Education in America

[Nightfoot92]

America is falling behind in terms of just about everything. We are number one in largest debt owed by a country. Our school system is falling apart and the average grade is now a c where as it used to be a b+ just back in the 1990s. I believe the root of the problem is not the lack of good school materials and funding (although that is a problem). Rather, I believe it is in this culture that we have established in America. A culture where people who think about things in depth and are interested in the areas of science and math are labeled as "nerds" and must be shunned. The reason why people do not care as much about school anymore is because of social status; because it is not socially rewarding to be a scholar. If we are to fix education in America, we must attack the root cause, not a byproduct of it. Thoughts on the subject?

[Rahul]

I think it's also because kids are too busy texting in class to pay any attention.

Attention spans are dropping at an alarming rate. Even entertainment shows on TV and commercials have to be shorter and do more bangs to keep people's attention.

Teenagers can't waste their time giving any kind of undivided attention to homework anymore. They even sleep with their phones right next to their faces so they can respond if anyone texts them at 2 am.

I've got a 17 year old. And her dang friends have spent more time at my house than I have. I'm experienced in today's generation.

[Nightfoot92]

I am today's generation. I'm only 14. But I'm intelligent enough to recognize the pitfalls of this thinking. Not all of the kids are people who only care about social status and the next biggest star and all that collective, unimportant bullshit. All the kids in my school seem awfully ignorant of what's going on. The jocks all have their friends, the bitch girls have their friends, and even the nerds have a group. Me, I don't have any dedicated group of friends because I look at things the way they are, and its kind of sad that its all because of a subculture within schools.

---

It's ironic really that an autistic savant with ADHD (me) pays more attention in school more than other "normal" kids.

[Slave]

The problem isn't the kids themselves. The education system is failing them. The root of the problem is less obvious than 'kids these days are too distracted by phones and TV'. The root of the problem is the entire industry we've built upon the current school system and how the system conflicts with the way that children and adults alike naturally learn.

With curiosity.

Schools don't care about catering to our curiosity, they care about standardised tests, generating jobs and keeping kids busy while parents work. Curiosity comes in maybe 9th, 10th place in the list of priorities that they deal with. This is why homeschooling is witnessing a resurgence over the last 20 years because parents are beginning to realize that they are sending their children off to school to learn how to do school, rather than learning anything of value.

Of course many kids do very well in school environments and many enjoy it, and find that their potentials are reached. As with everything in life, there is no one fits all approach. However, it is proven that children and teenagers who are given the opportunity to learn outside a school environment fare better than their schooled counterparts, enroll in universities earlier, are more driven in the workplace and are favoured by employers for the simple fact that they tend to show more initiative. They aren't as lulled as their schooled peers, because they have been given the chance to discover themselves without the pressures of bells, tests, bullies and other kids. Regardless of what many people believe, we don't need schools to learn, it just happens that our cultures have adopted them due to the industrial revolution requiring a skilled workforce, and they have dug their roots in deep into the social psyche ever since.

The only way I can see an improvement when it comes to this is by forcing schools to change how they teach our children. Scrap tests that require you memorize a list of numbers and dates and names. Introduce more flexible classrooms where students are encouraged to work together to solve problems, using whatever available tools at their disposal to retrieve information (the internet, libraries, people). Incorporate the learning experience more into greater society. Have kids working in real shops, performing tasks in real jobs that get them life experience that cannot be taught inside a school. This is what kids need. They need to be stimulated and trusted by adults to perform as productive members of society.

That is how it used to be before we shoved them all in a building together closed off from the rest of the world.

[FlyingNarwhal]

The problem isn't the kids themselves. The education system is failing them. The root of the problem is less obvious than 'kids these days are too distracted by phones and TV'. The root of the problem is the entire industry we've built upon the current school system and how the system conflicts with the way that children and adults alike naturally learn.

With curiosity.

Schools don't care about catering to our curiosity, they care about standardised tests, generating jobs and keeping kids busy while parents work. Curiosity comes in maybe 9th, 10th place in the list of priorities that they deal with. This is why homeschooling is witnessing a resurgence over the last 20 years because parents are beginning to realize that they are sending their children off to school to learn how to do school, rather than learning anything of value.

Of course many kids do very well in school environments and many enjoy it, and find that their potentials are reached. As with everything in life, there is no one fits all approach. However, it is proven that children and teenagers who are given the opportunity to learn outside a school environment fare better than their schooled counterparts, enroll in universities earlier, are more driven in the workplace and are favoured by employers for the simple fact that they tend to show more initiative. They aren't as lulled as their schooled peers, because they have been given the chance to discover themselves without the pressures of bells, tests, bullies and other kids. Regardless of what many people believe, we don't need schools to learn, it just happens that our cultures have adopted them due to the industrial revolution requiring a skilled workforce, and they have dug their roots in deep into the social psyche ever since.

