I would say, yes:
-it is expensive (most cities spend over $13,000/pupil/year)
-it teaches subjects that have little relevance to the modern world
-it is adapted to a 19th century idea of of learning-a time when computers didn’t exist
-it is not suited to students who are destined for blue collar jobs
-it does a poor job, overall
As I see it, the American HS system was something new and modern-when it was introduced (in the 1880’s). Bt now it is very much obsolete, and it is not doing a good job.
I think it does reasonably well, for students who are motivated and who want to learn. For those who are not, it does a poor job (the newspapers are rife with reports of HS graduates who do not understand compound interest, cannot find countries on a blank globe, do not know the dates of WWII, etc., etc.)
I think the US should scrap the whole system, and start over.
$13k sounds low to me; where’d you get that figure?
I graduate in the mid 80s and don’t have kids, so my opinion may be an ignorant one, but from what I see of kids coming out of high school, they seem to lack important skills such as balancing a checkbook, understanding the need to save (even a few pennies a day) for retirement, basic household management and survival skills such as cooking. So I lean towards yes.
I am here: Google Maps
With the exception of balancing a checkbook (which is arguably obsolete), I don’t see those as skills the schools were ever tasked to teach. I think this is a real problem: we don’t know what we want schools to do, we have no idea of what we want the final product to be. Is it college prep? Is it socialization/learning to function in American society? Is it becoming critical thinkers that can appreciate the complexities of life? Is it to make finished adults? Right now we are trying to do all of that for everyone, and it’s too much.
I find the discrepancy between:
and:
[QUOTE=ralph124c]
cannot find countries on a blank globe, do not know the dates of WWII, etc.
[/QUOTE]
A little humorous.
Other countries get better results with a traditional school model. But, then, they track their students so that not everyone goes to high school.
Look, I work in educational technology and know more than a little about distance learning. I seriously doubt that would do a better job, especially with students who would be playing games and surfing the web while multitasking the lesson (if they are there at all). No computer learning model is any different than sitting in a classroom – you’re just sitting at your computer instead.
So there is no replacement for the current system (and, of course, it acts as a way of day care that allows women to be in the workplace). The question is about the curriculum. And the point of school is not just to learn facts you can use; it’s to learn how to think.
Occasionally, you’ll see lists of what students were expected to know a century ago, most of which seems to be things that aren’t taught. People argue that this means we’re neglecting basic skills, but, they fail to note that these older skills are no longer needed (I was taught in school how to make change, for instance. No one needs to do that, since the cash register will tell you). And they don’t compare it to the far more advanced things that students are required to learn these days. My daughter’s biology class, for instance, required her to learn about part of cell structure that weren’t even known in my day, and certainly not part of the curriculum.
This argument that “education is crap” is tedious, ignorant, and just plain wrong.
How about some cites for your assertions? Your “fact” that most cities spend over $13,000 per pupil per year is grossly in accurate. The first hit on a google search of “spending per high school pupil” provides this NY Times BLOG: http://empirezone.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/05/24/the-highest-per-pupil-spending-in-the-us/. You will notice that highest state spending per pupil is New York at over $14,000. BUT, the average state expenditure per pupil per year is $8,701. A number off of yours by over four thousand.
As to subjects with little relevance to the modern world, would you care to enlighten us as to what those are? History? But you want students to know when WWII occurred. Geography (a class that I can assure you does not appear in most High Schools)? It would help in placing countries on a globe. Math, and its variations and derivatives such as algebra, trig., geometry, calculus, and so forth? Yes, in a world where computers and technology are at the forefront of economic development, let’s not have students learn essential math skills.
Perhaps you meant literature? Yeah, don’t want kids reading those pesky novels full of ideas and stuff. Of course entertainment in print, music, and visual media is one of America’s biggest exports.
I bet you will even have a hard time proving that high schools are doing on average a poor job of educating students right now. Not twenty years ago, not in the early '80s. Not in the inner cities or highly isolated rural areas only.
Yes, newspapers are rife with stories of students who can’t answer basic questions. So is that stupid segment on Leno’s show. If you go looking for people to give wildly wrong answers to questions and keeping asking, eventually you will find somebody to give you the money quote.
Some kids are going to work in blue collar jobs. Some are going to screw-up orders at McDonald’s for a career. But hey, the idea is everybody should have an equal opportunity.
I used balancing a checkbook as a general catch-all for being cognizant of all matters fiduciary with respect to one’s life and/or household.
Back in my time, schools were too much theory and not enough hands-on.
I am here: Google Maps
Certainly, things need to be improved. Kids coming out of high school today seem just as ignorant and poorly prepared for college or the workplace as they did 20 years ago, when I was one of them. But is there any data that backs up what “everybody knows” about the dumb-as-dirt kids today?
