Schools

[Sienthal]

Alright...I live in Oregon, in the area of Lane County
It's almost always enjoyed a bountiful economy, but after the attack, all went to hell. Unlike other states, we don't have a rainy-day fund. We have no spare money to make up for our tremendous short-fall, especially in the education department.

I thought it might be alright, we'd have to scrounge, having a 3 million dollar budget deficit in the education system, but it'd turn out okay. The 3 million is larger than any other cut we've sustained, and we've had cuts every year for the past decade, since a measure (5) took away funding as a result of increased land value, and equalized funding throughout the district. This alone is fairly stupid, as highly populated schools got the same amount as schools with small populations. In other words, large schools got entirely fucked with funding because they didn't have enough to fund all the programs to appease the big body of students, and small schools could practically give it away.

Anyway, back to the budget thing. Our 3 million dollar deficit depended on one thing: A .2% increase on alchohol and tobacco products. They're a little high, but it is only a .2% increase. Now, the good ole' boys here in Oregon though that was too much, and the measure bombed, because we've gotta have our drugs and alchohol!

As a result of its failure, the budget deficit increased to 6 million, doubling it. Total, it is more than the rest of our budget cuts put together. We'd been suffering as it was, and this is hell. It's creating such a problem, that we can't even get a budget going. Our governor is yelling at the school board, who is creating a budget out of non-existent money, and money that they don't need to pay until next year. Faced with the fact that there is little money to deal with, the board can't even create a self-sustaining source of revenue. All of Oregon's sports programs have gone down the shitter, which is leading an even further downward spiral, as a large majority of the students are threatening to transfer to private schools without the sports program (...That is kinda pathetic in my opinion). What's worse, is that Co-Cirricular classes (Drama, Music, Shop, most Foreign Languages, and some math, science, or english classes) are also in jeopardy.

A real shit-hole we have here. It's worse because I'm getting my better classes next year (Physics, Int 3, Lit 11 H, Drafting, Art, I'm planning to become an architect, ). Anyway, sorry for the long-winded story, I just had to get it out.

[Lusankya]

I think the main problem here would be the importance placed on sport in the curriculum, rather than its presence?

In Australia, there is a marked drop in sports participation rates at the age of 17-18. This is mainly because of the change from school based sport to club-based sport. When a sport is run by the school, it is free, there is encouragement to attend practices and matches and (in the lower levels) there is little pressure to perform. This differs from club sport, which relies on greater personal commitment, requires club fees and often puts a greater emphasis on personal performance.

In my experience, school sport is not about physical achievement, but rather about fun. THose who really want to excel in a sport do so through club sport rather than school sport. The difference becomes even more apparent at University, where the atmoshpere's even more relaxed.

But then again, things might be different in other parts of the world.

[Darth Wong]

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?

Can you please name me a single person in the world besides you who would interpret my post that way? I never said that team sports don't make you fit. I said that in order to do well at team sports, you need a lot of skills which have nothing to do with being fit. You can be in great shape and still suck at baseball, for example.

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

Is it? Your statement was in response to my earlier argument that that high school sports teams do more psychological harm than good because of the public ridicule factor. <EDIT: I just checked, and it was actually in response to someone else. I fucked up and assumed it was in response to mine because it came shortly after mine; you're right. Sorry>

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.

You're missing the point. Individual achievement is good, but team sports add extra layers. When you do poorly at a team sport, other kids will get angry at you. They will insult you, because you didn't just hurt yourself, you "hurt the team". They will want you off the field, and off the team. But if you do poorly at an individual sport, nobody gets upset. People might still ridicule, but it's far less likely, and you don't get extra humiliation by being made to sit on the bench. As I said before, team sports add extra layers. I didn't realize anyone would actually demand that I elaborate.

Team sports is fine as a purely voluntary, extracurricular activity, because someone who doesn't like it can always choose not to do it. But not as a forced-participation school activity, and not as something which schools give special perks for (eg- scholarships, the ability to break rules and skip class/tests with impunity).

