>There must be something fundamentally wrong with our schools. What is it?

Jigaboos.

jigaboobloxblox

Bad teachers and bad students from bad families. Simple as that.

Because they throw in all the morons with non-morons..

Though college filters that out significantly so we still rock it there..

I like how we're in such a rush to call our education system garbage when 100 or so years ago the average person could only count to potato.

Teaching salaries are a joke. Women who could only (real) jobs as teachers and nurses can now get different ones leaving retards and underachievers to be teachers.

>>8960392

Doesn't matter, the rest of the world is sooo much better than us in the pre-college education aspect..

>>8960392

That would be great if it were only a generation ago, but it's been at least...potato generations since then.

>>8960392
How bad the education system is, is relative to the times. This isn't 100 years ago.

>>8960392

>butthatswrongyoufuckingretard.jpg

During the Middle Ages, there was free education provided by the Catholic Church. Anybody, even a peasant, who wanted to be a monk/priest could join a village monastery and receive a fair education. Manuscripts were plentiful and students would have become fluent in Latin, and learned much of Astronomy, Mathematics, Music, etc. (such as those subjects were at the time).

And in the 19th century yes, not everyone went to school, and not everyone was literate, but not everyone needed schooling or literacy. If you're working on a farm what use is any schooling beyond the basics? And private schools were cheap. And the quality of education was better.

Neither of these were perfect systems but the public schools are seriously fucking up. Saying "hurr at least we have compulsory education!" isn't a good argument. That's like if the army was losing wars and your response was "WHATEVER AT LEAST WE HAVE AN ARMY!"

In my opinion american schools are too good, I mean there is soo much shit to do, gym, swimming, a lot of afterschool clubs, school projects it's distracting the education.
I'm all for these things, but in moderation. I lived in a 2nd world country growing up, the schools were reasonably well even though it was a poor country, I've had all the normal class and very good teachers, no one was strict because all the children were well behaved, trying to get best education because they knew if they failed they would be poor.

When I moved to a richer country the pupils were disrespectful, there were soo many activities to do besides learn I couldn't even begin to think which I should try. Met a few friends and I was enjoying life instead of studying, now I can't get into college because I've failed major tests, while I was an almost perfect student.
In american terms I had perfect GPA excluding religion, when I was a kid, living in a poor country.

>There must be something fundamentally wrong with our schools.

It's probably the fact that it's an institution designed to indoctrinate you into a cookie cutter factory worker that will obey big brother without argument as opposed to educate.

Watch The War on Kids. You can find torrents of it around. It's a nice documentary, but it doesn't cover as much as it could.

I don't think they're all bad. It's just all the schools in the poor, black sections of the country that's fucking up the averages.

It's because nobody in government, banking or corporations WANTS children to be educated or intelligent.

In other countries, it's seen as a genuine issue and efforts are made to do something about it. If you try it in America, the Republican mouthpieces scream about SOCIALISM until it forces anyone genuinely trying to improve education to give up.

>>8960488

also re: the Church, Pope Adrian IV, for example, was born the son of a poor Saxon serf.

And monasteries provided free health care, and orphanages, etc.

Whatever I'm rambling now, I just really think the medieval Church gets a worse rap than it deserves.

Everything is wrong with our system.

What ISN'T wrong about sending children 5 days a week for 6 hours each day to a stuffy building with an almost concentration camp-like atmosphere, wherein they are told to sit up straight, don't eat that, don't say that, etc., and told what they can and can't do in their lives?

Schools stifle creativity, they stifle the natural intuition everyone is born with - as a child you're curious about the world around you, but you are swept up at an early age and told you can't experience it until you're prepared. Then you are forced to learn about subjects you were never interested in, and so much time is taken away from you that you have none left to practice things that really do interest you.

An artist is only given a half hour in every day at most to do what they really want, and a kid who wants to be a scientist when they grow up is given only a half hour to do that, laden with six other classes, and in that half hour of doing what they do like, they are taught in a manner so unstimulating that most kids would just give up then and there.

Public schools should be abolished. We were smarter when America was founded, and America was founded by self-educated men who were inquisitive about the world around them. Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson did not attend public schools, and they never intended schools to be made in this manner. The public school system as we know it today was founded in the Industrial era, when adults wanted children to be taught to obey authority and be quiet - to manufacture well-behaved children to work in factories.

