Emphasizing Education
What do you believe the role of schools are today and how well are schools preparing young people for the work world. Share specific personal examples from your own educational background or that of someone your know.
The schools primary role is to prepare young people for life as adults. I think in the case of elementary schools there is to little funding and to little hands on experience and practical application. However in the private sector, for example at the college level there is more funding and better education.
My elementary school for example was terribly underfunded and there was very little practical application taught. However that changed allot when got to the high school and college levels.
I think practical application is a huge key to education. The classes I teach are pretty practical as I teach programming, web design, and pretty much any computer classes my school has. I think, at least in America, funding is horrible inadequate. I don't mean that not enough money is spent on education, although I do think that is true. The main problem is how and where the money is spent. Schools in Illinois like New Trier have gobs of money and are regarded as great public schools, while just a few miles to the south the schools in Chicago are in horrible shape even though they have a lot of money as well. Then you have schools south of Chicago that are in bad shape AND have no money. I'm not usually an advocate of socialism, but I think it's principles would work well for public education. You shouldn't need to live in a certain area to attend a well-funded school. Money isn't everything, but sorted out the funding discrepancies would go a long way to helping out broken education system.
Everyone always says school is to prepare you for the work world but if they want to prepare you for the work world, they should teach common sense. Alot of pressure is put on students to be book worms and they lose out on learning to socialize. Qualifications is just half of what it takes to score a job. I think [High School] is ment more to inspire, to give you an idea of what you think you might want to do in the next step in your education, or even decide not to continue your education. Funding is a huge problem, but it's always going to be a problem..especially with the state of our economy. There's only so much money to go around.
High School inspired me, which is why i know i'm ready to leave and move on. I'm going into computer science next year, graphic design ftw
I've always believed that education matters for its own sake, not just for preparing people for work... I would not be in graduate school now, likely, if all I cared about was 'preparing myself for work'. I am here because I like learning and thing it is important.
Does preparing people for work matter? Sure... but the act of teaching people things matters even more, I would say. You are creating an educated citizen, not just a worker drone...
As for funding, there's no question that schools are horribly underfunded. The only exceptions for this are private schools and colleges, which get by with high tuitions... but public schools cannot do that and do not get enough money from the state, sadly, so they suffer. Teachers should be paid much better and schools should be much better funded.
There's too much emphasis on making kids have a little bit of knowledge in a lot of different fields rather than going in-depth on these topics. History? Rush through Pre-Revolutionary War up to Civil War, everything else is scattershot at best. Math? Make sure everyone gets a little algebra at least. Biology? As long as they know what a cell is, we're good to go. It goes on from there, but the point's been made.
Now, I think it's a good idea to give kids an exposure to more than just a few core elements of what the world's like, but at the end of the day, kids come out of school with a lot of nothing. As for the solution to that, well, I'm not sure. Part of the problem is that there's no shortage of teachers, particulary in grade school, that are just intersted in touching briefly on a few keys points and then handing out busy work. There's no emphasis on actualy learning the material or having a detailed discussion between teacher and students about the importance of the subject.
I understand that doing that, particulary for very young students, is difficult, but you rarely see that at all outside of higher-level college courses.
What I'm trying to say here is that there needs to be a renewed emphasis on schools actually teaching, rather than just being the free daycares they seem to be today.
There's one more point to make, one that I know will be very controversial. I can already see a long and heated debate arising between myself and ABF, possibly DJ as well, over what I'm going to say next. So, before you get your keyboards ready, I understand exactly what the downsides and implications of this point are, but I'm going to make it anyway because it's something that should be seriously considered.
Okay, here goes. One of the problems in our school system today is that we believe every single child in this country has an absolute right to no less than twelve years of education. Obviously, given the country that we're in, this is the sort of belief that most people have without question. No discrimination, everyone's equel. On the surface it's a great idea and one that should be fought for, as it places an obligation on parents to allow their children to grow and mature and develop unique personalities, rather than just be cheap, or free, labor.
Sounds good? Of course it does, there are a lot of reasons not to change this belief. However, the problem arises when you take into account that not all children are the same. Some children are great at math, but bad at English. Some children are good at doing homework, but bad a taking tests. And so on. Some children simply do not have the mental capacity to keep up with other students their age. Yet we continue to do everything in our power to ensure that students whose mental capabilities are on a second grade level learn, or at least attempt to memorize, algebra. How does that benefit the student? It doesn't, at all. Because that student will never been in a position to use that kind knowledge, most likely because they will never be able to comprehend it.
The problem is thus: We do everything we can to pull the students at the bottom up, even if they will never be equal to their peers, and, at the same time, the students at the top are pulled down, even if they could outstrip their fellow classmates, because that's not what the school system is designed to do.
Why does the school system try so desperately to take students of widely diverse characteristics and abilities and boil them all down to homogenized product? Isn't America a country full of individualists?
To tie back into the first point I made, rather than trying to cram in as many different topics as possible over the course of twelve years without regard for the individual student, the cirriculum should be tailored to suit each student's needs and abilities.
Students lacking the mental capabilities of their peers should be taught as much as they can comprehend and then they should be taught how to get a job, what kinds of jobs they can get, how to do those jobs, and how to take care of themselves so that they can at least have something of a normal and indepent life.
Normal, average students should be given a cirriculum that is similar to what is present now, although with some modifications to accomodate individual tastes, desires, and skills.
Students who excel should be encouraged to excel. Special classes, emphasis on finding deeper meanings in the material, and focusing on which areas these students excel in. Students with creative minds should have classes that focus on growing those skills. Students with highly technical minds should have classes that allow them to approach more difficult science and math subjects.
And on it goes. But we don't do that. We have a set cirriculum and everyone is expected to learn the same material and is judged against the same criteria. Making good citizens, huh? It's a nice thought, but if you actually take a good look at the education system from kindergarten through highschool, we may as well be programing a line of homogenized robots.
GR, I do think you're right about that. In my classes I do everything I can to assist students who have trouble with the material and there are plenty of opportunities for the students at a higher level to work on higher-level material. The problem is that my classes are electives and students can drop them if it is too challenging for them. Core classes are not optional because of state and federal requirements. When I was in high school the ACT was only taken by students planning to go to college, but a few years ago it became a requirement for ALL high school juniors in Illinois, which is why we run into the situation you talked about where we are trying to cram algebra into a student who can't handle basic math. I would love it if high school was more specialized and was mainly a collection of electives. The first couple of years the students could get a taste of a wide range of different subjects and then they could talk to a counselor about what they were interested in and take the classes that would benefit them from there. There needs to be a total overhaul of the education system for this to even be possible, but in a perfect world it's what I would like to see.