Do you feel that the school systems are flawed?

[glover]

As an American student I can say yes. Not every school system is perfect. I get that but, students U.S. are as stressed as ever. If anything school is not about learning anymore but instead passing. A lot of the things we learning are extremely useless I mean, why teach a kid to learn how to pay taxes when you can teach em' (y=mx+b)? or how about the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell? Heck, a lot of students are disinterested in the curriculum that schools have to offer. Another problem I have is how teachers handle bullying, In my sophomore year of school I saw a girl get bullied and there was almost a fight. You see, schools think that bullying is just name calling and teasing, when in short it's harassment, people hurt themselves when they get bullied and that's a major problem. Last but not least I wanna conclude with this: If you want to have a better school system, change the curriculum, give students less homework, remove standardized, and give them more breaks and summer days. Since i'll be a senior next year I can only hope that things will get better but only time will tell.

 

[Xara]

yes - i’m a canadian student but the education system isn’t all that great over here either and proof of that is several teacher federations are going on strike and have been doing so for the last couple months. school teaches and forces a lot of things that aren’t necessary - the majority of things taught in math and presentations, for example. those types of things should only be taught to students if their career aspects require those skills and not forced upon kids that don’t need it.

presentations are a big one for me - i have severe anxiety and while the saying is “the more you do it, the easier it’ll come” but that isn’t true for me; i’m still just as anxious and stressed everytime and i feel i shouldn’t have to do it as my career aspects will not require me to do presentations.

funding is another issue - a lot of schools are underfunded and teachers are not fairly paid - here in canada, doug ford who is the premier of ontario cut a lot of funds for schooling but do you know what he happily invested almost 400 million dollars into? horse racing. and somehow he still has the audacity along with the minister of education to act shocked that the teachers are upset - of course they’re upset. classes are too big, several courses got removed, they’re underpaid and aren’t treated the way they should be.

i didn’t mean to go on a tangent but long story short the education system has a lot of flaws to try and correct and that includes the teacher’s wages, class sizes, courses that should and should not be offered/required and school funding.

how to fix ontario’s education system flaws? get a new premier and minister of education because they’re both idiotic.

 

[N e s s]

As a current Senior in High School, I disagree with a good handful of these points.

If you set up a class to teach a kid how to pay taxes, aka "Home Economics" or "Home Ec", most kids will just not pay attention in that class anyway. I don't pay attention to my senior seminar class meant to teach us about adulting, as well as many other kids in my class. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink.

The point of teaching kids topics such as math or science is because it's meant to act as a solidifier for what they want to do later in life. If you want to go into any STEM related field (Engineering is a big one), you have to have basic Algebraic and Geometry skills before you can do anything else. You could make the argument that kids should be allowed to pick and choose whether or not they take math/science, but then again, you're not allowing that kid to learn skills that they can carry on. Most people do not go on to use Algebra in their professions, but I'm certainly glad I know how to do it, because now I know I don't want to do math for the rest of my life.

One way the schooling system has affected me is that English/Debate classes taught me that I want to become a lawyer in the future. I'm talented at formulating sentences and I generally have a very point-based system of thinking in that I know what logical answer I need to provide. Other kids may not have it as figured out as I may at this point in their lives, but the American education system does have an affect.

I would say that I wouldn't mind seeing the U.S. education system be reformed to have less "periods" and have block days that teach more in class with less homework like certain schools do around the U.S., but I don't know if that is a great plan anymore considering the environment of American schools. Kids are lazy, and if they're already not paying attention in class or if the teacher themselves isn't that great, I don't know if I see the value.

Bullying is also an individual basis. I see bullying fairly often at my school and I wouldn't mind seeing more school/federal programs meant to encourage kind behavior. The faculty is generally pretty good at enforcing these rules at my school and I am sympathetic to kids that are affected by such a thing. I was bullied nonstop in elementary school and it's had a toll on my psyche to this day. I'm a pretty confident young man now, but the social anxiety and fear I felt when I was younger was unbearable, even though the faculty in my elementary school was very kind to me and punished the kids that bullied me. You can't necessarily stop kids from being jerks, it's just bound to happen, but you can try and have the faculty prevent it as much as possible.

That's my take on it. I don't view the U.S. education system as a bad thing. I do think there needs to be more opportunities for kids who are not quite as engaged with their education and we need federal programs that help stop bullying, but other than that I don't realistically think much else should be changed.

- - - Post Merge - - -

Although I will say I want to see more investment in public schools and less in charters/private schooling. Betsy Devos' tax cuts to the education system is apalling to me, teachers deserve higher wages for the work they put in.