This system has remained with little changes since then, and is cruel at best.

>>8960536

Except they taught children about Religious bullshit, and probably only other subjects that the church had censored enough to correspond to their beliefs.

Hell, they still thought Galen was the ultimate in medical knowledge just because he personally believed in a One God. They ignored the huge amount of contradicting evidence the rest of the scientific community tried to show them.

Good as a concept, but still inherently evil.

>>8960534
I assume this is why at 18 you graduate high school without anyone having even mentioned anything about taxes, business, financing, etc. We learn calculus, but not how to be self-sufficient people who can function from day to day in the world. Shit's disturbing.

>>8960656
Totally. I think there should be classes that are actually RELEVANT to real life, especially considering there are classes that nobody needs unless they're planning to become a University professor.

only half the kids in america being born now are white.

If you excluded the kids of immigrants who can't speak english and blacks, we'd be doing just as well as Europe is.

>>8960590

This is a big misunderstanding.

First off, the Church wasn't particularly involved in science. They persecuted Galileo for teaching heliocentrism as fact rather than as theory, and as for Bruno (and others) they were often executed not for their scientific beliefs but for heretical religious beliefs. Not that executing people for their religious beliefs is a good thing of course.

The Church actually did much to support science. Look at Roger Bacon, the monk who brought empiricism and the scientific method to the West. He was well respected. And so many monks and clergymen were natural philosophers. They would imitate Aristotle, trying to classify the various species, etc. And the Church spent inordinate amounts of money on copying and translating ancient texts - that alone was hugely expensive. And the Church built observatories throughout Europe which were open to astronomers generally.

You bring up the problem of auctores - well, you're right. Some segments of the Church were pigeon-holed by following the authority of earlier, mostly pagan, authors rather than doing their own experiments. But this was not a universal trend. Like I said, look at Roger Bacon and the other Franciscan empiricists.

The state of science was primitive but we can't hold a 13th century religion to 21st century standards. They really did care about science, and generally, at least, did not oppose scientific inquiry. There was a culture of intellectual freedom within the Church, believe it or not, outside of some specific theological matters.

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-sciencechristianity.htm

>>8960712

Source? I didn't think so. blux.

>>8960712
There are so many retarded white kids in my school- granted we have only three black kids- but trust me- white kids are stupid too.

>>8960722
for the 50% number? the exact number is 53% and it was in the new york times sometime reasonably recently.

For the "if you remove the minorities" argument? Don't have one tbh, but, I know people from Europe from college and from what they say their education (and from what I see their ability) is no better than your standard white/asian middle class american suburb.

Children have a lot of potential, this needs to be acknowledged.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-bjOJzB7LY

From my personal experience, children turn out to be more "rebellious" and "bad" when they're in an environment that greatly restrains them. Catholic schools breed more "fucked up" people than many public schools do. Children are given no rhyme of reason for their restrictions and therefore become frustrated as they get older.

Because it's a public school.

Privatize them and they will improve.
Trust me.

>>8960715

Wrong link LOLOLOL

wiki has a good summary, I can't find what I wanted to link, there are video lectures at Cambridge on the iwki page

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_in_the_Middle_Ages

>>8960752
yes, there are. However, we're talking group averages here, not individuals.

>>8960766

>
From my personal experience, children turn out to be more "rebellious" and "bad" when they're in an environment that greatly restrains them. Catholic schools breed more "fucked up" people than many public schools do.

Stop talking out of your ass, Catholic schools outperform public schools on every metric.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,973017,00.html

It is the culture. Who shows up more on TV, in the movies, and on the radio? The athletes and rappers, or the scientists and engineers? Smart people are not glorified the same way rapper and athletes are in US culture. Asian cultures tends to place the engineer and the scientist ahead of the athlete and the rapper.

Here is what you need to do if you want to make the education system decent

1. Make attendance required until 12 years of age. If the person is not interested in school, why send them for anything more than basic reading, writing and math skills?
2. After age 12 school should be structured like college. Don't force the kid who likes art class to take several math and science classes that he/she will hate. Let them take classes in what interests them.

