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#1
04-25-2012
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Your experience with the United States public school system
What were your experiences with the US public school system? (Or, if there is something like a public school system in your country, how was it?)
I've been reading books and articles on this subject and I got curious. I spent my entire academic life in public schools (including college). While I have had some bad teachers and classes, I have had quite a few useful classes to balance them out. But when I scroll down to read the comment sections of the articles, the posters act like going to public school is akin to signing your own death warrant. It was almost as if they thought that if you go to a public school, even for a short time, you'll be doomed to be stupefied. I think they're wrong, but then again, I don't know everything. So that made me wonder: was I just lucky to have not gotten a completely crap education (I wouldn't say it was the best, but it wasn't the worst)? Or are most public schools really not as terrible as they say? 
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#2
04-25-2012
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I was harassed and bullied.
Didn't care for classes never failed a subject, with the exception of driver's ed dropped out for some random reason I still got my HS diploma in the year I was supposed to. God bless the American School System.
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#3
04-25-2012
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I didn't know who George Washington was until high school. You be the judge.
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#4
04-25-2012
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Just like anything else, it varies.
Not that your schooling vvhen you're young particularly matters. It's almost all just rote learning anyvvay and if you don't give a damn about learning, it doesn't matter vvhat system is in use. If you do care, then you're probably learning things on your ovvn time. I'd refrain from giving any kind of credence to any kind of comments system tied to nevvs articles, though. If those people knevv vvhat they vvere talking about, I doubt they'd be spending their time bitching on a comments section.
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#5
04-25-2012
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...Like you're doing? Are you trying to cause a paradox?
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#6
04-25-2012
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if we can broaden the school subject to include private ones.
The one and only Christian Private school I went to did teach me about the value of Karma. I was bullied Mercilessly there, when I tried going to the teachers for help, they didn't care, and did nothing to improve the situation. They even made things worse on me, by lying and punishing me for seeking help. As much shit as they were dumping on me, it came right back at them. Twice that school was broken into to have their cash-box stolen. Parents were pulling their kids out in droves. The church that was associated with the school lost all but the school staff as members. I respect God and religion, but even God turned it's back on that place. what goes around, comes around. Edit: I just googled the school I went to, the sum of the students still there is 71. there was at least 5x that when I went there Last edited by GcarOatmealRaisinCookies; 04-25-2012 at 10:36 PM.
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#7
04-26-2012
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Quote:
Also, you can tell this isn't a comments section. Gcar didn't immediately shout 'FIRST'. Your argument is therefore moot.
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#8
04-26-2012
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I like this topic.
My experience with public schools was relatively painless. My parents took the initiative when I was young and taught me everything I would learn in kindergarten before I started school. I liked learning on my own and rented every National Geographic video in the library. My parents bought me a set of encyclopedias which I read frequently and by the time I actually started school I was well ahead of the other kids. My first grade teacher actually asked me to pronounce some dinosaur names for her when we covered dinosaurs. The worst experience I can remember is riding the bus to and from school everyday. Thats where I learned most of the swear words in my vocabulary. The bus is awful for young kids. If you want your 6 year old child to know what a blow job is, by all means let them ride the school bus for a few days. Aside from some playground fights, the first few years of school were pretty uneventful. 5th grade is when I first remember anyone actually trying to teach me anything. Math started becoming more than just basic arithmetic and history was more than just watching movies about how America was formed. My parents made me join the band which I had no interest in. I quit after a year having learned nothing. I'd like to learn to play an instrument, but not as huge group. I don't remember any bullies from middle school, but there probably was at least one. I made friends with some pretty tough kids and I didn't need to worry about bullies ever again. I don't remember much about middle school other than it establishing me in the group of the most popular unpopular kids. High school is when I had to start putting forth a small effort to maintain my 4.0 average. By that time, it was pretty much sorted out who was going to graduate and go to college and who was going to prison. Unfortunately, the kids with a future still had to share space with the kids who should just drop out and start their meth lab early. If you ignore half the student body, we actually had a decent school. I had a great math teacher who would publicly shame you until you got your shit together, but she knew what she was talking about. She didn't subscribe to the feel good self esteem movement and it made those who could handle it better people for it. It got her a lot of hate from the people who couldn't take it, but I learned more from her than any other teacher I've had. Most of my teachers were awesome if you didn't act like an idiot. Some would even joke around with our group of friends at lunch. Our principle was a dick, but I guess that is his job. He was nice to me though, mainly because I, along with about 10 other students, propped up our school's test scores and made us look better when it came time for the government to divide up the funds for each school district. I guess my experience was better than most, judging by some of the schools I see in documentaries about the failing school system. I went to a private university so I can't say what its like going to a public college (from a student's perspective anyway.) If you want to watch some good documentaries on the subject, I recommend Waiting for Superman and The War on Kids.
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#9
04-26-2012
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I was born in Florida. Florida is a true melting pot of all cultures.
