Stupid Q#2: American High Schools? What is wrong with them?

Question

Everyone I discussed that issue with: ages ranging from 15 to 45 had negative comments, or at least neutral. Why? Can it be changed?

Please Note that it's not my personal concern or attitude. I am not a high school student either. give your opinion on the matter - not me

Answer 1

this is a good question and i love your clarification. happens all the time; people assume that you are making a statement of belief rather than asking a question.

people say the curriculum in america is "a mile high & an inch deep." which is true. and there are many facets to it; the fault is not entirely one group's. all teachers are not bad as not all parents are not bad. there are good teachers and parents.

often, students have no discipline because of less parental involvement and support. it is more difficult to teach students who will not behave and get no consequences from parents. a disrupted classroom is not a good learning environment.

also, the government implements educational standards and an ultimatum and gives no support ($ or otherwise) to the schools. hence, grade inflation and students who cannot write or read well. especially with inclusion and the way that schools and teachers must cater to students for fear of getting sued. it's like telling someone to build a house in a week with a hammer and a bag of nails. and if you don't succeed, we're taking away a handful of nails every week until you do.

special ed students were thrown into the regular student classroom w/o training for the regular ed teachers. they're falling behind and getting advantages such as being allowed to take the same test over and over until they pass. if a teacher does not do this, then that teacher may be sued for not following the iep and the school loses more money.

since the teacher must allow this, the student is allowed to pass and graduate without really learning much.

the pity is, the plans and ideals for education (NCLB, heterogenous grouping, etc.) could be really effective. they just need to send some good wood and a saw. maybe a couple more hammers.

sorry for the length. :)

Answer 2

Two things: administrators and academics. I'm sure there are good administrators, but too many of them are simply teachers who wanted to move up the pay scale and out of the classroom. This is especially true of the lower level administrators: principals and vice principals. But a teacher once gave me her opinion of the superintendant of schools, which a group of newly hired teachers met. "He isn't an educator. He isn't even an administrator. He's nothing but a G--d----- politician!"

As far as the academics, look at the fads that have come and gone: new math, open schools, now it's intensive block scheduling. There's even a new "paradigm" to teach kids basic arithmatic functions, which I had to figure out for my neighbor whose daughter came home with it. If new drugs were pushed on us with as little testing as new educational "strategies" are pushed on our children, we'd be in an uproar. But academics make their careers and reputations thinking these things up and writing papers about them. I'm guessing nobody keeps track of how many ultimately fail.

There's a certain cultural snobbishness, too. What parent isn't familiar with a teacher who treats parents as children...because THEY aren't TEACHERS.

Can it be changed? I've had enough trouble trying to get administrators merely to listen to reason. The condescending attitude you meet is enough to put you off. It's very difficult (if at all possible) to penetrate and change a culture like this. The only thing I can see that could be changed is with these educational strategies. When they are rolled out, it should be on an experimental basis in a very few schools. The children exposed to them should be guaranteed remedial help if the program doesn't work. I'm convinced that most of the research being written up on these programs is nothing more than useless gibberish churned out as a project to gain a degree--and not at all in the interest of the research subjects, the students. Wouldn't this be highly unethical in medicine? Why should we allow it in education?

Answer 3

Those are a lot of good answers but I will add one more group: DISTRICT personnel.
Here's my example: Another teacher asked at a meeting about budget cuts, since we had to buy our own paper this fall, why the napkins in all the cafeterias had the district name embossed on them. Well, the big-wigs actually got back to us to say that they looked into it and found that we could save $8000. a year if we used regular napkins! So WHO okay-ed that little expenditure?! Obviously not a teacher!
I haven't had enough text books for my students for three years, I buy all my own supplies and the technology I have stinks. The book list I have has the same books my grandmother was required to read and classics or not, is that to say nothing has been worthy of classic status since 1930?! We wonder why kids are turned off?!

Answer 4

American students are suffering the effects of a program called No Child Left Behind. Even if you didn't learn a flipping thing,you get shunted along to the next class. You must be truly atrocious to have to repeat a grade under this system.

Yeah,we're the greatest nation on earth - and we haven't had a winner in the International Mathematical Society's annual competition since 1965.

I was appalled last week to have a junior in the State University be unable to read correctly from a page of text I was attempting to share with her.She was actually complaining that the author's English was " unclear,no one can understand that" when it was her own- I'm sorry - dimwittedness in her own way.She couldn't blooming read, but she knows how to dress cute and that is apparently about all she has to offer. New Jersey has among the highest college costs in the nation,so I really pity her folks to be scooping out that kind of moola on a girl who is unlearned and unwilling to become learned.

Our children seem to know all about their "rights" but know next to nothing about the corresponding responsibility that having rights engenders. They know all about fashion and nothing about history.And I will always maintain that a man who does not know where he has come from will have no clue where he is going.

Answer 5

I am 49 and graduated HS in 1975 and I was totaly dissatisfyed with my HS education. At the time it was out of date by at least ten years in history. In math it was so far behind the times that when I did get to college I had to retake from the numberline up.
In reading they did not cut the mustard at all.
The only thing that I have to say of the school back then is that they still had vocational programs. but we all know where thoes went. Down the drain and the money used for then went into the SPORTS program.
Oh yeah that bringsa in money to the school.. to pay for the higher wadges for the top tier.

Answer 6

Lack of Motivation. Lack of Respect. Attitudes.Students don't get the teachers and the teachers don't get the students. Every class is focused on test results. Students are not satisfied with doing work for personal enrichment, they want to know what is in it for them. Schools may be focused on making things appear peachy keen while caving in.

Answer 7

They are so overcrowded that students cannot get the proper education and assistance; its no longer a one-on-twenty world. Some teachers have 70+ students.

Answer 8

It depends on the student. The problem is lack of structure. The students still have access to all the material you would find anywhere else.

Answer 9

we could desire to continuously be directing 80% of center college babies remote from college and into commerce faculties, prepping them to be hairdressers, glazers, masons,plumbers and mechanics by capacity of the time they are 11 or 12. babies are continuously asking what application the matters they are being taught have in genuine existence. in the event that they are no longer being groomed for some thing functional and lifelike, the respond is "none". they are no longer inspired to check so as that they do no longer. Early prepping for commerce college for many persons is the respond. babies who've a projected occupation to artwork in direction of are inspired to develop into extra helpful readers and make the main of utilized math concerning their projected jobs. they are going to on no account be large thinkers and it incredibly is cruel to saddle them with debt and unrealistic expectancies at this manner of comfortable age by capacity of allowing them to attend college.

Answer 10

Unless you go to a good high school, you don't learn anything that will help you get ahead in life.