Efficiency of US Schools

[Drace]

I'm currently enrolling in high school, and having had experience, I feel there are some serious errors in the education system here.

I love to learn but yet school is the biggest waste of time for me. The homework is total waste of paper, and the teachers don't teach much.

Perhaps the real problem is the students who don't want to learn. I would think this is an affect of a capitalist culture.

I can't state exactly what it is, but school sucks. Maybe its just me :confused:

[Comrade_Red]

I feel there are some serious errors in the education system here. :confused:

Ya think?!

[ZeroNowhere]

The schools are extremely efficient. Well, in terms of cranking out obedient, dependent workers who don't think for themselves, at least.
There are alternatives even now, however, such as unschooling and free skooling. They don't get government funding, of course.
Also, the 'Teenage Liberation Handbook' should be compulsory (... :) ) reading for anybody, especially people in high school.


The homework is total waste of paper
Homework is a way of invading your own free time, and thus artificially extending school far beyond its original time limit. It is generally repetitive and pointless work, while the interesting bits could be done by you anyways.

[ev]

LOL!!! - Was my reaction when I first read the title of the thread, I thought someone was proclaiming efficiency of the US education system, if that were the case they would be making an ass of themselves, the system is fucked up and reeks with the enforcement of capitalist culture.

Here are some good examples of how great the US education system really is:

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=v2U_KRpz5NYhttp://au.youtube.com/watch?v=K8g3Gb5-jaY

I assume the Australian education system isn't really any better, I've been through it, it creates bad thinking habits in young adults and makes them not want to learn, they are taught stupid and unpractical shit in a lot of subject units, an example of this would be in my old "English" class that we had. At our school of 1600 students, students were not taught proper English, there vocabulary would remain very limited. I have had to spend (not waste because I'm teaching myself something very relevant) my own time expanding my vocabulary just to make up for this poor education received in this class alone!

They delve into trivial subjects, wasted my time at school, half the shit they taught I could have been teaching to the students!

The teachers don't know what the fuck they're actually talking about they are just following a curriculum and telling you "information" that is necessary to past a test and/or a take home assignment in which you will be delegated a couple of weeks to finish. I ask you, how the fuck are students learning anything if they are only expected to know the trivial questions that are on test sheets! In some cases I had teachers which failed to teach the curriculum correctly and as a result most students failed, I passed only because I thought it was wrong (because I knew some things on the subject) I then studied it at home and found out I was right and that I was being taught the wrong shit, as well as other shit that wasn't in the test and just the teachers opinion!

In most cases I utilized previous knowledge gained on the subject through past home study to pass the subject whilst sleeping in class through the 'lessons', the structured testing at these things society deems legitimate institutions is a mockery of social intelligence and a crime against children, my analogy in all this is that they are raping kids minds ;)

I have seen fucking retards get B's - A's due to favoritism (with mediocre work) and furthermore, I couldn't have been fucked in wasting my time 'learning' the trivial shit they were brainwashing the kids with! I mean, who's 'history' are they teaching, bias history.

An example of this was, in our history class where we studied the Russian Revolution and the only material they gave us was fucking animal farm! I mean, fuck... Okay, first term in year 12 (last year) our teacher asked us who Tzar Nicolas II was, nobody fucking knew (he only knew because he found this out on the handout sheet that he was to give out because of the curriculum), after everyone made an ass of themselves and made random guesses "China", "Cuba", "Japan" etc. I finally said "Russia" only because my teacher thought I wasn't listening because I had my head on my desk. The teacher didn't even know what the U.S.S.R meant (Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics - he said something like United Socialist Something Russia, I had to correct him). Anyway was fucking pathetic, school is and remains a joke.

I could rant on.. and on.. and on, I believe Rousseau wrote (even though it would be old) on how school shouldn't be so structured as it infringes upon the intellectual development of kids. If someone has read Rousseau's work on something relating to this subject could they please post, I guarantee it is an interesting read. Anyway, these are my thoughts on this subject, my advice to you Drace is to study hard on relevant subjects that interest you, as well as play ball or the "system" as i like to say and pass the subjects you need to to in order to attain the credentials need for a future career you want, or study for the marks required to attend an institution like university to study the subjects you wish to do. like sociology, imo you should be able to go to university without a 'rank' or OP etc. Perhaps an aptitude test and a basic study-entry test to the desired subject would be my suggestion to an institution but they wouldn't addopt such ideas because they aren't idealists like me, they embrace the capitalist system and furthermore they are just assholes :rolleyes:

Hell, back in school I wasn't even allowed to read a book on economics in one of my classes even though I had finished my assignments before everyone else and I did that only so i could read in class (I was told to sit and do nothing pretty much), IMO some teachers have a superiority complex but some a nice and legitimate, caring people. I had good relationships with 98% of school faculty.

