Same happened to me last year in chem, and we got an intern teacher for the time being. And then the pandemic hit 
1 Like
I donât think that they should make school not mandatory or anything like that. I think itâs okay that we have to have an education through high school, because that means we are able to get to an age that we somewhat know what we want to do as our job. If given the choice, most middle schoolers would stop there and then get stuck with a manual labor job because they missed the chance to go to high school and then college. An oft brought up topic is the fact that it is kind of dumb that someone has to have a college degree, but I think that is because the fact that there has been more emphasis on core classes and less on other classes in high school. This is a problem since even if we know exactly what we want to do, we donât have much time to focus on that and hone our skills. For example, Iâm a freshman in high school and have known I wanted to be an engineer for a long time. However, I only have one class dedicated to engineering in a day with 6 classes and is 7 hours long. That is because there is basically no emphasis on what you want to do and instead pounding in the core classes, such as biology, english, math, and such. Now, these are still important as we donât want to have another WaterIIDragon, but I feel like there should be a balance between those classes and occupational classes. The problem is, we cannot overwhelm the students too much by taking 10 hours of their day just for school and not giving them any time for their hobbies and entertainment, so there would have to be a delicate balancing act.
I guess Iâm famous now lol
average science denier 
oooo that outfit looks niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice
Damn didnât realize how much text that looks like on mobile
Necro bump time!
As a fellow member of the US Modern Education System Is BS club; I present to you an essay on why the system sucks.
Before I get into the meat and potatoes of it all, lemme first clarify a couple of things.
A. Iâm referring to the Modern US Public School System.
Due to that being the extent of my credible knowledge.
B. For simplicityâs sake & due to the forumâs rules; Iâll try to tone down & simplify things, as much as possible.
C. I know that my punctuation skills are subpar; I do apologize for any confusion that may result from it.
D. As Iâm also pulling from my personal experiences with the system and not just from the experiences that Iâve been exposed to. Some parts donât necessarily fully apply to every school.
Some have / are trying, to implement changes to combat the issues with the system.
That said, the system itself is faulty so⌠next to no schools are immune to itâs crippling flaws.
E. Many of the points that are mentioned here are from / inspired by this video :
Due to the topic being as convoluted as it is. I will be addressing things by a topic by topic basis, whilst occasionally referring to other topics, to link things together.
I will also be covering as much as I can but as itâs an incredibly complex & situational topic, I obviously wonât be able to cover everything.
How The Human Mind Learns
If Iâm jumping in, I might as well just toss myself into the deep end, aye?
âHow The Human Mind Learnsâ
This right here is the biggest chink in the system and where it flat out fails students.
Have you ever noticed that you usually remember more from say⌠Youtube videos, than from school?
Thatâs because of a thing called engagement.
See, when your engaged in something and actually care about it; your brainâs categorization process reflects that.
What that translates into; is that since you saw value in it, you naturally remember it better.
School isnât engaging?
Well⌠no.
Rarely if ever, do students actually get told why theyâre being taught something.
What they get is essentially " Itâs for the test⌠Itâs for the test⌠Itâs for theâ ".
In short, students end up âlearningâ the material, solely for tests.
So after theyâre done with the related tests, the material that they âlearntâ no longer has any value to them and as such gets tossed down the drain.
Memorize, regurgitate, forget & repeat.
So now that Iâve explained what it takes to learn things, now ya gotta take into consideration how the brain keeps memories.
( Yeah I feel ya, our brains are unfortunately, very obsessive about weeding out unneeded material. )
Ya know how the Education System tends to speed run topics and is deathly allergic to staying on one for any longer than is necessary for tests?
Yeah⌠we human beings, donât learn well under that environment.
We learn largely through application; meaning in order for a memory to stick, it needs to be reinforced into our minds through repeated application.
So not only are students not given a sufficient reason to learn the material, they arenât even given enough time to learn it⌠only enough time to get the scraps of information needed for a test or two.
With all that said, whatâs the actual effect on how much students remember?
Well⌠they wonât remember much beyond the literacy metric, a few years after they graduate.
Unless they use it for their job / hobbies.
In short, they end up feeling like they wasted a large portion of their life. Which they may as well have.
Now unto how grading works!
Grading
âYou donât learn the material for the sake of the learning. You learn it for a fancy grade.â
- Just about every student after they graduate.
The grading system would be passable if and I canât stress enough emphasis on âIfâ, if a studentâs grades actually reflected what theyâve learnt.
