Alright. I am originally from New York, but I have moved around the country a lot during my school years. I spent 5th grade through 11th grade in New Jersey. For my final year I find myself in Illinois. Sweet merciful crap. The educational system here conforms completely to all stereotypes about this region of the country. It’s all rote memorization. That’s all anybody does. Teachers say “Here, memorize this. Write it down. Read it in a book. Listen to me say it again. Memorize it. On the test, and in (what passes for) discussion, I want to hear these exact same words spit back to me.” In NJ, they taught us how to think. I am absolutely appalled whenever we try to have a discussion in lit. I come from a school where we were taught to read and draw our own conclusions; here, if you ask a kid to interpret a piece of literature for himself he’s like a deer in headlights. Now, I’m going to a school that loves to brag about how great it is. And they back up their claims by their standardized test scores. But all they do is literally “teach to the test.” Whenever a standardized test comes around, they indoctrinate kids with precisely what they’ll need to know for the test, and just have them memorize that. They even hand out back copies of tests from the last few years, and make kids do those in preparation. It’s sick and twisted.
And aside from the teaching styles, everything else in the school absolutely exudes traditional midwestern educational dogma. They spend NO money on computers. I came from a school that sunk all thier money into technology- they decided that computers were the best investment for the future. They put at least four or five internet-ready computers in each classroom, along with computer labs all throughout the school. This school, although it has comparable money, refuses to spend any on computers. They have two computer labs, and if the teacher should happen to want to use a computer during class, they have (this almost made me cry when I saw it) the C.O.W. Computer. On. Wheels. It’s a computer and a machine to project the monitor onto the class’ projector screen, and they roll it around on a projector cart. So teachers have to sign it out days in advance. Listen, there’s a source of infinite information out there, and any classroom that’s not connected to it is limited. So spend the money now, or regret it later.
You know what else they don’t understand? A fact about high schoolers: as a group, they are too self-actualized to be children yet not mature enough to be adults. So, if you treat them like adults, they will reciprocate. If you treat them like children, they will act like it. I guarantee it. In my old school, the faculty treated the students with a certain respect, and an attitude of “Alright, you’re getting to be adults now, so I’m not going to be your babysitter. Just treat me with respect too, and we’ll be alright.” And everything was fine. I got here, and on the first day I heard every single teacher talking about their “tardy policy,” and “talking in class.” This was stuff I hadn’t heard in years!! And you know what, it’s more of a problem here, because you’re fostering that “us against them” attitude, which is the source of all real behavioral problems in high school. Here they treat all behavioral problems with the “sledgehammer” approach: if one person leaves their trash in the hallway, then allow nobody to have food or drinks in the hallway. If one person abuses their bathroom privelages during study hall, then nobody goes to the bathroom during study hall. Cripes, get a clue: this approach is attacking the symptoms, not the real problem.
Thank God I’m going back to New York in the fall.
“History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.” -Winston Churchill
Good for you, it sounds like your current school really sucks. Glad to hear you’re going back to a better one. Just to point out one little flaw in your rant there, though, I doubt that what you described is in any way different from most high schools anywhere. The midwest certainly doesn’t have some sort of monopoly on bad schools. FOr instance I attended a school very similar to the one you describe(slightly better technology, but the attitudes were identical) in PA, hardly the midwest.
Sorry to hear you’re in a shit-hole school, Rousseau, but please don’t trash all midwestern schools based on your miserable experience at ONE school in Illinois. I was born and raised in IA, and my education featured challenging AP classes (NOT rote memorization), and computers in all the rooms (as well as several labs).
Take your whining generalizations somewhere else, kid.
Prairie Rose
If you’re not part of the solution you’re just scumming up the bottom of the beaker.
Rosseau: I am also a victim of a Midwestern education. And yet, I can’t quite convince myself to be on your side. Maybe it’s because you’re a whiny bitch.
Spoiled brat. 2 computer labs isn’t enough? You know, I attend a gifted and talented school now * and we don’t have or need the internet in every room. * It isn’t necessary. Not in every class, and not every day. That’s why there’s computer labs.
Y’know, computers get out-of-date fast. If you sink all your money into computers, it’ll all be obselete in 5 years.
What? You’re upset because they have a tardy policy? What the fuck kind of school did you go to? If teachers don’t have set rules, kids will go too far. If there isn’t a set punishment, the kid who gets in trouble will claim favoritism and the parents will raise hell. You may not have had policies, but I bet you couldn’t miss class repeatedly. An attendance policy makes sure the students are treated fairly.