 

[CasualWheezer]

I'm a junior in the ib program so my experiences might be a little different because technically it's something else but really it's just the same thing but harder and with several projects on our heads. I think that, yes, there are many things that are wrong with the school system in general. It kind of dulls our desire to learn instead of strengthening it and kind of just leaves other important things to not be taught. Things like paying taxes, relationships, and just growing as a person aren't paid attention to at all. But nevertheless, there are things that everyone should learn and that can be where the school system has its strengths in that area for the most part.

 

[SheepMareep]

I'm in my 5th and final year of college and the education system in America sucks. The high school I went to was in the transition of being a poor school in the city to a highly funded school despite other schools in the district (it was a technical school.) Having more funding due to the areas they were in. We had to share textbooks in a lot of my classes, I would have to take over for teachers who were too overwhelmed to keep teaching for the period, and the curriculum we were given did not really encourage growth since we did not have honors classes until my junior year and there were no AP classes. Students who were quicker to learn subjects were not given an opportunity to grow and students who struggled were pitted against students who didnt.

The education is also very different in separate parts of the country. The way we explain history such as slavery and the civil war are very different in the north than in the south. Some areas treat the genocide of natives as everything but (for example, kids being taught native Americans gave us the United states territories as gifts and then mysteriously died due to an epidemic as opposed to the biological warfare/genocide.) The socioeconomic status of the families living around the school directly impacts the supplies, quality of teaching staff, and resources available to students leaving children in poorer areas at a disadvantage to those in richer homes.

From the time I was in elementary school to the time I graduated hs I think I learned the same topics multiple times across all three levels of school in the US. It is repetitive and overly demanding of children to place school in front of their physical and mental needs. I remember missing school without a note from a doctor/parent could get you detention after a few instances. As someone who struggled with mental health that was hard to do, especially since my reasons for missing class were not "valid" despite me being one of the top 5 students in my class. (Meaning they dont care about your grades in relation to attendance just that people are showing up )

 

[cIementine]

i'm a sixth form student in the uk and i feel the same way despite having mostly positive experiences of education myself. i go to a state school that performs well and has a good reputation, and i get good grades. but i despise how people are separated into groups based on their grades, and how in sixth form, people who don't plan on going to uni/doing an apprenticeship and just getting a job, which is a perfectly normal route to take, are either discarded or seen as a worry; i don't think it's that radical to not want to waste money on a degree you don't want or train for a career you don't want. i also find schools don't do a good job of hiding that you're just a statistic to them to make them look good on league tables - they care more about attendance than your wellbeing, and more about you reaching your target grade than how they actually teach to facilitate the achievement of it.

 

[SmoochsPLH]

My opinion of school (as someone's who's been out of it for a few years now) is that while it's really cruddy, annoying, and way too stressful for a lot of kids nowadays...in this day and age it is unfortunately necessary to get a job and you should put some effort into it to at least get good grades. That's what I tell most kids when I hear them complain about it, homework, studying, etc.

Really I've never liked the idea of school and never enjoyed it much despite loving to learn. Schools shouldn't be so focused on making sure kids do things a specific way or drilling the same information into their heads and actually helping them understand what they want to teach them. How they do the problem shouldn't matter as long as they get the answer right and show their work (which I now understand is to make sure they didn't cheat).

School should invigorate and excite a child not make them dread it, avoid it, or neglect their own mental and physical health over it. Also pay teachers more!

 

[Circus]

Yes, defiantly. The school system in Amercia is so focused on teaching us useless facts that they ignore the fact that we actually have lives and aren't just robots that can learn and process information with ease. The only time I've ever seen bullying dealt with was when the kid who was getting bullied stopped showing up to school, and I've seen fights break out where both parties get suspended, but only one of them started the fight, the othet person was just fighting back. In the words of our teacher, "The minute you fight back, you become just as bad as the person fighting you. You should just get up, walk away, and tell an adult." Like what? If someone's punching and kicking you, how are you just supposed to walk away? They're literally teaching us that self-defense is bad!

 

[Tao]

As somebody who's finished school, I don't think it was a perfect system, but generally did a okay job.


That said, I think I would have benefited quite a bit from some sort of 'home economics' class in my school given that after leaving I had a lot of questions where the answer would start with "you should know this" or "didn't they teach you this in school?". Whilst they're supposed to be guiding you into the adult world and the future, they do a very poor job of teaching a lot of universal skills that you'll need regardless of your career path, income, social status etc. Still, you can provide this stuff but it doesn't mean they'll even attempt to take any of it in.

