My rant on the U.S. school system: F

Posted by Ryan Gordon on April 26, 2009 under General, Life, MyBB, School | 4 Comments to Read

Yesterday was the three year anniversary of being with the MyBB Team. It has been a great learning experience thus far and I have learned so much more being on the team-in terms of collaberation, project management, communication, and programming practices- that any standard school class could not have even gotten close to teaching. Today, I find myself in a position where I must refocus my learning to school itself instead of something “real world” like being a manager of a successful online software.

The problem

Our school system sucks. Plain and simple. Expectations are so high, and students are being pushed so hard these day that it is now, more then ever before, about beating the system then actually sitting down and doing and honest days learning. Face it, do any of you remember half the things that are taught to you in high school? Let me give you an example, to put it in perspective.

When I took Algebra 2 during high school, I would routinely not understand a word problem, or a formula. I would ask my friends, whom had already taken the Algebra 2 course and went on into math analysis or above. I asked four of those friends at random, the same question. Three of those four friends didn’t know what to do what-so-ever and the fourth had to correct himself twice before he got it right. Mind you, these are students who had already taken the Algebrea 2 course. Can you answer it, without looking up how to do it?

“The Student Senate consists of 6 seniors, 5 juniors, 4 soppomores, and 3 freshmen. How many different committees of exactly 3 senisor, 3 juniors, 4 sophomores, and no freshmen can be chosen?”

If you did that right you should have used the nCr combination theorem. It should work out as the following:

= ₆C₃ X ₅C₃ X ₄C₄ X ₃C₀
= (6!/3!3!) X (5!/2!3!) X (4!/0!4!) X (3!/3!0!)
= ((6X5X4)/(3X2X1)) X ((5X4)/(2X1)) X (1) X (1)
=20 X 10 X 1 X 1
= 200

So, were you honestly able to do that without using some sort of help?

For most of you, the answer is no. We students remember the lessons until the test, then we forgot about them, repeat that until the semester is over, generally don’t do so well of the midterm or final, and scrape by. For those of us who are not so lucky in managing to scrape by, we take summer school, and that solves everything.

Teachers

Teachers are a huge apart of what a student actually learns long-term and the grade we get in our classes. There are some really good teachers out there, but I’d say the majority are just “okay” with the last few being “bad”.

I’d classify teachers under the following categories:

A great teacher is smart, understands students and gets them “involved” with the lessons via projects, partner collaboration, music, and movie clips, does not give out “busy work”, does not have random mood swings [and if they do, tells the class they're not up for being silly that day, or likewise], and creates a comfortable environment in the class.

A good teacher is smart, only has average communication and collaboration skills, has periodic random mood swings [without justification or being forthright], gives out a small amount of “busy work”, piles up a lot of homework without respecting or considering what other prearrangement’s and events students might have.

A bad teacher is sufficient in the subject they teach, but has bad grammar or bad English such as that students have a hard time understanding the teacher, gives out homework without teaching the lesson, spends considerable time during class doing nothing and the class doing nothing productive, blames the class for “being behind”, gives tests that take longer then the amount of time during that period and always has to curve tests because they are too hard (and are not AP classes), and is unable to understand and help students figure out problems in the very own lesson they are supposed to teach.

Summer School

It is general knowledge [the same view is shared by many teachers as well] that summer school is where you come to when you fail a class, sit on your tush for several weeks, and pass the class. At our school [information that has directly been shared by teachers to students] we have P.E. teachers, during summer school, teaching Algebra 2 and math analysis classes.

No one expects a student to go into a class and spend that amount of time and come out and have actually learned something. In addition, laws, reform acts, and rising pressure on the schools to put out numbers and statistics that show a high amount of passing students and students that pass state tests create this problem where teachers teach to strict and boring guidelines. Everyone becomes so antsy about the tests that we forget how students actually learn and we train them with a piece of paper and a pencil, to soak up information until the test, and then we squeeze them dry to restart for the next semester. Students learn if something is “memorable.” For example, why would I ever need to know the order and the names of all of our Presidents? The simple answer is, I have a higher chance of dying in a car crash then ever using that information in all my life for a real purpose. Something I would remember though, is how an electric circuit works because that directly relates to many things around me in my life.

SAT & Subject Tests

Everyone in California takes the SAT and SAT Subject Tests as it is one of the main criteria for being accepted into a college. The funny thing is, it’s not even really a test of your knowledge. When I took the Practice SAT, I did not even have close to enough time to finish all the questions in the sections, as it is timed. I understand they do not want people just sitting there all day, but I like to read through things a couple times to make sure I understand what it is that they are asking on the question. In my area of expertise, if I screw up one character, everything can go to hell.

So what now? Hm, oh look. SAT Training courses! So great, now because I paid with my arm and a leg, I can pass up everyone else on the SAT test because now I’ve been drilled so much on how to take a test, I can get a much better score.

Wait just a second now. So now, the reason I could be accepted to a college is because I was able to take a test faster then the other person? What kind of bull!@#$ reason is that? What is the whole point of colleges? To prepare us to work in the “real world” environment, right? So now, because I can take a test really fast I can now go to college, get a degree, and get a good job, where at I would never ever have to take a test fast in the rest of my entire life? In addition, is it not our very own teachers telling us to take our time so we don’t miss something?

And yet, after all of those issues aren’t we still churning out successful people? People whom are successful not because of how fast they can take a test or if they know Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, but instead if they can sit down and do what needs to be done for a specific position in a company. Sounds pretty straightforward to me.

We have all of this mold building on top of this bubble wrapped, gilded, waxed, tummy-tucked  school system and its starting to smell.