My educational experience, from birth was as thus... By the time I was three years old I could read and write just by watching my dad play text-heavy video games and reading closed-captioning on television shows. Some childrens' books left over from when my sister was my age also helped, but not to a huge degree. I learned addition and subtraction by the time I was 5, not a huge accomplishment but it's worth noting. I went to a private kindergarten and we did basically nothing every day but say what day it was, nap, watch sailor moon, pray, eat lunch, play around for a while, then play with toys that were supposed to teach us logic. Those kids' toys of, like, circle-block-in-circle-hole, triangle-block-in-triangle-hole, etc., etc. I learned nothing. In elementary school, my parents were trying to save up money and repay bills so we could move somewhere a little less boondocks. Really, nothing but african-americans in our neighborhood. Haitians across the street, jamaicans next door, american blacks down the block, and even some actual africans lived there for a while. Truly a diversified black neighborhood. So I went to public school. I'd already learned everything I'd need up until, say, third grade. In fourth grade, I got my first black teacher, and she was one of the worst I ever had. She came in on the first day with the most stereotypical black female accent you could imagine, and started talking about her blood sugar for some reason. She sorted out our seats and proceeded with teaching multiplication, division, and a yearlong black history lesson. I learned multiplication and division on my own because she was terrible at teaching. I never did learn cursive because she was terrible at teaching AND I didn't see an actual need for it, so I left that out of what she taught above. I got into a fight and got bullied on by some jackass, and the principal, who wanted to suspend me for not fighting back because they were both black and he hated whites. He got fired a couple months later, though he was only there temporarily because the previous principal quit because it was such a shitty school. In fifth grade, the last year that school had its license, I had the absolute worst teacher I've ever had. She failed me for nearly everything I did even though I was right about how I did it. Then when I took an IQ test for my high practice test scores for a certain standardized test and scored absurdly high, suddenly she changed all my grades to A's. Fucking bitch. I remember one time a substitute took over for her while she was at a meeting, and some kids were making obscene remarks (THEY'RE TEN. WHY ARE THEY MAKING OBSCENE REMARKS AT TEN YEARS OLD) and I was doing my classwork she assigned (nobody ELSE was), she simply assumed I was the one who said it. I didn't even know what was said, and she, the black substitute was adamant that I, the one white person there, said it. I refused to acknowledge I said any such thing, and she kept coming back saying "Just admit you said it" about 5 times before I flipped out and slammed my fist on the desk and everyone fell silent. The substitute sent me out for that, and I had to go sweep the floors. That was really the first time I saw the world in terms of race, and started looking into my past with a general dislike of African-Americans. It took nearly ten years to undo all that damage. Now I just hate these particular assholes. My parents got me out of that school, and by the next year it had its license revoked and got reformed, with a largely white cast of administrators, into an A-rank public institution. I went to middle school and learned about egypt, then china, then world war II. I learned pre-algebra for three years. I learned about evolution and biology for three years. The only classes that actually progressed anything were english classes, constituting a lot of reading. Though I used to read a lot anyway because I had no friends. We moved from Florida to Vermont and I happened to be moving into high school. High school was fun and I made a lot of memories, good and bad there. I made friends, started dating, learned how much natural talent I had for singing, writing, and inventing, and graduated average as can be. But did I learn anything...?....... ehhhhh. It wasn't until Castleton State College that I really began to try and started learning a lot. Right now, though, I think I'd be a genius if I had a good elementary experience and access to a library, but my parents were always busy, and the school library always fucked up their check-ins so I never went because I'd be harassed. Thus the period of most learning wasn't abused in the slightest and I don't think I ever reached my potential. Now I'm struggling a bit. Not much, but a bit. Public institutions are bad. Really... really bad. There's a small chance you'll actually learn anything worthwhile without doing it mostly on your own. A lot of people see them as just babysitters' establishments, and that's my opinion too. Killshot just got lucky.
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#10
04-26-2012
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Hmm well I don't think my school experience was that bad.
I learned about dinosaurs at a very early age, before kindergarden. I never went to pre-school because I was watched by my grandparents and I played with the neighborhood kids on my street. By the time I hit kindergarden the teachers there noticed I had a hard time reading even though I read books and my parents bought me learning games for the computer and even that old learning box kit that had flash cards and stuff. When I went to first grade they fixed the problem by sending me to two special teachers every week so I learn to read and do other things better, like math and being less shy around others. The teachers were great and were always kind to every student they had. I remember one time, my 1st grade teacher went to China and Japan. So we took pictures wearing the little straw hats before she left. When she came back she surprised us with our names written in Chinese done by students our age. The rest of elementary school was pretty good. I made some friends and was always the quiet child who drew pictures and loved Egypt since 1st grade. Middle school and High school pretty much blended. I was bullied once or twice then I just went back to drawing. Although I love this, because I went to a vocational highschool I was in Art because I wanted to be a mangaka (now I'm learning to be an animatior in college) so I told my teacher that and showed my drawings. She just belittled me and told me to do something else. She loved one classmate that did photography all the time while me and my best friend slaved over our drawings. The only teacher that believed in me and my friend was our Web design teacher who said he liked my animations and that I should keep going with it.
