Hey, I don't know any of that stuff. But check out what I said before-- the level of schooling needs much, much better standardization if you can do all that, and yet others get the treatment I illustrated there.

I wonder if the person who wrote that online text was chosen specifically because he or she was a cynical asshole, or if it just turned out that way by coincidence? (Granted, it still made me chuckle, but then again I have a thing for dark humor.)

On a more serious note, I have teaching experience in both the US and Japan from elementary to adult education, and here's how I see it: There is a vast disparity in education quality in the US. It's only partially related to what state you're in, and mostly dependent on whether you can afford a private school or top level university. If it's not ivy league, it all depends on how dedicated your teachers are, and in the end you're not guaranteed to get anything more than a nigh-worthless piece of paper.

Our current regime-- er, administration-- has responded with the "No Child Left Behind" act. I've seen this policy being implemented, reluctantly, while teaching here a couple years back. Nearly everything but reading and math got dropped at that elementary school, and even those core subjects were dumbed down. It became clear to me: "No Child Left Behind" really means "Every Child Held Back."

It's the exact opposite in Japan. I've taught English at the same grade levels at multiple schools there. They're all eerily the same. They teach nearly the exact same things. Everything is perfectly ordered and standardized. That said, they're also stifling and mediocre, relying solely on rote memorization and enforcing conformity. Of course, the poor kids eventually find out that normal school means jack shit, because they need to memorize an arbitrarily chosen set of *completely different* things to pass their barbaric high school entrance exams, and thus attend "cram school" for more rote memorization.

On a related note, Junichiro Koizumi is awesome. I nominate him for president of the world.

The Singing Revolution is a pretty fantastic achievement. Nice work, folks.

Back to education in America though, it's terribly uneven. Pretty much anyone who knows much about education will concede that American primary and secondary schools (that's K-12) suck giant donkey balls. They're terrible, for a whole lot of reasons that would take too long to go into right here. When it comes to higher education it's a different story. There are quite a few bad ones, but like Satyr says, the top tier in America is unmatched. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, University of Chicago, UC-Berkeley, MIT, etc. can't be beat. I also feel constrained to point out that Harvard is actually extremely affordable. For example, if your parents have a combined income of $60000 or less, it's free. Getting in is still a bitch of course, but their endowment is so fucking big they don't really need tuition anymore. And MIT's coursework is available to everyone online free of charge. Now I'll be the first to admit that higher education isn't very accessible for lower-income students, but the problem is about more than just money. Well, maybe it is about money more than anything else, but it's lack of money in primary and secondary schools that's the problem. And too much of the money that is available going to bullshit and not education.

Sorry, I could go on all day about this stuff, but I'll pipe down now.

If this video doesn't prove how cultured we Aussies are, nothing will.

Honestly, I think the American education system has gotten worse since I graduated high school. We didn't have "No Child Left Behind" in the 90's. If you failed, you failed. I was in 4th grade with one boy who was 13, and another boy who was 14. I was on the pep squad in 9th grade with a girl who was 20 because she'd dropped out and came back.

A lot of schools in larger cities deal with overcrowding, more than 25 students in a classroom.  I came from a city of 13,000 and I never had a class with less than 25 kids in it. This was normal. Most of us still managed to learn despite  this so-called overcrowding. A good teacher can teach a class of 10 as well as he/she can teach a class of 35. It's all about power and control. When you give the children the power, it leaves the teacher with none...and chaos ensues.

As for international relations, we epically fail at that. We barely understand the cultures of people we go to school with, so how are we expected to understand the cultures and societies of the world abroad? My high school only offered French and German for the entire 4 years I was there. My senior year was the first time in at least 5 years that Spanish was being offered. For 900 kids, there were 60 spots available. 

But that textbook is pathetic. No one I know has ever encountered a book that full of over-generalizations. I admit I didn't go to an Ivy League university or a private college, but I went to the best in-state university I could afford. I will admit that it had it shortcomings, but our textbooks don't go on that list.  Now the lack of available courses....that's a problem.

That book is like a black hole of knowledge, every time I read one of those paragraphs I feel that I get dumber!!! Is... Is... ñya... mañana will be a better day for answeri... (Heeeeelp!!! the virus is spreading!!!! )

25 students is considered overcrowded for a classroom?!
Well damn. I don't think I ever had a class that small.

I never understood the whole pass/fail thing. I mean, when I was younger, it made sense. If you didn't pass, you failed, and were held back. Okay, got it. Must pass.

But then, people who weren't passing started making it too!! SO many people kept getting 45s on their report cards, but they were still progressing along like I was!! Well that's not fair.

So I was placed in higher level classes, for reasons unbeknownst to me. (I'm possibly THE laziest person on earth.) Almost everyone passed. Everyone got to progress. Eventually however, in some, we progressed into areas that I just royally SUCK at (like literature from hell. I have ZERO reading comprehension.) and as such, I left some of my hard classes to go to the easier ones. (Not remedial, but like... normal classes.)

