A small rant on the public education system. (Captain Obvious/Wall o' Text warning!)

[Ifafudafi]

Note that this applies to the U.S.'s (specifically the Texan) policies. Also note that this is indeed a rant and that fixing most, if not all of the things I list here is either impossible to do or doesn't make logical sense in the long run. But I have to say it.

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Everyone here (hopefully) has either gone through the educational system or is still subject to it. It's a painful but necessary bridge between childhood and adulthood that provides you with the skills and knowledge you need to thrive, as well as the social experience that will shape your interactions and personality for the rest of your life. However, after going through it (and now being not a subject but rather a member of it) I can't help but feel that there are some serious flaws, or at least a hundred cubic meters worth of room for improvement.

One of the things I can't stand is simply the standardization of the educational system. The process, in the eyes of those who run it, is as such:

1. Have kids memorize material A.
2. Test kids on material A.
3. If kids pass, move on. If not, have failing kids repeat steps 1-3 until success.
4. Have kids memorize material B.
5. Test kids on material B.
6. If kids pass, move on. If not, have failing kids repeat steps 4-6.
7. Continue as such for semester.
8. Cumulative test on all material. If kids pass, move on. If not, failing kids repeat old material until success.
9. Repeat steps 1-8 for second semester.
10. Graduate those who pass, hold back those who fail. Begin again next year.

And don't forget to throw in the state-mandated standardized tests. While it's a simple, efficient system, it assumes that all kids have similar qualities, behavior, and such. Which, as anyone should know, is not true. While most schools have departments for those with severe mental and/or physical disabilities, most smaller circumstances are passed off as growing pains or disobedience. None of this seems particularly disconcerting, but my issue is that grades take priority over learning. The purpose of schools is to educate. While people may stick onto a fact or two, nearly every class (both where I went to school and where I'm teaching now) allocates at least a month to reviewing and re-memorizing everything people should've known forever ago. Obviously, basic knowledge (addition/subtraction, difference between animals and plants, solid/liquid/gas, your ABCs, etc.) is exempt from this, but the point stands. My own mother, when she tried to help me with a science project in 10th grade, couldn't even remember what the Periodic Table of Elements was. And she's no idiot.

You may have noticed that I often use the word "memorize" instead of the word "learn." The two are completely different things. Memorization is taking a fact or concept and studying it or repeating the process it describes over and over until you can't forget it, at least for the time necessary to recite it on a test. Learning, on the other hand, does not only include knowing something, but also being able to understand and apply it. Memorization is knowing that "kicked" is the past tense of the verb "kick." Learning is knowing that "kicked" has an "-ed" at the end, and is therefore (most likely) the past tense of the form "kick," and that you can do the same for nearly every verb ending in a consonant.

The current educational system, as alluded to previously, places memorization above learning. It assumes that if the kids pass the test, they know the material. One fact keeps this from leaving all our kids in a hobo-hole when they grow up: Interests. If someone wants to be, say, an astronaut, logic dictates they will have an interest in and therefore put in more effort into knowing and understanding aeronautics, mathematics, and such, while barely skating by their poetry unit and forgetting what a stanza is by their first year out of high school. Those who don't want to put in the effort to achieve their career goals are deemed unworthy to fit the job. This is one of the few safety nets that prevents the educational system from collapsing on itself, and it heavily softens the next argument I'm about to make.

At the risk of sounding like a snob, kids these days just don't have an appreciation for all the shit we're trying to put into their heads, and a good bit of it isn't their fault. Force-feeding them all the same information within a time limit works as well as force-feeding them all spinach in the space of five seconds. A select few may at least tolerate the process, but more often than not you're just going to see a lot of leaves regurgitated in your face. And that's exactly what's happening. Give material, regurgitate material, move on. It's only once kids have taken their time, and chewed, digested, and processed the material that they can eject it in the form of the beautiful fecal matter of understanding.

Which brings me to my next point: subject variety. Until halfway through college, you will be taking the same core math, language, science, and social studies courses, with few electives to explore more exotic interests and some required communication, technology, and physical education courses thrown in to please the general populace. There are two main reasons for this: develop a variety of knowledge & skills, and to not determine what your immediate interests are, but rather give you the tools to choose later. All well and good, but 98% of the time little Billy simply doesn't want and isn't going to use Algebraic Matrices at any point in his life. While it does take a while for the "I WANT TO BE A ROCK STAR/FAMOUS ACTRESS/PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL PLAYER" mentality to wear off (and even then there's uncertianity; it took me until, again, 10th grade to realize my interest in teaching) it's not hard to predict when somebody simply doesn't need to know whatever you're trying to cram in their heads.