On the other hand, some of this stuff there's no excuse for the parents to not be teaching. Cooking or cleaning, how to do certain paperwork, bills etc. These could be done in a home economics class, but there's absolutely nothing stopping parents from teaching this to their children. To a degree, I think those are the things I would prefer my parents to have taught me.

As N e s s said though, from experience kids can be pretty lazy and to add on to that, that they know more than they actually do. A lot of things you learn in school you won't use, true, but you're not truly going to know what is useless for you until you're out in the adult world and you're not going to know you really don't like the thing until you've "tried it". The curriculum is based around that, to be widespread because nobody really knows where you're going to end up in the future, so here's a lot of tools so you hopefully have the right ones.

I think the most common phrase I've heard since leaving school are variations of "I should have tried harder/done better", as well as people going back to education to learn things they were supposed to have been taught the first time around. Why? Because they've ended up taking a path where these skills would have actually been useful but of course when they were actually in school the first time, they knew better, "I'll never need this so whatever".

Homework? It's basically overtime, again, something you'll probably encounter at some point...On the other hand, I've seen how much homework my younger siblings get compared to when I was in school and it is ridiculous. If schools are struggling to get so much done in school hours then the curriculum really needs to be shaken up. Maybe cut out some of the stuff that truly is useless, outdated and irrelevant in 2020.


But yea, ultimately I think schools do as good a job as they can when teaching tons of kids a bunch of subjects and disciplines when there's so much possible variation on what each one of them will actually specifically need later in life. I might not need algebra and have never used it since, but it's a good job I know how to work out averages and area for work I use regularly even though 14 year old me insisted it would be useless.


There's one more thing I would say about the curriculum, but it links better from my next opinion:

Another problem I have is how teachers handle bullying, In my sophomore year of school I saw a girl get bullied and there was almost a fight. You see, schools think that bullying is just name calling and teasing, when in short it's harassment, people hurt themselves when they get bullied and that's a major problem.

I actually feel for teachers a lot. Kids and arguably their parents these days can be utterly ridiculous to deal with. I think teachers know exactly what is happening, they're not as stupid as you seem to think, but what exactly can they do about it these days without putting themselves into any kind of risk? I actually wanted to be a teacher at one point (a music teacher. I would have loved that) but one of the main things that put me off isn't the bad kids, its the increasing number of bad or useless parents.

When I was younger and I did wrong, I would get a clip around the ear and didn't do the thing again. Didn't get PTSD, didn't fear my parents, I just got a swift memo that I shouldn't do 'the thing' thus didn't do 'the thing' again. There's other ways to punish a child but it takes a lot more patience and the ability to follow through with it, which my dad did. I feel the swift hand of justice made a lot of difference though and, in theme of "teaching kids how to deal with the adult world", a smack on the wrist is a very watered down and minor version of what could happen to you if you act like a butthole towards the wrong person as an adult.

These days its just flat out wrong to hit your kids at all, it's never been fine to kick their ass but it's also wrong to give a slap on the wrist. Now we have to rely on the other methods that require following through and patience, two things the vast majority of people don't have. We also have a damn lot of these parents who are failing to punish their kids refusing or becoming hostile towards people who do, such as teachers. "Nobody punishes my kid but me, even though I kind of don't". I feel kids are worse these days than they ever were when I was younger, and I went through some rough **** as a kid at the hands other other kids, but those kids would never dream of doing some of the things I see and hear about these days.

Teachers these days are being given less and less ways to punish bad behaviour and crappy parents are causing more and more problems that ultimately all that could happen is that teacher loses their job. They're not given the tools, incentive or freedom to punish kids and a hell of a lot of parents aren't just not helping, they're actively making things harder for anybody to sort out their little problem child...Who obviously is a "sweet young man and you're wrong, not him".

You hear a lot of stories in the news and media and for as many people who think "this is what ALL teachers have to put up with these days", there's as many who think "it's just a minority of cases. Teachers are fine". I don't think many people really realise how many parents like this actually DO exist because, really, most people aren't ever going to come across these parents themselves, or they're not going to act like that in front of them. You know who is going to see these types of parents a lot? The people trying to punish them, the teachers, the ones everybody blames both when things get done about it (by the problem childs parents) or when things don't get done (the victims parents) and in both cases, its that teachers job on the line, so they're damned if they do, damned if they don't.


I've had to put up with quite a bit and come into contact with these situations due to the way me, my siblings and my friends either look or are (visual disabilities). We get targeted and at some point, we're dealing with the parents whether we want to or not and the majority of the time, we're wrong even when we're right.