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#11
04-26-2012
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Political Debate section
=Public schooling is just too big and standardised to really be judged as a whole and the fact, we are so oppressive with making schools do this anyway, by making them compete against one another, is one of the main reasons public schools fail. One of histories worst crimes was implementation of New Right schooling. (Idea that you give funds based on schools success, because of course, schools which are failing will surely succeed if we give them even less resources. <facepalm>.) -This is is why it often depends on the school you go too and its individual culture, but in the UK most of the time, schools are basically a status quo by sending the poor kids to poor kids and rich kids to rich/successful schools, with private intuitions being top, not because they are any good, but because they ensure they only teach those whom are already at the top. In fact, the school itself, often has little to do with it, because it is the culture of where the student comes from, which defines them and though Labours plan of distributional grouping (sending students to random schools across their local area, in order to stop the type casting of schools) was a good, it failed because they came up with it, too late in their rule for them to actually truly attempt to implement it and a year later, the recession hit, killing any and all hopes of it occurring, due to its insane expense. =And this is basically the core of the issue, how do you stop students failing, when 70% of them have been turned against the idea of education before they even arrive. -Now one answer to this is streaming (put students in classes based upon ability) but the my fundamental issues with this are:- 1= Self for-filing prophecy, where students are defined as something, thus they see themselves as something and finally, they truly become that something. You tell a child, he is dumb, what does he believe? He believes he is dumb, thus he acts like a dumb person, until he actually becomes so use to acting like that, that has become that. 2=Culture setting, it is shown that classes of students with similar abilities will rarely progress outside that ability. This is not really that shocking, but it is logical that if you put a group of slow kids together, they progress slowly and vice-visa, however this has also shown that two or three 'slow' students in a fast class, will often have a much higher chance of progressing rapidly; this is because the class is going quicker, so they learn more, in shorter space of time, but also because many failing students, are not dumb, but merely culturally against the idea of education, however if you place them in a setting which is pro-education, then as children they are likely to begin conforming to this mindset and thus, they begin to learn more. =The result of the above is that you putting a lot of pressure of schools to fundamentally decide the fate of a person's whole future, when they are merely 6 or 7, even if that person is 'just' an early bloomer, or even if that person is just too young to be culturally aware of educations important/their own abilities. (My own story is intertwined with the latter problem, as I will explain later.) =Now, as for what we learn, well I would not say the English education system teaches the most compelling subjects and it is downright disgraceful in how it teaches English and English grammar, but it does have a lot of thought put into pervasive and academic writing, which in my opinion is truly important, because it teaches students to think about how to put forward their ideas and structure their points logically, while thinking independently. When this is compared to the woeful (sorry it is) Taiwanese education system, which fundamentally a sausage factory and has students taking final exams with multiple choice questions in subjects like English and History, then you can see why English people are a lot more expressive and independent in their thinking than Taiwanese people. This is also why Taiwan's most successful people have all been educated outside Taiwan, from their president down. Or if they were not educated outside Taiwan, their schooling at was an American/European run school in Taiwan. (Sorry Taiwan, I love ya, but it is true.) My experiences =Now, Killshot's story inspired me to actually write my own story. Whether Kill is mindfucking or not, I think my story is actually interesting, because it shows both the failings and successes of mass education. =Now, first most of you already know I am heavily effected by dyslexia, however what many of you may not know is that I was in my childhood, defined as below average intelligence by some degree. This is because I could not even speak until the age of about 5, let alone read or write. I was at the time sent for testing to see if I had learning disabilities and quickly returned with a label, saying: "Just dumb/no hoper." =However I was lucky, my mother for all her failings (and she has many) was never one to accept no for an answer (image her as Forest's mother, minus the sex). So I was still sent to what statistically they well ranked school, with a highly praised special education department. Sadly, in the same year Labour entered government and brought with them, many an unwanted change to our system, thus I was one of many students who had their futures 'almost' had their futures stolen by the woeful new-age education that labour wished to impose upon us. "Annie Apple, huh...Ting bu Dong loashi." Even to this day, I still do not know the English Alphabet's correct order and I was 14 before I knew what order the months of the year should go. Seriously, how do you screw teaching those up, I do not know the Alphabet from memory and I can still teach it; to Taiwanese students no less. -This mixed with the fact that I was extremely unpopular at school (what can I say, the long hair, dirty looking, snot covered, prescription glasses wearing freak was me and kids are not kind people, heck I once had a chair thrown at me and my noise is still bent to this day.) meant I hated school with a passion and would often try not to go or when I was there, just sit quietly in a corner, loathing the world which I had already decided had forsaken me. My teachers generally liked me, because I was polite and well behaved (due to be more terrified of my mother than any teacher, student or monster) but most clearly thought, in terms of academics, I was a no hoper. Thus why standardised testing for 6-7 years is a bad thing. They are too young for such judgements and need time to grow, otherwise they may end up believing them. =However, again the god of fortune smiled upon me. Thanks to my mothers precious nature, my extremely poor family, lived in a rather more affluent area, than we should been. However this area did not have its own primary (elementary for US readers) school until I was ten and the school was thus made as a lab-rat for Labours second and somewhat more successful, educational reform (basically a return to post-new right teaching <facepalm>). This meant due to its small number of students, high resources and a fresh faced set of teachers, for the first I began to learn things. My father also, shortly before I began here, gave me for the first and last time, some motivational advise, which remains with me to this day. "A persons intelligence is not set, even Newton failed at school before his brain switched on, so you still have a chance." -With these factors in mind, I was able to finally begin down a path towards success. I would say though, looking back, even if they had lacked the resources, the key element in that school was the culture. All the students had rich, successful and demanding parents, so worked hard, even when considered a no hoper, and all the teachers were amazing. They made even a no hoper like me, believe I could succeed; also they came up with a rather noble idea for the government imposed streaming problem. They still mixed sets, but the students would sit on tables of their own level, thus allowing them to still converse with the more/less intelligent and diversifying the culture. Due to this, the smarter students literally dragged us slower students forward. -Finally, there was one other factor, my rival. lol Yes, I had a rival, if it were an anime, he would be Sasuke and I would have been Naruto (or me as Ash and him as Gary.) haha. We both lived in the same area and went to the same two primary schools, however if I had poor parents and was defined as an unpopular no hoper, then he had the rich parents and was destined for success and fame. My loathing for him and the fortune life had given him so easily, meant I tried tirelessly to match and surpass him. However, ever I failed, even when, ironically, later he would become my first real friend, god this Naruto. haha. Later we both went to different secondary schools (high schools) and lost all contact. I always wondered what happened to him. -However, despite never surpassing my rival, because of all the above factors, I still attained slightly above average (or average for the school I was in, depending upon how one views it) grades and so, this mixed with my mothers irrepressible nature, meant I was able to go to a middle ranked RC school, rather than the woefully ranked school, I had previously been assigned too. =There was mostly uneventful in terms of bullies, there were a few, but these were catholic bullies, so hardly what one would consider scary and the few their were, had little interest in me. I was big enough to naturally scare off the small bullies and small enough to hide from the big bullies. However in my second year, something amazing happened and I met the teacher whom finally and completely change my fortunes forever, setting me on the path to true success. However that part comes later, as off to work now. At secondary
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#12
04-27-2012
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well... I guess since I had a completely different school experience I should share it.
My younger brother was diagnosed with Autism at 3... I was four at the time. My mom decided that the best way to deal with that was to use what money she had saved up, to put us through homeschool and be a stay at home mom. Before school my brother and I watched Ms. Frizzle and lots of educational things. So by the time we got to school, we knew some things. I began school one year before my brother, we went down to a small place called CHEP (County Home Education Program) and I met Mr. Mears. A paleontologist and teacher, he had fossils and artifacts throughout his office... was pretty amazing. When my mom asked my brother, he said "I want to go to Kaylynn's school." She agreed but with one condition, she wanted us to try public summer school. I hated it, need I say anymore? I learned nothing, I was bored and not really interested in anything they did. Lunch was horrible. They closed the playground off from the older kids... because they didn't want the littler kids to get hurt... leaving me even more bored. So I said I wanted to stay at CHEP. The first thing we learned at CHEP, is that the strength of the program was in the culture of it. Inside the school all kids had the mentality that learning was good and if you didn't want to, something was wrong. Also the classes. All regular homework was done at home: math, history, science, english. The classes were only by choice, but were amazing. Miss Franya taught crafts with everything: history, native american studies, american girl. Miss Cherry taught weaving, beading, and science. Stan had chess meets, math classes for older kids, and guitar courses. Mr. Mears had fossil digs and microlab for older kids. There were also other courses like french, journalism, dancing and plays. Some trips were available too; green oak camp for young kids, Astrocamp and Catalina Island later on. From CHEP I got a good understanding of the basics, as well as specialized knowledge; I took a few years of microlab so I can identify some fossils of sealife and minerals under a microscope, I have a collection of fossilized things in my closet, I know how to bead, weave and many other ways of crafting. I also learned my love of the stockmarket by playing the stockmarket game. But most importantly, I learned to love learning and thinking. During my last year there(CHEP only went to middleschool, no highschool), the school took a bad turn. The department of education was shutting it down, despite being accredited and everything. As we tried to fight to keep our school open, we learned that they had been trying to close it for 10 years, and 10 years ago the people who had been there fought and managed to get them not to close it. They had made it under the juvenile site, and nearly impossible to find out about. Before they had not succeeded, but having gotten it down to 100 students, they now had excuse to close it. We watched as across from our school they erected a new, fancy office building for education... as they shut CHEP down. Despite the same program thriving at nearly 3000 students in the next county. From there I went to Dehesa Charter school and Palomar College. I started college with a course titled "Introduction to Computer Science", I figured I would try it because computer science came up so much in my career search. I had to get the instructor to sign because being 15 or under requires a signature. So I took the general ed at highschool, which acts much like CHEP, but without the cool classes, and one class at college level. I then took two classes at college the next semester and continued like so. Now I plan to take two more years at community college, and then transfer to a four year for my degree, and I will graduate in a month and a few weeks from highschool. So... public school I dislike, I think their motto "No child left behind" is completely forgotten and politicians ruin everything... I think that's it, homeschool rocks, but most people cannot afford letting someone stay home. Also, my brother has reclassified as having Aspbergers and loves reading astrophysics, he's a lot better... I'd say for my brother and me, it was good.
