Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Education

Hi Students!

So, we've begun discussing education -- K-12 and university -- in our class. I think it's very beneficial to our in-class conversations that you all have attended so many different types of schools in your educational careers. Many of you indicated that you felt under-prepared for college in some way or another by your high school experience. Your focus for "blame" for this "under-preparedness" was on various entities (the school board, individual teachers, something more abstract, etc.). If you could go back and make one or two changes to the education-acquisition aspect of your high school experience (as this experience corresponded to you, your school, or something else), what would that change or those changes be? Why?

29 comments:

  1. I personally went to an International Baccalaureate charter school in Texas. The school system down there is notoriously bad, and most of high school revolves around sports, and passing a state wide test called the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) test. Most teachers in Texas get paid more if they have a higher average score on the TAKS test than other teachers in their district. This creates an environment where the teacher, for lack of better words, teaches the test. They are driven to get the students to get a higher grade so their pay checks increase accordingly, this creates a system where the students do not learn how to think on their own, and can only memorize answers and how to do problems.
    The other major problem with Texas schools is the massive emphasis on sports. As an example: If a star football player comes into his English class the morning after a game and doesn't have an essay that was assigned a week prior to the due date that morning he can still get away with it. All the player has to do is say he couldn't finish the essay because of the game last night and the teacher would automatically give him extra time to finish the assignment. I personally went to a school where this was true for middle school, but my High School had no sports. I could clearly tell a difference in the driving force behind the school, the teachers, and even the students.
    If standardized testing wasn't required to pass to graduate and raised teachers salary's. And the schools didn't care so much about football and focused their energy on actually teaching the students I think that our school systems would be much more of a learning experience, and students would actually come out of school with knowledge enough to go to college.

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  2. I seem to have had a generally positive experience in school, compared to what seems to be a majority of my classmates. While AP testing was a major focus in my school, most of the AP teachers I had simply taught the subject and held us to their own standards. The test itself was never the main focus, just the subject. With such positive experiences in mind, the only major issue I had with my schooling comes from my Freshman and Sophomore years in which athletic coaches taught some of the introductory courses. To say the least, actual teachers would have been greatly appreciated.

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  3. I would change the fact that I mainly only went because I had to and because I would get into trouble if I didn't get good grades. Ever since my middle school years my parents just wanted me to get good grades. I participated athletically as well and it was always the STUDENT-athlete that my dad mentioned. School just became school for me, I went and did what everyone wanted me to do. I had "dreams" about being able to take classes that appealed to me and that I did well in and dropping those that I didn't enjoy or had trouble with. I would have enjoyed my high school experience if it wasn't so pushy and unenjoyable.

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  4. I came from a public school upon entering college and I have NOT felt “underprepared” in the least bit. My high school, however, had some particularly high standards for its graduating class this year (i.e. each student must have at least one college credit before graduating, either through the AP program or by dual-enrollment in the local community college, etc.) so I believe that may have had some contribution to that. That being said, my high school was also A LOT bigger than NMT (around 4,000 students in my high school). Coming to Tech I’ve had to adjust to the smaller class sizes and more intimate feel of the school because I’m not really used to NOT having to do very much to stand apart from the rest of the student body.
    On that note, I HAVE noticed some things about college that perhaps have showed some REGRESSION a little since high school. By this, I mean that I have experienced a little more “hand-holding” and “babying” than I did while in high school. A good percentage of my professors base their grades on things like attendance and homework, rather than wholly on quizzes and exams. Of course there is nothing wrong with that, but it seems almost counterintuitive for me because ALL through high school my teachers continuously drilled it into my head that my college professors wouldn’t care if I showed up for lectures or completed my homework, because all-in-all their job is to teach and then measure my competency in the subject area through exams, and things like showing up for class on time and studying and doing my homework is on ME because it directly benefits ME.
    Overall, I feel pretty confident coming into Tech and I feel like I have all the tools in my belt I need to develop an effective work ethic here, so really I wouldn’t change anything about the education-acquisition aspect of my high school experience. However, it’s easy for me to say that NOW seeing as it’s only the second week of school. ;)

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  5. I have to agree with O.prime. My high school is known throughout New Mexico as being one of the top public schools in the state. The first week of school, I thought I had much more homework than I actually did. I can't understand how so many people could've taken AP classes in high school, and not had homework. eab2654 said that his or her teachers did not teach AP classes to prepare for the test. My teachers were the exact opposite, and I always felt very prepared for the AP tests.