The only way I can see an improvement when it comes to this is by forcing schools to change how they teach our children. Scrap tests that require you memorize a list of numbers and dates and names. Introduce more flexible classrooms where students are encouraged to work together to solve problems, using whatever available tools at their disposal to retrieve information (the internet, libraries, people). Incorporate the learning experience more into greater society. Have kids working in real shops, performing tasks in real jobs that get them life experience that cannot be taught inside a school. This is what kids need. They need to be stimulated and trusted by adults to perform as productive members of society.

That is how it used to be before we shoved them all in a building together closed off from the rest of the world.

I completely agree. People have forgotten that all a grade is, is a measurement of your aptitude in a given field. It is a system. Just because you scored a high grade doesn't mean you have actually learned anything, all it means is that you memorized enough of the right facts to get a high score. I graduated high school with a 3.8 and I never studied a day in my life. And honestly, all I did was a mixture of memorizing the right facts, and gaming the system. I did the same thing for the short time I spent in college too. Now if I was interested in a subject of course I would research it, but anything else was just me bullshitting my teachers.

I still learn and I don't go to college or any other school. It's astounding what can be learned with just a library card and internet access.

[Darth]

As a high school drop out, let me share my perspective.

90% of schooling is bollocks. Assemblies, the 'electives', English class*... It's all a joke. I did much better once I got to a school where there was none of that bullshit, only stuff you chose to do. But I had developed very bad habits over the previous 4 years and wasn't at all a mature person, so I still ended up dropping out. I only got my shit together once I got to study exactly what I wanted, and found a passion for a subject. Since then I've got myself into uni (took me 4-5 years longer than it should have), and am currently in 3rd year of Uni.

*We studied Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith in year 11 English (second last year here), and this wasn't the numpty class, this was the 2nd highest class out of 5 classes.

Edit: In Australia

[Foxaèr]

The problem with American education is that it expects the citizens to be well-rounded, and unfortunately not everyone is going to be great in every subject no matter how much they study. Another problem is that colleges, merely to make as much money as possible, expect their students to take courses which are not even geared toward the careers for which the students are striving.

[Rahul]

The problem with American education is that it expects the citizens to be well-rounded, and unfortunately not everyone is going to be great in every subject no matter how much they study. Another problem is that colleges, merely to make as much money as possible, expect their students to take courses which are not even geared toward the careers for which the students are striving.

Albert Einstein:

"School failed me, and I failed the school. It bored me. The teachers behaved like Feldwebel (sergeants). I wanted to learn what I wanted to know, but they wanted me to learn for the exam. What I hated most was the competitive system there, and especially sports. Because of this, I wasn't worth anything, and several times they suggested I leave."

[NoraBrimstone]

I think there are many causes. From lack of attention span, to lack of decent teachers. I've heard that after a certain amount of time or something, teachers can never be fired, is that right? Anyway, assuming I have the right end of the stick, they can be lazy and shitty and not lose their jobs. They don't have to care about whether or not they are doing a good job.
There is also the fact that parents don't have time to teach them anything at home. A generation or 2 ago there was usually at least one parent at home for most kids, who could help them with their homework and stuff. That's less common now, with rising living costs meaning most kids come home to an empty house while their parent(s) are at work.

They even sleep with their phones right next to their faces so they can respond if anyone texts them at 2 am.

I'm 26 and I sleep with my phone in my bed with me, right by my face. I thought most people did?

[popeyespappy]

The problem isn't the kids themselves. The education system is failing them. The root of the problem is less obvious than 'kids these days are too distracted by phones and TV'. The root of the problem is the entire industry we've built upon the current school system and how the system conflicts with the way that children and adults alike naturally learn.

The evidence suggests the kids are the problem although many but not all of the things that cause their issues are beyond their control. The problem isn’t the education system. The problem is students living in poverty.

Most crucially, out-of-school factors—family characteristics such as income and parents’ education, neighborhood environment, health care, housing stability, and so on—count for twice as much as all in-school factors. In 1966, a groundbreaking government study—the “Coleman Report”—first identified a “one-third in-school factors, two-thirds family characteristics” ratio to explain variations in student achievement. Since then researchers have endlessly tried to refine or refute the findings. Education scholar Richard Rothstein described their results: “No analyst has been able to attribute less than two-thirds of the variation in achievement among schools to the family characteristics of their students” (Class and Schools, 2004). Factors such as neighborhood environment give still more weight to what goes on outside school.

The most recent data come from the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment, released in December 2010. PISA tested fifteen-year-olds in sixty countries (plus five non-state entities such as Hong Kong) in reading, math, and science. Consider the results in reading, the subject assessed in depth in 2009: U.S. students in public schools with a poverty rate of less than 10 percent (measured by eligibility for free or reduced-price lunches) scored 551, second only to the 556 score of the city of Shanghai, which doesn’t release poverty data. The U.S. students outperformed students in all eight participating nations whose reported poverty rates fall below 10 percent. Finland, with a poverty rate of just 3.4 percent, came in second with a score of 536. As the level of student poverty in U.S. public schools increased, scores fell. Because of the high overall child-poverty rate (20.7 percent), the average reading score for all U.S. students was 500 (fourteenth place). In short, poverty drags down our international standing (see this Department of Education site).

http://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_ar...t-teachers