should school standards in North America be raised?

Question

please give me ideas of why school standards should be raised

thanks for anwsering

Answer 1

Ok its no secret that the curiculum of today is seriously watered down from earlier years of American education.
Pick up an AP math book of today and then look at a regular math book from earlier 1900's and you will find the regular math book from yesteryear was still much harder than those wonderful AP classes everyone raves about. Why was it watered down well my guess is kids became less diciplined, lazier and disrespectuful. That and lawsuits popping up like crazy from parents who were to busy to work with thier kids yet are angry cause thier kids are not passing.
I have also noticed a difference in pass/fail grading. When I was in school anything below 70 is failing yet now with my kids anything below a 65 is...another way standards have been lowered.
As to why the standards should be raised here are a few:
1) Kids perform better when they are challenged. Research prooves this.
2) Kids develope a better self esteem if they are challenged. Give them something to work for instead of handing it to them. Kids get a sense of accomplishment. Also behavior problems decrease when something is more challenging and stimulating. I work in schools and sometimes I feel like I would act up too if I had to sit in these boring classes all day.
3) Kids may have a better shot in college/real life. Todays standards teach kids that if something is late, "well thats ok". Or if you just didnt want to do a certain something thats ok too maybe you can do some extra credit. Kids with these ideals in thier heads go to college and flunk out thier first semester because they thought they could get away with not doing something. Or they get fired from jobs because they learned that you can pass by only putting in a small amount of effort.
5) Kids need to learn to apply knowledge. This educational system we have now seems to focus on memorization of facts. Yet these facts proove to be useless because I think kids of today are forgeting how to think or apply knowledge. To me this is what bothers me more than anything. Because in the real world we dont run around thinking about when Edison created the lightbulb but we need to take his theories and ask ourselves "how can I build on Edisons principals to make something better" This is how new discoveries are made...not through memorization of fact.

Anyway enough on that. I would also like to add that these are my thoughts on primary and secondary education, except for kindergarten. I think when it comes to kinder those kids are pushed too hard. They are being taught things that developmentally speaking they havent even reached those milestones.Once behind they stand a strong chance of staying behind because the curriculum is moving too fast. Reading for example is taught in kinder yet kids usually havent developed the visual skills or attention span for reading. Many other countries dont teach reading until age 7. Funny we start our kids the earliest yet seem to have one of the highest illiteracy rate. I think developmental kindergarten should be brought back.

Answer 2

YES!
Graduates of public schools in America can't compete on the world stage. Unless a child goes to college, he's barely qualified to bag groceries. They barely teach world history, are lax on math and forget about science. Check out some of the questions on Yahoo! Answers half of these people don't know where babies come from. Instead of teaching how to pass standardized tests, schools should teach a (nationalized) curriculum that builds on year by year.

Answer 3

Yes. And they should start with raising the standards for teachers. The NEA has run the show for too long, and we now have some teachers who border on moron status, who are untouchable. My daughter had a math teacher her sophomore year of HS, who was teaching the honors class, who was a laughing stock because the students had to show her how to work the problems on almost a daily basis.

and the concept of "tenure" should be eliminated altogether. I don't get it at my job, why should they.

Answer 4

it should be
and the only way for that to happen is to put the schools in competition for students.
make to where parents can chose the school there children go to, do not base what school your kid goes to by the location of the residence or districts.
start paying teachers more. and somehow change why people get into teaching. students who go to college and become a teacher are usually the worst students.
maybe even get gov't out of the school business and privatize all schools. there is so many answers for all of the simple problems we have in N. america yet noone does a thing about it.

Answer 5

YES definetly. the reason so many students are failing is because school standards aren't high enough. they should be raised because they were bad enough before and now they are being lowered even more. theres no way north american students will be sucessful in life if they've never been put under pressure and faced proper school standards.

Answer 6

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Answer 7

Yeah, how about not catering to the lowest common denominator. Teach kids that if they don't care about their education that's fine, they can pump gas and flip burgers. Then the system can focus on the children that want to learn.

Answer 8

of cpurse
look at graduates

Answer 9

NO!!! i'm bearly passing my classes now what are you thinking