    The only thing I would change if I could would be for high school classes to "go faster." In my math class this year, the instructor teaches one thing using one example and expects everyone to understand it. In high school we were babied. Sometimes we spent multiple days on a new math topic, but by the end of the school year we were always rushing to fulfill the curriculum.

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  6. I agree with Megatron. High School classes go so slowly sometimes, then the end of the year brings a rush to finish the remmaning topics, and even then not everything is always finished.

    Teachers used to always say things like: "High School will be so much harder than what you do now." However it seems to me that high school and middle school have equal levels of hand-holdng and blind faith (in eventual success) when a student doesn't do the work. Even college seems to be starting out on this track, like O. Prime said, basing grades on ATTENDANCE.
    So, showing up for class is such an achievement, it must be rewarded? That is utterly ridicuous! Showing up is not optional, but it is also something which the student must be responsible for themseves. Grades should solely reflect knowledge (practical and theoretical) in a suject, not that the student merely came to class (and potentially slept the whole time). The entire academic system is to blame for this "softening" of the standards and rules governing an education. "No, No!" cry parents and elected officials. We can't hurt the student's self esteem. I think that students build and DEVELOP THEMSELVES through this determination and individual work ethic; "I will do well, so I will go to school in order to secure my future." Schools, especially high schools and colleges need to understand that education is what about what the student is willing to do to succeed on their own than what the system is doing to help them succeed.

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  7. As eab2654 said, I had a fairly positive high school experience, too. Of course, it helped that I was driven to work and maintain good grades. I also was involved in enough activities that school was (mostly) a fun thing for me. I feel sufficiently prepared to do college work, due to many AP classes and other high-level subjects. This is not to say that I am not having some problems, but I think that I was probably as well prepared as possible.

    For me, the actual classes that I took always made me think and figure out effective ways to get things done. However, the testing that went on in my school sometimes took away from my learning process. We had to to pass something called Academic Yearly Progress, and if a school does not pass it for a certain number of years, they are taken over by the state. On a whole, I'm sorry to say, it is a ridiculous system. They are trying to measure one grade's progress against the graduating class that went before them, rather than trace one group over the years.

    I still maintain the fact that I had a good high school education. However, it definitely could have been better if the focus was shifted from constant interruptions for standardized tests.

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  8. My High school offered pretty fair choices for the first few years while I was there. In my junior year I took AP English Language and US History, and both classes had good enrollment, many of them people I'd gone to school with since first grade and were all a good group of intellectuals. Come senior year I often dropped by the classrooms of my old teachers, and in that time the number of students in AP english alone had dropped by more than half.

    That wasn't all; I'd wanted to take two other AP classes, but in that same year they removed them. Why? Well mostly a big bunch of budget problems courtesy of our state's conservative-minded government, but that's not the only reason. In the same years a huge amount of high-level classes were cut, the school saw fit to construct not only an artificial turf for the football team that never won, but an athletic parking lot that we most certainly didn't need.

    The show of favoritism among our schools, primarily public schools with limited funding, of athletics and sports programs and departments over learning tools such as classes, rooms, computers, and teachers is the very thing I would change had I been calling the shots. An artificial turf and athletic parking lot? A lanyard-ID card policy with zero-tolerance? We can have these things but it's somehow acceptable to cut important classes and give random teachers the pink slip? The money wasted on these misguided premises could have been used for the benefit of our kind. If I'm not mistaken, a school is a place for learning, not sports, not a reason to hate authority, not an excuse to make neighboring schools enemies. Exercise is perfectly fine, but when it's given so much preference over something everyone benefits from, I must object, for now our school is closed down, the time and money my class spent renovating our facility wasted, and my fellow graduates and gifted childhood friends reduced to martyrs.

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  9. I agree with LEVator in that the system of comparing a graduating class against the one before them is unbalanced. This is simply a wrong way of testing out the "strengths" of a class if they are just treated as one group. Students simply are not in the same level and some of them are advanced, lacking proficiency and in between. This is reflected in some students simply dropping out or not attending college at all due to their school's administration telling them how bad they were compared to their other classes. Schools should focus on students rather than groups in order for them to feel motivated by the same people who teach them.

