ZOMBIE FORUMS

That would work about as well in increasing voter turnout as abstinence-based sex education works in decreasing teen pregnancy. If people want to have premarital sex, forcing them to take a class that tells them that they should not will not change them. Similarly, if people don't want to vote, forcing them to take a class that tells them they should change them.

I don't agree.

Particularily because abstinince based education starts too late, and by then people have already made up their minds. But I'm not a fan of that program.

When I said in schools, I meant starting in the grade schools and working all the way up to a standardized test in high school.

oh goody, a standardized test.

how's that no child left behind working out for you?

The American Public Education system is laughable at best. Utterly depressing is normal. Standardized tests are the worst idea ever to enter the minds of educators.

In summation. NO! BAD VAERGOTH! NO BISCUIT!

The most that I ever got out of my Civics class (required eighth grade course in Virginia) was that I'm never going to try to raise a family of four people in Fairfax with only a $40,000 income. The meals I had to resort to giving my family for dinners was gross. I mean, pork picnic... :x

Anyways. I don't know if it's just Virginia, but on a public school education, we've been raised with government knowledge since grade school anyways. And a lot of us in the area are still dumbasses. It's a sad day when I know more about politics than my graduating friends... and those days occur a lot.

I can tell you now, it'd be a failure.

I think the civics idea is different than the abstinence thing, if only because you're trying to convince people to do something important - and when it comes to sex, you're trying to restrict something the teens/media considers important. If that makes any sense.

I'm going to guess that one of the two big reasons that our school system is actually going to hell is: it's not hard enough.

Seriously, you can sleep through your classes and get As and Bs. What motivation is there to trying to learn when your efforts are thwarted by lack of things to learn. What motivation is there to learn when you are taught how to be able to take a test at the end of the year? There is nothing of you in the materials. It is frustrating. And the last thing you want to do is frustrate the people who want to learn. I'm not talking about getting rid of the difficult text that are frustrating to learn. I'm talking about getting rid of the impetus to the act of learning, of which there is way too much in a public school.

High School is to prepare you for a career. University is to prepare you for a lifetime of study in that field.

The bar on High Schools have consistantly been raised to keep up the demand on education since they were first conceived of until recently. Now they load the weight off on the colleges.

The second one being ennui. And that's solved quite easily by either making students want to be interested, or making the the students (*cracks knuckles*) WANT to be interested. I suppose it's your own opinion as to which method works best. But I'd like to believe that the carrot works better than the stick.

I absolutely agree. High school has become entirely made of fluff. There's been an educational inflation, and kids who should be in regular classes are now honors, honors students are now in AP classes, and the "regular" classes are largely reserved for D.O.P. students. In order to prevent kids from screwing up too poorly, teachers give bullshit tests and then give a ton of homework and worksheets to offset the awful test grades. So now the students that would otherwise be doing fine on the tests and the few homework assignments that are actually assigned to benefit the students knowledge and assessment of the material has to take on a much greater workload, made necessary only by virtue of the fact that if those assignments weren't there, half the class would be failing.

WhatnoI'mnotbitteratall. My high school was an exemplary one, and got ranked 5th in the nation by U.S. News and World Report a couple years back, but that crap was still amuck even there.

The US (and especially the Florida) school system sucks. It's absolutely abhorring.

You get two slave girls, Alex. Simply because you're the only person I know besides myself who uses that word. And I <3 "Abhor" so very, very much.

Although Baron and Ero think I'm going to a crap school now, it's still better than the Fairfax County Public School System. I still think my school's too easy, but I'm changing that next year anyways. But here, at least, they encourage you to learn, rather than reitterate SOL information all year.

...do I get to pick them?!

high school is supposed to prepare you for a career? no, it's really not. it's the process of weeding out people who aren't useful enough for the rest of society to even bother trying to train them for a career.

college is about teaching you how to read and how to write. grad school is about preparing you for a career. why do you think that most employers prefer experience over a degree any day of the week?

you're not supposed to learn anything in school. you're supposed to demonstrate your ability to play the metaphorical game of life.

also, I find it rather amusing that those bitching about schools are the same that can't spell, don't understand grammar, etc.

I always thought high school was to weed out the vocational from the scholarly. Well, that's bullshit, but I thought that was its intent, aside from the obvious basic education that it's supposed to, and doesn't, give us.

the problem with that viewpoint is that anyone who is capable of doing well in high school (which is to say everyone who doesn't drop out) is also perfectly capable of teaching themselves the same basics that high school is supposedly going to teach you. doing it is almost trivial. so, the point must lie elsewhere; it's a test of your ability to deal with other people, disguise your true objectives, basically your ability to get ahead past other people who are trying to do the same to you.

and what education do you expect high school to give you? seriously, what the hell do you want to know when you're done with high school? you can read, you know to a very basic degree how to learn new things, what else do you need to know? congratulations, the responsibility to learn is not on the system, but rather on the individual.

Yes, although since I haven't had the time to get into big descriptions about them, they're pretty much anything you want. (They'll do anything you want.) And I only pick the lovelies to train, so you get premium quality, disease-free chickas.

I actually learned a lot in high school, but I don't know if it was so much that it was FROM high school education as it was simply in correlation with my time in high school.... oh well. You're probably right.

I tend to view it as a problem of inflation. In the past, a highschool education meant something. Now, if you cannot get an HS, you're pretty well on your way to becoming a total loser. Colleges have been bitching for some time about the amount of effort they have to spend bringing remedial students up to snuff, and really, a BA or BS isn't anything special anymore. You need an advanced degree to stand out in any specialty field.

I say, roll the fluffy parts of HS back to the eighth grade, and make 9-12 optional. Cover writing and arithmetic in grade school and leave hard science and math for the college bound. That way, a HS says "Yes, I am a motivated individual" and the kids who are only coasting can get out and get a 4-year head start on jobs or the vocational track.



Abhorrent. The adjective form of abhor is abhorrent.

<b>*Steals the girls and promptly emancipates them.*</b>

The six-fingered man strikes back!

BWAH! Don't blame me, I'm a product of the American public school system. *recaptures the girls*

Barbar, i think you're confusing what school is (about which i feel you're largely correct) with what school should be (which is what i believe everyone else is talking about.

Thinneh... <3
abearant > abhorrent > postwhoring

There's an essay by Heinlein in Expanded Universe on how to get a degree without getting an education, and that was written pre-1980. I imagine it's gotten worse.

I managed to learn things in highschool without getting a very good GPA. I graduated with a 2.1 overall, but i took the highest courses they offered. 4 years of honors english (and knowing english grammar really pays off when you're trying to learn another language, especially a syntaxic one) 4 years of advanced math series (geomentry, algebra 2, trig, pre-calc were the best math courses my crappy public school offered) bio 1, bio2, chem and physics for science. Even so, i probably learned as much at home as at school.

As a side note, our HS was paired to a "Vocational Education Center" Junior and Senior year, if you were so inclined, you could go to "Vo-Ed" and start learning a trade. Of the vo-ed people i know, there's about an even split between the ones who are now worthless burnouts working crap jobs, and the ones who are making better money than a lot of college graduates. A couple of them are even going to college now, because they can afford to do it. They aren't potential nuclear physicists, but they aren't rockheads either.

9-12 is optional.

Don't the Australians have something like this? I mean, there being no middle school and high school consisting of grades 7-10. Then years 11 and 12 (and 13) are to prepare you for University entrance?

I should know more about the system, seeing as how I'm going to be entered into it next year, but... I'm still not sure if College is optional or mandatory if you want to get anywhere. I don't know Australian job requirements all that well.