3. Make more mention of technical and scientific achievements in the news. If I want to know about the latest chick Tiger is boning or how drunk rolfsburger was in Georgia I simply have to turn on the TV. If I want to find information about the latest advances in science and technology I have to go looking elsewhere.

I did well in both public and private schools(graduated in top %5 of class with a 3.9GPA). I was interested in the material so I never needed much external motivation do pay attention in class and do the required work.

It's not your schools, Americans. It's your parents and your media.

You ever see my sweet 16? Guess what that does to other, poorer girls. That's right, they think they deserve that too. No work ever, being little ms popular, getting a mazaratti and bitching she wanted a mercedes instead, etc.

American parents are to blame. Consumer culture applied to children makes for absolute terrible discipline, and raises children to ignore school. Forever.

Public and Republican out cry about how much money the government is spending leads to less government spending.

Less government spending leads to less funding for education.

Less funding for education means an extremely low paycheck for teachers.

Low paychecks leave all the underachievers, failures, and generally uncaring people who are qualified but only teach because it gives them money. The other half of the field that is qualified move on to better things like research, college, shit like that.

Shitty uncaring teachers produce a stifling uninteresting and shitty environment for students.

A stifling uninteresting and shitty learning environment produces uncaring apathetic and uninterested students.

Apathetic uninterested students produce low test scores.

Seriously, that's really all there is to it. Of course you have exceptions on each end of the spectrum, but this otherwise explains the fact that so many B and C students end up getting A's and B's in college.

>>8960656
And you can't open a book or do some googling for information about taxes and personal fiance?

I worry about you finding a job if you can't find information on how to do your taxes.

It's hard to care about your education when it feels like a prison and a punishment.

It's a combination of things.

1. The material is largely lacking. In addition to the aforementioned lack of real-world skills classes, most school funding goes towards simply raising scores on standardized tests. Most classes these days are designed to teach kids to pass a test; in short, we are raising a generation who can memorize, but not comprehend.

2. The school schedule is completely out of whack. It's no wonder kids can't pay attention when they're forced to shut up and be perfectly still for nine hours a day, five days a week, with few breaks throughout the year. We need to move to a schedule like Germany, which goes from about 7 AM to 1 or 2 PM five days a week, and the school year divided into six week chunks with two week breaks in between (and, of course, six weeks of summer).

3. Lack of care from adults. A large number of teachers are in teaching because they couldn't succeed elsewhere, and, consequently, don't give a shit about the kids. Their classes then become less effective. Also, an equally large number of parents (especially lower income/minority) parents are completely uninvolved with their child's education. I myself grew up in a poor family, but my mother made sure that I knew how to read and did my homework. If she can do it, so can they.

4. We have a culture that celebrates ignorance. From Ke$ha to rappers to Hollywood, our mainstream culture teaches our children that being intelligent is something to be frowned upon, and that ignorance and stupidity is to be rewarded.

>>8960518
>idon'tthinksotim.jpg

I can honestly say I did not learn jack shit at school, or at least anything to prepare me for the real world. The teachers and administrators were not paid enough to give a fuck whether we actually learned, so long as we passed our state mandated tests.

>>8960874
>>And you can't open a book or do some googling for information about taxes and personal fiance?

you could pretty much make this argument for almost anything learned in pre-collegial education...

>>8960867

And I forgot to mention that the problem with this model is that students are expected to outgrow and shed away 18 years of bad studying habits right away once they start college, if they start at all and quite frankly, that just doesn't happen.

Lack of discipline, everything is "ohhh, can't say that, I'll offend some race/religion/nationality/creed/whatever".

Political correctness needs a boot up the ass.

And there needs to be firmer discipline.

THE NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND ACT

Schools instantly became less about actually learning things, and mostly became test-prep.

>>8960806
I don't give a shit, I did say it was "from my personal experience." It's only what I observed, it's not necessarily the truth of the majority. I practically admitted that I was "talking out my ass."

>>8960715
Are you that one medievalist who always posts whenever the Middle Ages come up? If so, thanks for being a good poster.

>>8960927
No. The expectation is that the current system teach students how to study over those 18 years, so as to be able to succeed in college. Your perspective has been warped by the moaning and crying of people who think that everyone should be able to go to college. The reality is that college should be something only a few very studious and lucky individuals take part in so as to reach their full potential.