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  10. The high school environment can only be seen as a sculptors tool. Maybe a teacher will use the tool effectively and shape the student into a good college student for the future, but then again, maybe it was a bad piece of material. A cracked piece of marble, and Davids aren't made anymore. I haven't done homework in about two years, I still passed the AP Calc, Chem and English tests, I still got a 32 on the ACT. I can definitely assure myself that my football high school didn't contribute to that. And now that I'm off topic... Anyway. I'd change my entire school. I'd have seriously attempted to get into AAcademy. A public school that I have seen turn out some of the most intelligent and resourceful people I have ever met (or heard of). A few successful people from a school may be a fluke, but a consistent high production of genius level talent means they have real sculptors teaching there.

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  11. I would make no changes to my high school or middle school educational experiences. My schooling then was fine. At those points, I was at a private school. But, I will go around the question and say that I would change my elementary education. By the end, I was in classes of 30 people under teachers that didn't care. I think everyone should have access to a small classroom size and a caring teacher, be given a chance to get to know their teachers and be an active participant within their classes. An elementary student should not be in a class of over 30 people or at an extremely overcrowded school.

    But, neither should middle or high school students. If my elementary experience had lasted much longer, I might have been turned off education for good. I might have never really learned the art of critical thought (which I did learn from many strong discussion based classes). I know plenty of smart people who went to college from my private high school who wouldn't have if they had gone to a public school. Now college doesn't necessarily mean much. A person can succeed without it. But still, a decent education gave these people a chance that an average one wouldn't have.

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  12. Honestly, I would not make many, if any, changes to my high school and middle school. The only thing I can say I would change is my chemistry class. I wish I could've either been taught more or learned (as of now I am not sure which was the problem, possibly both) more of chemistry and some of the sciences as I feel it would have prepared me better for college chemistry and such. I feel very behind as others shout answers and the teacher blows over "review". Other than that detail I believe my middle and high school experiences prepared me well enough for college. Though the fact that I went to a private school helped I'm sure.

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  13. My experience with public schooling in New Mexico was fine. I loved my teachers and their technique of teaching, and I am very well prepared for college personally. But I would like to agree with Optimus, Megatron, and Cam.

    I came from a senior year filled with AP classes, grading scales that were a midterm and a final, and little-to-no homework assigned, but encouraged that you do some of the work on your own. It helps things along that my teachers were college professors before they taught in high school, and gave lectures the same way when they were in Universities.

    In retrospect, I was also in a high school that was obsessed with school spirit in their football and basketball teams (which were not "good" teams in any way), but ignored the soccer, swimming, or golf teams we had (which were state champions). It seems high school has been American-ized to where the popular jocks can get by with things the rest of us can't.

    There was also another issue I would've fixed, however. I am a full believer in equality and total respect for your peers, but my high school saw it differently. We cherished our scholars and AP students like they were the next Einsteins. They graduated in a different color than everyone else, had a different graduation ceremony entirely, and got free perks the "normal" kids couldn't. I didn't approve of this policy at all, mostly because I was on the inside looking out. Many of my friends weren't in the AP curriculum, and so this inversely caused them to treat me differently, because of the way the high school society held the smarter kids in priority.

    Other than mere social issues that will happen inevitably, my high school experience was a great one. I loved friends, teachers, and learning, as I'm sure everyone else in this awesome class did.

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  14. From my school, I know some brilliant people who are natural geniuses and can solve pretty much any problem, and then I've met those who seem to have a lower IQ than a pigeon. I have been in both Ap classes and regular classes, and there is a huge difference between the two. In an Ap class, the teachers had a passion for what they taught. They loved the students, and they made sure that they got the material. It didn't matter that I never did homework, I was able to learn so much in so little time from each and every Ap class I was in, and I loved it. However, my regular classes were a different story. Like most other classes, the class slows down to accommodate to the slowest student. The teachers seemed like they were just there to get paid, not for any ulterior motive. I learned nothing from those classes.