What irrelevant subjects would you dump? We had writing, literature, math, history, foreign languages, the sciences, US government, phys ed, and art. What the heck else are they teaching?
Adding a course in computer science is probably a good idea, since IT jobs are pretty common nowadays. How, specifically, would you change teaching procedures to make use of computers? Is there any data that suggests reading things on a computer screen instead of on paper works better? What software, other than word processing and spreadsheets, should students use in which classes?
Are you suggesting that students be educated differently in high school, depending on their likely career? Is it wise to make decisions about who is “destined for” college or blue-collar work at the typical high school age and level of maturity?
Or, what those other guys said. Too damn slow again…
Such as? What do high schools teach that they shouldn’t? And what do they not teach that they should?
How so?
This is very general and vague—plus I can’t tell whether you’re primarily criticizing the means or the ends, saying that high schools aren’t succeeding at what they’re trying to do or whether they’re not even trying to do the right things.
Teaching students who aren’t motivated and don’t want to learn is a very difficult task. How would you accomplish it?
With what?
It’s not like there’s a standardized, monolithic system for the whole US, so that every high school student in the nation has an identical experience. Some of the decisions about the high school system are made at the level of the state, or the district, or the individual school. If you have an idea for a better system, it would make sense to try it on a smaller scale first and see how it works out before “the US should scrap the whole system” throughout the country.
For refernce, I take the City of Boston.
The current HS dropout rate is over 25%. Not only that, the tardiness rate (in some schools) is over 35%.
The most recnt data says that the city expends over $16,000/pupil for year.
In exhange for this, the results don’t seem impressive.
That does sound dreadful. What courses do we drop, what computery stuff do we add, and who do we shunt onto the blue-collar track to fix it?
If we dump high schools we need to allow 14 year-olds to work, either let them drive or invest the saved money in a bitchin’ public transportation system, and start booting them out of the nest at 16.
After a decade we can reopen the high schools and allow admission on merit only.
My high school sure tracked students: there was a college track, a vocational track, and an advanced track. Granted, you could mix and match if you wanted to, and any tests only suggested where you went, rather than forcing the issue. And that choice means that most people chose at least the college track unless they couldn’t even pass the classes at all. I sometimes wondered if it’d been smarter to just pick a lower track and get a higher GPA.
That can be said for any large urban system, not just Boston.
Additionally, I’d say the output of Boston Latin is pretty impressive, and possibly a good example of how to do a large urban HS “right.”
It’s clear to me that that has to be one function, but not the only function. Some high school students are going to go on to college, and high school has to prepare them for that. Others are not going to go on to college, and high school needs to make sure they have whatever they need academically to function as an adult, without making them jump through hurdles whose only purpose is college readiness. (And some won’t know, while they’re there, whether they will be going to college or not, so some flexibility is in order.)
If we change that, though, how are my kids going to get a leg-up on all these other kids? No thanks. I’ll keep the system and rely on my superior parenting skills.
Nothing you posted refutes what he said. He specifically referred to what cities spend to educate students.
In fact, local spending per pupil per year now averages about $5,000 ($9,000 in New York). Average spending per pupil from all sources (local, state and federal) is about $10,500 ($18,000 in New York). Bear in mind that all of these numbers (including yours) are for all students, not just high schoolers, who are typically cheaper thanks to larger class sizes.
Of course, this is all pretty meaningless without a frame of reference. None of us have any idea how much it should cost to educate a student.
Relative to other countries, we do spend quite a lot to educate high school students (or at least we did in 1998). I don’t know if we spend a lot relative to GDP, because that table seems to be broken.
[QUOTE=ralph]
As I see it, the American HS system was something new and modern-when it was introduced (in the 1880’s). Bt now it is very much obsolete, and it is not doing a good job.
I think it does reasonably well, for students who are motivated and who want to learn.
[/QUOTE]
All school systems work well for students who want to learn and poorly for the ones who don’t give a shit. What on earth do you propose we replace the current system with?
Everything I posted refutes what he said. But thanks for the meaningless dig. City vs. state spending is pretty much a distinction without a difference when I am challenging the OP to put out some basis for his assertion. As I pointed out, my numbers came from the first Google return on my search criteria. I am not doing a frigging dissertation, I am calling BS on somebody.
Your numbers go even further in showing that a high school education costs less than Ralph asserts. Quick searching could find nothing that backs up his claims for the costs of Boston schools.
I sometimes wonder if the standard concept of “grade levels” should be done away with. Instead of all students in of an age taking the same subjects, break things up into “subject levels” instead. you’d necessarily have mixing of ages in a particular subject, but if a student isn’t as adept at math it makes more sense to me than keeping him/her in a subject that he/she will only fail and possibly slow down the rest of the class.