[Doomriser]

I like to run track on the rare occasions when I have not busted up my leg/knee/etc... I do not enjoy most competetive sports simply because I suck at them and find them banal as well. But in track, I have fun whether I'm running with the fast group at the front or the slow group at the back. I can talk with people, be social, and be competetive without being yelled at for screwing up a pass or some other meaningless bullshit. I like sports where you are excercising and improving your physical abilities (e.g. swimming, skating, running, blading, etc...) without having to take part in some stupid game. If Phys Ed is mandatory, it should be the "physical development" aspect and not the obsolete "competetive teams." I agree that such competetive games are good for mental and physical development. Perhaps students should be forced to pick from options such as soccer, football, dodgeball, paintball (heh, yeah right) because everyone is bound to enjoy competing in at least _one_ sport no matter how fat or out of shape they are.

[Darth Wong]

I think the main problem here would be the importance placed on sport in the curriculum, rather than its presence?

Maybe it's different down there. Over here, people are so wound up over sports that they have committed murder over them (one guy beat another guy to death for not calling penalties in a kid's hockey game, a woman tried to murder a teenaged girl to open up a spot on the cheerleading team for her daughter). It's unhealthy and disturbing. I've seen parents of 6 year olds taunting other 6 year olds. I've seen coaches teaching their kids how to psychologically abuse the kids on the other team. And if you look at the amount of money spent on sports teams at the university or even high school level in the United States, it will simply blow you away. There are plenty of schools which can't afford decent science lab equipment but can afford expensive top-of-the-line equiment for their coddled team sports players.

In the economically depressed American inner cities, most kids look to sports, not academics, as their ticket out.

[Mr Bean]

in high school , where the material is so easy that a drug-addled gerbil could pass with flying colours

Its quite true saddly, I look back on high-school and remeber it as the time I got the most sleep(Of course I slept through when my home-work assignments where being given out so my grades were not the best oh well )
But I remeber wasting hours after hours if my life sitting there head on the desk as the teacher went over stuff I already knew, Fell alseep, bell woke me up, repeat for four years of my life...

[Crazy_Vasey]

Would have been nice if English college had been like that. Suddenly everything became much much more difficult.

A-Level maths was probably the hardest thing I have ever had to do.

But it was fun.

BTW college is UK equivalent of HS in US I think.

[Darth Wong]

But I remeber wasting hours after hours if my life sitting there head on the desk as the teacher went over stuff I already knew, Fell alseep, bell woke me up, repeat for four years of my life...

Isn't it funny when you hear kids talking about how high school is difficult? I always wonder whether they're just exaggerating, or whether they really do find it difficult, in which case they must be of sub-normal intelligence.

[Crazy_Vasey]

How does HS work in America anyway? I have absolutely no idea heh.

[Mr Bean]

Lemm say it this way

The STATE(That not being you)
Gets a bunch of people who have not seen the inside of a school of higher education since they where their themselves , ooh thirty years ago and puts them in a room where they come up with a *Circulum

The Ciruculum is what is given to teachers at the begining of the year and by the end of the year they are expected to teach all of it to the students for the End of Year Tests.

Depending on the school if you don't pass a final exam you don't pass that class, however there are retake aviable.

In the mean time however you will besides being taught at by Communted Collage Graudates(If your lucky, I remeber one teacher for example who was STILL trying for her degree yet taught us fresman Geomerty) from the Teachers Edition(No lie, 2/3 of my Teachers I had used Worksheets and assigned Home-work exactly how the Teacher's Edition Suggests WORD FOR WORD for the enitre year)

The typical Day consist of the Avarage student depending on where in the US now as every single school system is diffrent from the next will get up between 5:10 AM to 7:30 AM depending on when thier school starts, Get on a big slow, bad cornering death-trap know as a School Bus where they will be off-loaded like cattle, Then they have five to twenty minutes to sit around doing nothing or eat the school provided well balanced meal
Or as everyone else calls it.
A muffin..

