Commission Calls For Massive Reform of U.S. Schools

[calbiterol]

Note: this is not an excerpt (except for quoted text). See below for full original article.

 

A private commission called for massive reform among schools - high school (years 9-12) in particular. The reforms suggested by the panel would make the US high school system more like those in Europe.

 

The focal point of the high school reforms would be a "rigorous" state-developed exam in year 10 - similar to the

Abitur,

which is taken in year 12 at most German schools. If a student passed, he/she would have two options: stay in high school for two more years, either to "prepare for [an] elite 4-year university" or to enter a state university with credit for classes taken in years 11 and 12; or, to enroll at a community college "with the possibility of moving of to a 4-year university."

 

If a student failed the exam, he/she would "stay in high school to take remedial courses." The student would be encouraged to retake the test until he/she passes it.

 

I, for one, would endorse (and vote for) any legislation passed that implemented such a system. I think that it would supply a much-needed reform to a system that I have grown to hate, and will soon be leaving (thank God, I'm halfway done with year 12 as of Friday the 22nd).

[source:Chicago Tribune, page 1 of section 1 ("Panel: Revamp U.S. high schools"; article also available online at http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0612150315dec15,1,6644357.story?ctrack=1&cset=true)]

[CPL.Luke]

well I think that some change is neessary, but not neccessarily a test based change. Testing leads schools to teach towards the test, and ignore everything else, if everybody has to solve quadratics and cubic equations then why would you spend any money on teaching shop or photography? as these things would surely not be on the test.

 

 

also you say that the plan would essentially call for students of a higher calibur to stay in school two years longer relearning things they already know, why wouldn't these students move on while everyone else stayed in or something like that.

[BGMCFAR]

The different I would make is rarher than another testgive that person the opprotunity to learn a trade our school systems in this country teach like every one is going to colege and only about 25%-30% do So lets teach a trade or service oriented profession It takes a good Tradesoerson to build a college:

[calbiterol]

well I think that some change is neessary, but not neccessarily a test based change. Testing leads schools to teach towards the test, and ignore everything else, if everybody has to solve quadratics and cubic equations then why would you spend any money on teaching shop or photography? as these things would surely not be on the test.

 

 

also you say that the plan would essentially call for students of a higher calibur to stay in school two years longer relearning things they already know, why wouldn't these students move on while everyone else stayed in or something like that.

 

 

Ahah. But the commission recommended something that would solve both of these issues in one step. As far as teaching towards the test goes, I cannot offer anything. However, the plan did deal with teaching other subjects. That, in fact, was what the extra two years were for. The students would NOT relearn information they already know. Only those who fail the exam would need to take courses that would reteach material - these courses being entirely remedial.

 

Those who passed would be able, as per their choice, to either take more classes at school - classes of their choice, for vocational or technical or scholastic reasons or what have you - or to move on, at that point, to post-secondary school. I would probably have jumped at the chance to leave for college at the end of year 10 - not because I want to go get stoned or anything, but rather because I am so frustrated with the terrible state of secondary education in the US.

 

We're on the same side. Read the article, it explains it in far better detail. Also, the main disadvantage of the German Abitur is how incredibly stressful it is on the students, which would not be true of this tupe of exam.

[Mokele]

The URL posted didn't work for me, but this one did:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0612150315dec15,1,6644357.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed

 

That said, I think it's stupid to paste the end-test of a functional educational system onto a broken enducational system.

 

I don't know about the rest of Europe, but I've had a lot of chats with my British fiancee about education here vs there. According to her, she had calculus back in HS, and it was on the tests she had to take. The kicker: she was a theater student.

 

IMHO, the problem is twofold in the US educational system:

1) The information and skills kids need to know to graduate from high school compares poorly with that of Koko the signing gorilla. I'm not kidding. Koko knows grammar and can produce meaningful sentences, while I've seen lab reports that indicate we have college students who cannot. NO educational reform will be worth a damn if we don't address this.

 

2) Critical thought and logic. Currently, there is nothing even approaching this in US schools. IMHO, in order for a student t be considered educated, they should be required to have formal courses in logic as well as a strenuous test. Of course, this will never happen, because politicians don't want voters who can actually think.