You see, occasionally, after the aformentioned feces of understanding have been created, Billy decides that what he just ate doesn't agree with his stomach. I, for one, have never been a math whiz. I can multiply 2 and 2, but put X and Y into an equation and my mind melts. I've realized this fact since elementary school; however, I've always read constantly, had an excellent sense of grammar, and found myself looking forward to my English classes. Even the ones with the crappy teachers. And, what do you know; my profession involves exactly that. I could easily have not taken anything past Algebra I and I'd still be doing just as well. Unfortunately, the state disagrees. (Before you comment on this, YES, I REALIZE THERE ARE EXCEPTIONS AND I AM BUT ONE INDIVIDUAL. But if any of you employed folks use everything you learned, I wanna hear it.)

Lastly, now that I've covered what kids are taught, allow me to finish with my grievances on how kids are taught. Tying in to the memorization vs. learning point, one thing I've noticed most during my student teacher days is the heavy generalization of every kid in the classroom. According to those teachers' logic, if one kid can understand it when she teaches it, everyone else should be able to as well. This couldn't be more wrong. The irony is that, as I've picked up on occasionally, a ton of the kids' understanding was facilitated not by the teacher, but by their fellow peers. Since the teacher can't be bothered to come up with any other way but notes to educate, the children have to find their own ways to tell each other. While it's a wonderful example of collaboration, it just makes me feel as if the teachers aren't doing their job.

While this is my first year as a full time teacher, I've tried something: Once every six weeks (we have a six-week grading period), I'll spend a day simply calling up each individual student to my desk and having a talk about what they learned, what they didn't, and how I can fix that. I'll find what they learned the easiest and try to find ways to apply whatever I did there to everything else. This has proved miraculous; I have dozens of kids who tell me horror stories about their English grades who are coasting by comfortably, and every single one says that these little conferences played a big part. That kind of individual attention, I believe, is absoutely necessary if kids are to not only succeed, but thrive in whatever they're doing.

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Well, there went 40 minutes of my life, so enough blabbing on my part. I congratulate you if you've actually managed to process the entire thing. No, I'm not sticking a tl;dr at the end because if I compressed this to a sentence, my point would be lost.

Love and raeg,

-Ifafudafi.

Thoughts?

[Bodzilla]

GROAN, this is gunna take hours to read >:|

[n00b1n8R]

Only if you fail at reading.

E: I feel so much better about the Australian system (or atleast the one inplace at my school).

Although I certainly agree that there's too much of a "YOU ARE GOING TO LEARN THIS BECAUSE I TOLD YOU TOO AND NOT BECAUSE YOU'LL EVER USE IT" mentality. Where the fuck am I going to need to know how to deconstruct a poem and then extrapolate all the subtle imagery the poet is trying to convey through their phrasing?

Incidentally, If you're only going to talk to the students when evaluation is due, it's a bit late to be helping them in time for the report data to be collected. Better to talk to them like 3 or 4 weeks into the work.

Also, 1 month of revision? what the fuck do you guys cover that you need a whole month to revise a term's work? If we're lucky, we only have time for ~1 week of revision before tests.

EE: can't rep you but the spinach analogy was awesome. :awesome:

[Corndogman]

I agree completely buddy. Well I didn't read the whole thing, but I agree with the first parts at least.

But yes, I hate how everything is just memorization, and while that's easy for me, its one of the biggest problems I have with my teachers. I'm a Junior in High school, and most of my teachers only care about following the curriculum, and making sure you've memorized it for the test. I usually don't do as well as I can in these classes, because I don't feel like I'm learning anything and I lose interest. Now in my other classes, I do better because my teachers are teaching just to make sure you understand, and I actually pay attention because I don't feel like I'm just prepping for a test, but rather being taught valuable information that will actually help me in life.

[legionaire45]

Holy hell, I wish that you were one of my teachers during middle school. Lol.

I've felt exactly the same way since 10th grade, around the time that I started giving half a shit about school. I think that part of the problem (at least in California) is that schools are trying to stuff too many students into schools. I go to a relatively small charter school (High Tech LA) and I've had a great experience because the teachers actually care about how well you do. They know that each student has their own strengths and flaws and they take this into account when assigning things to learn. My history teacher has probably said more or less what you have said dozens of times over the past 4 years. Schools put way too damn much emphasis on having a shiny number to report back to the state instead of actually teaching their kids what they need to know; If students actually learn the content instead of having it forced down their throat high test scores should come naturally.

