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Paladin Catling

The American School System:

What problems does it have? What do think needs to change?


I have read a lot of articles and etcetera about the American school system and its issues, yet I want to hear it from the perspective of a student.

Obviously there are students on this board and of course, Americans (Non-American inhabitants can join the conversation too).


I am going to throw some problems out there, which I have "heard" about:

- Students may not choose the public school they wish to attend and have to pick the one in their region, regardless if it is a bad school. This results to parents who lie their child into a better school.

- Incompetent teachers are hard to get rid of. So basically, if a teacher is hired who later turns out to be garbage, the school is doomed, since it takes years to get rid of said teacher.

- The American education system has yet to form an agreement about the role of religion in the classroom.

- The grading system. What used to be a B or a C, is now an A, which results into students believing their are "great," but then those "great" students end up getting their butts handed to them when they are compared to others outside of America.

- Honors vs. non-honors




This should be enough to get a conversation going, surely there are more problems. To some Americans on this board the above list of problems might be outdated, so I am curious to hear your opinion.

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Bryan

I honestly think academic achievements by teachers should be recognized with an even larger pay bonus... in the sense that teachers have more motivation to teach students.

It doesn't need a role, the only role I see it serving is the study of it in Social Study/World History classes, and any other classes willing to study it.

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Useless

First two points you bring up make sense.
Even though I'm Canadian, the teacher I had, had tenure and she didn't care what she did in class since she had immunity from being kicked out.
She said that but she was a good teacher, just the fact she said that seems corrupt.

What I think seems to be the problem is the budget system that schools have nowadays.
When I in grade 2, if you didn't have a pencil, they would give you one, a notebook, they would give you one. Even if you didn't have a lunch they would give you one. And now I talk to my nephew and he has to get school supply for himself.
Even the teachers complain about "not having enough chalk" and having to go through a process with the school to get more.

So yeah, that's my 2 cents, budget has gone downhill.

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Ronin

First off:
Teaching is a job that isn't just as academically rewarding as one might think. Usually the applied fields are much more interesting and personally and monetary rewarding. Money won't change a thing about that, at least in the amounts that are sensible and available.
The people you can lure with such a measure won't make the money worth spending.

About religion I would say that the school systems in most countries are not at all encompassing the fundamentals of the republican state that they should be a founding pillar for. This spans to religious questions, because they are purely secondary in relation to education for a simple reason:
The citizen is first and foremost bound to his duty in front of the constitution which, if he serves it right, will give him access to his citizen rights (other than his human rights, which are not to be moved but equal to everyone). Coming from the constitution, he is not bound to any specific religion and free to choose which to follow and to leave it or join it. Thus religion really is an arbitrary topic for education in school. The constitution in just about any western humanist state places the responsibility and the choice of execution of religious duties into private hands of the willing individual and there it should remain entirely. There is no really point to trying to guide it via the school by both restricting it (or symbols) as well as encouraging it. Also, if any form of religion interferes with education, the duty to the constitution and the state as a citizen comes first, as it is not a choice.

How to better schools:
While humanity develops geometrically intellectually and technologies and our ways of life get enhanced on this same scale, schools lag behind, because they utilize a system crafted for isolated small rural communities with few dependencies from the local and global outsiders that form the rest of the world. This is a thing of the past, not so the way schools are organized and to get them back on track and to keeping up with humanities progress they must change.
To achieve this would be simple:
If you free up the resources bound to make schools self sufficient by letting them pick their own curriculum, manage their own facilities and plan their spending and distribution of resources freely by non professional members of the teaching staff, you are putting schools in shackles from the past.
A part of this effort would be a centralized specialized capable management, for example.

Give the school system a modern lookout and soon they will be able to adapt to modern challenges.

It's as simple as that.
Messing with the details of how schools are run and trying to influence their spending as well as their orientation and teaching strategy is impossible as long as the premises or being able to steer this process are not fulfilled. This is why changing the grading system on a national scale has no detectable beneficiary results; It's not able to steer the development, because someone else is doing the steering and a wasted effort.

How much of this technically applies to the US I am uncertain, but I suppose it's enough for a thinking impulse in any way, so I am not doing research on the stuff I type or how far what I call modernization process has reached the US at all or is already in process.
From what I know about some 15-20 European school system none come even close to start such a thing, which is why their performance continually underwhelms.

If the debate gets lost in the petty everyday problems of pupils and teachers, there will be no chance of getting schools up to date and the amount in which they are useful to society dwindles.

In short I think that none of the points you address are to blame why schools are already getting a lot of heat from the public who thinks they are insufficient and to bring them up individually is harmful for the debate and the progress of the educational system, because there is no sophisticated way of addressing any of the issues in a compulsory way anyway.
Hence, trying to mingle with them will only degrade the schools, which as of now rely on being more or less operating self sufficient and trying to leash them without addressing this will only suffocate them. This is imho the real problem and the chance for real change only comes from it.

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Mordar

that grading system it's a freaking joke, we always laugh at people who get those kind of grades in some Region's college

"are you gonna get a start too on your forehead ?"

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hian

I don't know too much about how school is actually like in the U.S seeing as I've never gone to one, but here, and a lot of other places, the problem which is most frequently brought up is how the schools in the states are at odds with the social classes and add to the social differences that are already there.

For you to go to a good school, you either need good grades and/or a lot of money.
If you're poor, you probably live in a place with a lot of social ills, and thus getting into a good school at a later date becomes much more diffiult seeing as you're not going to have either money nor a good psycho-social environment for studying.
This might not be a reality, but that's the way it's presented outside of the states though.

So to me, it seems like the biggest issue with American schooling is the system for student placement, a way of regulating the environment of the school, not your average poor teacher etc.

As for religion, I think religion should be tought in Theology/Religious study, where it belongs, like they do in Scandenavia. Why should it be tought or presented in any other class or other way? Not learning anything about religion is about as retarded as not having social sicence/history/politics class, and teaching religious stuff in other classes is just irrelevant period.

If what you say about the grade system is true though, then that's a big problem.
Unfortunately, you'll find that everywhere.

Think of private schools, which treat their students like customers. If the percentage of failing students is high, nobody will apply to the school anymore, so naturally the level for passing grades is bound to go down to make sure as many students as possibly pass.

To me, a good educational system should always primarily be about keeping a high level at public schools(in terms of economics, and educational offers), and making sure that the schools don't end up getting "ghettofied".
If that's taken care of, even with some bad teachers or lesser social problems, the brunt of the students will be able to go on to higher education if they should want to.

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hobolord

I'm only becoming a teacher because i want to make a difference. I know the pay sucks, but all the teachers Ive talked to say "you got to enjoy working with kids". The teachers that just do it for the money treat it as a 9 to 5.

BoomThunda

I'm sure most teachers get into teaching for the right reasons, to "make a difference" and whatnot. But years of being underpaid and dealing with the 90% of kids that are annoying brats can change a person.

Urahara

Don't worry you will want to get out of teaching as soon as you're a teacher.

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Espada1

The American school system is much better than a lot other countries. Yes even Asia from what I heard.