The Current State of the Quality of Education in the U.S. is Failing?

OK, I know I should post this in "World News", however I don't have any new articles to share to help back this thread up.

We get delayed broadcasts of NBC Nightly News here in my country of which I'm not sure if the delay is within a few days, or even if it's a full week.

Anyway, I just watched an episode tackling the declining quality of American Education & quite frankly, this shocked me.

A few years ago, I saw a feature episode on Oprah where several American Public schools are even starting to get a quality of Education equaling what Private Schools had to offer (during that time which I think was somewhere between 2005~2007). The problem that was most concerning at that time was only getting kids to school as factors like poverty & peer pressure amongst kids (usually involving bad influence due to kids joining gangs) were making kids leave school.

And now, after several years, they're saying that the Educational System itself is in dire conditions?

Holy crap!

This has shaken my time honored view that America kicks ass!, well it did a century ago, but now everything seems to be falling apart.

 

Yeah, according to everybody on TV that we've seen and the president himself, education is falling because of the TEACHERS not doing well enough. That's a god damn cover-up; It's the kids being punks, and believe me I've seen a lot of what the lil' mofos do to the teachers. One teacher in my school got gang-beaten cause a bunch of kids in a gang got Fs on their history tests. Nto everyone was in a gang, but most just refused to learn.

We need a non-lethal electric chair in every school, I say. OR at least the teachers should have tasers.

 

This is not a surprise to me. I live in the US, and know for damn sure that our education standards are so fucking low. The university I attend exemplifies this.

Normally, Calculus is the standard math class that all college freshmen take. However, the majority of college freshmen do not take Calculus; they take either a bullshit math class called "College Algebra" (which is actually high-school math! I know this, as I've worked as a tutor on campus for those students taking that class) or "Business Calculus", which is essentially Calculus for Pussies who are scared of trigonometric functions.

Which reminds me, a majority of college students choose their majors which are non-science based, such as liberal arts, and business. And these people wonder why it is so hard to find a job, when the reason is so obvious - it's because they are competing with the whole lot that did the same stupid thing in college. Which company wants to hire a lemming? No one!

Also, in case if you haven't noticed, there is one member here who is an American (resides in New York) and serves as a perfect example that the quality of education in US is failing.

 

And what's worse is kids are often "forced" to join these gangs for "security" reasons because not joining often leads to them getting bullied or worse getting targeted for a far worse situation.

People often Consider these courses including Law & Medicine in College because they still foster the 50's idea that these courses lead to the highest paying jobs available & they still do, but as you said, the sheer number of graduates outweighs the demand.

 

Oh, liberal arts majors make me lol. What do they actually expect to accomplish with such a worthless degree? People here are taking BAs in various fields simply because they've got no fucking clue what they want to do. I'm not gonna knock some of the Business undergrads, since a lot of the ones I know actually do have careers in mind.

In any case we're part of the BE/CompSci master race so yeah.

Proper medical schools are hard as fuck to get into. Same with Law. By the by, a decent Engineering graduate has a MUCH higher chance of making more than a Business graduate for at least the first five or six years after being awarded their degree.

 

in my school they got rid of coursework.

 

Because hey, blaming the generation of kids is much more rational than blaming the teachers' general quality, right?

Honestly, it's both a problem concerning with teachers AND students. Students generally need a more interactive class and have a teacher that adapts to each learning style. Students this generation are different from the previous and so on and so forth, what worked for the last generation of kids won't work with this generation.

I generally had good teachers who had adapted a more interactive class room (where class room discussions were common place), an interactive class room means more kids chiming in, enjoying themselves and being interested in the subject at hand. Also these teachers were good with adapting to different learning styles, as in, they understand that different kids learnt differently, some need visuals, some need to read, and/or some need to write to effectively learn. Also pacing is another thing that teachers need, having a efficient lesson plan throughout the semester is incredibly important so that when there's the last few weeks before the final, you aren't rushing through the rest of the modules that needs to be covered, generally the last couple weeks should be review.

The problem with some teachers is that they think that reading directly from a classroom textbook, or just talking for 80 minutes with little interaction besides questions, is an effective teaching method. It's not, it's boring, and the students will tune out, in turn, not learn anything.

