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The easiest way to fix our education system IMHO is not make it mandatory. Make schools a privillage not a right. I studied harder for my drivers test than I did for most of my math tests.

Another big thing that I think would help education is get rid of sports teams, the kids are there to learn (Keep PE). Go to little league or something. Give the sports funding to actual education. Public school should be for basic education (which they are not gettin), not extra stuff.

I agree with voutchers. If the public school can not meet my needs, it has clearly failed. If a private school can, my money , should go there, not to a program that is failing.

Wrong forum, try the off-topic

Sam or I did you get peppered at dodgeball as a young lad?

I agree with voutchers. If the public school can not meet my needs, it has clearly failed. If a private school can, my money , should go there, not to a program that is failing.

Agreed, but I'm asking Wong to move this.

The reason schooling was made mandatory, was in order to stop child labor. By forcing children to be at school until they are of an independant age, ensures that they are not abused by their guardians.

Public schools need more funding, not less. I went to a public school and I graduated in the top 10 percentile of the country. Fair enough I live in Australia and thankfully our education system is still fairly good.

Not sure about the sport issue. Perhaps some sport funding should go to the arts and science. Even though I study Engineering, I do value the improtance of the arts. After all, without stories, poetry and expression what are we?

I think the main difference is that in Australia, our universities don't really have any sports involved with them, so there is less focus on it during school.

In Texas football = life. Many people would rather the math and science programs be cut than the millions it takes to maintain gyms, fields, and the teams.

Oops wrong forum, for some reason I would have sworn I was in off-topic. My bad

It seems that all schools love their football teams, no matter how bad they are. At the HS in my district, the football team, although they only win about one game a season, still get a stadium with astoturf, while the teams that actually win get nothing! Schools should focus more on academics, and more funding does not equal better schools. Some of the worst schoold districts in America have the highest funding.

Sam Or I wrote:The easiest way to fix our education system IMHO is not make it mandatory.

First-world nations always have strong public education systems. Third-world nations never have strong public education systems. This is not a random coincidence.

Make schools a privillage not a right. I studied harder for my drivers test than I did for most of my math tests.

That is an indictment of the public education system's quality of service, not a reason to scrap it entirely.

Yeah, down here in Texas, High School is only about Football. My high school has 5000 students. It's the only one in it's district, I believe because of the football team(the bill to make another failed twice before it passed and thats when the school just had 3500) It's divided into Senior-Junior Campus(red) and a Sophomore-Freshman Campus(grey). The Red campus was the entire high school since the 60s and just recently the grey was built(across the street from a waste treatment plant). Last year we won several awards with checks attached to them, got a deal with Coke-Cola to replace the Pepsi machinies and sell soda for $.20 more than the other high schools, and is getting full tax money from a huge district. Still the old high school with shitty lockers, small buildings, and poor air conditioning units are left untouched. This year one of the buildings(after having a leak when it rains for several years) was replaced and I found out it had asbestus in it. Probly the rest of the buildings do too seeing how they all are from the same era. That building, instead of building a new one, was replaced with what seems like a giant portable. It is pretty much 6 moble homes pressed together. But why build a new building, get rid of the asbestos when the football team needs a new stadium and a nauditorium. Wow I did one hell of a rant and I probly started talking about something and didn't finish it. Oh well.

I don't think sport should be completely cut from the curriculum. After all, we can't expect everyone at school to be an academic star, but the school can at least teach them to have a healthy lifestyle.

That said, though, sport should not be the main focus of any teaching establishment.

And that's the problem. Schools are too concerned with their sports teams to put thier money toward academics.

The star QB at the high school my mom went to grew up having 8 kids, and having a lousy job. That's why they make you keep your grade above a 0.2 GPA to participate in sports now.

The thing that pisses me off is that it doesn't matter what your GPA is if you are good at a sport, they practically beg those idiots to take scholarships.

I actually go to High School in the SF Bay Area, and I agree with the general sentiment here: take away the sports teams. My school, Leland High for those wanting to know, is far to obsessed with sports. Most of the teachers also have teams to coach after school, making it hard to get extra help when needed. The class time is also constantly being interrupted by, mostly the baseball and football players, asking if they can leave their things in the room. I'm sorry, but I am not going to study in a fucking lockerroom, and I don't care if the lockerroom is locked for the moment, get one of the Monitors to open it up!
The thing that really irks me is that the Jocks get special treatment from (mostly) the male teachers. They can interrupt the class, fail to turn in homework on time, and get lectured every single day for "Postponing reaction to stimuli" (as my English Teacher puts it), but then end up with an A in the class. While we, the students who don't really want to waste their time running in tiny pants for hours, suffer if we even *dare* approach the behavior of the Jocks. This causes resentment admittedly amoungst myself and my peers, and confrontation between the Jocks and those who don't participate in sports. This is not needed in the learning enviroment, and it distracts us.