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#13
04-28-2012
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Most of my school experience has actually been in private school, but as a child, I did have 3 years of public school, and I attended public university for four years as an adult.
I will start out by saying that every public school system is different. Its differences depend upon the employees who work for the entire public school system, the teachers, the students, and even the surrounding culture. My Catholic high school was a college prep high school, meaning that it is expected that almost everyone who attends my high school will attend college, whether it's community college, an elite university, or something in between. This meant that our classes were more difficult and required more discipline and studying in order to earn an A. Many of my friends and classmates who primarily went through the public school system did not go through school this way. Many of them, however, ended up doing fine during college because they were already disciplined and enjoyed learning on their own time. School didn't need to teach them how to study, because they already knew how. However, for the ones who didn't have good study habits and whose schools didn't hold them accountable for said bad study habits, they took a beating during college. I have a friend who after her first year was on academic probation because she didn't know how to study. Many of my classmates constantly skipped class for whatever reasons they could come up with and didn't have the brains to drop before their money was wasted on F's. My university had recently started a program called the Early College Alliance (ECA), where high school students could take college classes in order to earn their high school diploma while receiving lots of college experience beforehand. I used to work for the Biology Department while attending university, and I had to help the Biology ECA program get their supplies counted and recorded. I was speaking to the Biology teacher and he said that students have no idea how to study for a test and how to responsibly earn an A because they are so used to getting their A spoon-fed to them. In short, the public school system is different in every area. No two systems are completely identical, and while some public school systems do a fine job at teaching students, others are more concerned about making sure their students do OK on standardized tests than they do about actually teaching. And yeah, No Child Left Behind is BS. The system is detrimental to public school systems that are not doing so well academically, and it gives more funding to the ones who don't really need more money from the government. I don't know how to fix it or what we could do differently to make the system better, but No Child Left Behind doesn't benefit the people who really need the help. Aaaaand homeschooling isn't for everyone either... I know people who were homeschooled and learned a lot. Others who are homeschooled get really far behind their own peers and don't ever really learn how to socialize. Every child is different, and not all parents make good teachers.
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#15
04-28-2012
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Sally, I did not know it was 'called' "no student left behind" to mess with money, depending on grades, but yup, the worse thing your country did to world wide education, was spread that woeful idea.
Also, I think your teacher brings up a an interesting and unfortunately problem of the public, because education is fundamentally one of those areas, live or die on and so most of the time, they will do anything to appear to provide good education, including provide a bad education. This happens world wide, including here in Taiwan (more on that later) and fundamentally shows parents are one of the key problems. To most parents all that matters is their son/daughters A, even if that means in truth they have to be less intelligence to get it. One of the students in my school has 'special needs' shell we say and because his parents will never admit their golden child may not be perfect, he gets no real help for it, however the school still has to get him to progress, so what is the answer, make him take the test as many times as is needed to pass him. <facepalm> If a kid takes a test 6 times, before he passes, he probably did not really understand what was going on. Now admittedly, this problem is an extreme in a small carp private school, however were it only applicable to private schools, then maybe I would not be in such a rush to return to politics. (You know something is wrong, when politics feel less dirty than education.) =The problem is, that if educators and politicians know their fate rests on grades, they will only care about grades, this is why, instead of learning science in school, I was taught how to copy out of a book, did I understand any of the carp I was copying, heck no, but still got me a good grade. <facepalm> Parents need to butt out of education, they generally cause more harm than good and have no idea what they are on about. If your son/daughter was punished in school, they most likely deserved it. If he failed, it is not likely to be the teacher who is a bad teacher, but that student, for whatever reason, simply was not up to the challenge of that test. Yes bad teachers exist and they are often found out quickly. I am no great teacher myself, another reason I am leaving, but my failing was, I went into education to teach. Not be a freak show for small children and guess what, now my students after up to 6 years of