Anyway, I chose not to conform to the system and play in the rat race with the majority (which were ignorant kids with strange ideas on how they thought the world worked & revolved around them) because if I did, to me, I would only be encouraging the participation in such a fucking joke we call high school. I had fun though and elaborated on relevant ideas (such as socialism, communism, economic aspects of social structures, etc. - elaborating, putting it as simple as possible) to my peers, thanks to me some kids learned something at that place.
It's odd though, I disagreed with the curriculum, didn't try (participate in the rat race for marks - hence laxed'), didn't go out of my way to be social either and I had.. well.. a pretty damn good relationship with my peers, teachers and most of all a good time at school, teachers knew I was smart after they had me for the first term and didn't bother interrupting me when I was asleep, I use to get a lot of phone calls to my parents saying that 'we are concerned about Ivan, he doesn't give a fuck about school and sleeps in our classes, he is a really smart kid with a strong background on certain topics like politics etc. and I know that he would be ace'ing this class if he gave a fuck, can you talk to him for me' etc. etc. This only happened after I got a new teachers, my old teachers said they would be fine as long as I passed the subjects so i said I would because I loved em' and all :rolleyes:, anyway I could joke around with my teachers, peers, I had fun and didn't worry about school and came out fine.
I hope you leave high school with a good experience Drace. Even though it's conclusive that high school fails and is only worth going there for the social experience (which most kids do but for different reasons!) I'd assume US schools are a bit worse, It isn't just you, for lack of a better word and quite possibly an over-simplification "school sucks." Good Luck :thumbup1:

[ZeroNowhere]

Well, of course, most teachers are decent people who join up to help children, but the bureacracy restricts them as much as the students. Of course, they're harmed by public schools just as much as everyone else that went to them (since most teachers, as well as most people, have gone to public schools or private schools with similar schooling systems).


Even though it's conclusive that high school fails and is only worth going there for the social experience (which most kids do but for different reasons!)
I'd expect that you could get friends and such fairly easily without going to schools. For example, joining clubs and teams, going to meetings and rallies, taking courses on things you're interested in, etc. Of course, there's also free skools, in which the community would probably be better than that of high school.
Of course, don't come to Singapore. Here, you have to go to school, there are no free skools, and the public education system is like the US one amplified a hundred times.


An example of this was, in our history class where we studied the Russian Revolution and the only material they gave us was fucking animal farm!
That's better than ours, seeing as Orwell doesn't only focus on how evil the bolshies were, seeing as he was a socialist. It does oversimplify things a lot, but yeah, here we were just told about how communism was a 'good idea', but impossible in practice. I'm sure everybody's used to that.
Of course, the Russian Revolution could be an interesting subject (though I'm more interested in researching the Spanish Revolution, as well as more ancient history), but only if one was left to research it on their own, the way it's conducted in schools is just incredibly boring, which is fairly inevitable, as well as incredibly annoying (here it was preceded by a unit on the Khmer Rouge and followed by the Cold War, so we got loads of interesting facts on 'communism'. Ugh.)


I have seen fucking retards get B's - A's due to favoritism (with mediocre work) and furthermore
Literally retards, or just dumbed down?

[ev]

Well, of course, most teachers are decent people who join up to help children, but the bureacracy restricts them as much as the students.

elaborate.



I'd expect that you could get friends and such fairly easily without going to schools. For example, joining clubs and teams, going to meetings and rallies, taking courses on things you're interested in, etc. Of course, there's also free skools, in which the community would probably be better than that of high school.
Of course, don't come to Singapore. Here, you have to go to school, there are no free skools, and the public education system is like the US one amplified a hundred times.

In Australian there are no "free schools" unless you mean learning at home from your parent (most likely mother probably due to gender-discrimination) using a government approved curriculum :thumbdown: Don't misunderstand what I'm saying, even though you have a valid point, teenagers often learn the basics of peer interaction through practice in a social environment, often when a child is home-schooled they are not taught on how to be socially "normal" in interacting with peers (the idea of a normal standard of character is stupid and a mockery of individualism but a cultural manifestation imo.) When people attend places where they can interact and communicate with similar people (such as school) they become more social because they develop better social skills than one would at home.