When I first encountered the joy that is Rosseau, I thought, “Man, what a dense, conceited fuck-up.” This was in a Physics thread in GQ, where you demonstrated that your school should have focused more on teaching you some basics. Over time I gained a little respect: “Rosseau can be fuck-up sometimes, but he’s not too bad.” However, your adventures in the Pit recently have brought me to the following conclusion: Rosseau is a bigoted, whiny, dense, conceited fuckup, given to foolish generalizations. He should be ignored in the future.
Excuse C&P errors, I do not have a mouse currently.
–John
Wo de qianzi shi Zhongwende.
My space bar works now but the mouse is gone. The computer gods hate me.
Lawsamussey, Rousseau, so you’re in a school you don’t like. Sheesh, kid, get over it already. If you find inadequate technology and rules not to your liking now you’ll pop a gusset when you enter the work world.
Sounds to me like you might have fallen into a school that emphasizes basics. (O, the horror!) They expect you to master basic knowledge and respect the needs of teachers and other students. If our idea of persecution is being required to be on time and shut up when the teachers are trying to teach, then you have a very unrealistic view of your place in life.
You may not like the approach, but basics do work. Before you get your undies in a knot, consider that Iowa consistently ranks first in the nation in quality of public education. Your disdain for memorization would also find little sympathy with the Japanese (y’know, those folks who kick ass academically). They emphasize memorization as a way of building a foundation of knowledge.
Sure, it’s a lot more fun to use computers, but a lot of info is frankly crap, cut and paste is not learning and it teaches you nothing about the process of learning. Info technology can be a great tool but way too many schools are using it as a glitzy babysitter for students rather than slogging through the dull, thankless task of pounding knowledge into the skulls of bored kids who don’t want to put the time, effort and frankly hard work into learning.
Kwityerbitchin’, kid. If you want to go the easy route, g’head. Somebody (Asimov? I forget whom) said we’re all prisoners of our own minds but one where we can pick the furnishings. Your choice of furnishings, kid. Better choose well, because it’s what you’ll live with for the rest of your life.
Oh, and BTW, it pisses me off enormously, when there are so many people in this world who would love nothing better than the chance you’re complaining about.
Who would have guessed that anyone would ever see New Jersey as a center of higher learning and intellectual discovery? Anyway, I am a product of a shitty high school in Illinois too, and I have this advice for you: learn on your own. If you’re depending upon the typical brain-stems who teach at a public high school to motivate and intellectually challenge you, you’re going to end up very disappointed and very stupid. In my own case, I found the coursework, even AP and honors classes, to be extremely boring and unfulfilling, so I decided to educate myself. I memorized what they told me to memorize for the tests and got my 4.0 without any effort, but I also took community college classes, read Dostoevsky and Camus, played chess, and tried to make myself into an intelligent person. It’s very frustrating to be smarter than most of your teachers, but there’s bound to be one or two who actually know what they’re talking about. I had one English teacher who was truly good, and he influenced me to become what I am today (an impoverished English major). Oh, and are you sure that it’s a regional thing? There are some really good schools in Illinois (IMSA in particular), and some terrible ones. It’s like that everywhere.
“The world is everything that is the case.” --Ludwig Wittgenstein
dicksuck-
i went to high school in illinois. my graduating class had 97 students. my district was the biggest in square miles in illinois. most of the students were/are future farmers. there were no PCs in my school, only Macs. and one computer lab that you could use if you had a computer class (we offered 2). our foreign languages? spanish. no pool, no tennis, only football, basketball, wrestling and baseball for boys, softball, basketball and volleyball for girls. that’s right, no soccer! we had no AP classes. i couldn’t take half the classes i wanted to because the one section of the class that was offered conflicted with another class that i wanted.
the high school experience can be defined by what adversity you overcome in your formative years. you do well in your high school, wow, looks good to colleges. shucks, i guess you city folk got us illinoisians good there. drat, i guess i’ll havta go to an A&M school.
so, in essence, suck my dick mullet head. go back to a shopping mall. we won’t miss you.
You really need to pull your head out of your ass long enough to look around, Rosseau. You’re nothing but a narrow minded twit. I come from a Midwestern school, Indiana in fact, which has a worse reputation for schools than Illinois does. My school, however, had computers in the library, in the classrooms, computer labs, math labs, english labs, very well stocked science labs and teachers that damn sure knew what they were teaching. Hell, I had a teacher that could quote hydronegativities from the periodic table from memory. And atomic weight, number of protons and neutrons, etc. To me, that’s damn impressive. And as everyone else has pointed out, if you got a rotten education in Illinois, it’s because you held yourself back with your stereotypical nonsense. People that really want to learn, do and spoiled little brats like you that have to be pampered and coddled at school, don’t.