 

Mokele

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

2) Critical thought and logic. Currently, there is nothing even approaching this in US schools. IMHO, in order for a student t be considered educated, they should be required to have formal courses in logic as well as a strenuous test. Of course, this will never happen, because politicians don't want voters who can actually think.

I've wanted this for a long time. Without critical thinking, you're restricted to just quoting what the textbook said - and that's not much use in a career. It's when you can draw the connections and make inferences based on what the textbook says that you can really consider yourself educated.

 

Frankly, though, I think the biggest obstacle in American schools is that nobody gives a crap. I've had personal experience in this. The philosophy is "I won't need this to be a _____," meaning that students only care about the few things they believe are relevant to their future careers. Of course, they'll probably end up changing their career (a number I've heard tossed around suggests that people will change career choices 5 times in their life), meaning they'll actually need that knowledge. Makes good business for community colleges offering remedial classes, I suppose.

[JohnB]

Nice to see we're not the only ones with illiterate Uni students.

 

It would have to be the height of hypocrisy for a University or College to complain about the quality of students the school system puts out. If I may remind everyone that every stupid idea and every silly syllabus was designed and implimented by University graduates.

 

These highly trained but incredibly stupid people are the ones who decided (on the basis of their training, and where did they get that?) that correcting spelling, grammar or arithmatic may damage the little darlings psyche. Do you really think it is a coincidence that literacy levels have dropped and behavioural problems have increased since we started listening to the "psychologists"?

 

The problem you and we have is that no-one has listened to John and Mary Public for a long time. They want decent testing, you know, the three Rs.

 

You want to solve the problem? Then go to the source and review exactly what garbage psychology and teaching methods are being put out by your Universities. The students are not the problem, the "Teaching Professionals" are.

 

[/rant]

[Mokele]

It would have to be the height of hypocrisy for a University or College to complain about the quality of students the school system puts out.

 

Bullshit. We have no control over the HS curriculum, and furthermore, we have no control over which hare-brained ideas become popular.

 

Furthermore, educational psychology is actually a *real* field, which basically tells us none-too-surprising things. $20 says the ideas you mention derive solely from popular authors with no psychological training and are *not* mainstream opinions in *real* educational psychology.

 

Your argument is like saying that I can't complain about the number of creationist students we get, because a handful of those idiots managed to get advanced degrees to help them promote their BS.

 

As for John and Mary Public, there's the same idiots who insist that standards be lowered so Billy Public will be able to graduate.

 

The only silly teaching method that's been a problem was the move away from European Classical Education, which placed a high value on debate and logic rather than memorization and trivia. Given that happened over a century ago, I doubt you can blame psychobabble that came around a decade ago.

 

Besides, does any school actually *USE* the disparaged methods in question, or are they just some idea that everyone got pissed about and never got implemented.

 

Mokele

[ParanoiA]

Ok, speaking as a parent of public schools and former recent student of higher education I can say that John B has a good handle on what's happened in our schools. Mokele is coming from a university perspective and will be equally disgusted when he gets kids of his own and realizes what public elementary school as fizzled down to.

 

I visit my childrens' schools several times a year. I'm always amazed at the amount of "testing" being done. The last parent-teacher conference we had, my wife and I sat down with the PAC teacher and 4 other teachers. As each of them took their turns going over our child's progress, they took out test after test, circling this and pointing at that. There must have been an entire pile of tests by the time we got done. And they're so excited and taken by the pie charts, bar graphs and excel sorting as they run through the info - and this is just for 9 weeks of study. When do they learn?

 

The goal of public schools has been duped and fumbled into a testing environment. My kids have almost no homework. The only reason why my oldest has homework is because he won't apply himself in class. He's not challenged. He's bored. And it's not just him.

 

You need to visit a public school sometime. Notice how the teachers and staff don't seem to really take control of anything or anyone. They deal with your kids with legal papers. They don't deal with anything themselves. They just test and test and test and I guess learning stuff gets squeezed in there ever now and then. Anyone out of order in class gets removed and handled with paper and signatures and whatever is easiest for the faculty - with no responsibility taken or order enforced. Kids don't have to obey or learn or anything since there is no enforcement by a school full of adults.

 

I could go on and on. It's sick. It's fake. It's plastic. It's ineffective. We've completely lost sight of the goal. Our kids need more school and less freetime. We should be able to condense all 12 years of schooling down to 8 years. At 14 you should be considering college, not high school. Would also coincide with nature's ideas of breeding age without getting in the way of a fundamental education too. When a teenager gets pregnant, she can worry about it effecting her college - not her general education.

