# Proposed plan for the US HS education curriculum. Tell me why this will not work **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 10, 2011, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proposed-plan-for-the-us-hs-education-curriculum-tell-me-why-this-will-not-work/599145 "2011-10-10T03:07:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![thelabdude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/dc4da7/32.png) [@thelabdude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelabdude)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2011, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proposed-plan-for-the-us-hs-education-curriculum-tell-me-why-this-will-not-work/599145/21 "2011-10-10T20:51:36Z")
I attended parent meetings when my youngest was in highschool. The principal went on and on about kids skipping class over 20 days a semester ans still passing the course. She didn’t like my suggestion that the kids were making a sound decision on the use of their time. Would there be a big downside to ending such charades? Back in the 60’s, I think it was UP the Down Staircase where the author suggested the primary function of an education should be to equip the kids with a built in, shock proof bullshit detector. Hasn’t been done. It would interfer with the political indoctrination that is the goal of much of our educational establishment. ---
**Author:** ![Tastes\_of\_Chocolate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tastes_of_chocolate/32/3232_2.png) [@Tastes\_of\_Chocolate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tastes_of_Chocolate)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2011, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proposed-plan-for-the-us-hs-education-curriculum-tell-me-why-this-will-not-work/599145/22 "2011-10-10T21:41:26Z")
> [@astro](#): > > Many US students are loaded up with absurd amounts of homework. Homework will be limited to 1 hour per night total for all students. How to parcel this out between subject areas relative to student ability will have to be worked out. Possibly only one subject area will be able to assign homework per night. ALL homework assignments will have to be placed online and accessible by teachers and students. What’s wrong with homework? Math, spelling and languages benefit from drilling. Science, history, and literature all benefit from sitting down and just reading. If the only exposure a student gets is during class, then all you will ever get is very rudimentary learning. The class can’t move any faster than the students can read or the instructor can lecture. By having student read text books outside of school time, they are exposing themselves to the ideas first, which is reinforced and clarified by the teacher during class. Rather than stint on the learning, I’d rather see less extra curricular activities, if a kid has to much going on. At this age, their job is to learn the skills they will need. ---
**Author:** ![Typo\_Knig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/cdc98d/32.png) [@Typo\_Knig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Knig)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2011, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proposed-plan-for-the-us-hs-education-curriculum-tell-me-why-this-will-not-work/599145/23 "2011-10-10T22:16:22Z")
> [@Tastes\_of\_Chocolate](#): > > What’s wrong with homework? Math, spelling and languages benefit from drilling. Science, history, and literature all benefit from sitting down and just reading. If the only exposure a student gets is during class, then all you will ever get is very rudimentary learning. The class can’t move any faster than the students can read or the instructor can lecture. By having student read text books outside of school time, they are exposing themselves to the ideas first, which is reinforced and clarified by the teacher during class. There is no evidence that homework helps learning in elementary school students. With all the pressure from standardized tests, kids are getting homework in elementary school - even kindergarten!?!! 😕 There is plenty of evidence that homework helps learning in secondary and post-secondary students. My son gave the “homework doesn’t help kids” line back to our family therapist when he started high school, and she said he was old enough now that there was proof homework helped, so he better start doing his assignments. The look of betrayal on his face was priceless. 😃 > [@Tastes\_of\_Chocolate](#): > > Rather than stint on the learning, I’d rather see less extra curricular activities, if a kid has to much going on. At this age, their job is to learn the skills they will need. I mostly agree with you, but part of education these days is teaching a healthy lifestyle - including exercise. The hope is this generation won’t be a bunchy of pasty couch potatoes, like me. ☹ Also, you can leverage extra-curricular activities for education purposes. “If you don’t keep up your grades you can’t play” is a great motivator for athletically-inclined kids. ---
**Author:** ![Typo\_Knig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/cdc98d/32.png) [@Typo\_Knig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Knig)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2011, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proposed-plan-for-the-us-hs-education-curriculum-tell-me-why-this-will-not-work/599145/24 "2011-10-10T22:28:17Z")
> [@CitizenPained](#): > > **Typo Knig** (haha), I agree that NCLB has done great things for SPED. But…it’s also created a few problems with admin and teachers because of the hoops we jump through that are sometimes unnecessary/underfunded/time-consuming/unfair (so now all IEP kids have practically the same IEP instead of it being actually individualized, or we have to keep a violent disruptive student in school b/c he is ADHD with an unspecified LD). > > It costs A LOT of friggin money to pay for the schooling of: sped, behavior issues, dropout recovery, and (sometimes, depending on model) ESL. From my point of view as a parent, NCLB had zero to do with Special Ed. Special Ed law dates back at least to eh 1970s, NCLB was a GWB initiative. I remember it took a lot of effort to get Special Ed students included in the NCLB scoring in a rational way. The original NCLB would have shafted schools with a lot of special ed kids who were not progressing on “schedule”. You’re a teacher, so you would know for real. Yes, the Special Ed paperwork is a heavy burden. My school district does not do a cookie-cutter approach, but I think more of a cafeteria approach to IEPs. > [@CitizenPained](#): > > The biggest strain on schools is figuring out how to pass kids who can’t read on to the next level/graduate because any dropouts will affect their ‘numbers’. Oooh, can’t do that! Gotta give Johnny with a 2nd grade reading level a diploma, even though he can’t add fractions! Johnny, of course, speaks English as a first language and has no IEP. > > I’ve seen kids being over-diagnosed with stuff when imho it’s a matter of ‘haven’t been taught’, not ‘can’t learn’. > > Your son, however, really did qualify for those things and (unfortunately?) he’s one of the few who have benefited from NCLB. One of the problems with NCLB is the pressure to promote to meet targets. Didn’t conservatives consider “social promotion” a bad idea in the 60s? 😕 ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proposed-plan-for-the-us-hs-education-curriculum-tell-me-why-this-will-not-work/599145/25 "2011-10-11T00:04:39Z")
