Doesn’t always work… I went to a private school, which was as much a bastion of teenage alcoholism, misogyny, homophobia, and terrorism as a good deal of what I could have come up with in a public school here in Mtl.
(Do public school teachers ever try to force their students to drink dilute hydrochloric acid, while getting the rest of the students to chant “DRINK IT! DRINK IT!”?)
At least the education was prestigious.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with public schools. In fact, there’s a lot of things inherently * right * about them (they sure as hell straightened me out). As mentioned, my public high school offered me a better academic education than any of the private schools nearby, and was one of the two or three best high schools for the arts in the country. And it all happened because they got sufficient funding. Fund our public schools, run them the way they should be, and all this nonsense about school vouchers and whatnot will disappear.
I concur that there need to be changes made in American high schools.
I went to a large, suburban Dallas high school that prized conformity, and expected it, no matter what the cost to the student. Over my four-year high school career, I was forced to contend with a lot of kids who tormented me because I was “different”. The administration, forced to manage over 2000 kids, rarely, if ever, got involved unless there were physical assaults. The counselor I thought I could trust took the attitude that it was somehow my fault that I was different. As if I could drop my IQ, my intellectual interests, or my religion. If I were in HS today, I’d probably be targeted as one who would commit a violent act.
I don’t think it should come as a surprise that I and several of my fellow nonconformists spent time in the local psych hospital being treated for depression, or that school was the root cause. It’s easy to conform when you’re on Prozac! Toward the end, I said screw it, and didn’t graduate. I don’t regret that one bit.
Robin
I go to a private high school, but I went to a public middle school. I was suspended once for having a lighter on me and it was considered “terrorist paraphernalia (sp?)”. The following year I was suspended again because someone else made homemade darts and was shooting them at people, and I happened to be one of those shot, so when I pulled the dart out of my skin I was in possession of a “dangerous weapon”. What a load of crap.
At my high school someone started a rumor that someone was going to bring a bomb to one of the football games. The school took appropriate measures (Police, dogs, that kind of stuff), but the game went on. It turns out it was a malicious rumor aimed at hurting a a student that a group of people didn’t like. They didn’t get in much trouble, but eventually every one of these students were expelled for various reasons…what a big surprise.
{{long sigh}}
Where to begin?
How about a quick trip to the bottom line?
Public schools (for whatever reason) do not educate. They do not get results. High school students graduate with diplomas they can’t even READ fer cryin’ out loud.
How about starting at the top and eliminating the worst parasites on the educational system-politicians, both federal and state. Then move right on in, and hack out SUPERINTENDENTS. These clowns are paid upwards of $100k per year(not including their support staff structure and golden parachute options)to do nothing but OBFUSCATE. Get rid of 'em. Return education to the control of the local school boards and the parents.
That would be a start.
Where the hell did you pull this nonsense from? Or do you really believe it?
The “Adminstrative” structure of the public school system in this country is a bottomless pit when it comes to sucking up public funds. No matter how much money we give them, very little (if any) of it filters down to benefit schoolchildren. Instead, it is used to provide increases in pay and benefits to the administrative layer (that portion that is not squandered on lawsuits by the teachers unions).
1)A meaningless ad hominem attack devoid of any substantive argument.
2)An indication that you are a product of the public education system
3)All of the above.
Multiple choice. Should be easy.
So, what you’re saying is that we should remove the (usually) dedicated people who have devoted most of their lives to educating students, and who are trained to do so, and install in their stead people who are popularly elected, who often have agendas of their own, be they liberal, conservative, or God knows what, and who may not even be an accurate representation of their communities? And, while we’re at it, let’s also give control to parents, where the majority of them trust the schools to raise their kids for them? Somehow, I don’t think I want my kids to go to a school that’s managed by the likes of a Sheila Brovlofsky. (Note reference to South Park) (Further note: I do not actually have kids. I am being hypothetical here.)
