"Public Education" - Evan Fury

To start off this rant, I would like to make the reader clear on certain facts. I am the product of a public school. I am not ranting from the perspective of a spoiled rich brat who when to Asssphincter Academy or whatever. Also, I am not a leading authority on education. This is just my opinion. That's all.

I really dislike the public education system. I don't consider it effective at teaching most students, and I don't consider it able to prepare students for the world beyond high school. I do not place the blame directly on the teachers. Like any profession, teaching has its' good and bad employees. There are some teachers who do their job very well, and some who really dislike children. That's a given.

One of this biggest problems in the public education system is class size. The teacher: student ratio is too high, especially among larger schools in larger cities. No matter what speed the teacher attempts to cover material, or how effectively they teach, it is impractical to believe that any one person can successful design a curriculum that will teach 30+ students at their maximum achievement level. Every student is unique, and it is unfeasable to expect each student to receive their education entirely on a one-to-one basis. However, the larger the class is, the more difficult it is for the teacher to assess even the most basic needs of each student.

Along the same lines, there is too much emphasis put on "mainstreaming" learning disabled or trouble kids. I am not saying that these students have less value than other students, I just think that schools should be structured to group students based on their abilities, to maximize learning proficiency. When a teacher is required to adapt their classroom for "mainstreamed" children, they usually slow down or lower the standard for all the students. Keep the mainstreaming to a minimum.

Don't overlook the gifted students, either. Grouping children based on how much difficulty they have learning shouldn't stop when you reach the "average" students. It has long been a belief by a lot of school systems that "since these children are gifted, why waste funds on them, they'll be successful anyway". This is simply not true. Gifted children have an enormous amount of potential. Potential is like an unstruck match. You have to motivate these students, too.

Students are taught and retaught alot of the same, unnecessary things. What students need is more practical, applicable knowledge and less facts to regurgitate. Throughout my public school experience, I can recall being required to learn and recite passages from important documents, literature, etc. While I am completely supportive of the appreciation of history and literature, there are simply too many other things that get overlooked by the school system, like how to balance a checkbook, survive on a budget, and file taxes. Teachers need to focus more on thought exercises, too. Learning to think independently and abstractly is much more important that regurgitating useless information. For a good deal of things, concepts are more important and more useful in a practical environment than hard facts. I realize that some things student should not be without, such as government, basic math, including algebra and geometry, english, including extensive grammar work and and understanding of literature and writing, and the basic sciences, and more than ever, understanding of business and technology.

I have a real problem with the idea that it takes every student exactly 180 days to learn a certain amount of material. When slower students are held back to repeat a grade, they may be doing so because of problems in only one or two areas. When students are allowed to skip a grade, they miss a whole year's worth of material, though the majority of it will be repeated. I think the school system would be in better shape if classes were broken down into smaller intervals, such as 6 weeks spurts, and into categories, such as english, arts, sciences, technology, business, government, and maths. The students would attend year-round, with several short breaks during the year, similar to how some school systems have in effect now. Students would take aptitude tests frequently to determine both progress and what adjustments need to be made to their schedule. Separate classes would be created depending on aptitude, putting the slower english students together with other slow english students. The curriculum wouldn't be linear as it now is; a student might be taking 3rd year math and 6th year science, depending on their ability to grasp on area better than another. There would still be a certain standard of learning; skills and lessons required for all students, but students would be allowed and encouraged to exceed those standards however they wanted. With smaller learning intervals, students would have the benefit of learning as quickly or as slowly as they needed. The sharper students could skip lower-leveled classes that they've mastered, and slower students could repeat classes based on particular areas where they might need extra help.

We as a society do not embrace differences easily or well. We are so hellbent to have everyone "equal", that we are forced to disregard our own uniqueness. We should be able to exploit our own strengths, and minimize our weaknesses, especially when it comes to education.