Schools in America: how to fix our education system.

[GePap]

My school reforms:

1. Start school in the late morning, 10 am. Students are half asleep earlier on.

2. start with mandatory phys ed. Sound Body, Sound mind.

3. Seperate academic classes for the Sexes. MOre and More studies are showing that kids,specially those goign through puberty, learn better in single sex classrooms, since social pressures of sex are removed. You can also tailor the classes to those methods most advantagous to each sex.

4. Teach fundamentals in early grades. Whatever system is shown most effective, use it.

5. Different track HS: some purely academic, tohers with more technical skills and so forth. Not all people are shcolars, not all people are athletes, nor craftsmen.

6. Much rgeater emphasis on writing: less standardized exams, more essay exams.

7. Greater teacher training and salaries. If this means breaking up some Teacher's unions, fine. The State has an immense interest in education, just as in railways and public transport.

8. Less homework that amounts to busywork.

[GePap]

Originally posted by yavoon
as for what our schools lack. I'd say mainly logics and ethics classes. don't know what tass is smoking trying to teach kids 5 different languages. Americans speak english!

Individuals who are bilingual or more show a greater understanding of the basics of language than monolingual children. All students should leave the schools bilingual, English and something else.

[Az]

stop pushing your agenda on us.

Great debate. We have a similar debate in Israel, since we've dropped from the top 5 in achievements to some 30th place.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Azazel
stop pushing your agenda on us.

Quiet Lackey! Or you don't get your check!

Great debate. We have a similar debate in Israel, since we've dropped from the top 5 in achievements to some 30th place.

These debates always crop up in the US, specially given how decentralized the whole system is, sicne each locality then has these standard's debates.

[Sava]

Individuals who are bilingual or more show a greater understanding of the basics of language than monolingual children. All students should leave the schools bilingual, English and something else.

Yes... bi or multi lingual people do have greater communications skills. There are a lot of good suggestions here.

but a few comments...

1. single sex classes... BAD IDEA... sorry GePap... by sheltering kids from such social situations, you create further problems when people go into co-ed environments.

2. Get soda machines and junk food vendors out of schools. There is huge money in these things... but they don't teach good eating habits. America is getting fat. Teaching physical fitness for a period a day is useless when kids are gonna be drinking and eating unhealthy things.

3. More specialized programs to teach technical skills or job-related skills. More choice!

4. Connect schools with private and public industries... I'd like to see subsidized job training for juniors and seniors. Instead of just a general education, high school should prepare people for the job market. Upon graduation, kids should have opprotunities, and they don't. College is becoming what high school used to be, maybe 40 years ago.

[Az]

Did I understand correctly, that people actually take different tests in the end of the school in different areas?

[Arrian]

I agree with starting school later, especially for highschools.

I agree that physical ed (or whatever you want to call it) is important - we're getting too damn fat & lazy as a country. (Says the guy who's kinda fat & lazy)

I'm not sure about the single sex classrooms. On the one hand, I see the logic that the kids will concentrate better w/o the "social pressures of sex." On the other, I would worry that this would encourage shoving people into gender roles - I can see it now, schools in the MidWest & deep South having the girls learning "Home Ec" while the boys are sent off to Math or whatever. I'm not saying it can't work, just that there are potential pitfalls.

I thought we did teach fundamentals in early grades. Reading, Writing/Spelling, basic Math, etc. ??

I like the idea of track high schools, but this gets back to the problem of not knowing what the hell you want at age 13-14. I sure as hell didn't. Not sure I do NOW.

Writing skills, check! I totally agree. Colleges have to start over again with high school grads who should, but do not, know how to write. I took elective classes senior year of HS that required lots of writing (for HS, that is, college was still a bit of a shock), and I think that payed off.

Better teacher training Easy to say, though, harder to do.

Less homework...maybe. I don't know what the homework loads are now (if they've changed in the past 9 years), so I can't really comment. I never had trouble doing mine.

-Arrian

[GePap]

Originally posted by Azazel
Did I understand correctly, that people actually take different tests in the end of the school in different areas?