~~Matt
Not to mention the Cheerleaders practing in the middle of our outdoor campus, but, hey, no complaints from me!

Not to mention the Cheerleaders practing in the middle of our outdoor campus, but, hey, no complaints from me!

Ah, there is that.

Do you really have cheerleaders? I thought that was just a brain child of Hollywood.

They had s since the start fo sports teams! They used to be men only, but during the women's rights movement, they allowed women to join, and even better, they were allowed to wear the same uniform the men wore, and they still do today.

I disagree in sports being cut form shools. Sports keeps kids in shape, gives kids a thing to do after school, keeps them occupied and away from trouble. It makes the person feel part of something bigger and being important. It gives the person self confidence; the sport may even result in a scholarship (something I'm looking foward to). Sports also help keeps students grades up becuase in most schools and leagues you must have a minimum ampout of pass classes so the student will strive to keep his grades up. My schools league (public school athletic league) requires you pass at least 4 classes and not failing any more then 1 major class. IMO, school sports is a good thing.

ArmorPierce wrote:I disagree in sports being cut form shools. Sports keeps kids in shape, gives kids a thing to do after school, keeps them occupied and away from trouble. It makes the person feel part of something bigger and being important. It gives the person self confidence; the sport may even result in a scholarship (something I'm looking foward to). Sports also help keeps students grades up becuase in most schools and leagues you must have a minimum ampout of pass classes so the student will strive to keep his grades up. My schools league (public school athletic league) requires you pass at least 4 classes and not failing any more then 1 major class. IMO, school sports is a good thing.

Okay, but look at where the focus of this is. You're saying, "Get good grades or you won't be able to play." Rather than: "Get good grades and learn the material, because you will someday need this to go to college and to help you get a good job." I don't think that the focus is where it needs to be. BTW, if you really need to be motivated by your presence on a sports team to keep your grades up, I don't think you should be playing sports in the first place. Where I was in school, you only needed a two point ZERO to stay on the team, and some people couldn't do it! My friends and I stuck out like sore thumbs in the dugout and on the sidelines.

I think that sports detract from the focus of serious students, who should be studying. They might significantly help high-risk or low-end students, but to create the best possible group of students, sports should be eliminated from the curriculum.

IMO, uniforms should also be required. They actually DO help students learn, so why aren't we using them? It is a very low-cost method of improving student learning!

Not here.... (well, not really. We have cheerleaders, but they're a bit of a novelty.)

You could also improve education by actually putting the school money into useful things, like books, and better teaching aids. That wasy, you could actualloy spend less money on a school, and have scores go up.

ArmorPierce wrote:I disagree in sports being cut form shools. Sports keeps kids in shape, gives kids a thing to do after school...

So does hooliganism.

keeps them occupied and away from trouble.

So does marijuana.

It makes the person feel part of something bigger and being important.

So did the Hitler Youth in the 1930s.

It gives the person self confidence

Only if the person is good at the sport. Otherwise, it creates a cruel environment of derision and mockery. Schoolteachers are told not to mock students with poor grades, and grades are generally not posted publicly for that reason. But in sports, someone who is not very good at a particular sport is made to feel bad about it in a very public way. School sports create an environment where athletic ability is deemed more important than intelligence. I still remember the fat kids in the class, and how we were basically allowed to make fun of them. You couldn't make fun of them for being fat, but you could make fun of them for being lousy base runners. And even if you ran into a gym teacher who didn't like that, you could always whine and moan about their poor performance, which had basically the same effect because he would overhear it: "Coach, you shouldn't give him so much playing time! He sucks!!!!"

And kid-sports leagues promote the worst kind of parent competition. I've seen parents at a tyke soccer game trash-talking 6-year old players on the opposing team! Would anyone go up to someone at a spelling bee and trash-talk a kid for being stupid? Of course not. But in sports, it's A-OK! Hell, trash-talk is part of the game! Sports commentators routinely discuss trash-talking as a legitimate part of sports.

The way performance is rewarded in sports also tends to create a vicious cycle in which a poor player needs more practice to get better but he gets no playing time because he's a poor player. Nothing like this happens in academics, where every student gets equal time and equal opportunity.

the sport may even result in a scholarship (something I'm looking foward to).