education, finally know that it is called simple present (or present simple) and why you use it. Before they knew you can say things with an ing and without, but beyond that, nothing. Yes I admit, sometimes I make mistakes and over explain things to them, heck you guys know me enough, to know that I will make that mistake and sometimes my dyslexia is a challenge, but damn I overcome most of the time and I know most of students get better grades under me, than they did under their previous teachers, despite me not telling them answers in the middle of a test. I had one student who in two years, had not once passed a test and was only in the class because parents needed a babysitter; she got 92% in her midterm test and 87% in final, under me. Of course, my school still hates me, but they hate me, because crime of all crimes, I taught my students English, instead of how to pass the test. Of course, my school hates me because I am not a monkey and so some of students miss their old teacher. I am sorry, of course they loved him, he played football in the classroom with them, but is playing football really productive towards learning English? I am also against homeschooling in general, because the problem is that most parents simply lack the education to do it and kids need to learn values, ethics and socialise outside their own home. Homeschooling can make children too isolated. Now do not misunderstand me, it is wonderful that Zariu had a productive and well educated mother who clearly educated him (her?) well. However, this is not the general result and was probably aided by his personal education experience. Question =Ok, for all the UK's and Americans education systems failing, they are good at make individuals, both from their structure and culture, however the Taiwanese education is praised very highly, but in truth is good at making robots. Sure, these kids have good memories, but rarely understand what they are taught and due to spending 90% of their day in school, often have real socialisation issues. It is total opposite of homeschooling, too much outside influence. What do you think of this? A sausage education, where students discouraged from questioning the teacher and tests are basically big memory games, with contentious academic subjects like history, reduced to basically remember names and dates. (Note, I know I my bais here and it is clear, which side I fall on, but this is not a serious debate site, so who cares.) Experience Ok, to end my education experience, for those whom care; it was in my second year of secondary school, that I met an older teacher who changed my life forever. Now I am going to say, I think I was generally lucky with my teachers and can safely say, that the number of bad teachers I had was outweighed by the number of good teachers I had, but this teacher was amazing in my eyes, because she did what teachers normally only do in films. She took a failing, average student and made him into someone went onto get 36th in his law school of around 500 students, per year. This is because, most teachers saw my less than amazing tests and demised me to a degree. They all said "<name> is creative and a good student, but lacks the basic communication and academic skills required." This teacher, however set us a lesson on Blakes peom 'wasteland' (says it all, when she gives 12 year olds that poem) and she could not believe my ability to understand it, because I had only just moved into her class and her general knowledge of me, was creative and polite, but dumb. So she set me a test on it and of course, I failed woefully. She then asked me to answer the questions out loud and suddenly, they were right. She finally worked out, what was wrong. I was not dumb, I just had no literacy skills what so ever. I could not spell, use grammar correctly or even know to conjoin basic sentences. So she sent him off for an IQ test/dyslexia test and this time, it was conducted correctly. According to the tester, (my mother told me this later) I was the only student my age, who he had ever seen complete all the test. I had the cognitive reasoning skills of an 18 year old at 12, however he decided that my writing ability, was equally to that of your average 6 year old. He could not believe it and said, the extremity of results was normally only found in international students and even then, it was rare. After this, I gained two things:- 1=A lot more attention/help from my teachers. 2=More importantly, a self-belief. I suddenly realised, I was not dumb, I could succeed. =During the following years, I went from being in special needs level classes in everything, to being in top/second top sets in everything and left school with B's in everything, apart from Maths and RE. Ok, so B's are not stunning, but for someone whose predicted grades from his first year, had been D's, I took them. =I then went onto 6th form, where I discovered a lot more about myself socially, but little happened otherwise and I got rather poor results really, due to my own mistakes, I made in those two years. However luckily, a good law school had taken me anyway, on the basis of my Personal Statement. =At university, I really grew up and developed; came out with a 2-1 (B again for the yanks) and overall had a great time. However that is a story for another time and so I leave you with this. What most people said, after graduated was this. "By god, I honestly never thought you would do it." Sums up my education, mostly disbelief, but it only took a few people believing in me, for me to succeed, because in my opinion, killshot is wrong, positive enforcement is key, how many students are wasted, just because no one believed in them.
