Moderators: This is not a political thread, please don't turn it into one, since that would be against the rules. This is just me sharing my thoughts on my 13 years going through the education system of the best country in the world.

After seeing some people, mostly Europeans, claim that all Americans are stupid because our "education system is worse than North Korea's" and making other baseless claims like that, I've decided to share my own experience with the education system of the United States. After going through America's 13 year system, let me say this, it was easy. I wish I could be one of those people who say that high school (the last 4 years of the education system; the last 6 years, if you count junior high school), but they weren't, in fact I am a much happier person now than I was in high school. By no means am I implying that the American education system is perfect, since no system is entirely perfect, but it's definitely not as bad as the liberal media makes it out to be.

No, I'm not a prodigy or anything, but I went through the education system and it worked fine. I didn't go to some fascist Orwellian high school with metal detectors, school uniforms, strict dress code, drug sniffing dogs, or police everywhere. I also didn't go to a run-down high school with gangs, violence, bullying, or anything like that. I just went to a normal American high school. Please note that I am basing this entire thread upon my personal experience, which was with a high school in a semi-rural area, and by no means represents urban (city) high schools, which are likely gang infested.

I went through the system like everyone else, did my education like everyone else, K-6, 7-8, and 9-12, and I wasn't generally a straight A student, nor did I have perfect behavior. I definitely could have been a straight A student had I applied myself more, but that was not the fault of the education system, that was a fault of my own. I am an extremely intelligent human being, and have been since I was about 13. I can code and design an entire fully functional website in less than an hour, I am informed about almost all political issues and have opinions on them, I study political ideologies and religions in my free time to further my knowledge, I know how the world works both in high school and after it, and I was always a step ahead of most of my peers, and still am today in many cases.

We teach our children and later our teenagers just fine, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Does that mean I want to lessen funding towards education? No, in fact I want to increase funding towards education. I feel as though education is very important for today's young people, but remember, high school is all about learning how to become a productive and social member of society, K-6 on the other hand is all about learning basics such as the English language, science, mathematics, and other core classes. My school district never had the best funding, and in my final year of high school it was/is crumbling now, because of lack of state funding. It has gotten so bad that they had to close down a lot of elementary schools in the area, and merge them with other elementary schools. They're even planning on merging an elementary school with my local junior high school, which many of the locals, myself included, are strongly against.

Now lets get down to the social aspect, high school has virtually no bullying, bullying is something little kids do in the K-6 system, not teenagers. No, I wasn't some popular football playing jock who had a cheerleader girlfriend, in fact, I was the opposite. I was the video game playing geek with practically no friends. Sure, I had some "friends" who I would hang out with at school and talk to online, but like most people, I only had maybe one or two real friends. But even within my own group, I was one of the people who just didn't fit in entirely, despite me being one of the two leaders of the group, and the administrator of the group's official message board. We had cliques, of course, like every high school does, there were the jocks, the emos, the stoners, the cheerleaders, the preps, the band geeks, the goths, us gamers, and all other kinds of cliques, and of course there was also individuality. But cliques are nothing like what Hollywood makes it out to be, everyone gets along with everyone else, and everyone has friends in every group, and all groups peacefully socialize with each other.

There were no gangs, but again, I've never lived in a major city, especially not a poor area of a city. We did have some drugs though, of course there was alcohol and smoking, but never on campus, and those are of course general things teenagers do to rebel (or because they get addicted). There wasn't any peer pressure though, no one ever pressured you into doing drugs, or even really asked you too. Of course, there's the occasional pot, but pretty much no one got into the hard drugs, maybe a few of the stoners did some of the hardcoe stuff like meth, but no one I know (aside from one girl, but she graduated a few years before me). Now then, teen six, sure, there was a lot of that, but most people played it safe and used condems and/or birth control. There were a handful of pregnancies each year, but they brought that upon themselves. As for fashion, let me say that, like most guys, I'm not very adept when it comes to fashion. I would just wear whatever I felt like, and never got made fun of or singled out too much. Sure, there were the preps who always wore Hollister or the emos who generally wore darker clothing, but it certainly wasn't a fashion contest or anything like that.

