I don’t know about everybody else, but at my high school it seems as though the teacher are more interested in babysitting us than they are in teaching us. I kinda feel as thoughwhen I go to college instead of being prepared I will be really far behind any one else had this problem? anyone in college had this problem and could help me?
Is this when we get to play “What forum will this thread be moved to?” Mindless Pointless or Humble Opinion? Hmm. Could go either way. I associate the phrase “high school” with mindless and pointless, but that is just my humble opinion. Don’t worry, Tazzy: it will all be over in a few years and things do get much, much better.
Little harsh on the new guy, new guy?
Relax Tazzy, college is just as much of a joke as high school. Only at college your main goal is to show up with a hang-over and act like your on the ball.
High School was cool for me. It was Junior High I felt in constant fear of my health. Which is why I do not understand the crazy shit that gets media attention. I would suspect a 6-8th grader to go postal, not a 9-12th grader.
IMHO, the only person you can depend on to help you get a good education is yourself. It’s sad that so many schools and teachers can’t or won’t help, but if you really want to benefit from your education, whether in high school, college, or anywhere else, you have to be the one to take the responsibility and initiative. You have to decide what you want to learn and when you want to learn it by.
If you do that, I’m convinced you’ll wind up ahead even if you’re in one of the worst schools in the nation. If you don’t do that, not even the best teachers or schools can help you.
Sounds hard? Yes, but the alternative is wasting the opportunity of being in school full-time. Once the pressures of a career or family get started, it’s often too late to do a lot of learning.
Good luck! Keep looking for people who will help you with your education, but depend on yourself.
Yup.
I went into college knowing next to nothing about how to conduct research or how to compose a scholarly thesis. And I had just about zero knowledge of world history.
At my high school there was a running contest to see who could make the administration pull their hair out the fastest. If it wasn’t the wannabe gangstas it was the goths. If it wasn’t the goths, it was the wannabe pimps. If it wasn’t the wannabe pimps… well, you get the idea. Needless to say, there was very little teaching going on, and what little teaching there was came from textbooks written in the sixties (I went to high school in the eighties).
And people laugh at me when I tell them that no child of mine will ever see the inside of a public school. :rolleyes:
No harshness intended, CnoteChris. More of a comment on how threads get bandied around from one forum to another; certainly not intended as hostility towards a fellow newbie. Of course, seems you’ve only been here a few months longer than either of us. Guess that big number next to your name makes all the difference…
Not at all, Sequent.
Considering that this was the fourth post that he/she had made, you could have at been at bit more kind and at least welcomed the new person.
Just pointing out something to you as well.
Thank you. Point taken. 
I disagree with some here. College was one of the greatest things I ever did - well, specifically, Engineering School was the greatest thing I ever did. High school was just killing time until College. If I knew then how easy the damn GED was, I would have taken it in 10th grade and escaped as soon as possible.
I think my experience is a little different than some. I think that people who go to a professional “School” within a University often have a better sense of identity, and of belonging. That is, Journalists, Engineers, Lawyers, Doctors, Artists, Education Majors, etc. It seems easy to get “lost” in the general Liberal Arts College Doldrums for some, which is very unfortunate.
Tazzy…if nobody’s told you, welcome to the SDMB. When I was in high school, people used to tell me, “kid, these are the best years of your life,” and they couldn’t have been more wrong. College marks an improvement, but your life is the real thing. In comparison to that, high school is a trifle. If you can enjoy that, you can educate yourself; school will take care of itself.
If high school was a joke, did I miss the punchline?
Seriously, I did learn some things in high school… they were overly arbitrary on their rules (as one teacher so bluntly pointed out by refering to the faculty meetings as Gestapo conventions). I had some excelent teachers, and I had some who didn’t know their burro from a burrow. Several were excelent though, and have motivated me to pursue a career in education… If I can inspire young students the way Mr Harrington and Ms. Atkinson did, I will feel I’m making a positive difference in the world.
Two more things:
- I went to the same school that Tazzy is at.
- They didn’t teach me proper english, as you can see by the end of the sentence in #1.
Tazzy,
GQ answer:
Once you are accpted to a university, it has a large incentive to keep you enrolled. Namely, if you drop out it affects their graduation rates. Universities understand that not all students are equally prepared for college. There are programs at most unversities to help out students who are less prepared. At the university I’m attending (UW-Madison) there is a writing center. If you have a paper to write you can go there for help with a thesis, research, and actually writing your paper. Also there are tutors for nearly every freshman level course. Teaching assitants are also an underutilized resource. Most have office hours once or twice a week. If you are having trouble you can go see them every week if you want.
IMHO/MPSIMS answer:
Lots of high schools are like this, you are not alone. I suspect you are nervous about the great unknown of college. If, in fact, your high school is especially bad, take heart in the fact that if are willing to work hard in college, and you are reasonably bright, you will succeed, despite your high school experience.
Don’t get me wrong here, I didn’t think high school was a joke either. Not that my grades reflect that…
But the posters concern seems to be with whether or not he/she will be prepared for that first year of college. Now regardless of which college he/she chooses to go to, you still have the first year of pre-requisites through.