[CPL.Luke]

I would have to disagree with the idea that the move away from european education was necessarilly a bad one, if you look at the nobel prizes and such for the past hundred years its quite clear that americans have dominated the sciences and just about everything else for the past 70 years, considering that that coincides wit hthe generation entering school in 1890 or there abouts, obviously the move away from european education was somewhat of a good thing.

 

I would say that a certain amount of memorizaion and such has to be undertaken before students are able to think critically. furthermore i'd say that students must reach a certain age (probably around 15) before they can think critically.

 

The problem today is that on average students don't see a purpose in their education other than to get a good job, and for most of the smart ones thats not much of a motivator. In the 60's we had the space program/ a civil revolution. Things that gave people reasons to dream, reasons to think. Today we don't have that, we have no great wars to fight, there is no great revolution afoot, and as for dreams, the last time we went to the moon was 30 years ago, and any ideas about rebuilding the space program involve 50 year timelines that never move forward. And lastly if you turn on the tv you see that the men who are supposed to lead us send men into war without care for the issues involved (the chair of the house counter-intelligence commitee believed al-quaeda to be a shia organization).

 

Its possible to say that the love of knowledge is gone from our students, but what if it was never there? what if students in the past learned because they thought that it would impower them to make changes in society, but now they simply don't believe that to be true.

[calbiterol]

The only silly teaching method that's been a problem was the move away from European Classical Education, which placed a high value on debate and logic rather than memorization and trivia.

 

Amen. I wish that schools placed as much emphasis on critical thought and logic as I did. That's why I often do well on things like vocabulary tests - I remember concepts and processes and systems and components, not specific items. I might not know a specific word, but if I know its components (stems/roots), than I can make a good guess at its meaning.

 

Critical thinking - it's simply vital for society to function and advance. The stupidity of the general public never ceases to amaze me.

 

 

Ok, speaking as a parent of public schools and former recent student of higher education I can say that John B has a good handle on what's happened in our schools. Mokele is coming from a university perspective and will be equally disgusted when he gets kids of his own and realizes what public elementary school as fizzled down to.

I don't think Mokele was arguing about the middle schools. I think Mokele was specifically refuting JohnB's attack on uni-level education. And as far as pre-secondary education goes... The emphasis on tests is not necessarily due to the teachers. Part of the problem is that the general public accepts test scores as a good indication of quality of education - something test scores do not indicate well. Part of this (as well as a bunch of the testing) is due to the No Child Left Behind act - we see it in HS as well.

 

And as far as homework is concerned, Jr. High School (at least the more "advanced," or high school-level) sure chugs out homework. The emphasis in homework before that (at least in my experience) was always on projects.

 

I must ask, because I am curious: ParanoiA, is your experience with your child(ren)'s schools based on city education, suburban education, or rural education? My guess would be city.

 

 

If you look at the nobel prizes and such for the past hundred years its quite clear that americans have dominated the sciences and just about everything else for the past 70 years, considering that that coincides wit hthe generation entering school in 1890 or there abouts, obviously the move away from european education was somewhat of a good thing.

Who is to say that the receivers of Nobel Prizes valued the educational system? Perhaps these individuals did think critically and valued something beyond rote memorization. Perhaps that's a large part of the reason that they were so extraordinary.

 

I would say that a certain amount of memorizaion and such has to be undertaken before students are able to think critically. furthermore i'd say that students must reach a certain age (probably around 15) before they can think critically.

I strongly disagree. I simply hate to use myself as an example for things like this, but I haven't used rote memorization since it was forced upon me for multiplication tables. I don't even memorize things for German. I learn concepts, I intuit things, and if they are important, they will implant in my brain. While individuals might have to reach a certain mental age, a physical age for critical thought cannot be assigned, short of perhaps 6-10 (which is Erikson's middle childhood stage). I would place it at the concrete operational stage in the theory of cognitive development (wikipedia briefly defines concrete as: "occurs between the ages of 6 and 11 years and is characterized by the appropriate use of logic.").

 

 

 

The problem today is that on average students don't see a purpose in their education other than to get a good job, and for most of the smart ones thats not much of a motivator.

