The Current Education System

I have noticed this over quite some time and thought that it would be something worth discussion.

We spend minimum 10-12 years in schooling which is to prepare us for our "future lives" But what does a majority of the things we learn in school actually do for us. My science classes where redundant, maths was irrelevant past yr 7 level and english.... well who actually can say a majority of the work you do helps you in life.

We are taught by the book learning procedures which will allow no way of thinking out side the box for most problems and often will loose you marks if you do not follow the book by the letter.

Yes i do admit that it taught me organization and how to schedule my life. But 12 years (4 of them basically wasted) to learn this? It doesn't make much sense to me.

Also we work hard to push our study scores up only to find that they are basically useless unless you were trying to get into one of the best universities in the country. Not exactly everyones aim to be perfectly honest.

Where are the classes that could teach us money management, how to look for a job, how to present yourself properly for work, intuitive and other things WE NEED in order to survive in the real world outside the bubble wrapped environment of the school system. Alot of kids leave school completely unprepared for what the world is actually like, due to the ineffectual need to protect children from everything.

It bothers me that the education system is basically turning out stupid kids who know next to nothing but have been brainwashed into believing that they know more than they actually do.

Not sure if this is true elsewhere but it is something i have been thinking about.

There was a little program I was apart of in high school but they stopped funding it which I think was a mistake where we took business classes such as accounting and what not. I do not remember the names of all the classes being offered for the few of us that managed to get in one way or another but we were in fact taught how to fill make a resume as well as cover letters and what not. Even had Moc interviews and even dabbled into law some where Moc trials were held by the books and so on. I managed to get in because word got around about my fascination with computers and they needed someone to compete in that area for them in competition.

I had something like that at my school also but it was relatively shabby and didn't do all that much.....

I didn't learn how to do a resume properly till about a year after i left school. And the mock interviews wher not even slightly like the real thing as i found out the hard way later :/

Is that for America?

I agree with some of your points about the need for teaching more'real life skills'. But in regards to the'useless information' you are forced to learn, the idea is that children are exposed to a wide variety of subjects and they find the subject that interests them most. Then in their senior years, they can specialise in those subjects.

I'm from Australia and I reckon if a student learned and retained everything they taught them in high school... they would be really fucking smart

The alternative point of view is that what you really learn in school is a way of learning. If you follow this, yes you got a pretty bad deal lol. 12+ years to learn how to learn

What do you mean by thinking out of the box? Doesn't it just mean creative thinking? How do you teach creative thinking? It's the result of thinking by yourself after understanding what's in the box i.e. the platform of knowledge laid out by the current education system.

I am aussie also for point ;)

Anyway yeah that is true but most kids don't have any interest in learning because it is mostly boring (i should know)

By me saying thinking outside the box i mean that when given a problem we are shown ONE way of doing it and any other solution is wrong, it is very rare for teachers to allow thinking outside the curriculum.

Fellow aussie *high five!*

Ah OK, so you mean an alternative way of doing problems. I think the degree of creative thinking in education is highly dependent on the subject at hand. Thinking outside the box is actively encouraged in humanities, but not so much in sciences due to its more precise nature.

Ah yes, about it being boring. Yeah I agree that's a major problem. The way it's been taught has been rather stale hasn't it? It's almost always been a teacher standing out the front talking with a blackboard and the student does questions from a heavy tome of a textbook. I reckon if the government contracted a japanese animation company to have an entire syllabus for a subject covered in an anime, it would engage all those students who say that education is boring.

You must be one of those guys that did well in humanities and use your right brain more than your left! (I'm more of a leftie)

[color=#2e1a6b]I don't go to public school, so I haven't actually experienced the American education system. I have talked to my friends about it, and they say that it's pretty bad. (according to them) Half of the time, the teachers don't teach, they just tell you to read certain pages and study them. One time, the students were playing Halo PC instead of studying, and the teacher didn't stop them... he played Halo with them! The content itself doesn't require any thinking at all; It's all memorizing and accepting as true: memorize this formula, memorize what this guy did, memorize this name, etc. I don't know what they teach about getting jobs, but I'd be surprised if they teach that. My opinion is that the people who control education want people to rely on the government. So they teach children to rely on the government, instead of teaching them how to fend for themselves.

My teacher has this video where he explains what happened to our education system. (click PART 2 on the left side, then watch from 9:00 to 13:20)

Yeah, that summed up chemistry for me... Did not understand a single concept preached by my teacher all year but I still got 85 for my final exam by memorising bullshit chemical formulas from the textbook in two nights.

Seriously. Chemistry. Wtf. To think I chose it as an elective...

Those classes, if they existed, do not exist anymore. Everything that wasn't taught in school people learn through other people, or on the internet. After finishing high school I became very aware of how little I knew. I think most people, at least from the US, have to go through a similar process. If you want to blame someone, blame the system itself for putting so much emphasis on test scores that anything that isn't on a standardized test is ignored.