I could list and link a bunch of articles with examples of schools/teachers being hassled by butt hole parents but I've got enough personal examples of what awful parents and hellspawn kids actually exist in the world to get rid of the "yea, but those are anecdotes from a newspaper, not a worldwide issue" reply's. As said, most kids and parents will never witness these types of people because, well, you're just not going to come into contact with them unless you're a victim (which most people aren't and haven't been), the teachers are just being useless or soft in the eyes of those people, so, here's a few personal examples of what it can be like dealing with the parents of a kid who has done something wrong (something teachers will have to do FAR more than anybody else...Other than the police I guess)

Spoiler: hefty list

My brother and his friend are in collage and they have been bullied A LOT by kids from their collage, a large part being that they're 'obviously' disabled. From the top of my head the repercussions of them reporting it are:
- his friend was receiving threatening calls from the bully's dad. When 'friend' dad answered the phone he was threatened to be stabbed if "your ****** son grasses up my lad again".
- My mums house (whilst I still lived there) was stoned by a bunch of their bullies as they stood out side shouting for my brother to come outside so they can kick his head in. At our house. Literally, at our house, that's where they decided to do this. I went outside, caught one who wasn't fast enough, made him take me to his house upon after explaining to his dad the situation I was told "you or your spastic brother go near my son again and I'll break your ****ing legs, you long haired piece of ****".
- Some girl claimed my brother sexually harassed her and we had the police around (I know he didn't. He doesn't go out the house really, especially on that night). My mum brought him back from collage the next day because same girl had told the school, he was placed in isolation, when her mother came and when the police turned up (especially due to this being an already reported case) her mother was taken in the back of a police car for threatening behaviour towards an officer basically because they questioned the validity of her daughters claim due to the evidence given for the other claim the night before.
- A fun one, some total dreg decided it would be a good idea to smash his lunchbox over my brothers head. My brother was fine, but that kid cut his hand on the plastic shards. When they failed in getting money for 'damages and compensation' from my parents (who rightfully told them what to do with their request) they tried to demand it from the school. I don't think this got anywhere since it was all very unofficially done other than my brother filling out a short "what happen?" form.
- We had one dad coming to the house, extremely hostile, demanding that my brother pay child welfare for my brothers 'baby'. He broke the door lock, my step dad fought with him, I came down and helped out. He left with threats against my brother.
Obviously police got involved. Not much happened, the guy got community service or something lame. Later turned out that it wasn't my brothers baby at all. Being disabled, it didn't occur to him to mention that he was a virgin, he just got told it was his baby and accepted it...Didn't stop the dad coming around again demanding money anyway because...Reasons? I don't know...And this guy had the audacity to call my brother a ******...





My friends live together with their daughter. A group of us go around fairly regularly to play DnD, almost every weekend. The guy is also very clearly a fan of metal which always makes somebody a target but otherwise the chillest dude I've ever met, his wife is a 'big girl' but absolutely lovely to everybody. Visually they're both typical targets for harassment and obviously they were.

There was a group of kids on that estate, true bunch of future criminals their mum should have swallowed. They:
- Stole my friends bins multiple times, except the one time where they just set fire to them literally under his kitchen window. Stealing bins doesn't sound like much...Until you realise that after the first time you have to pay about ?80 to the council for a replacement.
- Stole their front gate...For some reason
- Stole their ?500 trailer tent they bought for us to use at festivals and take their daughter on holidays
- That trailer tent I just mentioned? It was found smashed and burned on a field behind another friends house.
- Their kitchen window was smashed, much worse considering they have a daughter and pets who could have gone in and cut themselves on it.
- Smashed all the windows on their new car.
- Though it can't be proven who did it, somebody cut the breaks on their car
- The general harassment they got from one of them being 'obviously into metal' and the other being 'a big girl', to be nice.

Police did pretty much nothing about any of this. I was there for a couple of the visits. This is basically when I lost any faith in the police due to how little they did about any of this.

He was threatened to be put in a hole where nobody would find him when confronting one of their parents about the trailer tent and to stop spreading lies about children. They moved house late last year to get away from this.

Couple months after they moved, this kid stole a car and went joyriding with his friend. They crashed it, he was killed, two innocent casualties from the car they crashed into and their parents gave the usual 'shtick to the papers about how he was a little angel that fell in with a bad crowd. We're not usually the type of people to laugh and consider a childs death a good thing but, yano, I don't feel the world is a worse place in his absence.

Quite quickly my friend was being contacted with multiple hostile messages blaming him and his wife for the death of their kid/nephew/brother/friend etc. Obviously it was their fault for spreading these """lies""" about their little corpse which caused him to do something like this.