I’m not saying there aren’t problems in American high schools. As I previously posted, there are. There is no instant fix that works in every situation, every district, every time. I also don’t think the schools should be run by people who have an interest in using the schools to propagate a particular agenda. This goes for liberal as well as for conservative. As for parents, yes, I do think parents belong in their kids’ education process. However, the reality is that many parents aren’t that active in that process. It takes a lot of time and commitment to successfully run a school. Most parents don’t have it.
Robin
Hmm Sneevil, let’s think about this. My former high school was one of the best in the country. It was because it had lots of money, and could therefore provide for a good education.
I also happen to have educators–both teachers and administrators–for 3 parents (step-mother), 4 grandparents, and a few great-grandparents. They’ve worked in both public and private schools of all natures. I therefore spent a good bit of my childhood hanging around schools (besides regualar attendance–parents were working late, so I ended up hanging around) learning all the internal politics and administrative decisions and whatnot. It also happened to be the dinner table conversation topic 3 nights out of 4. I think just * maybe * I have some idea of what I’m talking about…THAT’S where I came up with that.
If you want a perfect example, I give you Baltimore. Baltimore County–where I went to school–provides a good bit of money into the school systems, though not enough (my high school found an outside grant). The quality of education far outweighs the general level in Baltimore city–which does not provide enough money for building repair, textbooks, a decent salary. There are a few exceptsions of course–School for the Arts, City College, and Poly are all exceptional (however, these schools all receive greatly increased funding)–but on an average level, Baltimore Co is far better than the city.
Now, if you know anything about the area–which you might–you’ll want to argue that the demographics are different; the city has much more crime, poverty, and other problems that can interfere w/ education. But here’s the kicker: the Montgomery County schools (or is it PG county–my mind is blanking…it’s the ones around Rockville and all) kick ass. The demographics there are pretty comparable to the County, but they provide heavy funding, and have nationally recognized theatre program, and an even higher standard of education than the County or City.
And it’s directly correlated to funding. Of course the money has to be managed well, but when the money is there–in generall–good things are done with it.
Amen to that. You won’t get any argument from me. It would seem that the purpose of the public education system is obvious-to EDUCATE! When that purpose is hijacked by any “special interest” group, the goal (and the students) suffer. Reference the federal program “Goals 2000”.
School systems are funded locally, by property taxes. They should be controlled locally-by the local school boards in concert with parents. When layer after layer of federal and state bureaucracy (and expense) are added to satisy each national and state special interest group, the system becomes a battleground for competing ideologies. Remove the bureaucracy and use the funds effectively.
When local school boards and parents cannot set scholastic agendas because of conflict with some federal or state regulation/prohibition you wind up with the current mess. Now the big brother/big government folks will argue that local schools need ‘oversight’ from the feral and state governments. They don’t trust local voters/taxpayers/parents to make informed and intelligent decisions about their own children’s education-the “It Takes a Village” mentality. Au contraire! If local people can’t be trusted, what makes any reasonable person think distant bureaucrats will? Or have any incentive to do anything that does not directly benefit them?
That’s nice, Myrr, but for people like me( I live in a small college town known as Delaware, Ohio), we’re about SOL because the residents of this town don’t want to give money to the schools. It took us five times to get a bond issue passed just to renovate our high school that has been needing repairs for about the past 10 years. I just graduated this June, and as far as I could tell by being there for the past four years, at least half of our teachers are nearing retirement and most of them really have almost given up on trying to teach us anything. I only had two or three teachers who I would consider “good” teahcers and I believe the only reason for that was that all of them had had previous jobs in the fields they had degrees for before becoming teachers. I know some really nice high schools, there’s one in New York that a friend of mine goes to that’s excellent, but here where I live, it’s very hard to find decent schools because nobody wants to give money to the schools. Unfortunately, that’s the way it is in a lot of places. Things will change soon, but it won’t happen overnight. I just have to hope for better when I start college in January.