> [@thelabdude](#): > > I attended parent meetings when my youngest was in highschool. The principal went on and on about kids skipping class over 20 days a semester ans still passing the course. She didn’t like my suggestion that the kids were making a sound decision on the use of their time. Would there be a big downside to ending such charades?.. I graduated in 2003 and anyone who had 20 or more unexcused absences _a year_ automatically failed & had to repeat a grade (at least in high school). If you were 16 or older you were dropped from the rolls and not even allowed to finish out the school year. Our school handbooks had a whole section on PA’s school attendance laws. As soon you turned 16 you could legally drop out (15 if you had a job), and the district could expel you for extremely serious misconduct without having to provide any educational alternative. AFAIK this is still true. I knew one kid who got sent to the “alternative school” for truancy; he did not like (& later ended up dropping out and getting his GED). One of my neices also did her time there about 2 years ago. Looking back the only HS class that was really a total waste of time was gym. The boys PE teachers were all huge assholes, couldn’t teach worth a damn, and were actively resentful towards having to deal with unatheletic boys. They were hired for their coaching abilities, and considered “teaching” gym a distraction. I was actually told “It’s not my job to teach you anything”. All they would do is have everyone go outside to play touch football or stay inside to play basketball depending on the weather while they did paperwork or went over game plans. No instruction at all. Same deal every class except for fitness tests at the begining & end of the year or the occasional joint activity with the girls. Sometimes we’d be allowed to choose which teacher’s activity we did. I always chose the girls’ teacher. She would do really strange stuff like pick different activities, explain the rules, or actually pay attention to the game. :eek: She event tried to circut training, but the administration shut her down because we “weren’t learning anything” (ie they didn’t want regular students putting wear on the exercise machines). Oh, and there was never any atempt to seperate students by age or ability. You just got assigned to whatever gym class fit into your schedule so each class had a random mix of freshmen, sophmores, & seniors. ---
**Author:** ![Farmer\_Jane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Farmer\_Jane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farmer_Jane)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proposed-plan-for-the-us-hs-education-curriculum-tell-me-why-this-will-not-work/599145/26 "2011-10-11T00:15:06Z")
> [@Alley\_Dweller](#): > > The idea of a national curriculum or textbook terrifies me. > What would happen is that every four to eight years the textbooks would be rewritten to state, alternatingly, that: > > - Adam and Eve rode their dinosaur to church every Sunday, FDR ruined the economy, and Reagan set us on a course to prosperity. > - We are the products of a genetic mutation in monkeys, FDR saved the economy, and Reagan set it on a course to ruin. > > And before you say that this would never happen, remember that at the beginning of every Republican presidential debate the candidates are required to raise their right hands in response to the question “Do you believe in Creationism?” One of these people has a 50/50 chance of being our next leader. > > Under the current system, we have to [sacrifice Texas school children](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/texas-schoolbook-massacre-rewrites-american-history-1929320.html) (and that is tragic), but at least some of us have the choice to produce reasonably educated children. If it were to go under Senate and congressional review, then what? Is that better? Or at the very last, have national graduation standards. EVERY STUDENT MUST take this core material in xyz grade and needs pdq to graduate. Counselors across the country would agree: transferring students is a pain in the ass! Texas already has a monopoly on education. Publishers have to cater to them, anyway. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proposed-plan-for-the-us-hs-education-curriculum-tell-me-why-this-will-not-work/599145/27 "2011-10-11T01:25:07Z")
> [@CitizenPained](#): > > If it were to go under Senate and congressional review, then what? Is that better? Or at the very last, have national graduation standards. EVERY STUDENT MUST take this core material in xyz grade and needs pdq to graduate. Counselors across the country would agree: transferring students is a pain in the ass! > > Texas already has a monopoly on education. Publishers have to cater to them, anyway. I think that’s a little overstated. Publishers have to cater to California as well, which is an even bigger market. ---
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proposed-plan-for-the-us-hs-education-curriculum-tell-me-why-this-will-not-work/599145/28 "2011-10-11T02:24:25Z")