As far as New York City goes (with 1 million kids):

IN middle school you take a series of city-wide english tests and seperate Math tests. There was no single test.

In HS, at the end of each year they have the regent's exams, which are by subject. There is a math regents each year, there is one English regents which comes by 11th grade, Social Studies regents that came 10th grade, blah, blah, blah. So yes, different tests on different subjects throughout your career in school. If y0ou don;t pass your regents you can not graduate with a regents diploma (you can get a non-regents diploma, but that ain;t worth much).

[GePap]

Children have plenty of socializing time in school at lunch, their breaks, and phys ed. But the point of academic classes is to learn the subject, not to check and be checked out by others. More and more sutides show both boys and Girls are more focused and learn better if in their classes they can ignore the social rpessures of sex. They can get all of that in lunch or in afterschool activities, but you are in class to LEARN.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Arrian
Less homework...maybe. I don't know what the homework loads are now (if they've changed in the past 9 years), so I can't really comment. I never had trouble doing mine.

-Arrian

Homework loads have gon up in the last few years. Too mnay teahcers decide not to teach in class and just have the kids read the book and answer questions. Much of it does seem to me to be busywork, with littel education value. Homework should be probative, a way of elarning where the stundets are not getting it. Asking a few substantive questions that mgiht require a few sentences of writing is probalby better than having a kid do 30 multiplication examples.

[Az]

Some great math techniques have emerged lately that create amazing math abilities. I think we should incroporate them into schools, too.

[mrmitchell]

Tassadar5000

Originally posted by Comrade Tassadar
1. We need to give more funding to schools. Yes, you've heard this a thousand times, but it's true. My son used to have me read history with him (as it was required that a parent read with the child). Wanna know when the book was printed? 1980.
I went to his school for parent teacher conference. They have a large map at the entrance. 1987 edition.
I've visited numerous schools here in Logan, and none of them have decent technology. Their computers are Apple IIs. So not only are they teaching students Apple when the world is prodominately Windows, they're teaching it all wrong.
All this has forced me to act as a home teacher to my son.

Very true. But how? Where are we going to pull money from to give it to the schools? "It will be a great day when schools have all the money they need and the Air Force will have to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber. - A. Z. in a letter to the Southern Edition Old Farmer's Almanac 2002.

2. Tied in with number one....It's time to pay the teachers more. I say $60,000 minimum. Investments today will pay off in the future....

Where're you gonna pay for all this?

3. Tied in with two....We need more teachers. I'm willing to bet there are 30-40 children per classroom (Which consits of one teacher). That is unacceptable. We should have at LEAST 2 teachers in a clasroom at a time but I would prefer 3-4.

Well, the best we can do is get down to a teacher per 15 or 20 kids. That'd be great. Remember, not every adult can be a teacher, and selecting the right teacher is as much a need as getting as many as possible.

4. An acknowledgement that males and females learn differently.

But, as it is, difficult to pull off, just like every other suggestion in the thread.

5. Dicipline. Teachers need to FORCE their students to pay attention, and disrupting students will be sent to a punishment after 1 warning.

This is how it already is in a few cases, and, excuse me for bringing out the broken record player again, (bias) but everyone knows teachers have (bias) favorites. Also, what is this force you speak of?

6. A fundemental change in teenage psychology. Learning in schools must be put at the HIGHEST value, and top students (top as in meeting their ability, NOT meeting the A.) should be honoured and given first class treatment. Gradually overtime, it will be looked upon as a very desirable thing to be intelligent.

Just get rid of athletics and you're already a huge step there. However, you can't force teenagers to change. The best thing to do is to try and convince systemwide (K - 12) is that learning is going to help you make a killing once you get out of school. (Figuratively.)

7. Required physical activity in a non-competitive environment. Physical activity promotes a desirable lifestyle, physical wellbeing, and refreshes the mind. However competitiveness must be kept to a minimum as it can interfere with the education process. While some would think "How can you then hail good students?", one way to do this would be to simply honour them. Do not say "Head of the Class", or "Class Genius", or "Number 1"....Simply display honour towards them, and make it known.