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#16
04-29-2012
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Not to mention in high school how I had an english teacher-- an ENGLISH teacher who showed a video about how evil and inaccurate FOX news is for basically no reason other than "You should agree with my political point of view!" Parents needs to watch out for their kids if teachers do this stupid stuff. A parent should trust their child when they feel like their child is telling the truth. To assume that the educators and staff thereof are right about all their judgments even if they have no proof, and to allow them to outright brainwash high school students for political purposes is simply bad parenting. It's not always about just being bad at teaching, but being a bad person. You need to look out for the bad people, because if they're a bad person they'll teach them things that either aren't true or they aren't qualified to teach. Quote:
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I know it may be hard for you to understand this, but teaching individually and answering individual questions alongside teaching in a group is actually a very effective tool. In Calculus II in college I was struggling badly because I just kept getting bogged down by the algebra involved in working out formulas so I could apply them to a general rule. It was the first class that I took notes and studied every night, and I could still only push my grade up to a C. But then we started going in study groups once or twice a week and by the end of the class I got an A on my final exam. True I still only had a C- in the class, but that's just because of the lack of understanding at the beginning. Without my professor's help during those study groups (there were like 3 of us there), I guarantee all of us would've failed the class. And yet, teachers make mistakes too. Especially in mathematics, which is very fickle. A few times I questioned their answers on questions, and showed them how I attained my answer. Most of the time I'm right and they messed up with rounding or something silly like that. One time in high school my precalc teacher had no idea why an answer wasn't working when she did everything right. She had the whole mathematics department working on it but they couldn't figure it out. I took out the rounding and the answer was completely right. Quote:
I took algebra in 6th grade because of my high IQ test scores (it was supposedly an advanced class, I think it was taught exceptionally poorly) and did well for about a week, taking a lot of time out of my day to learn what they were teaching... but by the end of that week, half the class had quit. By the end of the second week, there were literally two students left. And by the end of the third week we were all gone. It's because they wouldn't teach us individually despite there being so few of us. She just got up and shouted different rules with no examples and tons of homework none of us understood how to do. __ One time I was in a spelling bee in elementary school, and I was in one of the worst classes in the school. We were given one copy of the preliminary words being used in it literally a day before it was being held. Everyone else got one per student for a couple weeks ahead of time. Teachers were allowed to send in as many students as they wanted, but our teacher felt like there was probably one girl in the class who would stand a chance. However, rather than simply send only her in and nobody else and make us feel bad, she decided to hold a small spelling bee with those words in the class itself. The girl she thought would win, lost. It was between me and a boy who bullied me months before. And I won. He threatened me to not show up and I did anyway because he was an asshole. I studied the night before for hours and hours, getting every word right consistently. On the day of the actual spelling bee, I got my word right over and over, until there were three of us left. I was given a word, and I got it wrong on purpose because... my parents promised they'd be there and weren't. My grandmother promised the same and wasn't. My sister promised the same (she had dropped out of school a year before that and still wasn't working) and wasn't there. When I realized how little they really cared about me succeeding and how much they pressured me anyway, I spelled the word wrong on purpose, went to sit down, and got told by everyone "You shouldn't have gone up there if you weren't going to win", including the teacher. Now isn't it great that I socialized like that? I had lots of friends around the neighborhood before going to elementary school. No problem socializing there. And then this happened, and, uh, fuck everyone.
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#17
04-29-2012
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I'm going to assume Fared wants me to reply since he said my name in bold so I could see it even if I was skimming.
What exactly am I wrong about? Just because negative reinforcement was what worked for me, that doesn't mean it is best or everyone. Some students need to be encouraged and others need a reality check. When I was going through high school, I had gotten so much praise that my ego was threatening to eclipse the sun and plunge the earth into an ice age. I needed someone to show me I wasn't as smart as I thought I was. I needed to realize that I wasn't anything special and I needed to study if I wanted to stay ahead. When I got to college, everyone in my classes was just as smart or smarter than I was. Its easy to think you're the greatest when you can surpass your peers with minimal effort. Try maintaining your inflated sense of self importance when you are surrounded by the brightest minds in the state and struggling to convince yourself that you belong there. Without learning my limitations in high school, I probably would have switched to an easier major where I could have my ego stroked by people praising my minuscule accomplishments rather than working at something I can be proud of. I'm not saying positive reinforcement has no place in education. I'm saying too much of a good thing can be poisonous. Kids need to learn that self esteem by itself is worthless. Its OK to be proud of yourself, but misplaced pride is just as dangerous as a lack of confidence.
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#18
04-29-2012
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#20
04-29-2012
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Killshot, fair enough, nothing to rebut there, I agree; I just originally felt this line portrayed that you were against positive enforcement, however I personally believe some student do require some encouragement. Whether it is due to their need for ego stroking or simply because they lack confidence, some students cannot succeed without being reminded that they can succeed.
=The student, I consider my biggest failing is a boy, whom I know is smart, but I cannot inspire any self-belief in him and because he is so scared of trying and failing (an unfortunate side effect of some parts of Taiwanese culture, if my beliefs are correct) he would rather just succeed at failing. Punishing him for it does nothing, because that only enforces his self-created spiral of failure, so until I can get him to realise that the occasional failure is not a bad thing and that he can succeed in the end, he will continue to fail. Of course, this is presuming he is not just a lazy git. Quote:
Last edited by Fat1Fared; 04-29-2012 at 11:08 PM.
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#21
04-30-2012
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I didn't say this in my original post, but she only taught the upper level math classes. If you could make it to her class in the first place, chances are you already had enough self esteem.
