UtahBill

The "system" is not perfect, but it is more than adequate for those students who are motivated to learn. Where they get their motivation is one key issue....our kids learned early on that their parents would do their best to help, but that most of the effort had to be theirs, as there are no guarantees in life. Long story short, we put the fear of the unknown into their heads.
The best prepared (most educated) for potential unknowns are most likely to succeed. Our son prepared for pre-med, but ended up teaching science. Our daughter got a degree in economics, but now runs a successful coupon website that paid her and her business partner very well this last year. Both were over educated for their current endeavors, but surely being under educated would not have been the way to go....

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Education is expensive, ignorance is costly.

Each generation should have more opportunities than the last, but not at the expense of the next.

lizzie

From what I can see, parents are not really interested in their childrens' education compared to 25-50 years ago. When I was young, I was already seeing a decline in parental involvement. It probably has its roots in the decline of the family unit, and situations where both parents have to work. The general attitude toward education these days seems to be that parents see the schools as the responsible party for educating their children, both intellectually and socially.
To the issue of diversity in learning, the increasing incidence of standardized testing used as the sole determinating factor in the success of schools in the country probably bears heavily on that.
In a somewhat related subject, I have a good number of friends who are immigrants from different countries, and in the course of getting to know them, I learned about the strengths and weaknesses of education systems in other places. Several of my friends are from Kenya, and they have told me about the education system there, which I personally believe is superior to ours in that it encourages competition, but it also allows for education of differing types of students with differing capabilities and interests. In Kenya, students are pretty much educated in a uniform manner in primary school. After that is completed, they are tested to see where their strong points are. They can go into a school of science, school of the arts, or into skills training schools, which are similar to what we call trade schools. Most of the students desire to be placed in the science schools because those are considered the most "elite" (for lack of a better term), therefore, the students apply themselves and work really hard for the priviledges associated with it.
In our culture, we have decided that failure is unacceptable, so we tend to advance students out of social pressure rather than advancing them based on successful performance.

buster9

The only thing that schools are good at teaching is how to take tests. Lat collage class I had, you had to take a test to get certified. The only thing they taught was how to pass the test. No real knowleage was passed on.

UtahBill

I am 63, so high school was a long time ago....
My high school was recognized as being one of the best, academically. You could only get 24 credits, and you had to have them all to graduate.
But if you had passive parents, and a bad attitude, and the school counselors were too busy dealing with the college bound, and the reform school bound, you could easily spend 4 years not being noticed.

Once I got into the military, I discovered a really good education system, and blossomed, so to speak. Bad grades in high school meant nothing to the military, they looked at your entrance exam scores to determine what schools you might qualify for. I was 1 point short of acing the GCT/ARI exams and that got me into 2 of the Navy's best schools.

Mostly uphill from there....because there were people expecting something from me, and made me aware of it....

__________________
Education is expensive, ignorance is costly.

Each generation should have more opportunities than the last, but not at the expense of the next.

Bodhisattva

I completely agree. High school should be more like trade school. I have kids in Social Studies (Geography, History, Economics and Government) that are going into Trades and Dairy Farming and such... good for them. I sure as hell don't know anything about milking a mass quantity of cows, and you should hear how smart these "failures" in Social Studies are about the Dairy Industry! They know everything about every machine that I have never heard of and pricing and distribution, etc. What they need with the Russian Revolution is beyond me, but they are forced to learn this stuff for some reason, and they HATE it. This creates many of the problems that teachers face too.

It is amazing how many young kids (9-14) that are also failing in school have cell phones, I-pods, PSP's, etc but THEY DONT have a pencil and paper. Every year I tell the kids how I will deal with my girls if they are failing, and that is to not even allow them to have any of those things unless they are doing well, and to certainly take them away from them if they are not passsing a class. The students freak and say I am horrible and that they wouldn't give me their cell phone. I say that I would either just take it from them or when they are not aware, I have many students who say that they would steal it back. LOL! I then tell them that I would take it again and smash it. This really sends them over. They say they would just buy another... I tell them that I would just break or take it every time. This is all during the first couple of times that I have to confiscate phones, BTW, to show them how serious I am. After a couple of times of taking phones from students and giving them to the Dean, that is the end of my troubles.

Whew, that was long, but the point was that you are correct, parents should not be allowing their kids all this stuff unless the kid EARNS IT. Kids today are just given stuff and that sucks for them with regards to learning how to strive for something.

NCLB is a big problem, no question. And lack of appropriate involvement is huge. Kids need and WANT structure, rules and consequences. They want to know the boundaries. It is a real disservice when parents don't set the rules and even worse when they set rules but don't carry out consequences when rules are violated. That not only sets up a kid that cant follow rules, but one that gets kinda chaotic and spazzy since they are being told different messages. Clear cut and too the point is best for kids. Consistency.

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"Only pompous idiots have a quotation as their signature" - Agnapostate

lizzie

Wow, I'm quite surprised (but delighted) that you are allowed to take phones. There has to be some kind of incentive to make children behave in a way that facilitates learning. As much as many people would like to believe it's not true, humans don't have a natural inclination toward self-control, and without self-control, it's difficult to do much that is productive or meaningful in life.

Bodhisattva

Not only can I take the phone, I can keep it for the rest of the week. A parent can demand a phone back, but then that creates major problems regarding code of conduct for their kid if they choose to violate rules again.

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"Only pompous idiots have a quotation as their signature" - Agnapostate

Tsunami

Who does get into MIT? This year 1,552 out of 1,675 freshmen are Americans. We have the best universities in the world and they are full of Americans. So how can our education system be failing?

__________________
Schadenfreude ist die schönste Freude.

lizzie

That is not an accurate indicator that our education system is not failing. I know first hand that this link and the author are reliable sources of information:

Educated in America: College graduates and high school dropouts | vox - Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists

Tsunami

The link says more people are going to college and more people are dropping out. This makes sense to me. If you aren't going to college, graduating high school is meaningless. I graduated high school without going to college, and having a diploma hasn't affected (thanks aps!) my life in the slightest. My brother and sister both dropped out and both make a good living. You don't need to learn American History to fix cars or groom dogs. You don't need to read Shakespeare in 12th grade English to be literate. Not everyone needs to go to college. If the college enrollment rate is going up, the high school dropout rate is unimportant.

__________________
Schadenfreude ist die schönste Freude.