Then there's me. I've had to deal with ****head parents since I've moved into where I currently live last year, so not a bit of anecdotal recollection here. (as an end terrace, I feel we get 'targeted' by idiots more).

- Some parent and kid walked past and their kid just casually threw their empty McDonalds bag in my front garden. "Excuse me, could your lad pick that up please? He can put it in the bin if he wants *gestures to my bin*, I just don't want litter in my garden". Oh, the response. "Don't tell me what to do, he can do what he wants. Pick it up yourself, prick". (and because I'm not going to paint myself as a saint, I did respond with "how about you stop making your mistake into everybody elses problem and actually parent the little **** properly?")

- Some kid climbed over my fence and couldn't get back out. I came home to his angry mother screaming at me as to why I had locked her son in my back garden. After massive confusion to what this angry hoe was talking about, I went and let him out. Turns out he was just playing with his football walking past and accidentally kicked it in, climbed over to get it, couldn't climb back out...His mum absolutely wouldn't take this for an answer though, probably because then she would have to admit she made a mistake by screaming at me for 5 minutes.

- We had banging at the door at about 4AM on a Saturday night/Sunday morning, woke me up, I went to see WTF was going on. Two kids, must have only been about 14/15, drunk and violent at my front door for some reason, probably got wasted on a park nearby or something. The lad tried starting a fight with me for some reason, his girlfriend encouraging it, tried to guide him off calmly since he was just a kid, he wouldn't have it. Once he got really violent I just restrained him, made him aware he wasn't going to win if he continued and sent him off on his way...Little **** smashed my van wing mirror on the way out, cost me ?45.

Next day I get a visit from the police. Apparently I had invited them into my house, gave them alcohol and made sexual advances on his girlfriend later in the night (in other words, apparently got a kid drunk and tried to rape them). He hurt his hand (cut up from when he smashed my wing mirror) when he was trying to defend himself/her which is where he also got his other bruises (which later turned out he asked somebody to give him to strengthen his story). I'm taken away, I just go with it because I know I've done nothing wrong.

Obviously this all got thrown out legally incredibly quickly with lack of evidence, lack of motivation, me having enough witnesses saying this didn't happenand as well as a total lack of continuity or accuracy in their story...Such as what the inside of my house looks like and that two other people live there as well, not to mention the wing mirror with his blood on it ripe for testing where he really cut his hand. They've confessed at this point that they just asked somebody to go into the shop for them and buy them cider, this whole story being a failed attempt to hide the truth since illegally getting drunk, bashing on somebody's door, trying to start a fight with them and smashing their car was definately something their parents were going to find out about (they wouldn't have. I wouldn't bother with the police since they're useless and I had no idea who they were, so they would have gotten away with it)...But their parents, good god, pair of total arseholes. We've had plenty of hassle from them and their ilk since then to the point where we are trying to move house since we're just sick of it. They can't accept their kids were wrong even when their kids tell them they were wrong, it has to be literally anybody else.

These kids have admitted to lying and wasting everybody's time, yet their parents absolutely refuse to believe their kids could do any wrong to the point they're still attempting to carry this crap on long after everybody else has accepted, including the kids, that they were wrong.

We're not teachers, we're just unlucky enough to have been victim to a few crappy kids and their god awful parents. How many of these people do you think teachers have to put up with? With those types of people existing in, sadly, far larger numbers than you would believe these days, its no wonder bullying is such an issue in schools, the place that's going to see ALL of THOSE parents. I would HATE to be a teacher these days, I would absolutely dread having to deal with any of this at any risk of my job or personal safety and I would feel absolutely heartbroken that I feel I would have to sit back and watch kids go through any amount of trouble because the potential **** storm one of the bullies parents could start.

At best these parents will take their kid home, sit on the sofa and say or do absolutely nothing about it. They don't really care as long as its not their child. Maybe they'll tell them they can't go on their Xbox for 2 days, until they realise they can't actually be bothered enforcing that so Billy is on the Xbox within 2 minutes.

At worst, these teachers could lose their job and have their name spread around the internet as newspapers report false allegations of physical, verbal, emotional or sexual abuse towards children (because we never get follow up articles of "we were wrong, this guy did nothing wrong, sorry", because those articles don't get clicks...)

 

[cornimer]

I was just having a discussion about this with my coworkers yesterday. The consensus among those of us who had been raised in Ontario was that we learned almost nothing in school that we actually use today - we learned most things through jobs. The people who had come from other countries (India and Denmark) had higher opinions of their schooing.