I'd say the school system is pretty damn good, if not the best in the world. Sure, after high school, like most people, I missed it, and still do sometimes. I wish I could go back and be 13 again, a teenager, and start my advlt/teenage life over. But all-in-all I'm glad of the person I am now, I'm not rich or overly successful yet, but I work hard and I'm getting there, since that's what America is all about, hard-work and making your own future. The school system has already vastly improved, my baby brother learned in 3rd grade what they taught me and everyone else in 5th grade. He was learning multiplication and division in like second grade. So yes, I'm glad our school system is making strides to become better, because our young people are the future of this country. Do I think we need to completely overhaul the school system? No. Do I think we need to take extreme stances like metal detectors, teachers beating students, school uniforms, strict dress codes, search and seizures every 2 hours, drug sniffing dogs, or anything like that? No. But I do think we need to fund education more, and with that, I bid adieu.

The "Were you bullied?" thread seems to disagree. Not all schools are equal.

Umm, congrats for growing up in middle America.



Besides teachers "beating" students, I disagree, though I do think teachers should have the power to spank kids again.

The school systems in America are drastically underfunded, understaffed and under-equipped. Education in general is not improving, though not for lack of trying on the teachers part, they are fighting an uphill battle against insane odds. Bullying does exist, and it is bad.

Apparently one thing you weren't taught was basic logic. "I did fine in school and therefore the schooling system is fine" is no more a valid argument than "I've never been to Australia and therefore there's only dragons on the other side of the world."

Honestly I feel the main problem with America's Education system is how it's "Well rounded".

When it all comes down to it, some people, no matter what will svck at math/english/science/etc/etc/etc. I see no reason why after say 10th grade, there should be a set curriculum. I know in Ohio in 10th grade we take the 'Ohio Graduation Test' (I know a few other states have something similar) and it contains everything we must know to graduate from high school. You have to pass it to graduate. I feel that, since the test contains the knowledge required to graduate, the rest of high school is rather pointless, more or less.

What I would propose is, after 10th grade, if you've passed your "Graduation Test", you can either be done with school and join the work force, or move on and go to a "Career Center" or College.

I think it would cut down on being burnt out on classes too when you enter college. I did Algebra, Geometry, Algebra 2, and Pre-Cal in high school, and now in college I have the same requirements again.

EDIT: At the very least I'd like to see more options for classes you could take in 11th and 12th grade. I remember my high school used to have (my year was the last year they did it) you could take a class about cinema as a replacement for you English 4th year class, or Drama.

Heck, I'm an American and I'll say I base my opinion of our school system (a very low opinion) on bow I've met and conversed with kids/teenagers from other countries and even though they're in the same things that any kid/teenager is and they hate school, they are generally well-rounded academically and as pertaining to general knowledge of world conditions and whatnot. Contrast that with going to high school in Miami, where throughout high school, I was relearning what I had learned as a junior high schooler in my home state of California.

This. That was just the OPs school, and I'm fairly sure that scientific and pedagogic opinions are a tad more reliable.

That's the problem. If you look at the things our (U.S) government throws money at, we're top of the class. I'm not implying anything (yes I am) but we're not throwing money at education, and therefore it's not improving.

I think it goes deeper than just money though. A school can have all the money in the world, but the students have to be willing to learn, and from what I've seen in my general area, many aren't anymore.

Those pesky Europeans! :toughninja:

Just because there wasn't bullying at your school doesn't mean there isn't bulling at other schools. Just because you didn't turn out rotten doesn't mean other people don't turn out rotten. The American school system definitely isn't the best in the world, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that it's the worst, either. I've spent grades K-6 in school in the United States and after that have studied in Finland. I vastly prefer the latter, even though the schools I went to in the US are at the better end of the country's school spectrum.

And oh em gee, I was bullied at school in the US. I know people who were bullied all through high school in the US. Bullying is a common problem in just about every school institution in the world, and even work place bullying among advlts is quite common. It's not something that people just "get over" once they become teenagers. Bullying is often at its worst in high school/during the teenage years.

Yes, and the fact that it was easy is part of the problem.

When I was doing my student teaching a few years ago the American History teacher commented that the level he teaches Honors History at now is below what he taught his normal classes fifteen years ago.

So fifteen years ago the expectations for the basic American History course were higher than what they even expect the honors students to accomplish now. Some students far exceed today's expectations but a good class should push you to do better regardless of your capabilities.

Funny enough I have a son in Kindergarten right now and my parents (who have very high standards) are astonished at how far along they expect these kids to get - and by in large they do get that far. When you have high standards there will be times everyone struggles but you also get students putting the extra effort in to reaching those goals. Obviously it's more complicated than that, you need a teacher who inspired you and a can actually assist you in getting there and that means they need to demonstrate the worth of the material. As curriculum get more cluttered this is more difficult and as standardized testing begins to dominate the school year (it isn't uncommon to spend 25%-33% of the school year on testing and test-prep :rolleyes:) many students get caught up in the testing instead of the learning. So I'd say there is plenty of room for improvement in our education system, particularly in the 6-12 grade range.