I agree that students don't see a purpose in education. Like Cap'n said, the students just don't care. The ones who do care are the same ones who use their free time to do things like this - those who enjoy knowledge, value critical thinking, and employ logic regularly. These are the students we should really worry about, and these are the ones that are constantly ignored. NCLB, education reforms, what have you - they always try to teach to the low end of the spectrum, they try to raise the floor. If you raise the floor and ignore the ceiling, you will escape the floodwaters - but you won't have done much good because you won't be able to stand in a 2-foot tall room. That's why I like this panel's suggestions - they allow students at the top end of the spectrum - the ones with the drive and the motivation and the will to seek knowledge for knowledge's sake - a way to pursue their interests before they grow uninterested and repulsed.

[JohnB]

Bullshit. We have no control over the HS curriculum, and furthermore, we have no control over which hare-brained ideas become popular.

True, but Universities do have control over over the training of those who do set the curriculum and make hair-brained ideas popular.

 

Please note, I'm having a go at Unis per se, just their departments responsible for training educators. The simple fact is that a board setting a curriculum (whether composed of graduates or lay folk) rely on the advice of a series of "expert opinions". These experts are almost without exception University graduates.

 

Since the drop in standards is obvious over time and it is highly unlikely that kids are dumber now than they were it follows that the standards have dropped because of either;

a) Lower teaching standards or,

b) Poorer curricula or,

c) A combination of both a) and b).

 

I've already shown b) above and if it's a), then the fault still rests in the higher educational system as they are responsible for training the teachers. Teachers don't get their educational theory while laying awake some stormy night, they are taught it.

 

If there is a panel of six experts and one comes up with a hair brained idea, why do the other five go along with it, or at least not strenuously oppose it? They can't all be sheep, unable to think for themselves. They go along because this wonderful new idea doesn't conflict with their training. Again, where were they trained?

 

Mokele, if you want undergrads who don't need remedial english lessons, then you should be asking your Faculties of Education exactly what sort of poeple they are giving degrees to. Because those are the people setting the curriculum, advising on it's implementation and teaching it.

 

calbiterol, I wasn't attacking Uni-level education, just one facet of it. I hope the above makes that clear. My point is that you can't fix the faults in the school curricula without first fixing the faults in the training of those who set the curricula.

[Glider]

These highly trained but incredibly stupid people are the ones who decided (on the basis of their training, and where did they get that?) that correcting spelling, grammar or arithmatic may damage the little darlings psyche. Do you really think it is a coincidence that literacy levels have dropped and behavioural problems have increased since we started listening to the "psychologists"?

 

[/rant]

When did the half-arsed, tree-hugging newbie 'educators' of the 60s and 70s become 'Psychologists'? They may have entered their teacher training with an unhealthy interest in, and familiarity with, pop-psychology, but that doesn't make them psychologists. A lot of them were also socialists and into Marxism (very popular at that time), that doesn't make them politicians. Some of them may even have had a degree in psychology, but that doesn't make them psychologists either.

 

Even the branch of psychology particular to learning (Educational Psychology) doesn't get involved in policy decisions in schools. It's primary role is research (the study of learning and how humans learn in educational environments). The cornerstone of all Psychology is research. Psychologists don't teach (unless they are University lecturers, and even then, they research). Nor are they involved in the design of school curricula or educational policy decisions concerning their implementation.

 

I know this is off topic, but it pisses me off that when a problem like this arises, it's suddenly the fault of 'Psychologists', when in reality, it was more the fault of people with a particular (usually political) agenda or bias who may be marginally familiar with some crappy pop-psychology books, and then, only those which support their particular axe-grinding perspective which was generated by their greater familiarity with books on Marxist philosophy and the communist manifesto. Back in the 60s and 70s it was 'educational socialism and equality' and 'no-one can fail' and suchlike. Now, it's more a competition between schools to keep their pass-rates up (i.e. their government funding). Neither of which has anything to do with Psychologists.

 

To blame the current state of middle education on Psychologists is, at best, like blaming Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Einstein.

 

You might be thinking "Oh, he's only posted this because he's a Psychologist", and you'd be right, but that doesn't make it not true. I posted this because I was frustrated at yet another example of the inaccurate and misleading beliefs concerning what Psychology is, and what Psychologists do.