    I believe there needs to be a way to separate the students who want to learn from those who do not. I hate to say that, but there are just some people who just don't care, and those people will slow down those who do care. It is true that some people learn at different speeds, but to the people who did slow down the class, they never took the time to learn the material outside of class, nor apply it. Those kind of people need to go.

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  15. It's clear through everyone's comments that the educational system is quite dynamic, rather than static. Everyone has a different experience with their education depending on a limitless amount of factors. In addition, new teachers are being introduced into the system; bringing with them new teaching concepts and new ideas. At the same time, old teachers with old teaching concepts are retiring and the whole cycle is repeating. However, I believe that it isn't just the teachers that determine the success of a student. Without a strong internal determination and an extreme amount of effort, a student will not succeed, regardless of the caliber of teaching.

    Every educational experience is different. Personally, if I could change one thing about mine, I would have wanted not to move as much as I did. From elementary to high school I attended 27 different schools. There came a time when I was moving faster than my transcripts could follow. But ultimately, that isn't the fault of the educational system. There needs to be a distinction between educational experience and educational system.

    My educational system was actually quite good at times. I was lucky enough to have a very renown English teacher my freshman year of high school. The private school I was accepted to, Alexander Dawson, stole the director of the Harvard English department in order for her to teach at a high school. Her name was Dr. Weaks, and after her freshman English class, I rarely learned another thing in my public school literary education that followed.

    Education is what you make of it.

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  16. I cannot say that I would want anything during my education to change. My high school was made up of some of the best teachers in the state, all who loved teaching and gladly gave their free time to help students out. Most everyone in my school was driven to get to a higher education. This helped to press everyone in my school, including me, to a higher level. There were AP classes available in all areas. We had some of the brightest minds as well as some of the bast athletes. You had to push yourself had if you wanted to stand out, whether that was in class, sports, or as part of the school. I believe that my school was a perfect environment to be taught and grow up in.

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  17. Most of my high school peers would think when asked of their satisfaction with the educational services (after laughing quite loud), "How did the system fail me?" Most would say that the odds were stacked agianst, and for many they were. But for some, myself included, they found a way to get a benefitial education by relying on the dedication of their meaningful instructors and pure effort.
    Eduaction, like everything that is of any value, takes effort. It takes drive to unfold the complexity of calculus, chemistry, philosophy. It takes patience by teachers to unravell the mystery and introduce it to students in a comprehensive fashion. ALthough those are the basic necessities for facilitating a meaningful education, that is by no means the only formula for academic success.
    My school did not have a reputation for academic excellence (even though that's in the motto). Yet I found a way to obtain a quality education by the sweat of my own brow (and lack of sleep) and the help of a few teachers. You could say I was lucky to have the guidance of the instructors I did, but you could also say that my own determination overrode any adversities.
    My peers, if they ever read this(...probably not) would, I hope, ask themselves now how could I have found a way around the adversity, instead of why did they not have the adversity in the first place.

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  18. I personally would change things in the history and humanities department of all the schools I've attended. I was very into school and like it because I was good at it. However, I'm now realizing that the humanities and history departments didn't do much.
    The history classes would simply have us read and take notes and then just take tests. We were never really encouraged to ask questions, debate, or anything along those lines. The humanities department had us reading some interesting stuff but they didn't really do much to support what we were reading. Again we weren't encouraged in debates or discussions of any kind. When we were to write papers they were graded on the grammar and spelling not our support and ways to prove and strengthen our points.

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  19. I would have changed how teachers formed and taught their lesson plans. I think that high school teachers should not teach from a test or a yearly set list of standards. Instead their lesson plans should be taught on what will be academically expected upon entering college.

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  20. There are two things I did in high school which made me feel entirely prepared for college, especially NMT. The first thing I did, was take AP classes. That was the first time I've worked in a class. The second thing I did was drop out of high school at 16 years old and proceed directly to college. My first semester, I got used to the college system at a community college, taking non-technical classes such as english and art history. The next semester, I stepped it up a bit. I went to a better community college, and took math and chemistry and anthropology. Now that I'm here, I'm finding it incredibly easy to manage my homework, my time, and my grades.

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  21. Personally the only thing I would do different is get out a little sooner. I was bored after being taught the same information since eighth grade. However, I do feel I was well prepared for collage when I did start. I did go to a good school I just over learned all the information.