After the student have calm down from all the exicment of the balanced meal they are hearded into little rooms, typical class size is twenty eight and one teacher for anywhere from fourty two minutes to one hour five mintues. Then the bell is rung and the students normaly walk through extremely croweded hall-ways to another small room where they will repeat this proccess two or three more time

Then there is a break for Lunch depending on when it could be anywhere from Nine fourty to Two oclock. Each school system has a varried amount of Periods so it could be as little as Five or as much as nine.


Bascily the School-system of USA is so ass-backwards when it comes to so many things, From Fundinf Allotcation to massive overcrowding, To people a monkey could outsmart are expected to teach Science it leads to a bunch of unhappy people(Students and Sane Teachers both) Worried and over-worked people(The Office staff with the exception of Vice or Otherwise Principles) and the three to five happy ones who would be the upper management, The Principles, Generaly these people sit in thier offices and either, Sleep, Pratice begging for more Funds for thier school, Or meet the Student Bodies idiot and dumb sections.


Hope that helps shead a little light on the Cluster-Fuck that is American's Education system

Oh one thing I forget, Depending on where you are going you will be going to diffrent little rooms
Because of *Requirements
The First High-School I ever went to(ninth, I went to three)
Required
4 Years of Engish
4 Years Science
2 Years of a Laungage not English
1 Year of History

My second school was the same in English but I only needed Three Years of Science and no Forigen Laungage

My Third school had Two years of Science Two Years of History and THREE years of a non-English Lagunge

Of course this begs the question when I wanted as (You do when you start school) I annoced when they had Gudiance meet with me, That I wanted to be a Computer Engineer and work for Nvida(I'm getting closer to that goal ) how exaclty did any of that help me? The science class applyed somewhat, The non-english not at all, The History I enjoyed because of all the Projects(Make a Diarama, Subject? WWII, Of? Omaha Lots of plastic Army men and some Fireworks later... )

And I took some electives after I went through the of course one year of computer Science I general had nothing at all helpful excpet Prehaps on a Appernce on the Game-show Jepordy, Otherwise I spent roughly 3 years of High-School Learning nothing that would help me in the slightest...

Some notable examples
1. My Eleventh Grade History Teacher was fire from three diffrent places for Incomptence, Including, Mcdonalds, Burger-King, And her Former School she worked at. They are that desprate for new teachers
2. Janitors are paid roughly 1.3x as much as the Teachers are and for some odd reasons this genreation is an oddly tiddy one, They don't have much to do
3. If you want resoutles you have to have money
Schools don't have much of the green stuff. I remeber our Caffitera when the price of Lettace climded by roughly six cents could no longer afford to buy it because they would run over-budget.
4. I gave my old school a call up last week, Only 4/5 of the Senior Class Graduated, 1/3 of the Senior Class where *Repeats
5. During my 11th and 12th Grade Years I spent roughly 5 hours of the seven and a half hour school day.. Asleep
I passed every class with no less than an 85.


*Vent off

[Master of Ossus]

My AP Chemistry teacher in my Junior year of high school was a complete bitch. She was such a moron she once tried to tell my friend, Steve, and I that hydroxide was an ACID in one RXN that we were examining on the board. She totally disregarded our safety during labs, and used tap water to mix stock solutions on a regular basis. One time she messed up a lab procedure so badly that a RXN we were supposed to time happened instantaneously (because her solutions were dozens of times more concentrated than they should have been). When my friend and I attempted to bring that to her attention, she refused to believe us. EVERY other lab group, by this time, was so afraid of her that they would not tell her about their real results, so every other lab group MADE UP THEIR RESULTS (I talked independently to four other groups about their results, and all of them confirmed this). The teacher then chewed my friend and me out for not properly finishing the lab. Another time she refused to curve a test that 8 out of every ten students flunked, and more than half the class received a thirty percent or worse. I got the second highest grade in the class, and mine was barely a B-! Her policy on homework was this: She assigns homework. You do the homework (between 3 and thirteen hours, though it never took me more than 8.5) you come in the next day and turn in the homework. She gives you a quiz on the material. THEN she lectures the class about the homework that they just turned in and took a quiz on! And once she had us spend three class periods making origami molecules that she never talked to us about!