 

[Milleram]

As a fairly new teacher, I can definitely say that the school system where I live is flawed. There is not enough funding for in-class support. More and more students have special needs these days, and it's impossible to meet these needs when funding is being cut. I have been physically and verbally abused by my students, and these kids were only 6 years old! More special needs assistants need to be hired in order to help all students succeed.

 

[LadyDestani]

I do think the public school system in the US is flawed. Keep in mind that I have been out of school for 20+ years now, so my experiences may or may not still be relevant.

My family moved around when I was younger, so I had the opportunity to attend a variety of different public schools. I was one of those rare kids that actually liked school and learning, so my opinions weren't clouded by a general dislike of school. I spent a few years in a public school in one of the more affluent areas and then we moved and I spent a few years in a public school in one of the poorer neighborhoods. The difference was like night and day when it came to the quality of the facility and the atmosphere. In the wealthier neighborhood, even though our school was in the basement of the high school, we had access to plenty of light, open areas, top-notch equipment and new books. In the poorer neighborhood, despite having 3 whole buildings, the classrooms were small, dingy, and dark. The equipment was always broken and the books were falling apart. These are publicly funded schools. There's no excuse for one school that's only 20 minutes away to be so much better than the other. And the school in the wealthier neighborhood got a brand new building a few years after I left, while the other school is still located in the same cruddy building to this day.

The curriculum was similar, but actually slightly more advanced at the poorer school. I had to be tutored for a week after class to catch up since I moved mid-year. So that was good that they weren't behind in that respect. And the teachers at both schools were an equal mix of good and bad. But the teachers at the poorer school had a lot more to deal with and overcome. Between the awful facilities where it was always too hot or too cold and the lack of quality teaching materials and equipment, they had to get far more creative. The students were also much less engaged in learning. There were regular fights and bullying, something I rarely saw at the wealthier school. Not gonna say it didn't happen, just not as much.

I would say that in both schools I had the same opportunities for learning, but it was only because I went out of my way to do so. I paid attention and worked hard. For the students who didn't care, and let's be honest there are a lot of those, there was nothing at the poorer school to interest them or draw them in.

There needs to be more equality when it comes to learning. One school shouldn't get all the funding, while other schools in the same city languish. And teachers definitely deserve higher pay. They pay for so much out of their own pockets and they are not fairly compensated.

 

[Hopeless Opus]

i absolutely think it is flawed. there are far too many points, as it is flawed for both students and teachers alike.

on the student end, students aren't really being taught the essentials nowadays. there's plenty of skills i would've loved to have, that i had to learn outside of school. of course there's the whole debate on bullying as well, and teachers definitely aren't taught correctly on how to handle these situations. i think this should be part of a teacher's job, too, to be prepared for these type of situations.

on the teacher end, they aren't paid enough, have to put up with a LOT, sometimes have to pay out of pocket for supplies, and so on. it's just a difficult job to deal with. teachers are just not recognized enough and it makes me sad. there are some teachers who are INCREDIBLE - those are the ones who are compassionate about what they teach, are empathetic to students, and actually want to do the job... and those are the types of teachers that inspire students to do good.

anyways i could go on and on, but the point is that the school system is VERY flawed... and not just for students.

 

[seliph]

I was just having a discussion about this with my coworkers yesterday. The consensus among those of us who had been raised in Ontario was that we learned almost nothing in school that we actually use today - we learned most things through jobs. The people who had come from other countries (India and Denmark) had higher opinions of their schooing.

yeah i also live in ontario and that sums up my thoughts pretty well lol

the sex ed curriculum is especially embarrassing (not to mention incredibly heteronormative but that's a whole other discussion) and i personally learned next to nothing aside from a few terms, in some cases without their definitions. everyone i know learned most if not all they know from the internet, which can be incredibly dangerous when you take teenagers/minors into account.

what's even worse though is how people with mental illnesses or other mental conditions are treated. there's just about no help beyond possibly getting an IEP which more often than not just makes school staff patronize you and treat you like you're dumb or something. if your condition makes you miss school you're more likely to be punished for poor attendance than to get any help getting back on track. most schools have a guidance counselor (which can be lovely to talk to, don't get me wrong) but no one who actually knows how to handle students who need mental help. we NEED more programs for mentally ill/special needs students now more than ever.

on another note, i think standardized testing in general is such a bad idea. everyone learns at a different pace, certain people learn better from different teaching methods, and people show what they've learned differently. the expectation for everyone to learn the same things from the same method is absurd and kills peoples', especially kids', desire to learn. there also should be smaller class sizes so that all students' needs can be met, there's zero room for personal help when one teacher has to deal with 30 kids.

anyway thats just some of my thoughts on ontario schooling, unfortunately with our current premier it doesn't look like it's going to improve very soon