When are you going to realize being normal isn’t necessarily a good thing?
As much as I enjoy bashing the Midwest (I am a L.A. transplant marooned in the Midwest) I don’t think the Midwest is to blame for this.
For one thing, schools are good, and bad, depending on the district, the individual teachers, administration, etc. Some regions seem to have better schools than other regions, but within every region, there are schools that are terrible, and schools that are outstanding. That’s the way it is everywhere. Plus, Illinois is just one state. It’s not the entire Midwest. It’s just ONE STATE. Shouldn’t this thread be bitching about Illinois? You can’t speak for all Midwestern states, surely. You really can’t speak for all of Illinois, just your one school, or perhaps school district. That’s all you really know about.
It’s been ages since I was in school, (San Fernando Valley) and while I guess it was a good school, it sucked in art courses, (the main thing I was interested in.) So I read lots of books, went to the library, practiced on my own. I owe almost none (well, let’s be honest - ABSOLUTELY NONE) of my artistic ability or education to what my High School taught me. Yet I came out of high school with some decent art skills. I wasn’t just going to sit around and flounder in ignorance because my school sucked at teaching something that was really important to me. I did something about it on my own.
Well, the OP doesn’t mention where in Illinois he is going to school, but Naperville (suburb of Chicago) recently finished building a high school that, at the time and perhaps still, was the most expensive high school built in the country. I’m sure they have computer labs a plenty for your needs. Come to think of it, all of my experiences with the schools in DuPage county pretty much shows them to kick ass.
Stop your whining and cope. People grew up to be intelligent and articulate in one room school houses on the fucking prairie so I’m sure you can make due with your miserable Midwestern education if you try to learn something instead of crying.
“I guess one person can make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn’t.”
Unless, of course, you want to go on to a good college, where they’re actually going to ask you to think. The #1 gripe among college professors is that kids come with nothing but a head full of memorized facts, and the professors have to spend time teaching them how to actually synthesize information (the high school’s job).
Based on standardized test scores…this is exactly my point.
What easy route?
Oh, I forgot for a moment that being as privelaged as I am gives me no right to ever complain about any hardships in my life.
Oh, see, my graduating class has over 600 people.
Memorization impresses you that much?
Oh please. The last thing I need is to be “pampered and coddled.” You’re making an assumption about me here, and I’m not even going to hazard a guess as to why.
If I had grievances not commonly identified with midwestern educational dogma, then I wouldn’t make the generalization. But I do.
“History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.” -Winston Churchill
Of course you want to be pampered and coddled. You bitched about tardy policies and talking in class. They’re called rules and they’re put there so people can actually learn and not go running wild or whatever they let you do at your school.
And yes, knowing the hydronegativities and other facts of the elements does impress me. It’s damn hard to learn all that. You don’t think so, try it sometime. It also impressed me that he understood the concepts we were dealing with and taught us to think things through in real life situations. Oh my god, he taught us to think. And so did my World Lit teacher, who asked us what we thought about The Iliad or Hamlet or The Metamorphoses.
Or my American History teacher, who played “What if” with my class, having us think of what would happen if this event or that event in history had not happened.
But of course I must have been dreaming I went to a high school like this. I live in the Midwest. They couldn’t possibly have a place that gives an education that good. Nope, we’re all just a bunch of yokels out here that can’t teach and can’t learn for shit.
And since you were so good to mention a good college - Indiana has two of the best. Purdue University is revered as a great engimeering school and Indiana University is the school Watson of Watson and Crick got his Ph.D. at and where Kevin Kline learned theater. I hardly would call them uneducated.
And many people from Indiana attend these good colleges. So what’s your explanation? We’re a bunch of idiots that can’t get into a good college according to you, because our school systems just suck ass that much.
So take your stereotypes and high handed East Coast attitude and shove it up your ass. I’m glad you’re going back there soon. The Midwest doesn’t need people like you stinking it up.
When are you going to realize being normal isn’t necessarily a good thing?
I’ve been disgusted by Montreal’s schools. You’d think it would get better in university but it doesn’t. Their method for grading labs is the following:
Labs are on a very elementary level because the equipment to do labs that are on our level woul be too expensive. This means that the lab tests, if they were fair, would be a insult to everyone’s intelligence. BUT you can’t have everyone getting A+'s so instead of putting harder questions on the tests they just make them more vague, intentionally misleading or just plain stupid. On paper it looks good because you have a nice bell curve. Of course your knowledge has nothing to do with your mark. They’ll often ask trick questions or historical questions. (Who was the first person to perform this experiment? Who gives a damn! I’m here to learn physics not history!)