 

[/rant]

[ParanoiA]

Good points Glider. Same points can be made when you hear people bitch about "one day milk is good for you, the next day they say it isn't". They blame scientists and say "what do they know? they keep changing their minds about this and that..." That's because it isn't the scientists blowing whistles and shouting the sky is falling - it's the media and the public's mind numbed relationship doing the damage.

 

Psychologists just draw conclusions based on what they've learned - just like the rest of us. They get printed here and there and people run with this stuff and implement it here and there and then blame them when it doesn't work out. So, I don't blame psychologists - I blame the administrators for implementing these ideas without testing them out fully. Whatever happened to pilot programs?

 

I must ask, because I am curious: ParanoiA, is your experience with your child(ren)'s schools based on city education, suburban education, or rural education? My guess would be city.

 

Not sure if it would be considered city or suburban, probably city. My kids go to Blue Springs schools in Missouri, which are supposed to be (at least a few years ago) among the best schools in the nation. And we do like the kinds of text books and material it looks like they're trying to learn, but I just don't see much in the way of meat and potatoes. Just alot of paper shuffling.

 

This is a big issue with me and this modern world we live in. Everything is program, a system..everything seems to require paper and signatures, documentation, etc. It's really getting on my nerves. I go to a parent-teacher conference and I'm signing documents that I've read and understood this and that. What the hell is going here? You'd think we're getting a signature loan from this place.

 

We've replaced personalization with documentation. They don't spank your kids and make them behave or pay attention - they send them home with documents to sign. This is stupid. Just plain stupid.

 

I don't think Mokele was arguing about the middle schools. I think Mokele was specifically refuting JohnB's attack on uni-level education. And as far as pre-secondary education goes...

 

I do realize that. My point to Mokele is that he hasn't seen for himself how this psychology has been perverted throughout the institution, which would explain why he was questioning that these ideas were really being implemented - they most certainly are.

[CPL.Luke]

I think you can blame the paperwork problem on the frivelous law suits. the schools can ill afford to cough up 10 million dollars because a teacher spanked a kid, a kid didn't get all the special attention they wanted.

 

 

so now they have to hand out papers for people to sign so that they don't get sued. Don't blame the psychologists or the educators for the paper work, blame the court system that will hand out million dollar rewards for spilling hot coffee on yourself.

[ParanoiA]

I think you can blame the paperwork problem on the frivelous law suits. the schools can ill afford to cough up 10 million dollars because a teacher spanked a kid, a kid didn't get all the special attention they wanted.

 

 

so now they have to hand out papers for people to sign so that they don't get sued. Don't blame the psychologists or the educators for the paper work, blame the court system that will hand out million dollar rewards for spilling hot coffee on yourself.

 

Well, this is a tough one. I mean, whatever happened to having a backbone? Whatever happened to applying common sense? Chances are, a kid really did need special attention and they basically abused him instead. They needed to be sued for that. But that doesn't mean you implement a policy of banning corporal punishment because of it.

 

Teachers are smart people and they're getting smarter and more tolerant every generation - I sincerely believe they have the skills necessary to know when to beat my child's ass and when he needs a different kind of approach.

 

I understand trying to protect our institutions from frivolous lawsuits but when the counter policy directly undermines the fundamental purpose and goal of education in the first place, then it is wrong and gutless.

 

Besides, I would be more than happy to sign a release form to allow them to use corporal means to enforce rules.

[JohnB]

Glider, I put the word psychologists in inverted commas to differentiate them from actual psychologists. In the same way I would refer to a Creationist "Scientist" as opposed to a scientist. I'm sorry if my meaning was unclear and caused offense. Believe me, I would never intentionally lump you into the same group as say, Dr. Phil.

 

One thing we should all remember is that we are talking from the differing perspectives of different nations. The process of curriculum setting in Australia is different from those in the UK and US. I'm writing from the Australian perspective.

 

Down here we do ask the Educational Psychologists for their advice when we change or attempt to improve teaching methods. (Whether their advice gets bastardized in the implementation phase is another matter which is outside the control of the Psychologists.)

 

I say again,

Please note, I'm having a go at Unis per se, just their departments responsible for training educators. The simple fact is that a board setting a curriculum (whether composed of graduates or lay folk) rely on the advice of a series of "expert opinions". These experts are almost without exception University graduates.