If I may interject, I would suggest that the lenght of the studies that must be completed to enter "active" life learning, as in a job perspective(meaning private universities, and other formations dedicated to learning an actual craft or skill),I would suggest that that lenght is due to the decay of our societies education levels.

By this I do not meanthat people have become less intelligent, on the contrary, we are progressing, at least in the domains of science and industry, towards better understanding of the world that surrounds us. But that means that, as time passes by, more and more precise definitions of things are brought up by our "thinkers" and must be implemented in educational programs.

I have lived in France for 12 years, America for 4 and the rest in Great Britain. i do not remember much of GB and the USA only apply for primary classes, as I was there from 6 to 10. But what I can evaluate is the French system.

In ten years, there have been 5 plans of educational restructuration in our system. Only two of these were put into action. they have changed nothing in the contents of the program, all that they have done is spread it finer.

That is the problem. In the 1960's, in France, only 32% of the student population obtained their Baccalaureat Diploma (end of studies diploma that you obtain just before hgoing to University). It was considered a highly valued diploma, and of these selected few that passed, only a fraction went even further.

Today, 87% of students obtain their Baccalaureat. 70% of them go on to study for more than three years.30% for more than five.

The problem is that before, what we learn in the first two years of University was considered as the program of your last and second to last year of college. To get a majority of students to pass, the program was lenghtned, and simplified greatly.

And thats just all there is to say. Today, we learn things that our elders learn two or three years before us when they were at school, or we learn new things. Thus we spend more time studying. And because the program needs to be generalized to all subjects, well, it keeps getting longer.

Studying used to mean something back then apparently. Today, its just a shadow of what it was. Well, thats what i make out of it, per se.
Thats all I've got to say. hope this is interesting.

What school did you go to anyway?

Let's say I'm talking about Education system in Victoria (since we both live in Victoria).
You were doing VCE, right?

In VCE, what were taught by the teacher is only knowledge to get to University, knowledge how to do good in the Final Exam.
Well, I chose VCE anyway, but, if you don't want it, you could also go to TAFE.

It is going down the toilet. I am not afraid to deny it. The school boards have taken out everything, soon maybe even P.E. (not like kids are physically fit anyway). I am sure in the future a president may actually try to better our school system by removing money from the military and placing it there only to have it blow up in his/her face from some other foreign affair that occurs during this learning revolution. I maybe wrong, spot on accurate, or in the middle of both. Only time will tell.

I went to Vermont Secondary~

yeah but that is only for a specific field, it still doesn't prepare you for real life, which as a fellow victorian you would know is expensive and downright harsh, cause even the things there to help you are unhelpful *cough*centerlink*cough*

Well, that's true.
In here they made you decide what you want to be, not what you might end up being.
LOL what's with the cough.

Oh did i say something about centerlink being helpful as a rock for people who just came out of school? silly me~

I got something that might intrest you.

Watch it.

Education.


You wont regret it.

The Educational system is, and always will be, overbearingly long. I didn't do a damn thing after 7th grade, (part of that was my Aunt, who i was extremely close to, dying), but I took some tests a few years later and got my HSED (High School Equivalency Diploma) and it took me two months to do 7 pretests, 7 regular tests, and 4 booklets to get my diploma.

Most of the schools in my area are now not even bothering to teach cursive to their students. That's not a problem with me, but it shows laziness. In my opinion, i think cursive was pointless and wasted more time than writing the normal way.

Most of the teachers I had during my last years of schooling never did anything to help most of the students. They'd tell us to look in our books and re-read the chapter if we couldn't figure it out, rather than show us how to do it correctly in a shorter time.

Overall, the current educations system is screwed. Teachers are becoming more lazy every year, and they don't care enough to do anything to help their students to succeed. Thats just my view.

-The Fakkuist.

True story. Were just given books and told to learn. people learn diffrently. Some need more aid than another. Teacher are supposed to help those who need it.

As i might go off topic, IF teachers NOTICED THINGS more around themselves and CARE what happens in class, MAYBE there wouldn't be any news about school shootings OR suicides.

Well its not just teachers but PARENTS as well. Alot of parents use the public school system as a daycare. They feel its the teachers job to get their children to learn and do nothing when the child is at home to show any kind of concern for that childs education. Instead of making sure they do their homework they feel it is the teachers job to make sure of that. Its kind of a 2 way street.

I agree with you completely, when I was in school, my class mates would brag about high scores and such when I'm only passing with a 60. I did not try in school, because I knew what I was learning was pointless.

I think, in grade 5 you choose a occupation, and that is what you will be trained to do. That's it, not learning anything that you don't need to.