Physical activity and non-competitive in the same sentence? You've got to be kidding? Much as it drags education, everyone learns something from competition. However, the huge budgets diverted from academics to sports make it not worth it--just cancel the athletics and phys ed programs.

8. Resting periods. A period of low-noise where children would be allowed play games or read books.

This does indeed raise test scores and grades. There was some study or something, I think. But the school day is already jam-packed enough.

9. Instead of having a standard nation-wide test, individual blocs of schools should be able to create their own tests, which would allow them to conform to their demographics.

It's all about how much measurability you want. That's actually a good idea, though.

10. Make the following classes REQUIRED: Philosophy, History, Math, English, French, Spanish, Chinese, a current events class, Physical Education, and Science.

I don't know how to not bring out the broken record player again on Philosophy and current events. Which is usually a bad sign.

11. Teach social tolerance.

You can't just "teach" social tolerance. It is to be learned at home, from the parents.

I'm tired now.

Wuss.

mayb we shuld add a class fer "12 yr owld hackr speek" too loolllol!!!!!111!!!!!111

Tassadar, I am ashamed of you. Firstly, "12 year old" and "hacker" are complete opposites. Hackers do not wish to be thought of in the same region as "omg wtf dud mayb we shuld spel bade". That, my friend, is AOLien / teenager territory. Hackers do not speak "omg wtf dud u suk". Yavoon is just talking without using caps or lots of punctuation, which is perfectly excusable and a far cry from your mockery, which was a sick failure of your usually good mind. Much as you don't want to believe it so you can ostracise them more efficiently, hackers speak regular English. Get over it. ( )

Gepap

1. Start school in the late morning, 10 am. Students are half asleep earlier on.

Wasn't there some test where a school started an hour late (and let out an hour late probably) and had better grades and half the disciplinary needs? In some other study (I'm the guy who knows all the studies without the sources ) teenagers' brains had hormone problems that made their accurate go-to-bed time later than that of any other age group--11 PM.

2. start with mandatory phys ed. Sound Body, Sound mind.

School is for academics. No one started a school with the idea in mind that their students would be the strongest; only the smartest.

3. Seperate academic classes for the Sexes. MOre and More studies are showing that kids,specially those goign through puberty, learn better in single sex classrooms, since social pressures of sex are removed. You can also tailor the classes to those methods most advantagous to each sex.

Quit trying to pressure our kids into homosexuality. It won't work!

4. Teach fundamentals in early grades. Whatever system is shown most effective, use it.

How is this different from what is happening? Aren't fundamentals taught in early grades?

5. Different track HS: some purely academic, tohers with more technical skills and so forth. Not all people are shcolars, not all people are athletes, nor craftsmen.

No one knew what they wanted to do when they were 14. No one else knew what they would grow up to be when they were 14. You can't point at a 14 year old and say "He's going to be a [insert profession.]".

6. Much rgeater emphasis on writing: less standardized exams, more essay exams.

The thought that writing is important is probably one of the most dangerous in today's education. For example, there are many students naturally geared toward a computing profession or telecommunications job or something engineering-related. Just because they couldn't write an essay on some half-assed **** they were told to do, doesn't mean they can't maintain a local phone network, can they?

7. Greater teacher training and salaries. If this means breaking up some Teacher's unions, fine. The State has an immense interest in education, just as in railways and public transport.

Yes. But where is the money going to come from? It needs to come from somewhere....

8. Less homework that amounts to busywork.

Yes. But what is busywork? What is legitamite reinforcement and what is just some sht the teacher copied out of a workbook?

[mrmitchell]

2. Get soda machines and junk food vendors out of schools. There is huge money in these things... but they don't teach good eating habits. America is getting fat. Teaching physical fitness for a period a day is useless when kids are gonna be drinking and eating unhealthy things.

I loved those things, man! Don't even TRY touching the school soda machines! (On a serious note they do make a hell of a lot of money.)

