Originally Posted by
learningtoneopet1
Talking about America's education system (all the way up through college). To those who have also gone through it, what do you think? Is it awesome, or down in the dumps? Personally, I have a ton against America's method of education.
1) First off, a large portion of the teachers/professors are just there to make money because it's one of the best jobs they can get with whatever degree they got- even though the pay still isn't great as compared to other jobs. See this video for example:
Of course this isn't going to represent every single teacher out there, but I have known quite a few of these types of people. Schools are often willing to hire anyone with the requirements to teach, regardless if they truly care about the students or not. In addition to this, there are also a ton of teachers who have the best intentions for the students to learn, but they just are not the best teachers. Again, in my opinion, the schools' faults for just hiring people with the requisites to teach and not investigating to see if they would actually make a good teacher.
2) Second, one of my biggest problems with the education system is that some subjects which are forced upon students aren't going to be beneficial to their future careers. For example, I'm not sure if this is a nationwide policy, but I know in my state at least that one year of art is a requirement to graduate from high school. I understand that the goal with this is to initiate creative thinking and problem solving, though in reality, by this age, people generally have developed this ability just through life experiences. Therefore, this requirement is unnecessary for those who do not plan on doing anything art related as a career in the future. They are extremely strict on this rule, as I have a friend who graduated last year from a high school near me: he did not have the art requirement; thus, they would not let him graduate until he completed an art course which resulted in him having to do one over the summer and graduate as something they call a "super senior". His future has nothing to do with being overly artistic, so this late graduation was completely pointless just because of some stupid rule.
3) This part will be a bit smaller because I want to finish this up, but I think that high school and college should become more personalized. In both, you are subject to take classes which may or may not have a major impact on your future. For example, let's say someone plans on getting a major in some sort of mathematics. For their core classes, they are still required to take a few English credits which is understandable because communication skills in writing are important no matter what occupation you are going in to. However, it seems like overkill that he would take the same core classes as someone who is majoring in English. This is the exact same in high school, you are forced to take 4 years of math, English, etc. but if you are in the place of this future math major, then taking 4 extra years of English will be unnecessary as you will not need that in depth of a writing experience. The solution to this? Make high school more involved in terms of helping students determine what they would like their future occupation to be and let them customize their schedule more to fit with their interests. Maybe for this hypothetical math major, he would take 3 English credits instead of 4 and possibly 5 math credits instead of the regular 4.
Anyways, to sum my argument up I believe that our education sucks and has a lot of room for improvement, the only way to fix it is to actually have people realize how bad it is so that laws can be passed to change the way it works which won't happen any time soon, if at all in my opinion. What do you guys think? Also if you're not from the U.S. feel free to chime in on how your country's education is.