[ev]

That's better than ours, seeing as Orwell doesn't only focus on how evil the bolshies were, seeing as he was a socialist. It does oversimplify things a lot, but yeah, here we were just told about how communism was a 'good idea', but impossible in practice. I'm sure everybody's used to that.
Of course, the Russian Revolution could be an interesting subject (though I'm more interested in researching the Spanish Revolution, as well as more ancient history), but only if one was left to research it on their own, the way it's conducted in schools is just incredibly boring, which is fairly inevitable, as well as incredibly annoying (here it was preceded by a unit on the Khmer Rouge and followed by the Cold War, so we got loads of interesting facts on 'communism'. Ugh.)

I agree It would have been nice to be taught about the Spanish revolution, what I got in addition to animal farm was a load of anti-communist/pro-capitalist rhetoric with nothing supporting the claims the teacher was making, also the work we were given was very bias to position us and our values/ideas to oppose communism. Why can't I have the option to study a subject of my choice at school and have optional units to study in addition to the standard things that must be taught and tested on that? It could work, I have already come up with a system to this and would elaborate it upon request. I refute your claim that school must be "boring" and that it is inevitable. School is boring due to the structure of the institution, the curriculum is too structured, students don't know why they are learning what they are being taught and they don't have a say in the matter when they should because it is there education.


Literally retards, or just dumbed down?

Do I really need to explain, you know what I mean. They were not intellectuals, they just do what they have to without actually thinking or questioning what they were being taught. It's like they get a piece of paper that says "communism is bad, this is because it results in totalitarianism and a dictatorship of the proletariat which is a dictatorship and a dictatorship is against democracy hence communism is bad" then when you get the test "is communism bad, if yes explain why?" Now, lets say I advocate my view on communism, I say its a better socioeconomic structure because.. +600 words then run out of time in test* and get a bad mark where some mindless fuck knows no better and says "i think communism is bad because it results in a total dictatorship and isn't democratic" and gets a A-

It..Is...Fucked...Up. - Thank you.

[Drace]

an example of this would be in my old "English" class that we had. At our school of 1600 students, students were not taught proper English, there vocabulary would remain very limited. I have had to spend (not waste because I'm teaching myself something very relevant) my own time expanding my vocabulary just to make up for this poor education received in this class alone!

English class is pathetic. You learn nothing.


my advice to you Drace is to study hard on relevant subjects that interest you, as well as play ball or the "system" as i like to say and pass the subjects you need to to in order to attain the credentials need for a future career you want, or study for the marks required to attend an institution like university to study the subjects you wish to do

Fack yes! This is one reason I hate it. We are fed stupid shit no one cares about and forgets the next year. If it was something that I enjoyed, it would be quite different.

And yes. Lot of stupid kids get As. Its all about doing your retarded work which is retarded and makes me cry because its retarded.

[ev]

what can you do? Nothing.

Conforming and doing your homework is counter-revolutionary ;)

[black magick hustla]

i used to think HS was a huge waste of time. Sometimes it is sometimes is not. But saying it is completely worthless is just juvenile. Unless you are fuckin bright as hell and can learn calc by yourself, or are willing to learn calc by yourself, then it has a use. then if you are not willing to go to college then i guess its a waste of time.

[Sprocket Hole]

English class is pathetic. You learn nothing.Depends on the teacher, my friend, I took honors english by choice last year to read good books and be surrounded by intelligent people, and it's exactly what I got. I had an awesome teacher who never once gave us pointless assignments. I also was exposed to some great literature (Of Mice and Men, the Odyssey, To Kill A Mockingbird, Greek Mythology, as well as a few others..). But then again, the school I went to last year was extremely diverse and had a huge focus on arts. I miss that school a lot.

The school I'm going to now here in the midwest has a very prison-like feel to it. On top of that, I have never felt more alienated in the comuinity, as I could be the only one in the school who thinks past what I am told, and I am defenetly the only student in the school who has a vast vocabulary (as I have had to explain some very basic english many times). I don't really have the urge to speak out in debates in my history classes becuase they move so fast from subject to subject on irrelevant misinformed subjects, and to speak up would be speaking in a foriegn language in my class, that only my teacher would partially understand. The worst of it all, people will hate me becuase they don't understand what "I am". They couldn't group me into any social 'clique' if they treid, so they do so by who I associate myself with and what they identify with.

My observations of US highschool life, especially in my conservative school is that it encourages kids to despise learning, to respect authority no matter how rediculous it is, to be herded like sheep, discourage inquisitive thought through repitition, discourages teamwork and mutual-aid, and robs kids of their true individuality (other than where they shop and what corporate sponsered bands they dance to). Kids are pitted up against each other, as I see it, due to wanting to move up in the imaginary heiarchy they see in their heads.