The same thing happens in a lot of classes. If too many people are doing well on the tests, instead of putting more advanced questions, they put questions that are worth a lot of marks that are really long and require a lot of algebra so that people will make algebra mistakes and lose marks. On paper it looks real good because the average drops to where it’s supposed to be.
I know a guy who thought he was smarter than his teachers all through high school…still does. And he may be,who knows or cares? He’s currently making 5.50 cents an hour in a lacky job because he failed to catch the subtle people/life skills that many teachers include along with academic lessons taught. He was just too damn smart.
Maybe some of our teachers ain’t Ensteins and some should not be in education at all that’s for sure…but the majority of them have done what you ain’t…educated themselves to gainful employment. That means selling themselves to a superintendent,board of potiential peers(a committee of teachers who participate in hiring)and finally their principals. After that they have to deal with an ever changing public that waffles between hating them and loving them ( many times it depends on the grade their son or daughters are making at the time). Then there are the local politics to deal with. In the bible belt you better belong to the right church or many times you don’t get hired. You better not be seen in the wrong place or drinking/buying a beer or your job is fucked and all that education goes out the window. If you apply corporal punishment ( if your local board has ok’d it) you better fucking well have some backup because there is an excellant chance you will have the pants sued off you. Oh and let’s not forget that you are professionally evaluated twice a year so you better damn well have a dog and poney show to put on for your evaluator or your handed a “plan of improvement” in which you have, one week to comply or your job is fucked. So next time you see a teacher shake his/her fucking hand instead of running the down. Oh and one last thing.
Fortunately there is more to making a success in your life than just being smart and studying chess and the classics…modesty and humility are just two for starters.
Nothing personal George but this is the fucking BBQ pit.
“I’m the best there is Fats. Even if you beat me, I’m still the best.”
(Paul Newman in The Hustler)
Rousseau:
You should thank your lucky stars you are going to school in Illinois in the '90s rather than in Indiana in the mid-1970s. My old-fashioned high school emphasized nothing but the basics – even those students preparing for college had limited choices for electives.
I hated high school at the time, but you know what? I’ve found out that my classmates who were bright and/or worked hard know a helluva lot more than many graduates of big city schools that were little more than playpens because of “progressive education.”
Memorization of facts is important. You won’t get far if you are a computer programmer who doesn’t know the syntax of a language, a chemist who cannot remember the periodic table or a musician who cannot remember what those funny phrases mean. An education is not something handed to you; it is a process, and you get back only what you put into it. Also, in order to think, you must have something to think about.
Don’t like standardized test scores? Nobody does, but they are the best means society has been able to devise to measure whether kids are learning. When you get out of college, you are going to have to work for people who will hold you to THEIR standards. Learn to deal with it.
Also, IIRC, New Jersey spends a ton of money on education, but strangely, its students seem to lag behind the rest of the nation on those hideous standardized tests.
Finally, I agree with TaleraRis. You are just another goddamn East Coast snob who thinks the whole universe revolves around the Big Apple and The District. I’ve got news for you, kid; it doesn’t.
(TaleraRis: a minor caveat. Indiana actually has four world-class universities. You forgot to mention Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and Notre Dame.)
I’m detecting some issues here, Talera. I won’t delve into it.
Explain to me how wanting to be treated like an adult is the same as wanting to be pampered and coddled. Cause they seem like polar opposites to me.
Don’t you understand that memorizing and learning are not the same thing? What if I devoted the next month of my life to memorizing hydronegativities. I would have spent a month memorizing something that I can always look up. “Learning” is being able to come up with things that aren’t printed on tables.
Purdue and IU are two of the best schools in the nation? Say what? The US News and World Report in 1999 had both of them in the second tier of national universities, both with 3.8 academic reputations (out of 5). I’m not saying that there aren’t good schools in the Midwest (the University of Chicago is the highest ranked midwestern school at #13, Northwestern is good, and so is Washington University, as well as Notre Dame, and the U of M). Purdue and IU just aren’t the best examples.
No, I didn’t say that. I said that once they get to college, they get their asses handed to them by people who have been taught to think instead of memorize.
Me too.
Oh, please let me stay. Peyote:
And it’s that kind of thing that some school systems out here refuse to let go of. And that’s my basic grievance here. I’m not saying that no progress has been made, but that it’s time for some of the schools out here to catch up and enter the 21st century.
“History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.” -Winston Churchill
Aww, c’mon guys. Leave Rouss alone. She’s a moron incapable of formulating logical arguments and is thus reduced to supporting her side of the argument using cloudy value statements and citing something she once heard from someone who had abunch of initials after their names.