Gepap
I can't agree less. Socialising is a part of being a teenager. You can't change it. You can't reduce it or you'll create a nation of little nerds (or homosexuals. Both of them usually won't reproduce. )

[Al B. Sure!]

the problem with physical education class is that it dont really teach students to be healthy (health classes alongside are supposed to do that also but they degenerate into how to put on a condom). in philly, we have 2 gym periods a week which is far too little but the main problem is we don't do ****... teachers at my high school seemed to have something against the typical male student so we only would have 2-3 periods of real active sports that guys enjoy like basketball, football, rugby, or field hockey and then have whole months of badmitten, dance (not really dance... we just got to square dance around and waltz like idiots), and other nonsense...

so what always ended up happening was that those who weren't athletic did their little sissy, non-active sports or sat around and did nothing while the athletic people ran around throwing tennis balls at each other and trying to give each other wedgies or pulling down each others gym shorts... everytime at the start of gym, we'd beg to have free time so we could play basketball or something (while everybody else just sat around on the side) but no... never could do anything athletic...

[Nubclear]

Where are we going to pull money from to give it to the schools?

Defense *Insert cute smiley here*

and selecting the right teacher is as much a need as getting as many as possible.

Yes, and more people capable of becoming teachers WILL WANT to be come teachers because of increased pay.

But, as it is, difficult to pull off, just like every other suggestion in the thread.

Yes, but it's not like any of the suggestions in this thread are EVER going to be pulled off. Basically, were just killing time.

(bias) but everyone knows teachers have (bias) favorites.

That is inevitable. But the teachers are STILL going to have a bias, and disprutive students will hamper other students. It's just that simple and cannot be tolerated.

Also, what is this force you speak of?

Vocal force. Not physical. I know what you were thinking.

However, you can't force teenagers to change.

It is indeed possible. Trust me on that one.

Physical activity and non-competitive in the same sentence? You've got to be kidding?

There will always be competition in everything. However, it must be promoted. The problem I see in the United States is massive, especially compared to certain countries where the problem is very small.

just cancel the athletics and phys ed programs.

No. Physical activity, even for a short while, is proven to help academics.

I don't know how to not bring out the broken record player again on Philosophy and current events.

With regards to ANY class....There is always going to be a bias. When we fix the fundemental problems of children and academics, we can then come to this problem. If the adults do not have intellectual integrity, then the children must get knowledge from other sources. The class would merely be there to spark interest.

And I haven't read the rest of the rest, so...

You can't just "teach" social tolerance. It is to be learned at home, from the parents.

And also from teachers. A child has many constants in a life....Things that are always there. The parents, and the teacher. The teacher should set a good example by filtering what (s)he says to remove biases.
Of course, a payraise could take care of this problem as the more intellectual teachers would begin rising up.

gers' brains had hormone problems that made their accurate go-to-bed time later than that of any other age group--11 PM.

I read that somewhere too, although the timeframe I saw was more of 12-2ish.

School is for academics. No one started a school with the idea in mind that their students would be the strongest; only the smartest.

And all steps that help further that goal must be used.

No one knew what they wanted to do when they were 14. No one else knew what they would grow up to be when they were 14. You can't point at a 14 year old and say "He's going to be a [insert profession.]".

No, but by fourteen don't they usually have a GENERAL idea? A school can help them work towards this goal. Though I think these classes should be complimentary to other classes.

Just because they couldn't write an essay on some half-assed **** they were told to do, doesn't mean they can't maintain a local phone network, can they?

No, but it is important to have communications skills. In almost any profession.

(On a serious note they do make a hell of a lot of money.)

Yeah. The Diabetes industry is probably booming right now.

I can't agree less. Socialising is a part of being a teenager. You can't change it. You can't reduce it or you'll create a nation of little nerds

But it interferes with education. To a MASSIVE degree. America is in its declining position right now because of stupid people. The solution? Make the uninformed populace....Informed again. Not just "Turn to page fourty six and read paragraphs one through twenty. after you are done, you may read a book.", but to the point where they can actually think for themselves instead of emulating their peers/parents.
All these steps are, well, steps to this solution. When it comes to this issue, the US is sorely lacking. One would think that the US, with the largest economy in the world, could beat the likes of Russia, Germany, India, South Korea, etc when it comes to education.