I hate it, I trully do and I'll be damned if any one wants to tell me that is "normal teen rebellion" .

But some advice, if you trully can't get out, a comrade of mine told me:
"Get through school, but don't compromise your values to the bullshit they feed you. Take what you need out of it. Us it to further your arguments. Put pen before sword. Knowledge comes slowly, let your ideologies sink in before you put brick to window."

[ev]

Marmot:
For the record I'm not advocating a position that high school is completely useless, I'm stating that it could be a hell of a lot better. I could have taught myself the curriculum because all the information was there.

Prophetic:
So, you went to a privet school last year and now you have moved to a public school?
Anyway, you have said something similar to what I stated. Drace needs to play ball and win without compromising his values and beliefs, remembering that he is only going there to get a piece of paper that says he is qualified because he has done some trivial shit in HS. Not all of it is trivial but a majority of it is filler & propaganda. /endrant

[ZeroNowhere]

Anyway, you have said something similar to what I stated. Drace needs to play ball and win without compromising his values and beliefs, remembering that he is only going there to get a piece of paper that says he is qualified because he has done some trivial shit in HS. Not all of it is trivial but a majority of it is filler & propaganda. /endrant
Well, if necessary, one could get into most universities through taking exams. You hardly have to go to high school to do that.

[Kukulofori]

johntaylorgatto.com has a free book or two on just how terrible the US education system is.

I dropped out after middle school and it's still the best decision I ever made. Trust me, just go for your GED.

[Psy]

I'm currently enrolling in high school, and having had experience, I feel there are some serious errors in the education system here.

I love to learn but yet school is the biggest waste of time for me. The homework is total waste of paper, and the teachers don't teach much.

Perhaps the real problem is the students who don't want to learn. I would think this is an affect of a capitalist culture.

I can't state exactly what it is, but school sucks. Maybe its just me :confused:


Yep school pretty much sucks. The largest problem schools have is they discourage learning by mistakes which is how humans mostly learn, they also abstract the subject far too much making it harder for average students.

[Dóchas]

i think school is so stupid. sure most of the teachers hate you anyway and just want to go home. there is a teacher in my school that mumbles that he hates his life whenever someone bothers to listen to him. on the other hand i have an english teacher that has really opened my eyes to the language. he is just so passionate about the subject and he just wants to share it with anyone that wants to learn. the same is the case for my old classics teacher who was so passionate and he just wanted to share his passion. i think that in general teachers couldnt give a shit about you they just want to do their job and fuck off to whatever life they have but now and then there comes along a guy that just breaks the mold and i think these are the only ones that deserve to educate us.

[Sprocket Hole]

So, you went to a privet school last year and now you have moved to a public school?

No way, I was living in California last year and moved half-way through the year to here in the Midwest.

I've been reading a lot into the Teenage Liberation Handbook somebody mentioned in here, and it sounds like a possibility. I'm going to get my hands on a copy for further reading (as I've only read samples and whats on the author's/publisher's site)

[Guerrilla22]

Not very efficient at all, when you take into consideration the fact that the US spends more on education than any other country by far, but yet consistently scores well below other countries that have less than half the resources the US does and far below industrialized countries that have similar resources. In fact, the DPRK has a much higher literacy rate than the US does.

[mikelepore]

The largest problem schools have is they discourage learning by mistakes which is how humans mostly learn, they also abstract the subject far too much making it harder for average students.

When a student makes any kind of mistake, what a U.S. school uses the occasion for is to punish the person with a recording of that mistake in his or her "permanent record", so everyone else in the future will be warned not to give a job or a college admission to a person who "doesn't deserve" it. There's no mood similar to that's okay, everyone just needs practice at everything, just keep practicing. No, if you can't remember a calculus formula by Friday, you must have a criminal record following you around forever. If you might fail at something, you're much safer not to have tried it at all.

The purpose is that schools are in the business of recommending students to others, mainly employers and higher schools. This follows from the individual being a little cog in the production machine.

A decent education system would use frequent testing and evaluation only to help the student, to make an assessment of which topics need to be reviewed by each individual, which misconceptions are causing problems.

Today's educational system is in the business of tagging and filtering out the people who "need more time" at various things, so employers will be forewarned not to hire them. The corporate Personnel Manager, who has a job opening, and a stack of hundreds of resumes to sort through, before offering that job to an applicant and rejecting all of the others, is the person for whom the educational institution is in the business of providing a service.

This is my opinion as a perpetual student who has gone through four universities (engineering, physics, and secondary education) and also has 18 years experience working in a competitive corporation.

[The Idler]

Watch Free to Learn - a radical experiment in education (documentary).