The point of this story (other than venting) is that we don't need more teachers, we need GOOD teachers. That means that they should understand the material they teach, and understand why it is important. They should also know how to teach the material to students. If you are in a school administration, or a position of power in the district, NEVER allow bad teachers to continue teaching in the hopes that they will get better. These teachers are often downright dangerous to their students, and I personally know of five people in that class who had come in wanting to be scientists and went out looking for another future. That is not good teaching. It isn't fair for the children to be stuck with such teachers, and the district will be hurt by them, in the long run. Remove them as soon as possible.

[Crazy_Vasey]

Suddenly the English education systems problems seem a lot less...

Well we head off to college at 16 and choose between academic or vocational subjects to do. I chose academic because the vocational subjects are without a doubt the most retarded excuse for an education possible. No joke the vocational computing students learnt how to plug in a monitor and how to open files in windows.

So academic you pick a number of subjects for the first year, normally four but some do three or five. The subjects are totally your choice there's no you must do this class to do this other class type of stuff, well it is recommended to do maths if you physics I think but not required. Anyway I picked Computing, History, Maths and Chemistry. Got 4 excellent teachers who all knew their fields extremely well and got on with it. End of first year you can change your subjects around if you wish. Actually this is a bit fiddly to explain.

You have to be doing at least 3 subjects if you're on the academic track. But there's no requirement on number of subjects you take to second year standard so you could in theory drop all your subjects and start fresh BUT universities will only take subjects you've done for full 2 years into account as a rule.

I dropped chemistry, not my cup of tea at all. It was just memorising reactions by rote for a third of the year in organic and that really is mind numbingly boring. I wish I'd took physics instead that looks much more interesting.

Anyway.

In each two year subject there is six modules, Three first, three second year. You're allowed to resit each module once if you wish but you have to pay.

My only complaint is that in my second year my history teacher got up the duff and the replacement was the only one they could get hold of and he was useless on a grand scale.

That and the edexcel examining board made some illogical decisions in their maths syllabus and made it very difficult compared to most others.

[Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi]

It seemed that school was easy for everyone but me. I barely got a B several classes, but they were honors classes. Meanwhile, some idiots in easier classes thought they were smarter than me, just because they got an A in classes any moron could get an A in. It really ed me off.

Anyway, you can go to any US High School and ask the students about physics, and most of them won't have a clue.

[Durandal]

What baffles me is why Chemistry is taught before Physics in most high schools. It's like starting with derivatives and then learning limits!

90% of high schoolers have this boogie-man conception of physics. They all think that it's going to be a disgustingly difficult subject, so they just don't take it. Yet, they all take chemistry with no fears at all, even though chemistry is much harder at the high school level than physics is! Everything about Chemistry is more time consuming and more difficult. Labs in chemistry involve tediously mixing chemicals, measuring temperatures and waiting hours for something to actually happen. Physics labs can be done with a stopwatch and a ball!

Hell, I think that students should be taught physics their first year in high school. It's far easier to explain the scientific method with physics examples than with chemistry or biology. Students can learn the importance of units more easily with physics, and they will go into chemistry already knowing basic conservation laws and the basics of electromagnetic interactions, which would help enormously in chemistry.

[Lusankya]

I think the main problem here would be the importance placed on sport in the curriculum, rather than its presence?

Maybe it's different down there. Over here, people are so wound up over sports that they have committed murder over them (one guy beat another guy to death for not calling penalties in a kid's hockey game, a woman tried to murder a teenaged girl to open up a spot on the cheerleading team for her daughter). It's unhealthy and disturbing. I've seen parents of 6 year olds taunting other 6 year olds. I've seen coaches teaching their kids how to psychologically abuse the kids on the other team. And if you look at the amount of money spent on sports teams at the university or even high school level in the United States, it will simply blow you away. There are plenty of schools which can't afford decent science lab equipment but can afford expensive top-of-the-line equiment for their coddled team sports players.

In the economically depressed American inner cities, most kids look to sports, not academics, as their ticket out.