> [@astro](#): > > You are seriously telling me I could not get a powerful server site up and running, and then get a full complement of originally sourced, high quality instructional digital texts and testing materials produced covering all relevant ability levels (remedial to advanced) for grades 9-12 in subjects areas covering math, science, history, English, Spanish etc. by the best educational instructional writers in US secondary education **for fifty million dollars**. Yeah, seriously I’m saying that. Technology is cheap. You could probably rent the infrastructure from Amazon for a lot cheaper than $50 million. Intellectual Property (IP) is expensive. For $50 million dollars of IP, each supplier gets a measly $12.50 from each kid in the example above. That’s a single subject for a single grade. Let’s say just nine through 12 have 6 subjects each, and that’s 52¢ per kid. Who’s going to license their IP for so very little? Or if you’re going to pay someone for original research, who’s going to work for so very little? > [@](#): > > I guess we’re going to have to agree to disagree. In fact I’m going to also bet a lot of what we need to fill that server already exists via various authors and could be bought outright for reasonable prices. Not necessarily. Just show me where you’d buy the stuff. And stay current. ---
**Author:** ![MsRobyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/90ced4/32.png) [@MsRobyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsRobyn)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 11:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proposed-plan-for-the-us-hs-education-curriculum-tell-me-why-this-will-not-work/599145/29 "2011-10-11T11:18:37Z")
> [@Tastes\_of\_Chocolate](#): > > What’s wrong with homework? Math, spelling and languages benefit from drilling. Science, history, and literature all benefit from sitting down and just reading. If the only exposure a student gets is during class, then all you will ever get is very rudimentary learning. The class can’t move any faster than the students can read or the instructor can lecture. By having student read text books outside of school time, they are exposing themselves to the ideas first, which is reinforced and clarified by the teacher during class. If you rely on homework, you’ll get rudimentary learning. Homework assumes that a) the child will do it, b) that the child has the materials he needs to do it, including the textbook, Internet/computer, and whatever else he needs to do the assignment, and c) that the parents are on board. In any event, what do you do when the child is stuck, needs help, and the parents can’t help for whatever reason? Besides, in some disciplines, the textbook is bullshit anyway. I’ve got a stack of social studies textbooks that I wouldn’t use because, despite the fact that they’re pretty, they’re boring, watered-down, and mindless. (And, yes, I have read them, or at least parts of them, before I came to that conclusion.) Good teaching isn’t about making busywork for teachers or for students, and that’s what the textbook-and-questions model is. It’s about finding ways to engage students so they want to learn. It’s far more interesting and fun to read historical documents to prepare for a mock trial, or to form a model government or economy based on hypothetical criteria, or to put a historical artifact in front of them and have them figure out what it is and how it was used. These types of activities teach critical thinking, and if they don’t learn dates, names, places, and other isolated facts, so what? That’s what a good reference book is for. ---
**Author:** ![rbroome](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/838e76/32.png) [@rbroome](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rbroome)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 11:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proposed-plan-for-the-us-hs-education-curriculum-tell-me-why-this-will-not-work/599145/30 "2011-10-11T11:59:39Z")
> [@astro](#): > > For a relatively rich country we really don’t seem to be doing all that well compared to less affluent countries in overall educational attainment, or making sure our children are prepared for life. > > I would propose the following changes to the US educational curriculum. > Education beyond the age of 16 will be a privilege not right. If you are physically disruptive you can be tossed out of school and there will be no special schools safety net to catch you. If you want out of school the door will be open for you to leave. If you choose to be truant you can also be told to leave. > > After the age of 16, if you choose to, you can take challenge tests and graduate early. > > If you are convinced that high school is not for you, you can leave at any time after the age of 16. > > All reading and test materials will be available online. A full digital copy set of all the books necessary for every subject in a standard high school education will be made available free of charge to all school systems in the US by the US government. If a school chooses to offer courses not in the US set that is perfectly, OK but they will pay for these books themselves and they will have to provide digital copies of these material online at their own expense. > > Many US students are loaded up with absurd amounts of homework. Homework will be limited to 1 hour per night total for all students. How to parcel this out between subject areas relative to student ability will have to be worked out. Possibly only one subject area will be able to assign homework per night. ALL homework assignments will have to be placed online and accessible by teachers and students. > > Students may choose to take math courses focusing on practical business math without having to take algebra and still receive a degree. > > Where practical all parents shall be emailed often with updates as to their child’s progress, missing assignments, etc. > > One exercise class will be required daily for all students. You do not have to choose a sport, you can walk around the track if you choose. But you must exercise. If you are physically handicapped commonsense provisions will be made for your physical limitations. why not compromise and change the age to 18? That way you won’t have to make any changes at all. All the components you list are basicly there already. If you don’t like math/PE or other things-get a GED. Problem solved. ---
**Author:** ![Pai325](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c68b51/32.png) [@Pai325](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pai325)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proposed-plan-for-the-us-hs-education-curriculum-tell-me-why-this-will-not-work/599145/31 "2011-10-11T12:11:47Z")
An hour of homework a night? When I taught (math) I would give homework that some kids finished at school, some took another ten minutes or so at home, and some (according to their parents) struggled until midnight to finish. Who gets to decide what an hour of homework is? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proposed-plan-for-the-us-hs-education-curriculum-tell-me-why-this-will-not-work/599145.md?page=1)