>>8960806
>Can Catholic Schools Do It Better? By Sam Allis/Boston Monday, May. 27, 1991
>By Sam Allis/Boston Monday, May. 27, 1991
>Monday, May. 27, 1991
>1991

Wow thanks for telling us about something that was like, 19 fucking years ago you idiot.

I highly recommend this book, it's only 100 pages, please check it out.

Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling - by John Taylor Gatto

Buy it here:
http://www.amazon.com/Dumbing-Down-Curriculum-Compulsory-Schooling/dp/0865714487

Free PDF download:
http://www.4shared.com/file/72898520/dcaaf2df/Dumbing_us_down.html

Author's website:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/

Other writings & lectures by him that you can read online:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_Gatto#Writings_and_lectures

>>8961097

>Completely misses the point about how bad teachers produce an environment that encourages bad studying habits.

Way to go.

>The reality is that college should be something only a few very studious and lucky individuals take part in so as to reach their full potential.

So you're telling me that college should be a system that creates an educated elite rather than an educated public? Then what's the point of even having secondary education at all?

>>8961153
Suddenly having an educated elite is not valuable?

>>8961153

Secondary education should be the institution that creates an educated public, not college. College should be open to all but it certainly shouldn't be necessary to get nearly any job.

>>8961097

>The reality is that college should be something only a few very studious and lucky individuals take part in so as to reach their full potential.

Well that's just not the case at all, so your opinion isn't relevant.

>>8960903
>the school year divided into six week chunks with two week breaks in between

wait

no weekends?

>>8961254
It's not the case because it's been transformed from that purpose to meet ridiculous modern standards and ideals that can't be met.

>>8961276
No, there's weekends. It's 7-2, M-F for six weeks, then a break, etc.

Interesting documentary, go to the 4:10 mark

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx4pN-aiofw

>actually going to public school

Ha.

We spend plenty of money, but we spend it on absolute bullshit. What's wrong with out school system is we dumb shit down for all the retards who passed the previous year even though they shouldn't have, and in the process dumb down the normal people by not actually teaching them anything.

And there's this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALf2HZsGtGQ

OP it depends on where the school is in America.

In some areas, there are great schools and in some places there are not so great schools. One of the main reasons why American schools are bad compared to international public schools is that they still use the property tax as their main source of school funding. So depending on where you live, you may get a good school or a bad school.

The US states have not fixed this problem for decades, and now it's staring at them in the face.

Inflation of college degrees is a serious problem.

1.) a college degree could prepare you for some jobs that required high learning
2.) "hey guys look, college gets you good jobs, let's get more people into college!"
3.) dumber people start going to college regularly
4.) the value of a degree goes down, people go to school for longer for less results
5.) universities get rich, the government picks up a huge part of the tab

You don't need 16 years of schooling to work in middle management. You just don't. Our entire system is extremely inefficient.

>>8961366
This honestly enrages me.

there's a lot of problems. it's the whole damn system, not just one.
one that particularly enrages me, though, is the liberal idea of paying teachers with failing kids, more. they basically get raises to do a bad job.

>>8961366
Stossel is a beast

>>8961705
this goes all the way back to the GI bill.

which is why I'm not going to be going to college, probably, unless its to learn a quick trade. plenty of blue-collar jobs that dont need a degree, just show up to work on time and work hard.

>which is why I'm not going to be going to college, probably, unless its to learn a quick trade. plenty of blue-collar jobs that dont need a degree, just show up to work on time and work hard.

Eh it is hard to get a good job without a college degree unless you want to work in a trade. It's unfortunate, the system is fucked, but it's a lot easier to play along than it is to buck it.

>>8960343

The more homework part nearly made me fail a few classes in high school,
and not because I was lazy, but rather because it was like 100 of the same
questions with slight variations.
Boring = zzZzZZzzz

>>8961830
but that's what I do....I know I really go against the nerdy /r9k/ grain, but I can't stand inside, white-collar jobs.