See, this is why the federal govt should be bending over it’s ass to send money to every damn public school system in America. I agree that the schools should be controlled locally (and despise this pathetic trend towards standardized testing; the teachers need to be the ones setting standards)–although they should have some oversight from above. Balance of power–same thing behind the layout of our government. That said, there needs to be a lot of money coming in on a national level, to prevent the aforementioned problem. Fr example, I know a few people screwed over by Florida schools because there is no interest in funding them (given the large retiree population–who aren’t sending children to the schools, and therefore don’t want to pay for them).
These are probably the same idiots who complain about those damn punk kids!
ARGH! I hate people like that!
Well, kiss social security good bye, grampa, because now we gotta use that money to put these kids who didn’t have a chance in prison.
(Sorry, as a former education major, this stuff pisses me off to no end!)
Between bricks falling on students’ heads, arguments escalating into stabbings and gun shooting, girls as young as five getting raped or sexually assaulted by their schoolmates, I say that we are not paranoid enough. We should stop giving parents a free ride in the blame breakdown in schools. There were crime problems in the Reagan/Bush era too.
There is a huge summer school program in New york City, yet only 60-70% of the children attend classes regularly. The chancellor should mean business and fail all the truants, and maybe investigate the parents too for educational neglect.
On the other hand, Capacitor, paranoia is not just any old paranoia, and kicking out goths for being goth is not going to prevent your five year olds from being raped or force your 30% of truants to show up.
I teach in a suburban elementary school near Cleveland. It was built in the '70’s when “open classrooms” were all the rage. The classrooms are divided into four “pods” or groups of classrooms “open” to each other – now – to varying degrees. In recent years, locking doors have been installed in the entranceways to each of the pods. In addition to fire and tornado drills, we also practice “emergency” drills. During these drills, the shades are pulled, the lights are turned off, the pod doors are locked, and the students are instructed to crouch under their desks and cover their heads. Do I feel this is overkill? (Pun intended) No. I feel a tad safer.
There is now supposed to beonly one door through which visitors can enter the building, but I often find some of the other doors left unlocked. Some of the other teachers – obviously – do believe it’s gone too far. I understand that these precautions aren’t going to keep us completely safe, but it’s better than nothing. Heck, I’d feel better if we had a security guard at the door!
As I said, I don’t believe this is overkill – not when a third grade student was recently caught with a fairly large knife and a fifth grader kept an updated “hit list.” It’s difficult to teach reading when we don’t feel safe. (And, btw, not one of my students has ever left my classroom not knowing how to read.)
Well, that’s the other problem with this whole “accountability” thing; teachers are being held responsible for things that aren’t their problem. Teachers who fail too many people will be reprimanded, as if it were their fault. One of my teachers (the year after I had her) failed a good bit of her class because they didn’t earn passing grades. It happens–even to the best teachers; you sometimes just get classes full of people who refuse to do work–even in the better schools. Some students will look a teacher in the eye and say “no, i won’t do my work”. Well, said teacher was forced to raise everybody’s grade and write out an apology-- * for giving students the grades they earned. * So yes, damn straight they need to get serious about dealing with problem students.
Kicking out the goths and people who happen to like to wear trenchcoats isn’t going to change anything. My group of friends almost all wear trenchcoats–though we were lucky enough to be a year or two out of high school when Columbine happened. These are some of the most non-violent, passive people I know. Some of them also have dyed hair, and we all spend lots of time shooting people in Counterstrike. None of these people would ever shoot a person, and only two of us even know how to use a gun. We’re not a threat–but we would all be nailed in a high school today. Of course, I might escape because I’m a “jock” (well, not really, but I do play sports) and dress normally, but what about the guy who wears all black–simply for practical reasons (never have to worry about matching, and he works backstage in a theater all the time)? Should he be harassed by administrators and possible expelled, in the name of a false sense of safety? I think not.
I just graduated from high school. I went to a school of about 1,100. Small town mentality. Fairly prosperous. One of the things that they started doing was making the teachers wear ID badges at all times. Next year I think they’re going to make the students do the same thing. What that solves I’m not sure.