Strange that we're percieved as the sports-obsessed nation then.

[phongn]

What baffles me is why Chemistry is taught before Physics in most high schools. It's like starting with derivatives and then learning limits!

Hell, I think that students should be taught physics their first year in high school. It's far easier to explain the scientific method with physics examples than with chemistry or biology. Students can learn the importance of units more easily with physics, and they will go into chemistry already knowing basic conservation laws and the basics of electromagnetic interactions, which would help enormously in chemistry.

My high school taught physics in freshman year, then chemistry, then biology. It's been changed around a bit, though - chemistry and bio are now taught in the same year (sophomore).

[Sienthal]

Our HS has a lovely course set up. Science 9 for froshies, which is essentially a refresher course on your entire first 5 years of school. Biology for sophomores, which is a slightly more focused refresher course of your years in middle school. It was fun though, for we were able to dissect a frog. And FINALLY, I'm getting into Physics.

Of course, I may have been able to skip Sci 9, but I was a little lazy then. Instead of doing my homework like a good child, I spent most of my time exploring the different concepts given to us, in an attempt to truly understand them, instead of simply being able to "reverse engineer" information to my tests and forget about them right after.

We have some really great teachers at our school, even if many of the courses suck, so I enjoy myself there.

[ArmorPierce]

. Individual achievement is good, but team sports add extra layers. When you do poorly at a team sport, other kids will get angry at you. They will insult you, because you didn't just hurt yourself, you "hurt the team". They will want you off the field, and off the team. But if you do poorly at an individual sport, nobody gets upset. People might still ridicule, but it's far less likely, and you don't get extra humiliation by being made to sit on the bench. As I said before, team sports add extra layers. I didn't realize anyone would actually demand that I elaborate

In Track and Field there are Relay team races adn if your relay team were in teh lead then you get it and fuck it up you are going to get the rest of em pissed off.

As for the comment about someone who would have had failed had they not been an athlete, that is correct, my coach gets out some guys who would have failed by talking to their teachers and getting them to do some extra credit project or something, but then one of them was a national champ.

[ArmorPierce]

. Individual achievement is good, but team sports add extra layers. When you do poorly at a team sport, other kids will get angry at you. They will insult you, because you didn't just hurt yourself, you "hurt the team". They will want you off the field, and off the team. But if you do poorly at an individual sport, nobody gets upset. People might still ridicule, but it's far less likely, and you don't get extra humiliation by being made to sit on the bench. As I said before, team sports add extra layers. I didn't realize anyone would actually demand that I elaborate

In Track and Field there are Relay team races and if your relay team was in the lead then you get it and fuck it up you are going to get the rest of em pissed off.

As for the comment about someone who would have had failed had they not been an athlete, that is correct, my coach gets out some guys who would have failed by talking to their teachers and getting them to do some extra credit project or something, but then one of them was a national champ.

[Durandal]

Which is precisely the point. Academic institutions shouldn't be making exemptions on their requirements for athletes just because they happen to be good at a sport while being a moron.

[Graeme Dice]

Which is precisely the point. Academic institutions shouldn't be making exemptions on their requirements for athletes just because they happen to be good at a sport while being a moron.

The highest calibre of athletes tend not to be morons.

[RedImperator]

In my experience, there are two kinds of teachers (in the United States, anyway). There are the relative few who teach because they want to teach. Generarally, they know their subjects, and more to the point, they do their utmost to teach their students. They are also the ones who end up getting frustrated early in their careers with tyrannical administrators, boneheaded school boards, twink parents who drag their lawyers out from under their rocks every time Junior gets a C-, twiddledick parents who can't be bothered to care if junior's grades are so bad his GPA slips into negative numbers, PC race baiters who want Tom Sawyer banned because it has the word "nigger" in it, lint-headed Bible suckers who want Genesis taught in biology, state education officials who didn't quite make the cut for the Motor Vehicles Division passing down idiot proclamations from On High, childless yuppies and senior citizens who've let that "Greatest Generation" claptrap go to their heads who'd rather see the school sell the cheerleaders into the white slave trade before they spend another quarter-cent on the dollar in school taxes, fascist coaches who demand Tim Testiclebrain get an "A" because he's needed in the big game against Pig Dicker High this weekend, yogurt brained colleagues who run screaming to the union every time competence testing is mentioned, and students who just plain don't give a shit. There's more, but I've run out of amusingly insulting adjectives. Oh, and considering the amount of training the competent teachers usually need (especially the math and science teachers), they're grossly underpaid. These teachers often find themselves burning out within five years of getting their certification. A lot of them quit to get jobs at the college level, or else decide flipping burgers is a better career move for them.

