I have a question about Education and High Schools in particular...

[battleknight24]

This question is for anyone in particular...

Although I still think that America's public schools, high schools especially, need to make a great deal of improvement, are they as a whole as bad as a lot of people make them out to seem?

I always hear people talk about how high school students in foreign countries get higher grades and score higher on standardized test. But in many foreign countries (Most Asian countries and many European countries), isn't the education system set up so that only the best, hardest working students with the very highest grades and test scores obtain a high school diploma (or equivalent of what we have here) and go on to college? If that is the case, it sure puts the whole educational comparisons in a different light.

What do you guys think?

Peace,

[LisaM]

1. I have heard that, and more...

I read a study a couple of years ago that essentially backed up what you said, and made the added point that American students had a better ability to keep learning after they got to college (this was compared to students in Japan.) I am probably not phrasing this correctly, but the implication was that the students who had to work so hard to get out of high school essentially peaked earlier.

[One_Life_To_Give]

2. When I went to college

I discovered that the kids from other countries were better prepared. And was informed that most of them were here because they were not bright enough to get into the schools in their homelands.

FWIW Most of the T/A's I had in Sci/Eng classes were foreign as well.

[JaneDoughnut]

3. Also consider our SAT scores

The SAT's have consistently been taken by larger, more diverse groups of high school students every year - and the average score continues to rise.

It is hard to measure the performance of public education at a national level, because a million different measurements are used, and they can't be easily compared.

I think of my own school experience, and while I was relatively prepared for college and work, we could definitely do a better job of teaching people to be active citizens and critical thinkers. In general, though, public education in America does a good job.

[Daphne08]

4. Yes, this is true.

I do not have any statistics on this, but I believe that most countries use a tracking system. An entirely different curriculum is offered for those students who will not be attending a university, and of course, these students are not tested. (Someone please correct me if I am wrong.)

In America, we seem to be dedicated to the idea that everyone will go to college, and we design our high school curricula accordingly.

I think it's admirable that we offer the opportunity of a college education to our students, but I also believe it's time to become realistic.

[AP]

5. Don't scandanavian countries (where everyone goes to school) do best?

[BeeBee]

6. From my experience

working in French schools, you are right. We also have to remember that students in other countries specialize in their chosen field earlier than Americans.

[hfojvt]

7. My question is "what is the purpose of human existence?"

Anyone who has had kids knows that they love to explore and to learn. So why does the whole process/philosophy turn it into a boot camp for scholars? "Learn, maggots!"
People talk about "making schools better" and they seem to say that they want kids/students to run five miles a day with a fifty pound pack instead of the two miles a day that the surly, disrespectful, lazy punks are running now.
As a physics/math/economics University graduate who has worked as a temp, and now as a janitor, and who has worked for two of the world's largest companies - Phillip Morris and Citibank which had absolutely no use for my University education. I say we already have more educated people than we have jobs which utilize that education.
I would like to see a process that creates a love of learning and allows kids to follow their interests, rather than a soulless process of teaching kids to be soldiers in the industrial army in our economic war with EU, Japan, China, and India.
I would prefer a human race to a rat race.

[smoogatz]

8. There are good schools and bad schools.

And some states do a much better job than others. In general, you get what you pay for. Some very conservative states are less than fully committed to the notion that a basic education is a civil right.

[hfojvt]

9. I think that more tracking would be a good idea

In a sense that allows students to follow their interests rather than putting everyone on the same track. We recoil from that because we think of the poor child who is mis-assigned to the janitorial track. Part of the problem is our values - the contempt or lack of respect that we have for the working class and people who do not advance on a career ladder. Only people moving towards the top, or those on the top, should be happy - everyone else is to be pitied, everyone else is a failure, a looser, a moran. We probably also have the largest pay/benefits divide between "grunts" and skilled positions.
See, I messed up because I am a philosopher/scientist. I went to college to learn. I was supposed to go there to get certification so I could make some money, money, money.
Our schools are not any more dsyfunctional than our society, but they also do not seem to be part of the solution.