Education in the US

[cookiecutter]

I heard this on mock the week, not the height of the correct information but it's usually nearish.

Basically Obama is trying to give 45 million people free healthcare, and people are annoyed about it?
Srsly?

Pretty much. They're also trying to stop insurance companies from not covering people who are actually sick which happens a lot. It's incredibly frustrating.

 

[skeptik]

99% of schools have NO "insufficient funding" problems. Too often money is just thrown at educational problems without any method. For example, millions of dollars have been thrown at my old high school, much of which has never been successfully traced, and it's still abysmal. I didn't realize how bad my high school was educationally until I graduated, though there certainly were signs, such as the fact that I was the first student in the history of my high school to score a 5 on an AP test as a sophomore. Nobody I've talked to that went to other high schools seemed overly impressed with that fact.

 

[Pessimism]

My high school was terrible, but by no means was it the epitome of a abhorrence when looking at standardized test scores (they instituted new student programs to raise the shoddy reading comprehension and math scores). However, that doesn't mean students actually became able readers 9i.e. minimum 7th grade reading comprehension) or mathematicians - they merely learned how to pass state tests.

That is one of the main failure's of our educational system; that in conjunction with the rising stakes of federal funding in many areas leads to many schools teaching how to pass tests, not the subjects of study in themselves.

 

[Cythraul]

I got my K-12 education in Arizona, which I think is regarded as having one of the worst public education systems in the United States. Anybody who grew up in Arizona and doesn't have a problem with public education obviously went to private school and has no clue.

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

Public schools are statist indoctrination camps.

Nah.

 

[Cythraul]

Whatever you say, Bolshevik scum.

 

[-CC-]

You know I've been lucky to have experienced three radically different types of education when I was a kid.

I went to public school in Sweden for 7 years, private school in Switzerland for 3 years, and then 2 years of public school in California + god knows how many years of College.

Ignoring College and the private school (they are just too different from the public schooling system), it's easily said that the Swedish public schools are just far superior in every way to the American because of two things.

1) The classes in Sweden are more intense, broad, and demanding. As mentioned in the original post, at one point in my schooling I was taking 4 languages at the same time (Swedish, English, Spanish, German), and this was before high school! My Calculus class in American High School was covering math that I had done in 7th grade.. I mean it's crazy how much you learn over there!

2) The classes/schools are MUCH smaller. Imagine the shock when I went from a 350 person school to a 3,000 person school! (And I'm not talking about College) When you have such big classes, the teachers have to grade a shitload more, often leading them to resort to handing out Scantrons (another sidenote: I believe Scantrons is another reason why education in America is so crap...fill in the bubble for the 4 choices? What is this? Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? In Europe EVERY single test I had was Written Response, not only making sure you knew the answer and not just guessing, but also helping you develop your writing and reasoning skills)

Sorry for the Cool Story Bro Post....thought I'd give my 2 cents on this because I've experienced both sides ya know

 

[Blind Guardian]

Well to be fair, taking four languages isn't obligatory. At my school English was the only obligatory one, then you could choose between taking German/French, or studying more English. I don't think Swedish counts.
And we naturally have small schools and classes since we're a small country with a low population density. Of course living in Los Angeles and being crammed into a class of 40 people will slow you down, compared to my high school class of 12 people.

 

[The Ozzman]

Whatever you say, Bolshevik scum.

haha I lol'd