I think part of the problem is with bored, unmotivated teachers. If they act like they can't be bothered and just go through the motions, the pupils are going to act the same.

Similar observations have been made about the UK school system, too; I've seen a fair bit of it myself. The rot had already started when I was at school 20+ years ago, but it does seem to have got a lot worse. Recent examples of GCSE papers I've seen such as the maths exam was probably on par with what we were studying around the 2nd year of secondary school (GCSEs are taken at the end of the 5th year, not sure what it is in the current nomenclature) and even my 2nd year example was said to be more basic than what previous years had been taught.

Lack of funding was a major problem: of my five A-level teachers, four were fresh out of college and the fifth was useless. The physics class had three very dog-eared text-books to share among nearly 30 pupils, though it was probably good to encourage us to huddle together since they couldn't afford to heat the classrooms in winter. I think that summed up the state of the funding cuts since just a couple of years previously, that sort of state of affairs would've been unimaginable.

Anyway, the point was to demonstrate that it's not a US-only phenomenon. It'd be nice if someone took the lead with regard to fixing it, though.

I don't really understand this, as my mum often told me that stuff I was learning in years 8 and 9 was on a par and sometimes ahead of what she'd been taught for O level. Not saying you're wrong, just thought I'd throw that in for contrast...

Kids don't seem to study much history any more. My grandparents were taught all the kings and queens of England from 1066, my mother was not, and neither was I. If I hadn't read widely outside of school, I wouldn't know it either. And since a lot of kids don't get given books, neither do they. It's scary actually, a lot of common cultural knowledge is disappearing amongst the young. You don't hear nursery rhymes as often as you used to.

Well I talked with one of my former high school teachers a while back...

He said they bumped him to 40 kids in a class which is absolutely atrocious and we're still making budget cuts and closing down schools. Of course http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UX8czAijqGg doesn't think it's a problem to have that many students in a class but I can say as someone who does have experience in the class, a smaller class size helps extraordinarily well with classroom management. In one of the classes I taught (it was about 30 students) I had 3 students with autism, two with aspergers, around four students with ADD, and two with oppositional defiance disorder. I had my hands full and my master teacher was always right there assisting me because it was such a difficult class to handle. I can tell you right now that no teacher in their right mind would like to take on more students in their classes and any teacher that does probably needs their heads examined.

All the while we're spending billions on [insert political statement] and stuff like [insert another political statement] and arguing over [insert a third political statement] instead of focusing on getting class sizes down and getting the proper material for students.

Of course funding the schools is only part of the problem. Channeling those funds into the right avenues can be just as difficult as getting the funding. In one of the schools I was tutoring at they had just paid for new computers (their old ones stayed in the auditorium waiting to be picked up by an e-recycle company that never came in the three months I was there) but their text books were still several years old, worn, and (quite obviously) lacked up to date information. Not only that but a majority of classrooms were not being taught in actual classrooms but portables that were also quite old and run down themselves.

But hey the OP says the education system is fine so we'll just pretend these things aren't happening :shrug:

USA is actually above England, but behind South Korea.

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2010/12/7/1291740184391/PISA-rankings-within-OECD-001.jpg

According to that chart they're barely above in reading, and behind in the other two categories.

Since we're talking about eduction... :shifty:

You don't want this to become political and that's your opening sentence? [censored] off.

The trouble is, knowledge of history can't be judged cumulatively. Yes, we weren't taught all the kings and queens since time imemorial, but that doesn't mean we didn't learn other things... Frankly I'm glad that history lessons aren't so centred on useless regurgitation of names and dates any more...

We do not concern ourselves with scotland, wales, or northern ireland. If it ain't english, it's not something to be shot at in our war reenactments. Unless it's a confederate or union soldier.

That was an admittedly terrible way to learn history, but it was an example. When we study WW2, we don't study any of the major battles, the geopolitical situations or the flow of the war. All we study is trench conditions and the holocaust.


Some schools might do better, but the curriculum does not bother to set a high standard, so a lot of them will do the bare minimum they can get away with.


Ha, didn't see that.

I'm sorry but I have to disagree, the current GCSE scores have been drastically increasing across every subject in England at least and I know this is not my school alone, it is happening all over the North East of the country. Sure, there is going to be the odd school where scores are going downhill but for the majority, we are seeing a increase.