I'd rather be making money than getting into debt yknow?

anyway, at this point, sadly, knowing people in the industries and making connections are worth more than degrees, unless you actually need the education to do your job properly.

the inflationary education feedback loop is going to break one day, but I don't think it'll be for at least a few more years (or maybe when the whole country goes broke and people are spending their money on food instead of useless degrees)

Because niggers.

They have to keep lowering the standard for them to pass anything. And everyone has to pass in a leftist utopia!

Teachers should be allowed to hit students. Make the little cunts shut the fuck up once in a while.

Some classes are virtually impossible to control. Teachers are scared to send kids to the office because that makes them look bad ("can't control classroom"), and they're pretty much powerless.

I'm not american.
But in england, I'd have to say it is retarded how the school system gears people towards studying for tests and exams. (at least my particular school) rather than gearing us towards learning practical life skills, or getting a job.
I'm in film school at the moment and I've been here for two years, today someone edited my first film that's over five minuites long.

This is mostly because the school system is still doing the retarded shit it has done my whole life.
Giving bullshit projects that don't teach me anything.

I take maths, I do a project on Ls in boxes. I'm given food and cooking, i'm bogged down by fuck loads of safety work and paperwork to justify making a god damn sandwhich. I'm given sociology, the whole thing is bullshit. I'm doing DIY, I'm given a project about making a box. English? I'm stuck writing essays about text books. History? a month every year is wasted on the history of black movement against racism.

it is retarded how I am going to school, and not being taught anything.

>>8962216

YES fucking waste assignments. I remember in 10th grade English class being given middle school assignments - and I was in a nearly all-white-and-asian honors program at a good public school. "Read the Life of Pi and draw a map of Pi's brain."

Just retarded work, things that take a long time but don't teach you anything. "HURRR MAEK A POWERPOINT"

Just thinking about those days make me rage. Dropping out was the best thing I did, college gives reasonable work.

Until I hit 12th grade I only took one class that actually taught me anything. I went to what is widely regarded as the best school in Pennsylvania. Shit is bad.

>our children are in school for 30 hours
> giving them even more homework. But that's what we have been doing

Hmm, I wonder what you are doing wrong...

Seriously, kids don't want to go to school, the more schoolwork you shove down their throats the less they will like it, and the less they will feel like as if they want to learn

I' m to busy being educated to learn things

Teacher here, it's because public schools don't get the funding they need, it all goes into the military. Because of this, the experienced, good teachers are getting laid off in favor for new, fresh out of college, cheap to pay teachers. Then schools also cut programs like music and arts, which teach more to kids than my math class ever will. It also doesn't help that parents expect the school to do all the work, and the parents don't enforce the children's study habits. Other schools around the world are also more difficult. They hold students to a higher standard in different areas, which makes the students more well rounded, and they just drop the failures.


TL;DR: Our schools don't get enough funding to keep the programs needed & no child left behind.

>>8960418

I'll admit it, I lol'd.

One issue is that males start too early. They are not developmentally ready yet for school at the age we send them. In short it ruins the experience. Places where they start kids in school when they are 7 do better than American schools.

>>8962343

You know that you're wrong on both counts right?

USA spends more per kid than any country in the world and still almost in last place among 1st world countries. In fact they've done several studies showing the amount of money you put into a school has almost zero effect on test scores. Here is a study where they pumped money into a ghetto school and it didn't get any better. http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-298.html

Secondly no child left behind was actually a good idea to start with. But it's been so watered down it's useless now.

Schools need to be Privatized.

>>8962343

>Teacher here, it's because public schools don't get the funding they need, it all goes into the military.

Typical lying teacher. We've doubled education spending per/ pupil in the last 30 years, while our performance has declined. They added 2 bil to the budget of Kansas City schools. You should see how much they spent, how different they were. But performance went down, not up. We spend more per-pupil than many of the European countries that outrank us.

Fuck, teachers are a huge part of the problem. "HURR GIEF MORE MONEY FOR US TO PHOTOCOPY WORKSHEETS AND PARAPHRASE THE TEXTBOOK"

>>8962343
My dad is a teacher at an inner city middle school.
Every kid gets a free laptop, lunch, new books, the works.
That school is many things, but underfunded it is not.

>>8962411
HAHAHAHHAHAAHAH

Fuckin' bookmarked!

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_meyer_math_curriculum_makeover.html