 

[Shellzilla_515]

I live in Canada. I'm not in high school anymore but I am currently in college. Back then, I noticed some classes were using old, outdated textbooks while some teachers just don't really care what they're doing. In summary, it was lacking to help get students engaged with learning materials. The most useless course I took was civics, and I have no idea what it was all about. I don't really understand why more courses aren't made to develop personal growth (e.g. cooking, doing taxes, leadership, etc.). As a person who lives in Ontario, there's a potential that online courses may become mandatory. The problem is that it really isn't engaging at all speaking from my experience. And it's easy to get distracted, so you're even more likely getting the information through your head and out. Surveys were taken and it shows that there's a huge opposition against it from students, parents, and teachers.

My sister wanted to take a strings class one time, but was turned down by a guidance counsellor saying that you need a certain amount of experience. Dude, my sister played violin for a few years now and you're saying that she doesn't have experience, let alone trying to get into the course in the first place to develop further? Disappointed.

That's not to say my entire experience in high school was bad. In fact, there were some courses that I enjoyed! I'll start off with Law. It sounds boring when you learn how it works on different levels and in different countries. What really got me hooked was that the teacher gave the entire class an opportunity to participate in court mock trials! Because of this, it gave me a good idea how laws work in my country and how court cases proceed. Another course I liked taking was cooking. While I'll admit I don't remember everything I learned from that class, it was hands on learning which kept me engaged. And since the school I was at had technical courses available, I took video production and digital arts! It really got my creative juices going and I put my heart into each assignment I was given. Unfortunately, I didn't save them on my own hard drive but at least I have them in my memory!

A few teachers I had was very kind, helpful, and gave me the reason to learn. They were awesome, made my time worthwhile, and not feel like I was in torture. In fact, that's what made me like biology in the first place! I feel that not only do you need to have quality courses to take but teachers as well who genuinely like to teach.

 

[idiotdoomspiral]

the sex ed curriculum is especially embarrassing (not to mention incredibly heteronormative but that's a whole other discussion) and i personally learned next to nothing aside from a few terms, in some cases without their definitions. everyone i know learned most if not all they know from the internet, which can be incredibly dangerous when you take teenagers/minors into account.

sex ed is terrible. it didn't teach me anything and worsened my bdd which i still have to cope with. there are a lot of problems with it for all genders but what affected me the most is the misinformation on women's anatomy. it circulates all the time and it's disheartening to see that that it's the norm for people to be uneducated and sometimes say really horrible and disgusting things that aren't true which only serves to make people even more uncomfortable with themselves even though they're completely normal. i want anyone who may be worried to know that it's very likely that your body is perfectly normal and there's absolutely nothing to worry about, you're only given a few drawings of what your body can look like and maybe a couple of human examples but everyone is different and still normal, don't listen to what sex ed tells you and never project that information on others

i really didn't like school in general and missed half of secondary school because i hated it so much. the way they dealt with bullying was so bad that for one example they showed a video in assembly where a girl was singing and then some guys who frequently bullied her kept interrupting and annoying her and the teachers were like haha so funny what a funny joke! completely oblivious to what was happening or they just didn't care. the same girl also got ridiculed at the talent show and the teachers thought everyone was laughing with her and not at her. i'm surprised i never really got bullied because i was definitely an easy target back then, in fact i was bullied more by some of my teachers if i wasn't good at something, i had a lot of needs because i was very mentally ill at the time but nothing was done to help me. the way they dealt with mental health was just really bad, maybe you'll see a poster about depression hung up on the wall somewhere but we never talked about mental health directly. apparently i went to one of the top schools in britain and ????????????? that can't be true surely. i don't think many teachers realise how much of an impact they can have on another student's lives. mine sure didn't

 

[Mayor Monday]

Short answer- absolutely.

If I started ranting about the school system, I would be both fuming and banned.

The semi-long answer is this: the school system is terrible. It has its pros, but they are outweighed by the far too numerous cons. The school system is too unstable, political, mentally damaging, and often times disgraceful.

Individuality and free-thinking are taken and then replaced by a herd-mentality. The education part of education has been removed. People are learning little to nothing. They're showered with 'facts' but zero skills. Education must be gained through the lust of seeking knowledge and at one's own pace and interests, instead of shoved down their throat.

Not all schools are as stated above- but the system as a whole truly is- and no one will change my mind about it.

 

[SublimeDonut]

Quite unpopular opinion here that i'm salty about:

One of the things most people love to repeat is that you don't learn anything of use in school. I think that's oversimplistic bull****.