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  22. If I could change a couple of things about my high school experience, the first thing to go would be unenthusiastic teachers. You are learning from these people and they don't want to be there. It's hard to be excited about something when the person teaching it would rather be anywhere but the classroom.
    The second thing I'd change is the drive for grades rather than knowledge. I think this was something that happened in high school because every seminar and AP Class was about needing a high GPA for success (and college admission).

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  23. My high school experience was in many ways good, but in other ways it was awful. I have noticed that a good portion of the responses so far have cited a dumbed down/hand-holding situation as a large cause for disappointment in the school system. I however have honestly been on both sides of the equation. I took classes that I greatly exceeded my peers in, but I also took classes that I truly struggled in. In the classes I excelled at I did get the feeling that my hand was being held, however in the classes that I had a hard time in I felt that the pace of the class was way too fast. If I could change something about my high school education it would be the class sizes. This would mean hiring more teachers which was against what my school did(we lost teachers every year). Having three math classes for example would allow for an advanced class, a normal class, and a remedial class. More importantly a smaller teacher to student ratio allows for more face time with the teacher. I have been in several classes with small student to teacher ratios and they have always been far better than large classes. This is also one of the reasons I decided to come to tech.

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  24. I had a positive high school experience that I honestly would not change. My school provided a decent amount of AP courses such as Chemistry, Physics, English, Calculus, Government, Art, and Spanish. The school also had a dual credit program in which students could attend college classes at the local community college. The teachers were supportive and generally did not hold the students' hands in the higher level courses (some exceptions were made when a class was stumped by the material, but this was a rare occurance). The advanced courses required a fair amount of studying and gave out workloads that were comparable to what I am experiencing now in college, so I have to say that my high school gave enough options to prepare students for college between the advanced classes and the dual credit courses. Regular courses, however, had a lot of hand-holding and did not have much homework. I guess that in my high school you got back what you were willing to put in.

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  25. I do not believe that I can limit myself to only two things I would change, but I'll try.

    For me, the single largest issue was the fact that most of the teachers were under-experienced; they wanted to help but couldn't teach very well. I did my best to teach myself what I could, but the general lack of motivation among students in my class meant we regularly failed the AYP testing, so the whole class was therefore slowed down. I came out of high school knowing a bit of Trigonometry when I could have left knowing Calculus 1 quite thoroughly.

    The other thing I would change would definitely be the students. I liked my classmates well enough, I supposed, but the school was under-staffed considering that the student body was comprised of children from the sixth grade to high school seniors. There was not enough time in the day for what few teachers we had to properly teach the number of students at the school.

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  26. One of the things that I would go back and change at my high school would be the addition of more ITV courses. While I feel that the current assortment of ITV courses is adequate for a general college education, I feel that the school should probably add a few more math ITV classes, as I recall not seeing one math class on the list. I would also like to see some more AP classes. When I was still in high school, the only AP class that I can remember was Geometry, Trigonomety, Algebra 4. I think that if the school added more AP classes to the roster, it would help to better prepare students for college.

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  27. If there was one specific thing about my high school career that I could change I suppose it would have been…me. In high school I did what all kids do, I wiggled my way through by the skin of my teeth. I did only as much work as was required to get the A or B, which, more often than not, didn’t require me to be much of an overachiever. I did this until I met one very good, and mildly intimidating teacher, who gave my class a huge project that was worth 100% of our semester grade. I worked as hard as possible on that project, and it felt great. Now in college, I do my best because I know how it feels to finally turn in that hard work. If I had known that all through high school, I may have been a better and happier student.

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  28. I am actually very pleased with my high school education. It, I feel, has prepared me very well for college. Academically I feel I am ok but socially I feel like high school could not have done a better job preparing me for more school. I believe that education is truly what a person makes of it. He or she will get out of it what he or she puts into it. Simple as that. No matter what is done to the education system, just like anything else that is run by humanity, there is going to be imperfections.

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  29. My highschool taught in a way that was very memory-based in its learning techniques. This made simple things easier to understand, but it also made it hard to learn. College is much different than high school in the way things are taught, learned, studies, developed, researched, etc. I feel that i am not unprepared for college, but if highschool was taught in a way that was more similar to that of a college, my education would have been benefited even more.

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