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#22
07-21-2012
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Might as well post some of mine:
-In sixth grade, our teacher treated us like we were in college. She dictated everything to us, gave us five page papers, and had us keeping track of the stock market (we even got to go to the New York Stock Exchange for a field trip; this school was in Queens). At the end of the year, we had to do a college project, where we researched a college and answered about sixty questions about it, and then we had to pick a major and say why we picked it. One time, she gave us, as she called it, this “All or Nothing” math test. There were two questions and you could score a 100, a 50, or a 0. The passing grade was 70. If you failed this test, there was some sort of penalty (other than the failing grade), but I forgot what it was. The teacher called me to her desk after she’d finished grading. I was pretty nervous, since while I was decent in math, it wasn’t my best subject. (For context, when I was in sixth grade, I considered a B- a failing grade.) I was very relieved when she told me I scored 100. I didn’t want to look like a nerd, so I lied and said I didn’t study (even though I spend most of the night studying). -I had a first grade teacher who was a little excitable. She had this big-ass wood yardstick, and if you just looked like you were going to fall asleep, she’d whack your desk with it and scream, “Wake up!” Good times. I made the mistake of rubbing my eye or something and got my desk whacked. I was lucky I hadn’t actually been asleep otherwise my reflexes wouldn’t have been strong enough to make me flinch. -We had a graduation ceremony for the sixth graders just before school ended, so we had to rehearse entering the auditorium, singing three songs, and sitting down every day in June (the last month of school). It was pretty hot in the auditorium and the windows were stuck closed. Our singing teacher was also pretty excitable and yelled a lot. We weren’t allowed to sit down until we sang the songs to her satisfaction. We weren’t really allowed to carry water bottles unless the temperature got above 100 and they didn’t let us go to the water fountain because they were afraid people would cut classes. Then one day, I fainted (it was my fault, really; I shouldn't have quit eating), and they let us sit down after every song. They still didn’t let us use the water fountain, though (they did lift the ban on water bottles, though). I guess what I learned was: always study, keep your reflexes sharp, and drink a lot of water at lunch (also eat). I may not have gone to some fancy private school, and that "self esteem" movement may have missed our school, but I think I turned out decently. The schools I attended after I moved from New York weren't as good, though.
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#23
07-21-2012
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It sounds like you had a good education, if not a fun one at times. I think thing to remember with education is that educators are not there to teach you par-say, they exist to enable you to conduct your own learning. In the end if your education gave you the ability to go out, pick up a book, learn something from it and then tell that information to a third party, in my opinion, it did something right.
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#24
10-23-2012
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In general, it sucked. Not for me but for other people. My mom works with special needs kids, and in our elementary school, the SN program didn't work so well. The paras (the people who work with special needs kids) weren't allowed to touch the kids, and they were allowed to run on the ceiling and do whatever they wanted (a kid in my 5th grade class threw chairs, and I was in the hospital for 8 weeks with a very painful spine injury, and a cracked rib). Our school district wouldn't hire any more paras, even though the para to kid ratio was about 1 to 10 by the time I got out of that mess. But I'm home schooled now, and I did 6th grade in one semester, 7th grade the second semester, and 8th grade the next year. I can't do that in high school, though. But I'm graduating before my best friend now:) But, yeah. It's pretty bad. At least for our school district.
Last edited by PhantomWolf; 10-23-2012 at 02:55 PM. Reason: A mispelled word.
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#25
10-24-2012
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I have never attended a public school. However, I have participated in clinical fieldwork as a SLPA student at several of them. Overall, it felt too fussbudgety - like there were too many conventions and just STUFF tangling into each other and sometimes preventing things that needed to get done from being done. =/
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#26
10-24-2012
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No complaints about my education overall. It was great.
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#27
11-08-2012
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When I was 4-5, I went to a private k5 (ahead of my age). We had homework, read, and did many educational activities. I could read chapter books, and enjoyed doing so. The next year, when I switched to public school, they informed me that I could not go to first grade yet because I wasn't 6 yet. (would be turning 6 about a month after school began). We were told I would have to go to kindergarten again. For no reason apart from my age. I would sit in the back and read books while the other kids were just learning their ABC's. Even at this young age, I was irritated and thus began my mistrust of the school system. Also in third grade, one girl asked the teacher how to spell out that her grandmother had passed away. The teacher told her "P-A-S-T away". And upon me correcting her that it was "passed" since past was a noun, I was reprimanded and she continued telling the girl the wrong spelling. This made me furious. "How could such an idiot woman be qualified to TEACH?" I thought to myself...I may sound like a brat..and trust me I surely was at that age...But seriously....Since the beginning I have not trusted the educational system....
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#28
06-01-2013
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The most memorable thing about high school at least was the insane security. Cameras everywhere, police patrolling the halls and lunch rooms, and severe punishments for anyone who stepped out of line. It was not the nicest atmosphere. My experience with teachers has generally been positive, although I've had a couple who were rather toxic people.
From what I hear about public education in the news, it seems that everything is going to hell. Classes are being dumbed down so that everyone passes, and people are becoming increasingly sensitive to anything that can be construed as violent behavior.
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#29
06-01-2013
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My experience with public school is decidedly sub par. I do not like the direction it is going because all the good classes get killed by budget cuts, security is mean, and there are stupid rules that say I don't get to wear my cute flip flops because they're dangerous or something. I bet if I went to a private school they'd let me wear my flip flops all the time. :(
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#30
06-02-2013
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I absolutely hate our school system. It's all about everybody going at the same pace so that everybody feels good. Thats the most retarded thing ever. It is the individual that matters, their education should suit their needs, smart kids shouldnt be held back because other people arent at that level. I remember sitting in the back reading The Hobbit while i had to sit through the teacher reading Horrible Harry to the class in 2nd grade. "If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid" - Albert Einstein
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