We also had books to read. Much easier ones. However, we didn't read them!! We had a tape! We followed along!! We were graded on how well we followed the tape!! (I... failed... because I read ahead. She thought I was lost, but the tape was UNGODLY SLOW. But it didn't matter!! She pointlessly raised, not curved, raised, everyone's grades! So I passed!! And some people STILL failed.)
Another book. The Great Gatsby. I have no idea what the hell happens in the Great Gatsby. Why? We never opened the book. We saw the beginning of the movie. That is ALL.

I've had classes where the teacher just sits on the phone half the class. Classes where it seemed like all we did was watch movies.
I had one class, a music theory, I swear to god, we had at least sixty people. And then, for some ungodly reason, they wouldn't let me into music theory two, because they had too many people!! (like 20.) They also ONLY let band and choir join, because, seriously, they're band and choir.

Our school was FALLING APART. We had classrooms without ceilings and doors. We had dummy fire systems. The sprinklers would FALL FROM THE CEILING in the middle of class, crashing to the ground, along with a considerable amount of fiberglass insulation. Once I saw a guy CATCH ONE ON FIRE, and NOTHING happened. We had classrooms that routinely flooded, entire wings that were possibly MADE of mildew, and God and Jesus would frequently graffiti our school. (Someone would spray paint messages from god, and crosses EVERYWHERE. and sign it something all love, God. Wtf.) People would mercilessly beat eachother, people would smoke everywhere, people even had sex, and NO ONE CARED.* Of course, when the cheerleaders asked for a new building, they got one near immediately.

To graduate highschool in Texas, you have to take a test that I swear a monkey could pass. And of course, people still failed and were held back. And then they'd have to enroll in pointless semesters until they got kicked out for being old, or managed to pass.

Of course, all these people who got carried through highschool applied to community colleges here, and an INSANE percentage of them drop out. (I'm not sure, but off the top of my head, I wanna say at least 80%.) Actually, public colleges in San Antonio are preeetty good I've heard.

Oh, also, I supposedly went to the best school district in town.




*(One guy DID try to kill himself with a plastic utensil though, and the staff flipped out, and a couch tackled him to stop him, probably doing more damage then he himself could have ever done.)


[edit:] Gyah. I wrote a novel.

Last edited by allegoriest (02-01-2008 03:59:41 PM)

it was quite something to actually see.

I didn't want to read it, but its still the principal or the matter and all.

I think they passed it while I was in high school.


My sister actually goes to the same school now and she says it to be far worse. She's terrified going to school there, and has been looking around desperately for a way to get to another high school.

'no child left behind'? What bunk. Excuse me for sounding like a nazi, but if you can't comprehend the material of a certain grade, you shouldn't advance to the next. Otherwise, what's the point of putting your kids in school? Social interaction, maybe, but I'm pretty sure there are some other important reasons being forgotten with this rule... like education and, maybe, a better chance at a future career?

Sorry for crapping all over the U.S. education system, but this is just too ridiculous. It negates the notion of 'schooling' alltogether, and it's not as if you're helping students by passing them if they aren't qualified. It just lends to a whole lot of disappointment later in life.

Edit: I liked 'The Great Gatsby'. I studied it in my American lit class(did you know i's mandatory in my Canadian university to take an American literature class for an English degree?) and I thought it was fun.

I still think a better novel to study, though, is 'Lord of the Flies', although it can't be a great American novel because it's British. It's still quite awesome, though.

Last edited by Adrasteia (02-01-2008 06:57:45 PM)

There is a Jewish adage that states "God could not be everywhere and therefore he made mothers."

This would explain the stereotypical relationship Jewish men have with their mothers.

Giovanna wrote:

Albert Mehrabian suggests that "we tend to approach those people and things we like and we tend to avoid or move away from those we do not like."9

STOP THE FUCKING PRESSES

And this is why I could never be a PhD.

On the subject of screwed up school systems, my school is supposed to be one of the best, yet unlike last year, the test that all the juniors took in order to determine the quality of our school ending up with the results, "School in need of improvement," which is the worst a school can get. This could mean that even the best of American schools are going to hell, or maybe it's just that my school should be putting more of the taxpayer's money towards our education instead of useless shit. But no. If the people in charge of my school have any kids, I'll bet that they would spend their kid's college fund to buy a vacation home.

Overall, I can't really pinpoint the problem. I suppose that it might be because of the teachers, but there's not a whole lot you can do about that. Apparently they're trying to raise the age in which a student can drop out to 18, which I don't agree with. Any student who does not wish to be there can have nothing but a negative impact on the education, but at the same time, at least they tend to make things more interesting.