Of course we don't learn about taxes or the job market or whatever you think is more useful, those things we can learn navigating the world by ourselves, as adults. The biology of our body? Not so much. The development of human thought? Even less.
Growing up we need to understand and grasp who we are, what world we live in, how it came to be this way, how it functions, in which ways are we all alike, in which ways we aren't. Taxes will not teach you that.
Each subject in school is there to fill one of these purposes. History teaches the mistakes of the past so we don't repeat them. Art teaches human emotion and in which ways we have always been alike. Biology teaches about our bodies, a subject that becomes ever more important as the child grows up. Physics and chemistry teaches the very fabric and rules of the universe we inhabit. Each subject adds a new layer to the child's perspective about themselves and what surrounds them.
Of course there can be mistakes in the execution of all this that make children exhausted, overworked, anxious, ill. But again, that's a mistake in the execution, not in the intent.
The intent of school is to give the most basic tools every human needs to navigate the world. Taxes and the job market are not among them.

 

[TheRealWC]

I'm a junior in the ib program so my experiences might be a little different because technically it's something else but really it's just the same thing but harder and with several projects on our heads. I think that, yes, there are many things that are wrong with the school system in general. It kind of dulls our desire to learn instead of strengthening it and kind of just leaves other important things to not be taught. Things like paying taxes, relationships, and just growing as a person aren't paid attention to at all. But nevertheless, there are things that everyone should learn and that can be where the school system has its strengths in that area for the most part.

I'm in IB as well and I can say, especially with an A/B Day schedule, school is mentally draining to the point where I feel like I'm falling behind in other things. I do not have much time to study for the SAT/ACT because of work and studying in IB, yet at the same time if I wasn't in IB in my district, there is no way I would get into a top school.

One thing I find flawed about education in the US is that its so unequal. Where I'm from (South Carolina), education sucks. Teachers are payed crummy salaries, the schools are literally falling apart, and our career center is closing down. Trades are very important and you can still make a good living through them, so this is unfortunate. Instead, they're delegating all these activities to our local tech school, but if you do decide you want to go to a 4 year university, there's a good chance credits from this school won't transfer.

I feel like school overall is exhausting mentally and physically, but it could 100% be worse. I can't imagine in places like China where students go to school 6 times a week. Some things that I learn in school I do find kind of interesting. For example, I've figured out that I'm really intrigued by political science and history. Also, I have learned a lot of Spanish, which is something I want to continue on learning in college (and in my opinion, EVERY student should have to take at least a semester of a foreign language. It's such a useful tool in an ever-shrinking world).

TL;DR: School can be stressful and economic division in different parts of the country have unequal systems, but it could be worse and there is some good.

 

[Midoriya]

I do agree very much that school systems are flawed. As someone who went through a really difficult time in elementary and middle school not being able to flourish really or relate to the other students, it was awful. To the people that think bullying is limited to just aggressive acts of behavior, it?s not. Another form of bullying is exclusion. I was excluded every day at lunch in middle school. To the point where I would be sitting at a large table by myself because no one else wanted to be around me.

This is what caused me to switch to private school for both high school and university. Since then I?ve been able to grow tremendously as a person and critical thinker. Starting in private high school I developed a sense of humor and ended up doing really well in all of my classes. I was one of the rare students who enjoyed learning and going to school, and still am, but just didn?t have the right setting for it before this time. I even managed to graduate as Salutatorian (2nd best GPA) from my school.

In university I?ve opened up even more and made friends and memories I will never forget. I learned how to be independent and furthered my critical thinking skills, to the point where if I?m actually trying, my writing and reading skills are above that of someone graduating from most universities with a master?s degree. I?ve also learned a lot about my specific field and just about life in general. Because my style of learning is hands-on, I?m doing the perfect major for me and wouldn?t have it any other way (I?m not a visual or audio learner. I can try to learn those ways, but it?s not as effective).

Objectively speaking, I agree with these points a lot:

There needs to be more equality when it comes to learning. One school shouldn't get all the funding, while other schools in the same city languish. And teachers definitely deserve higher pay. They pay for so much out of their own pockets and they are not fairly compensated.

Although I will say I want to see more investment in public schools and less in charters/private schooling. Betsy Devos' tax cuts to the education system is apalling to me, teachers deserve higher wages for the work they put in.

The entire reason I made the switch is because I was used to seeing and hearing about all of these public schools that had these problems and crumbling infrastructures. Putting aside any personal bias, I believe that it?s really important that more money is invested in public schools and the education system so that people like me don?t have to switch to private. Kids need the opportunity to flourish from an early age, and if they don?t have the right setting for it that makes things a lot more difficult.