The other type of teacher becomes a teacher by default. Typically, they had planned on being a lawyer, an engineer, a scientist, etc. but since they were in the bottom 10% of their graduating class, Harvard Law and MIT (also, Big Bill's Bottom Dollar Discount Taxidermy and Law Academy) wiped their ass with their admissions application, they needed to find SOMETHING to justify the amount of money their parents spent putting them through college. The teaching profession is so shorthanded (for the reasons listed above) that schools will take these bozos in. Being a tenured high school teacher is the perfect career for these wastes of carbon, because as of now, there's no accountability for anything short of fucking a student under the teacher's lounge lunch table, and no way to measure output as long as there's not an excessive number of either A's or F's.

There's actually a third type. These are the ones who realize they're incompetent ahead of time and so they major in education at the undergraduate level. Once they graduate and get certified, the description is basically the same as for those in the paragraph above. At Villanova (my college), education majors are required to take perhaps 20 credits in the subject they plan to teach, out of 120 needed to graduate. I myself plan on being a teacher (I obviously count myself in the first group, or I wouldn't be admitting that), but I've spent my undergraduate time studying the subject I want to teach and taken NO classes in education (I'm a double major and I don't have any room for them). Provided my GRE's are up to it, I want to get my master's in education from the University of Pennsylvania, learning in 1 year what an undergrad ed. major learns in 4.

How do you fix the American education system? Beats the shit out of me. Everybody's got such a vested interest in the current debacle that they're willing to let the kids continue to be morons. So long as American companies can continue to lure foreign talent in with big fat American paychecks with nice reasonable American taxes (from a foreigner's point of view, anyway), it's not a big enough crisis for the people in charge to bother with (yammering about education in election years most certainly does not count). And frankly, the politicians probably would prefer a nation of nitwits. Nitwits don't vote, and low voter turnout favors Republicans, and the nitwits who do vote vote Democratic, to judge by the sort of Democrats who get elected and interviewees on MTV's "Rock the Vote". Plus nitwits demand lots of stuff from the government for free, which expands government power, and find me a politician who's not in favor of that.

[Durandal]

The highest calibre of athletes tend not to be morons.

No one is saying that they are. I am only saying that an athlete of exceptional skill shouldn't be given exemptions and pardons on that basis if he or she cannot pass their classes to the satisfaction of normal school criteria.

[Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi]

Which is precisely the point. Academic institutions shouldn't be making exemptions on their requirements for athletes just because they happen to be good at a sport while being a moron.

The highest calibre of athletes tend not to be morons.

That's what happened when I was in school. It seemed just about all the best athletes were not only better athletes than me , they also got higher grades than I did. All the s in student council were also on just about every sports team, and the teachers loved them. If someone like that gets a scholarship, it's probably because of their athletic ability, not their grades.

[ArmorPierce]

Lemm say it this way



The typical Day consist of the Avarage student depending on where in the US now as every single school system is diffrent from the next will get up between 5:10 AM to 7:30 AM depending on when thier school starts, Get on a big slow, bad cornering death-trap know as a School Bus where they will be off-loaded like cattle, Then they have five to twenty minutes to sit around doing nothing or eat the school provided well balanced meal
Or as everyone else calls it.

In my school, the Freshmen don't come to schoole till 10 or 11. And most people don't have lunch in their schedule (well they have a lunch period but for most people it is their first period class so they don't go)