I will tell you, though, that one the anniversary of columbine about a quarter of the school stayed home. I went, and the whole atmosphere was… scary. One of the times I didn’t feel safe there.
The other time was when several groups were fighting and there was a rumor that someone was going to bring in a gun. About a third of the school stayed home. Again, I didn’t. And someone brought in a BB gun. Nothing happened, but… yeah.
My school has security guards and a police officers. Sometimes we have a whole bunch of 'em.
There came to be a sense of paranioa at school. I was one of the freaks- in theater, openly gay. I sat at a lunch table with “the queers and the freaks”. As in, theater rats, people with dyed hair/piercings, and other “unsavory” types.
We got more attention paid to us than the table of Aryan nation/KKK boys did.
My 'rents are both teachers. Actually, my dad retired this year after 35 yrs teaching middle school. My mom teaches mentally retarded kids. They generally agree that my dad had the much harder job.
One of the problems of the public school system is that teachers don’t get paid jack shit. Someone coming out of college can make quite a bit more in business or some other field than they can in education. So… a lot of people who start out teachers don’t end up teaching. Also, the whole “accountability” movement is fucking absurd. About 40 percent of all teachers are going to be retiring in the next five years. Public education is going to suck even more, because schools will start hiring even more underqualified people.
One of the things in Columbine, I think, was that there was a complete denial that there was a problem. The “trenchcoat mafia” was constantly tormented, beaten up on, ect. No one did anything. Insert two unstable people…
I have a friend who lives in Colorado. She’s in the same school system as Columbine, and she knew someone who was wounded. She told me once that she blames the system more than the people. I don’t know.
ramble,
andygirl
Andygirl said:
Yeah, my school requires students to wear ID badges. The teachers can send you to the office for not wearing yours. It’s stupid. I mean, is someone who is planning on shooting up the school going to be stopped by the teacher telling them to go to the office for not wearing their ID? I don’t think so. If they want to make it effective, check EVERYONE at the door. No ID, you have to buy one right there or go home with an unexcused absence. If you are going to require students to do something stupid, at least make it effective.
BTW, you people are all lucky this thread wasn’t a year or so ago, because I was PO’ed at my school about this whole ID thing.
I’m going to recap some of the points that have been made so I can keep them straight in my mind:
[ul]
[li]Bring the power of schooling back to a local level, but do not return to a school board system.[/li]
This I agree with. The Kansas situation has illustrated some of the flaws of the popularly elected school board system.
[li]Ease the accountability of the teacher and go back to judging students on their merits.[/li]
I wholeheartedly agree with this one. Even at a college level this was a problem. There was a “quota” a teacher had to meet in A students, B students, etc. If a teacher had too many A students, it’s not because he’s a good teacher, but because he’s too easy. So rather than judging students individually on their scores, teachers would use the Bell curve system so students would fall ointo the proper percentages. I know that I deserved B+'s in many of my college classes, but the scale system often pushed me up into the A range.
I also agree that it is the responsibility of the parent, and not the system, to ensure that students attend and do their homework. I was a normal kid and tried my best to coast through school. It’s only because my parents nagged me about homework that I did it.
[li]Stop relying on standardized tests[/li]
Absolutely. The current system rewards the schools with extra funding for having higher standardized scores. With money on the line, why would any school keep band, drama, art, wood shop, auto shop, etc if these programs can not contribute to the standardized tests. In fact, it would be in a schools best interest to eliminate these programs and implement more classes that can contribute to standardized test scores. That may be in the school’s best interest, but it’s not in the student’s.
Also, the funding system is too easily manipulated. One Houston school was caught doctoring tests.
Also, I believe that by determining standards on a federal level and not a local level sitfles innovation. You have to give the teachers room to use their imagination and use the methods that work best for them.
[li]One item I haven’t seen mentioned is school size. If you have administrators that are too busy to deal with problems slide until they escalate into violence, then you need to either reduce the size of the school or increase the number of the adminstrators.[/li]
I have also heard good preliminary evidence for the benefit of smaller class sizes.
[/ul]