While I agree with teaching auto class, I've always thought there should be an equivilant for home repair. Turning off water/power, how to patch a hole in the drywall, how to fix a leaking tap, how to weather seal a window etc... It's amazing how easy most of this stuff yet how baddly I've managed to screw some it up over the years because I had no clue what I was doing in.
Obviously, you can't change the kids. That doesn't change the fact that the landscape of U.S. education needs some degree of overhaul. I'm sure many children would be more inclined to learn if they were shown how it applies to them (as someone else mentioned about Shakespeare) and taught more enriching topics that they have a better understanding of. And I'm not suggesting we "throw money" at the system; rather, we put money towards things that matter. What highly-qualified teacher would want to work in a public system that is notorious for poor pay? Very few, when there are better options such as private schools. This is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I can't believe anyone on here would suggest that a good teacher can't positively impact a child's education. Because that's kind of, you know, their job.
You do realize public school teachers have more credentials, make more money and have significantly better benefits than private school teachers, right? I'm not saying that they don't have a positive impact, or that they CAN'T have a large impact, but the teacher who turns a kid's life around is a straw man example and isn't as common as after school specials would like to make you believe. I'm saying that on aggregate a kid's background has a much larger impact on their success than who their teachers are. Especially since they will have over twenty teachers in their K-12 career, some will be hits and some will be misses. But we will see very little marginal benefit if any by throwing money at the situation. I realize now that wasn't your original point, but that's what I was responding to before. As for school reform, fuck it, I can teach my future kids math and my GF can teach them science (the subjects that matter). Keeping all the other idiots down will give them a competitive advantage. Pragmatism FTW.
This is actually news to me. I've always read the opposite. My state, in particular, ranks somewhere like 45th or 47th in the country for public school salaries. Those are fair points, and for the most part I'd agree with that. Still, I can't help but feel like it undermines the importance of quality instruction. It's almost like saying, "Baseball plays so many games during the season, so it doesn't matter if any of them are wins or losses." Regarding the system as a whole, I think kids in general would be more successful and more willing to learn if they weren't graded so harshly on their math and language skills, and were encouraged to pursue skills they were better fit for. Consider: Some people in this world aren't meant to be doctors, but some of them can work with their hands and and do damned nicely as a result. I'm sure the kind fellow who replaced my AC unit last summer for $150 can vouch for that one. That's comparative advantage, y'all. It's what makes the economy go 'round.
Much of the contents of the DSM-IV don't have definitive tests and share symptoms that can and do present for a variety of reasons, but that doesn't make the disorder any less real. Psychiatry and psychiatric diagnosis is hardly an exact science and the DSM is far from a perfect tool (its real value is codification for insurance purposes). I do think that ADHD is over- and often misdiagnosed, usually by GPs or pediatricians with limited experience in psychiatry. While there is no definitive test, there are a variety of psychological screening and assessment instruments (usually administered and scored by a neuropsychologist) that can reveal a better and more detailed clinical picture than one can get by simply listening to Mommy's examples of behavior.
I've never met anyone who excelled in school that didn't like learning. I'm not talking about getting good grades without any effort, passing a college course without cracking a book, etc. I was one of those kids, and it's not that I wasn't trying because I was so much smarter, because I'm not. I was just bored with what was expected of us, so I did it as fast as I could and then spent the rest of my time learning about the stuff that actually interested me. Completely zoned out, mailed in most of my "formal" education. Would things have been different if I had an amazing, incredible teacher at the front of the room? Probably not. People tend to forget that education (at least a public one, no matter how accelerated a program is, gifted classes, IB tracks, etc) has to pander to the lowest capability. It's part of the process. They're stuck dealing with shithead kids who are only in school because they have to be, wasting their resources on convincing a child that learning is important, then having all their work reversed when that kid comes home to an environment that doesn't give a fuck about education. If there's no interest in learning on the child's part, I'm 100% convinced that it's the parent's fault. They dropped the ball, screwed the pooch, muffed the kick, and any other stupid euphemism for "done fucked up, good". Not saying they're bad parents, sometimes life happens and they have other priorities than checking to see if their kid is doing homework or getting him interested in reading for fun, which is unfortunate, but still lacking any real good excuse. Their fault. School reform can only do so much, it's passive parenting that needs to be corrected. At the end of the day, a great teacher is simply a resource, nothing more, nothing less. They might have a monumental impact on a kid, which is fantastic, but I'd bet good money that child was already eager to learn, all the while there's six kids in the back of the room staring at the clock because they just.don't.give.a.shit.
Debate. Participating in debate club gave me a unique high school experience that has positively impacted my academic success in too many ways to list. ~90% of the stuff I learned in high school came from actively participating in debate. I have the attention span of a cracked out goldfish and spent more time researching for debate than I have for any paid job since. It's unbelievably empowering to study an intense social issue and argue those points in front of a judge panel based purely on how hard you worked. Going into freshman year I was a quiet kid, but researching the circumstances surrounding illegal immigrant minors in the US was both fascinating and horrifying. My normal courses would try to throw abstract theories at students but in debate the shit you research directly relates to pressing shit going on right now. I had such bad ADHD I would fall asleep front row center during an english lecture, but would eagerly put 30+ hours a week into researching our annual topic. After just one year in debate I moved from the regular track to primarily honors and AP courses. Classes still bored me but debate actively motivated me to cultivate my critical thinking skills and provided both tangible and intangible rewards. Debate trophies for winning at the state and national levels are WAY bigger then the football ones. Because of the hard work I put into debate I travelled to ten different states, spent a week in Las Vegas, got paid to hang out in NYC, ate a lot of free filet mignon, argued in front of state reps and CEOs, and made some fairly high-powered connections. If I had never joined the team I would have ended up a loser dropout with too short an attention span to even pass remedial classes. Instead I graduated with a bunch of AP credits and the ability to speak like a motherfucker. The skills I've learned from debate have insured that I will always get high marks on research papers and be able to speak like the smartest guy in the room despite definitely not being it. It taught me the impacts of hard work, abstract thinking, research skills, speaking skills, improved my interpersonal skills, showed me how to learn from failures, and empowered me to overcome personal fears through determination and grit. I don't fall into this category but many of the hardest working high school debaters are ludicrously smart and end up wildly successful in advanced fields. I know at least a couple debaters from low-income backgrounds that earned full rides to Ivy schools. High schools should have a mandatory year-long debate course. Give all students an equal opportunity to speak their mind, think quickly on their feet, learn about relevant social issues that directly impact their lives, and earn rewards based directly on how hard they work. Side note: Looking back I probably should have paid attention during english because my writing outside of research papers and speeches still blows. Whoops.