A scholarship for doing well in sports, rather than a scholarship for doing well in scholastics, which is where the word "scholarship" comes from? That is simply perverse. Common, but perverse nonetheless: "We're going to pay for your education because of your throwing arm, not your mind."

Sports also help keeps students grades up becuase in most schools and leagues you must have a minimum ampout of pass classes so the student will strive to keep his grades up.

"Up", as in "passing grade, with lots of special exemptions from generous teachers who forgive sports stars their transgressions". Not "up" as in genuinely high, as in "someone who actually cares about learning and about scholastic achievement."

My schools league (public school athletic league) requires you pass at least 4 classes and not failing any more then 1 major class. IMO, school sports is a good thing.

You think that it's good to merely pass 4 classes and not fail more than 1 major class? That's pathetic! If this is the level of scholastics that school athletic programs produce, then you have just provided a devastating argument against school sports.

Anybody who actually needs special motivation in order to pass 4 classes or fail less than 2 (in high school, where the material is so easy that a drug-addled gerbil could pass with flying colours) is a worthless retard. If sports helps keep such mental pygmies in the school system, it's doing more harm than good. Athletes who are smart enough to do well without sports can do so, and play sports on their own time. Athletes who are so stupid that such laughable minimum requirements actually matter are useless dregs of society and should be shuffled off immediately to the nearest McDonald's, where they can happily screw up drive-through orders for re-heated food for the rest of their lives.

Another big thing that I think would help education is get rid of sports teams, the kids are there to learn (Keep PE). Go to little league or something. Give the sports funding to actual education. Public school should be for basic education (which they are not gettin), not extra stuff.

Physical activity is a necessary part of every child's education, whether they are good at it or not. Anyone under the age of 20 who can't run a mile in under 10 minutes and doesn't have something wrong with their motor control or physically in their legs is horribly out of shape.

Competition and failure are part of being human, and there is no reason to shield children from it. Especially not when we, as a society, are becoming extremely fat.

Graeme Dice wrote:Physical activity is a necessary part of every child's education, whether they are good at it or not. Anyone under the age of 20 who can't run a mile in under 10 minutes and doesn't have something wrong with their motor control or physically in their legs is horribly out of shape.

True. What does this have to do with competitive team sports, in which most of the key skills have nothing to do with basic fitness? Does throwing accuracy improve basic fitness? Does stick-handling improve basic fitness? Is it necessary to have schools maintaining competitive sports teams instead of simply having basic phys ed programs?

Competition and failure are part of being human, and there is no reason to shield children from it.

Excellent suggestion. Kids with low grades should be made to stand apart from the rest of the class and get ridiculed. Kids with high grades should be allowed to break the rules at will and insult the kids with low grades with impunity. That way, we can adapt some of the important psychological benefits of competitive sports teams to the rest of the curriculum.

Especially not when we, as a society, are becoming extremely fat.

Good ol' track and field practice can help take care of that. I was always a good runner. But team sports introduce other elements, and when schools compete against each other and athletes are elevated to stars even before they leave high school, the result is shit.

AdmiralKanos wrote:

Graeme Dice wrote:Physical activity is a necessary part of every child's education, whether they are good at it or not. Anyone under the age of 20 who can't run a mile in under 10 minutes and doesn't have something wrong with their motor control or physically in their legs is horribly out of shape.

True. What does this have to do with competitive team sports, in which most of the key skills have nothing to do with basic fitness? Does throwing accuracy improve basic fitness? Does stick-handling improve basic fitness? Is it necessary to have schools maintaining competitive sports teams instead of simply having basic phys ed programs?

Can you please name me a single sport where throwing and stick-handling are all that takes place and that do not include some kind of full body motion?

Competition and failure are part of being human, and there is no reason to shield children from it.

Excellent suggestion. Kids with low grades should be made to stand apart from the rest of the class and get ridiculed. Kids with high grades should be allowed to break the rules at will and insult the kids with low grades with impunity. That way, we can adapt some of the important psychological benefits of competitive sports teams to the rest of the curriculum.

For someone who outlines logical fallacies on your website you sure committ a lot of them. This is a strawman argument.

Especially not when we, as a society, are becoming extremely fat.

Good ol' track and field practice can help take care of that. I was always a good runner. But team sports introduce other elements, and when schools compete against each other and athletes are elevated to stars even before they leave high school, the result is shit.

Track will not accomplish that. Track is an individual sport, so the star athletes will still maintain their status. Unless of course, you believe that we can somehow remove the humanity from people and make them not want to compete with each other.