The pre-requisites should bring the average student up to speed on what he/she will need to know in later years. At least that was my experience.
I had a blast the first few years, but really got down to learning only in the final years. By then, I was more than prepared and ready to take the classes that this poster might be afraid of getting his first year.
So, relax, you’re getting yourself anxious over what might be, not necessarily what is.
These two messages in the same thread, and y’all WONDER?
Teachers are expected to be teachers, babysitters, counselors, spies, secret police, drug enforcement authorities and college prep tutors. They are paid less to start than garbage collectors. They are given outdated materials and insufficient supplies. The government puts cash into making sure there are more computers in classrooms and doesn’t up the teachers’ salaries. The kids fight the teachers at every turn. The PARENTS fight the teachers at every turn. And you wonder why it’s hard to get a decent public high school education?
My eldest son started kindergarten this year. Two days after he started, he was sent home with a packet so he could sell gift wrap and candles and the like to help fund the school. They’re pimping FIVE-YEAR-OLDS to supplement their meager budget. I had to supply paper, scissors, crayons, markers, gluesticks, white glue…the teachers are pretty much given a classroom and a few teaching materials, and told to do the best with what they are given.
Despite all of this, I want to be a high school English teacher.
Why?
Because somewhere buried in the administrators who are trying to keep the peace, the parents who are so worried about little Johnny’s grades that they don’t notice he’s been shooting up with his friends for two years, the ones who expect the teachers to take responsibility for their little monsters beating each other up, and the kids who, far from thanking the teachers for doing this crap job for crap pay, actually actively work to make the teachers want to QUIT…there are kids out there who need to learn to speak and write proper English (including me, actually). I’m willing to try to get my foot in a few mental doors and at least attempt to make sure that the kids who WANT to learn CAN, despite everything working against them.
There are a lot of crappy teachers. They are NOT the biggest problem.
Certainly, some schools (high schools and colleges) are better than others. Expectations vary. But overall, you get out of school what you put into it. There’s probably a negative feedback loop of bored kids and frustrated teachers. Teachers that I have talked to (outside of the school environment) are generally excited about it at first until they become frustrated with having to deal with obnoxious kids. New teachers (those who are most excited about the job) are often assigned to the worst classes.
Anyway, education is important and your school years are a great opportunity on many levels. All you have to do is seize it.
Hi, Tazzy, and welcome to the Straight Dope Message Board.
A question seeking advice such as this one is best suited to our forum MPSIMS. I’ll move it there for you.
Not all high schools are all that bad, though I can see that perhaps your high school isn’t one ogf the greatest. Don’t take offense at that, but there are at least a few public schools that really care about the kids. Or maybe my education was just a fluke. Most small public schools vare very close knit and you can get a wonderful education, finding one is the problem. But then I’m in high school and I’ve never gone to a school with more than about 600 students. At my current highschool they seem to care a little bit too much. If one more teacher threatens me about how I’m going to be lost and confused in college because I’m not paying attention to a lecture he or she gave at least 3 times before I’m going to scream. However, those same teachers are usually in their offices after school for a couple hours most days. they offer to help you if you need it at all, and the school has an “academic probation policy” that helps out and restricts kids that get behind. It’s rather stressful and lots of work but it’s worth it in the long run. also, most things you have to do with your classmates or on your own, you need to want to learn before anyone can help you. If your teachers want to babysit you then go out and take courses at a community college or take your education in your own hands. If you don’t help yourself it might never happen.
Oh and welcome to the SDMB, hope you have fun.
Kitty
Things that shouldn’t happen in my high school but do:
-Students shouldn’t be teaching the class, the teacher should. Last year my algebra II teacher had little idea what she was doing and since she would get mad when people would ask questions people would come to me or some other smart person. This has happened in many of my classes.
-We should all get books at the beginning of the year, not 1 month or more into it. By now I expect for not to be enough computers, new maps, desks, and things but are books too much to ask for?
-The football team gets nearly unlimited amounts of money and the language classes, PAL (mentoring classes), yearbook, and newspaper get no money at all. There are probably other classes that get zero funding that also need it that I just don’t know about.
Sorry for the long post but I am very frustrated with school (and I’m too tired out from it to edit this post.)
As I heard it put once, high school is the best example of social darwinism the world has ever seen.
High school was Not Fun for me. Grade school was Not Fun. College so far as been a blast. Fun, the people here are at least moderately humane, whereas in high school and grade school the same could only be said for about 5 percent of the students there.
In my high school students taught the class in both history and calculus. I shit you not. The final two weeks were students reporting (sometimes falsely) on various important historical events as deemed by our teacher (who is another rant unto himself). Our math teacher, who could not speak proper English (which got to be a problem when he was lecturing) . . . ooh boy. And this was boarding school. Paid a tidy sum of money to get “educated” there.
Grade school I won’t even get into that much except to say that there is a place for violence, and it is not school. It is a boxing ring.
The issue of sports getting money and other things not is so blatant I’ll leave it at that. Fortunately I played those sports, so I wasn’t shafted too much.