Tests and exams, are also not a very effective way to grade. When I took Social Studies, I hated it and I wasn't very good at it, since it was the first block of the day for all of high school, I went to school early and just memorized the notes. So by the time I did the test, I'd have the notes memorized, and thus have a good grade in my test. That being said, I said memorized, I never learned anything from the notes. Nothing stuck with me past the exam. By the time it was the multiple choice final, I did abysmal since I can't memorize a whole semester worth of notes (although I did great on the written).

Being graded on course work throughout the year is much more effective in terms of learning. Not in terms of grades or anything, but just of learning. Also having the teacher go through the course work or test beforehand to clarify questions is great (I've had one teacher who did this and it avoided a ton of confusion regarding vague questions and confusing questions). I also remember Spanish being totally fucking awesome since it was mostly projects with one exam. And the projects were fun and we were able to choose our partner.

As I said, it's a problem with both students and teachers, as the students of today learn differently from the ones yesterday, and teachers simply haven't adapted yet.

That being said, I can't exactly comment on Hypr's post since I have never gone through college/university (or even considered it tbh), besides that trigonometry was the easiest part of Math.

There's so much more to school that sucks for quality of education, but that's just too much to cover to be honest.

 

TBH, dad wanted me to make that post cos that's how he feels. He just happened to be looking at what I was reading at the time.

Dad's one of those teachers that thinks the only way to learn is to read textbooks and do lots of problems. He thinks that adapting to new generations is wasting time.

I sorta think it's both kids and teachers too.

But the gangs and kids like that still aren't righteous or anything.

 

No shit (I honestly don't mean this to be rude of anything).

I generally find that a lot of the problems facing this generation are handed down from the previous, or the previous' adherence to what and how they did things.

 

Some girl got mad at a teacher for taking her phone away because she was texting in class.

I'm out.

 

Now this really blew my mind away

Seeing that a few months ago it was on the news that Cambridge University which is in England is this year's top performing School/University in the world.

I was also surprised that you are currently suffering overload of students against a limited amount of facilities. This indeed has an adverse effect in the quality of Education when there are not enough stuff to go around for everybody. I should know as this is the biggest problem we have here.

I take it you are speaking of the educators heavily focusing more on "Theoretical" that is textbook material, rather than focusing on practical application.

This seems to be an issue everywhere it seems. Teachers drilling students as to what their textbook is about so they can pass exams. Problem is, what all the students learn are terms & ideas, but the application of said material is never given to them in a first hand basis.

I definitely agree on you on this part. Especially now when information & knowledge is very easy to acquire, thanks to the net. What teachers nowadays need to figure out is how to use this piece of technology properly so it can be used in a classroom setting.

 

as a teenager in england ill say its the kids

 

Okay since I am American I will tell you all from my perspective. This is only how I feel of the American Experience, so do not judge the entire country solely by my words alone.

Generally speaking I was raised in a county of California all my life. School was somewhat fun and not very rewarding towards the end of education. The schools I went to, from K-12, are very lenient at marking errors. All the instructors do is mark down wrong answers, but they leave it up to the students to understand how to correct those mistakes. Consequently, the majority do not really care or mind at all. Intelligence is basically left up to the individual.

 

tl;dr

this just made me literally "lol" though. you must be american as they're the only people who seem to be under the impression that country is the best at anything. talk about lacking in education.

 

I feel, from all the schools i've been to, both parties, the teachers and the students, can be at fault...because at my current school, most of the kids smoke tobacco, weed, crack, anything you can think of, and drink alot, so they have no idea how to focus on school...where as at the previous school, the teachers didn't care to much at al..school before that, both were at fault for reasons names above, school before that they treated every kid like they were special ed, so no kid really got a good education there, and before that, every kid had anger issues and couldn't do schooling because they were always being sent to the office. T_T
So in my view of things, both parties are at fault, though kids have the ability to forward their education by requesting more work, asking questions, and things like that, so it falls more-so on the kids is what i believe in.

 

Actually, Cahos lives in the Philippines.