don't just worry about taxes, because that's what pays for the schools. Worry about how the school district is using the money. Work with the educators to make the schools better, Please.
I will not give in to the terrorists. I will not become fearful.
"If you don't fund it properly, it just ain't going to work." ...and that's the sort of nonsense comment that leaves it broken. I'm sure the Teacher's Unions love it, however.
/secid=-1/compid=-1/site=pes
Simply throwing money at problems rarely solves them.
In 2004, the City of Minneapolis was spending more than $11500 per student, for a math proficiency below the 40th %ile, and reading around 55th %ile. And don't tell me it's the crowded classrooms...15.2 students/teacher. That would be a joke, if it wasn't so serious.
http://www.schoolmatters.com/app/location/q/stid=2 4/llid=116/stllid=148/locid=956260/stype=/catid=-1
So tell me again, it's the MONEY?
Let's take a good sized class, perhaps 25 students.
That's $287,500 per year to educate them.
Let's give the teacher a really nice salary - we want someone GOOD, who enjoys their work! - of $87500, leaving us $200,000.
Good suburban office space is leasing at just under $2/sqft...let's give these kids LOTS of space, and assume a goodly portion of shared spaces (a gym, a cafeteria, auditorium, etc.) 2500 sqft = 60,000 per year leaves us with $140,000. (Ignoring for the moment that School Districts and cities can/should obviously do MUCH better than 'market'.)
Let's even hire a nicely-paid assistant for the class, always better to have smaller groups learning when you can, and there's a lot of paperwork to teaching: $40,000/yr.
You're telling me that a class of 25, with a budget of $100,000/yr for materials, can't manage better than 40th percentile in Math?
If that's true, is another $200/student really going to make any difference? $2000?
You could buy them each an adequate laptop and STILL have $60,000/year for other supplies.
I call complete BS on your "underfunded" assertion - that's the lazy answer. US Public education is a perfect example of waste, bureaucracy, sinecure, and mismanagement from top to bottom.
Teaching is one of the hardest jobs there is. I believe that more of the $$ should be going to the teachers and students, than whatever rathole it's disappearing down now. Many schools in the Western world are doing much, much better on much, much less than the US spends per pupil. We need to examine why, and see if we can emulate it.
Nota bene: it's easy to be a critic, but harder to provide suggestions, so I'll make a few
- schools have suffered from 100 years of 'mission creep' (ok, really only the last 40). School != Parents, and we need to stop expecting that teachers will parent our children for us.
- less funding for special-needs students. Yes, we all feel sorry for them, but schools are now doing the work that mental hospitals used to do. Why? I can understand that if Timmy is slightly disabled, having an aide work with him to get him up to speed is fine; but when you have 2 full time special-ed teachers in 1 elementary school to deal with a roomful of children who (AT BEST) *might* be able to feed themselves? That is educational dollars being wasted in medical care. That should NOT be a school's responsibility.
- English...the Mpls Schools crow about their 'diversity' of having courses in some 60+ languages. That's idiotic and wasteful. Elementary and High School ESL classes, otherwise all English.
- End social promotion. Teachers found passing children who do not meet grade benchmarks are fired. Stop the focus on 'self-esteem'. If a kid has trouble, hold him back. If this makes him sad, perhaps he'll work a little harder.
- 8-5 school day, 48 weeks a year.
Yes, this is harsh. But I'm 39, and my opinion of high school is informed by my experience. As a junior, I stopwatched my school days for a week. Out of a 7.5 hour day, I would start the timer whenever we were going over new material, or reviewing it the 1st time, or testing. I
-Styopa