[Bodzilla]

couldnt agree more tbh.

the only reason dane passed mathematics and therefore yr 12 is because of my supa fucking awesome notebook. and i taught myself the maths simply because the teachers where the biggest bunch of saddistic fuckers in the world i made it my goal to spend as little time with them as possible.
i can count the number of times i asked for help in questions on my hand. and i understood all the work.
Theres no attention to detail and it's just a one size fits all policy that fits less then 10% of the student population.

It's just a side effect of the mass production, little rights, budget cuts and wage slash's that we have in the world.
i cant honestly say that i build kitchens. i build white box's, and assemble them.
look at your supa market stores and you see the exact same thing, theres no skill because no ones been taught and taking the time to teach someone properly will interfer with the status quo.

[Limited]

Completely agree, your only learning to pass the stupid tests, not learning anything actually useful.

Out of all the things I've learnt at school, I've probably only needed about 5% of it, minus the obvious reading/writing that you learn really young.

If you were to ask me what K is in the periodic table, all I remember is I think its one of the ones that tricks to trick you, just like lead (I think is PB or something close)

They need to make education more relative to life.

[Dwood]

If you were to ask me what K is in the periodic table, all I remember is I think its one of the ones that tricks to trick you, just like lead (I think is PB or something close)

Wouldn't want any lead in your peanut butter!

Bananas have Vitamin K (Potassium) - Simpsons movie.

Hey ifaf: Florida is 100 times WORSE than Texas!

Btw what parts of Texas do you teach?

[flibitijibibo]

Reasons I picked music #Eleventy: No matter how hard you memorize something, if you haven't learned anything, you will still fail (in my class, anyway), because the piece you play will always suck due to its horrifying blandness and generic expressions (if any). It's what ranks L4D with Portal on my top 5 games evar; no two runs can be the same. The mechanical nature of the American education system cannot apply in a superior music program, and that's what makes me love doing what I do now.

As for the regular discussions with students, that's something all teachers really ought to do. It's helped with your students, it's helped with mine, the pattern seems to be consistent. This could improve the system in multiple ways. Not only will it improve attitudes/achievements within the student body, but it will also improve the staff as well.

There are multiple things like the above that could really narrow down and improve the teacher population. See, the drooling morons who are reading out of the textbook will have no ability to work well with kids because they simply don't know anything, and can be weeded out. You all know who I'm talking about, the bitch who knows their subject as well as you do, and sits blankly at their desk to show the world that they ended up where they are rather than choosing to be there. Without them, there's more room to employ those who truly deserve it. So, not only will teacher quality improve, but this also assists in employment; rather than hiring some dick who only has their degree to qualify himself, the person with legitimate experience/personality can get the job they deserve. In fact, having those essential abilities should be required to even be certified.

In closing, getting a job in education should have higher requirements than having a body temperature between 90 and 100. If students begin asking a high school student with no formal training in education to teach their band class instead of the appointed director (who, instead of a degree in music ed, has a doctorate in African drumming), something has gone horribly wrong.

To those wondering: This is in Maryland.

Edit- My brain eventually processed the "excess amount of unnecessary subjects" paragraph you wrote. I had a wee rant on that a few months back, here's the snippet on the subjects:

For me, school was/is a humongous waste of time. That's why I now take classes that let me leave the building and go learn ||heh, I even made the memorize point too|| instead. My biggest problem is that you're required to take certain classes to a certain level. Example: I had to take 3 years of history. I now have that slot replaced with my internship, and I've already forgotten everything I learned (using that term lightly) in those 3 years.

I feel like those busy-work classes could have been better spent on courses worth taking. It was only by testing out that I was able to max out my music course levels. And even then, I didn't come close to taking everything I wanted to. Because I pissed away my time in my science and history courses (the two I dropped for my internship this year), I will never be able to take comp sci 4, unless I take it in college, which costs a fuckton more money.

If you think about it, it wouldn't be so bad to drop such requirements. If a student wants to learn history, there you go. If it weren't a requirement to have foreign language, I definitely would have done it anyway. To waste the time of both the students and the teacher is just plain stupid.

[PlasbianX]

All our schools and this damn 'no child left behind' crap does is produce a bunch of mindless young adults who can't do much more than fill out a few worksheets. Our school systems seriously need reform. Our teachers care more about our abilities to read a worksheet than actually think for ourselves. What kind of a country is that? We need to produce more educated and informed young adults who can run this country in the future. I hate our school systems.