 

Since the drop in standards is obvious over time and it is highly unlikely that kids are dumber now than they were it follows that the standards have dropped because of either;

a) Lower teaching standards or,

b) Poorer curricula or,

c) A combination of both a) and b).

 

I've already shown b) above and if it's a), then the fault still rests in the higher educational system as they are responsible for training the teachers. Teachers don't get their educational theory while laying awake some stormy night, they are taught it.

 

If there is a panel of six experts and one comes up with a hair brained idea, why do the other five go along with it, or at least not strenuously oppose it? They can't all be sheep, unable to think for themselves. They go along because this wonderful new idea doesn't conflict with their training. Again, where were they trained?

Mokele has ably defended the Universities, likewise Glider the Psychologists, will no-one defend the education of teachers?

So, I don't blame psychologists - I blame the administrators for implementing these ideas without testing them out fully. Whatever happened to pilot programs?

So wouldn't you say that the training of the Administrators is lacking somewhat?

As for John and Mary Public, there's the same idiots who insist that standards be lowered so Billy Public will be able to graduate.

I meant to address this point earlier. This may be a difference in the nations, but down here it's John and Mary Public demanding higher educational standards while the "experts" are dumbing the system down. (There's those inverted commas again. )

[CPL.Luke]

Paranoia the things that people sue for in the US and get rewards for are rediculous,in my old school system the school would jump through hooops to make sure everyone had every little bit of special ed they could get, and peole still sued them when they wouldn't have a teacher follow their kid around like they have for the kids who really are retarded.

 

the problem is that these people who sue either win and get awards in excess of 100,000 dollars, and special ed their kid doesn't need. Or they fail but still cost the school a fortune in legal fees. This is killing school systems as they can't afford to pay good school teachers because they have to spend all of their money on legal fees and phsychologists, tests, and lawyers.

 

If you want to ave good high quality education that caters to the brighter students than you can't have frivilous lawsuits that pay out in the million dollar range.

[Glider]

Glider, I put the word psychologists in inverted commas to differentiate them from actual psychologists. In the same way I would refer to a Creationist "Scientist" as opposed to a scientist. I'm sorry if my meaning was unclear and caused offense. Believe me, I would never intentionally lump you into the same group as say, Dr. Phil.

No worries. I'm still sore at the last time the media got hold of my work and mis-represented it on 3 different continents. Those bastards! Lucky it wasn't particularly imprtant, but it still bugs me. It feeds the public perception and lack of understanding concerning 'Psychologists'

 

One thing we should all remember is that we are talking from the differing perspectives of different nations. The process of curriculum setting in Australia is different from those in the UK and US. I'm writing from the Australian perspective.

In the UK I think the government has a lot to do with the problem.

 

Their approach to education is the same as for health. They want 'quick-fix' ideas and concentrate on shallow, short-term interventions. I suspect their interest is less on what real effect they can have, and more on the appearance. They introduce 'initiatives' to cut patient waiting times (not much has actually changed, just the way it's counted). Likewise, they introduce 'initiatives' to increase exam pass-rates and tell us that 'standards are increasing in real terms'. If this is true, then how is it that such a high proportion of the student intake into higher education can't form simple sentences? How the hell did they pass their exams? How did they get into University?

 

I don't think these government 'initiatives' help anybody in the long term, apart from the government, who can say "Look what we did in the four years of our office! Patient waiting times are down (even though we're sacking 30% of all nurses), the number of school-leavers entering higher education is higher than ever (even though they can barely read or write)".

 

Speaking for myself, I'm getting tired of teaching people introductory English. I'm not an English teacher, I'm a lecturer in Psychology. I teach Psychobiology & clinical neurosciences, research methods, health psychology. Why is so much of my time spent correcting basic grammar? Many of these students may or may not have understood what they have been taught, but if they can't explain it clearly, who the hell can tell?

 

Mokele has ably defended the Universities, likewise Glider the Psychologists, will no-one defend the education of teachers?

I don't really know about the education of teachers. It may be acceptable, it may not. I strongly suspect that their education has less to do with the state of affairs than the box-ticking 'policies' and 'initiatives' implemented by local government. I doubt that individual teachers carry much weight in the grand scheme of things. It's more likely to be down to local education authorities and their scrabbling for crumbs from the government trough. At least, that's how it appears in the UK.