This is probably going to be a long post, so fair warning. I think the most important part of education is the part that happens even before you get into the school system. I was taught to read around age 3, and I loved reading way before entering school. Most of the background knowledge I used to excel all the way through 5th grade came from children's encyclopedias that I'd read when I was young. In elementary school, I would basically read 10 books from the local library in a week or so, and then go back and get ten more. The reason is that I was raised to be curious. My parents were very good about answering all my annoying questions about the world and encouraging me to learn more about them. I still engage my dad in religious/philosophical debates to this day because he encouraged my interest in them. This in turn made me want to learn more, which made me read more. It's a lot easier to learn something when you are actually interested in knowing it. Seems obvious, but the modern school system is basically constructed to ignore that fact. I also benefited from teachers early on who allowed me to do my own thing. A lot of bright kids get stuck in a system which forces everyone to move at the same speed. So they have two choices: experience the slow death of repetition - trying doing 200 basic multiplication problems in a hot room when you're 10 years old - or zone out/act out and become a "slacker" or "problem child". When I was a kid, my teachers let me read paperbacks in class after I'd demonstrated I understood the material. Sure, there were some occasions when they'd try to force everyone to learn at the same pace - the typical example might be having the class read a novel at one chapter a week, and disallowing people from reading ahead - but I ignored those rules anyway. I was a quiet kid and generally acted like I gave a shit about whatever we were doing, which I think saved me a lot of grief (as opposed to the kid who goofs off because he's fed up with the slow pace of the class). A lot of kids don't get that same benefit - they have less understanding teachers (read, worse teachers) or they don't have the self-control to grin and nod, and get labeled the "teacher's pet". I guess I'm one of the few people who generally enjoyed learning "advanced" stuff, even if not immediately relevant to my life. The last math and science class I took was Calculus III/Differential Equations and AP Physics C, respectively. That was in high school - my college doesn't even require any math or science courses. I just enjoyed the classes, and it does give me a more well-rounded perspective on certain topics (generally science-y current events stuff, like missile defense and stuff like that). There's a lot of easy fixes to stupid structural problems that keep kids from learning to love learning. Here's one easy one - have the school day start later. Common sense says that while little kids wake up early - most Sundays I was up and hyper by 6 am - young people start needing more and more sleep as they enter their teens. But for some reason, high school tends to start around 7 in the morning, and kindergarten starts at noon. Why? Cause that's the way it's always been. Stupid. Sir Ken Robinson has a lot to say about this and other things: Cursive is bullshit. I learned something similar to you - My typical speed-writing is absolutely chicken-scratch, but everyone in my family uses small caps as a matter of habit when writing something formal (paperwork, etc). It lends the text a sense of dignity. The difference is that I taught myself how to write in small caps when I was in high school, because my handwriting sucked. It still usually sucks, but I can clean it up when it counts. You know, I see this a lot, and I'd like to offer a counterpoint. My father, as with many people of his generation, was a bright teenager in India looking to go off to school. He went through the same rote performance/memorization regime that you're talking about, but that doesn't get you everywhere. Perhaps more importantly, he got high enough marks on his college entrance exam (like Top 1000 out of 100,000, and that's with preselection) that he was able to get a world class education on the government dime. He later leveraged those skills to get an IT job in the US, and ended up developing a system that's the most-used in its field (pharmaceutical trial stuff, if you care). That ain't writing-a-screenplay creative, but you're not going to be able to do that with just the rote memorization skills, either. It takes a hell of a lot of creative thinking and problem solving ability. A large part of the senior IT industry in the US* grew up in the kind of environment you're talking about, but they were able to use it as a stepping stone to something bigger. That's just one industry, too - there's many other fields in the maths and sciences that have similar stories. I guess what I'm trying to say is, be wary of that generalization. I agree that rote memorization methods are stupid, but it's a confluence of parental pressure, educational methods, and student ability/"intelligence" that creates these neurotic kids who can't think outside the box. *and maybe other countries too. Scootah? I also agree with some posts here that economics is criminally underrated. I was required to take two full years of the stuff in college, and while I'm not so fond of macro theory and global market stuff, opportunity cost is the single most influential idea I've experienced in the last five years.
Indiana kiboshes cursive writing curriculum I'd like to second the person who said they wish they had taken more programming classes. While I never ended up in the IT industry, I was a CS major for the first 2 years of college and had taken 1 or 2 classes in high school. I ultimately switched to business/finance, but the programming classes taught me a ton about critical thinking and problem solving, which has been invaluable in my career. It enables you to take a bunch of different variables and analyze a series of various outcomes. Understanding cause and effect is a huge part of making shrewd business decisions. We business people love "what-if" scenarios.