But as I explained in the previous section, they only âlearnâ the material for a test and usually end up forgetting most, if not all of it afterwards.
Think of the reward principle.
If you gave someone a reward every time they did something correctly.
Would they get better at doing said thing or would they just get better at doing the bare minimum required to get said reward?
If your answer was the latter, your correct; at least in the case of how it turns out in our public schools.
In our public schools, grades are the reward and the material is the thing.
Even at this point, it could work if the value of the reward wasnât put above the thing.
We all know that that isnât the case. Grades are so overly stressed, to the point where the material behind it is completely overshadowed in the minds of students.
This results in students âlearningâ solely for the sake of the reward, not to actually better understand the material.
So they donât.
Memorize, regurgitate, forget & repeat.
Next Section!
The Material Itself
To be blunt once you get to around 11th grade, most subjects go beyond literacy and into the more advanced levels that the vast majority of people, rarely if ever, use.
At this point students should be allowed to choose their courses and focus on what they want
to pursue.
Honestly students should be given some sort of control of their courses after elementary school and then get even more as they enter high school. That way they can get valuable experience when it comes to critical thinking.
Which is yet another issue with the system⌠Itâs bad at creating people who can think for themselves.
Next Section!
Teachers
Iâll be keeping this section brief.
Teachers are some of the most important people in a studentâs life.
Yet why do they have to pay for their own supplies at times?
Far too many teachers are underpaid and it shows in the quality of their work.
Another question worth asking is
why are there so many bad teachers?
Not enough is being done to ensure that the right people get the right job.
For a job as important as teaching, this canât stand.
Next Section!
The Learning Environment
A caveat worth noting here, is that this section is highly circumstantial.
As such it can vary heavily depending on the school or even the teacher.
That said hereâs how it tends to work out, to my knowledge.
To compound the already horrendous issues with the system in general; the learning environment itself actually discourages learning.
âX person, what is the answer?â
What do you think of when you hear that question?
Probably anxiety and dread.
What!? Under no circumstances should that be a standard reaction.
Yet it is.
But why!?
Itâs because if your wrong; youâll likely be made fun of or made an example of.
Being wrong Is considered bad most of the time.
And not just socially, taking harder classes / projects is discouraged, because your more likely to get a worse grade for them.
Which can affect what colleges you can get into later in life. Which can affect your entire life.
That kind of stress doesnât teach students to learn from their mistakes and become better at something. It just encourages them to stay away from what theyâre bad at.
Oh no, this section isnât done yet.
Thatâs just one of many problems with the learning environment.
Did you know that a lot of newer schools are designed by the same people who design prisons?
No you heard me right.
Not only do schools metaphorically feel like a prison; they now physically feel like one!
And then ya got the bells, having to ask someone to go to the restroom, only being able to go the the restroom 4 times per 9 weeks per class, next to no breaks between classes, only being able to speak when called upon, sleep deprivation caused by absurd amounts of homework ect.
The list goes on and onâŚ
Next Section!
The Social Environment
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha no.
Next section.
Students' Mental Health
Honestly I canât give this section the respect that it deserves here but hereâs what I could do.
Feeling like theyâre stupid for not being able to remember things,
in some cases being forced to hold it for the entire school day,
having to wake up at an ungodly time,
being given an hour of homework per class,
sleep deprivation caused by the former point,
having next to no choice in what they learn,
being legally obligated to go to school,
social pressures,
having next to no time to themselves and be themselves because of school,
everything that I mentioned in former sections & so so much moreâŚ
All of this negatively affects a studentâs mental health and in far to many cases⌠breaks them.
That doesnât even include stress that comes from outside schoolâŚ
No wonder students arenât mentally healthy.
Next section.
Conclusion
Our current public education system is ineffective, counterintuitive and is in way too many cases, harmful to those itâs supposed to benefit.
Thus concludes my contribution to the rant.
3 Likes
My memory when being taught algebra that I will use for the rest of school: I sleep
My memory when seeing a Minecraft crafting recipe: REAL SH!T
2 Likes
why
Technically weâre always in school because summer is only a break preparing us for the next quarter of school
Some thoughts must never be said aloudâŚ
Gonna go find a memory eraser now.
Man I miss Desired_Bag, although his departure was probably for the best. He was a smart and cool dude, if only he wasnât such an edgelord.
why must you bump this topic
because they had more to add
1 Like
this topic is irrelevant now
no
1 Like
Bag was great
Iâm genuinely sorry for being a dick to him that one time
talk about school now