 

It's like Orwell's 1984. The government keep releasing sound-bites like "record numbers pass 'A' levels" whilst increasing numbers of the students we get into Universitiy struggle to find the sharp end of their pencils.

[Mokele]

Ok, speaking as a parent of public schools and former recent student of higher education I can say that John B has a good handle on what's happened in our schools. Mokele is coming from a university perspective and will be equally disgusted when he gets kids of his own and realizes what public elementary school as fizzled down to.

 

Leaving aside that my fiancee and I are childfree, I actually left HS only about 10 years ago, so I do know how things are in the US public school system.

 

In fact, I probably have an even less sunny view than you, since I went to school in the 2nd and 10th *worst* states for public education in the entire US at the time. If you ever want to feel better about your kid's education, go visit some schools in the Deep South.

 

Our kids need more school and less freetime. We should be able to condense all 12 years of schooling down to 8 years. At 14 you should be considering college, not high school.

 

I agree with the former, but not the latter; at 14, most kids don't have the maturity necessary to independently apply themselves to classes. I think a better approach would be to condense as you suggest, but then add the freshman and sophomore years of college coursework onto HS, so they've already had what is now college level physics, biology, chemistry, english, etc.

 

I would have to disagree with the idea that the move away from european education was necessarilly a bad one, if you look at the nobel prizes and such for the past hundred years its quite clear that americans have dominated the sciences and just about everything else for the past 70 years, considering that that coincides wit hthe generation entering school in 1890 or there abouts, obviously the move away from european education was somewhat of a good thing.

 

You're looking at the wrong segment of society; we can't judge an educational system by the peak, we have to judge by the mean. Some individuals, either by luck or their efforts to independently educate themselves, can rise to the top of even the worst system.

 

Also, how much of what lead these people to make great discoveries was HS and below, and how much was college and grad school. I know that personally, my advisor has done more to train me as a competent scientist than all of my prior education has.

 

The problem today is that on average students don't see a purpose in their education other than to get a good job, and for most of the smart ones thats not much of a motivator.

 

I dunno, I think the tide might be turning; kids seem people like those behind Google, Youtube, Amazon, and microsoft raking it in, proving that being the smartest can mean being the richest. Geeks are the new wave of success.

 

This may be a difference in the nations, but down here it's John and Mary Public demanding higher educational standards while the "experts" are dumbing the system down.

 

Definitely a national difference, then. The US's educational standards have been falling for a long time, in large part because we have this view that every HS diploma is the same, so if a school drops their standards, their graduate rates rise and everyone congratulates them for educating the kids better.

 

Speaking for myself, I'm getting tired of teaching people introductory English. I'm not an English teacher, I'm a lecturer in Psychology. I teach Psychobiology & clinical neurosciences, research methods, health psychology. Why is so much of my time spent correcting basic grammar? Many of these students may or may not have understood what they have been taught, but if they can't explain it clearly, who the hell can tell?

 

Oh, you would not *believe* (or maybe you would) the level of bitching I hear in Anatomy & Physiology (the freshman level anatomy course) when all we ask is that they spell words correctly. It's not even for a lab report or paper, just a 'practical' where they name the parts. If you can't learn to spell 'brachioradialis', you don't belong in college and you *certainly* don't belong in the nursing program.

 

I waver about what to do. The hardass in me wants to just mark wrong everything spelled wrong and knock assloads of points off the grade of every lab report with attrocious spelling and grammer, but on the other hand, is it fair to punish them because the educational system has failed them up until now, given that they may actually know the material. But then again, we can't just keep letting them pass by on it; at some point, they have to be held accountable and forced to fix it, or we'll have illiterate college graduates.

 

Maybe I'll just be nice until I get tenure, then come down on them like a ton of bricks once I can't be fired for doing so....

 

Mokele

[JohnB]

There is one thing I've never been able to work out.

 

If a student studies French, German, Latin, in fact any language, then spelling and grammar are taught as part and parcel of the language. Yet when it comes to English spelling and grammar suddenly become irrelevent.

 

I've often wondered where this double standard comes from.

Definitely a national difference, then.

So it would seem. The main cry down here is "What do you mean he/she passed? He can't bloody spell."

 

Perhaps this is the aftermath of the "Nobody can fail" mindset? Some pass, some fail, some win, some lose, deal with it. Pity the little darlings have no idea how, as they have been protected from the idea of failure and how to deal with it.

