This is why American students are ranked so low in math....

[Weltall]

The population is also at a record high. While I can't say what the current money being spent on schools is, what I CAN say is that the local schools here recently are cutting out basic science equipment for the science labs, and the computers haven't been updated since the 90's. So, either there's some huge conspiracy among the teachers that's funneling this money away into some sort of hidden breakfast clubhouse, or they actually are underfunded.

One thing's for sure, either way thousands of dollars are being wasted on building outdoor stadiums for high school sports teams and oversized gymnasiums. Perhaps that's where all the money is currently being wasted?

The national education budget is nearly $10,000 per student, which is a record high, and there is not a strong correlation between spending and performance.

Though, certainly, there is a lot of money wasted on extraneous shit such as athletics. I don't even like that the money is spent on athletics in college, even though it typically pulls in commensurate income, but colleges collect tuition. Public schools are totally on the public bill. I definitely think the problem is that there is enough money and it's not being spent properly, but that can be fixed by solid oversight. More of the problem, I think, is that we have a flawed approach to education overall in many ways. There is too great an emphasis on standardized testing and boiling down learning to memorization and recital, instead of finding ways to impress knowledge into children by exposing them to real-world applications of the material.

An experience which will always stand out for me was taking tenth-grade biology and not conducting a single hands-on experiment throughout the entire year. Biology 10 for me was taking notes and being quizzed and tested on the notes I took. It should surprise no one that I retained almost none of the knowledge afterwards.

To be honest, I have learned far more by experimentation on my own time than I ever got out of public schools. I am ten years past graduation and I still make an effort to expose myself to math, science, literature and history, because I've discovered that I would have been utterly fascinated by all of these things in school if the education system did a better job delivering the knowledge to me.

Pundits like to say that kids are getting dumber, but I don't think that's true at all. I think that the system is outmoded and is not delivering to children in a way that they otherwise are exposed to new things. People learn best by experience. You can't tell a kid to write an essay about the mechanics of bicycle-riding and expect him to learn how to ride a bike armed only with that information.