 

Mokele, I'll lay odds that if you did come down on the students at least half of them would be visiting a counsellor wailing "But I'm doing my best". Unable to come to terms with the simple fact that their best is just not good enough. We see this every day in private industry.

 

That's just my jackleg psychology talking, I'm sure Glider would be able to comment professionally. (And with greater authority.)

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

I think it's mostly because spelling is taught in English in the second grade (and promptly forgotten), while foreign language instruction starts far later. The assumption is presumably that a high-school student has progressed past menial tasks such as spelling in English and can learn advanced subjects, when the truth is that spelling and grammar have been forgotten totally.

 

Grammar is something I'm rather irritable about. I correct my own family.

[JohnB]

Perhaps, but I was still being corrected in spelling and grammar in my senior year.

 

One factor that has yet to be mentioned is that Medicine, Engineering or any science have higher entry requirements than Teaching. So if Mokele is getting the cream and they can't spell, then what sort of students are the teaching colleges getting?

[Glider]

Perhaps this is the aftermath of the "Nobody can fail" mindset? Some pass, some fail, some win, some lose, deal with it. Pity the little darlings have no idea how, as they have been protected from the idea of failure and how to deal with it.

 

Mokele, I'll lay odds that if you did come down on the students at least half of them would be visiting a counsellor wailing "But I'm doing my best". Unable to come to terms with the simple fact that their best is just not good enough. We see this every day in private industry.

 

That's just my jackleg psychology talking, I'm sure Glider would be able to comment professionally. (And with greater authority.)

Not really, but I agree with your point.

 

There are schools over here that have banned competetive sports because (they say) they're divisive and encourage terms like 'loser'. They are afraid that kids who lose races and so-on will suffer catastrophic damage to their self-esteem.

 

In my opinion however, school is supposed to be, at least partly, a preparation for adult life. Adult life (for better or worse) involves a degree of competition; for seats on the train, for the job one is applying for, for promotion, for partners and so-on.

 

In my opinion, schools who do not teach people how to deal with the small failures that everybody has to cope with are failing their pupils. Anybody who has never learned how to deal with disappointment is likely to respond to it like a three year old (which is about the time we begin to learn that the world doesn't revolve around us). That doesn't bode well for their professional or personal lives.

 

What we see in University is an increasingly prevalent attitude that students have earned their degree simply by virtue of the fact they have been accepted into higher education; "I am at Uni, therefore I get a degree". This isn't helped by the increase in tuition fees, because that just encourages the idea that they have paid, therefore we owe them a degree.

 

What they can't seem to understand is that they have only earned the right to try for a degree. They have the right to higher education, but they also have the right to learn nothing from it (i.e. fail). They have the right to attempt to fly. Equally, they have the right to hit the ground quite hard. What they really need to learn is to be able to cope with all possible outcomes, and that learning should begin early. Failure at most things in life won't kill you, which means you have to live with it. The real problems arise if you never learned how, and fail to get some sense of proportion.

 

 

If a student studies French, German, Latin, in fact any language, then spelling and grammar are taught as part and parcel of the language. Yet when it comes to English spelling and grammar suddenly become irrelevent.

Funny thing is, our foreign and international students often have better grammar than our home students. When people are taught English as a foreign language, they have grammar and spelling bundled with the learning. The home students, as I say, can barely form sentences.

[JohnB]

Not really, but I agree with your point.

Thanks, It's nice to know I'm not nuts. What I fail to fathom is that if it's so obvious to me, an unlettered layman, then why can't the "Professionals" see it?

 

Or do we face the age old problem of someone not wishing to see the failing results of their ideology?

There are schools over here that have banned competetive sports because (they say) they're divisive and encourage terms like 'loser'. They are afraid that kids who lose races and so-on will suffer catastrophic damage to their self-esteem.

Some of ours got around the idea by giving every kid in the race a ribbon, that way none feel left out.

 

In my industry (Exhibitions) we work to a deadline. The show opens on time or else. The penalties for being late range up to $30,000 per hour. I don't want to turn this into a rant but I think you blokes have no idea (okay, some idea;) ) how often it becomes "Start now, do it my way and do it in an hour or go home and don't come back." We have actually had some of mothers little darlings leave in tears because we were "too hard" on them.

 

Sob, sob, Boo Hoo, I've got a show to build.