The sorry state of 'murrican education.

[Suu]

Every high school graduate should have at LEAST the following under his/her belt:

Algebra & geometry.  MINIMUM.
Statistics.
Physics.
Chemistry.
Biology.
American history, at least the basics, 1600-present.
20th century European history.
4 years of English, to include speech and essay writing.
Civics, to include the US constitution.
Literary study (Twain, Mencken, Kipling, etc)
Basic mechanics and electrical knowledge.

Electives added to round it out.

Anything less means you do not have an educated citizen, and 90% of the above is memorization.

I had all of the above sans mechanical shop. I would like to include art and music in there as well to a point. An elective in each should be required.

[Salty]

Every high school graduate should have at LEAST the following under his/her belt:

Algebra & geometry.  MINIMUM. Scraped by with a D in sort of a remedial Alrgebra & Informal Geometry
Statistics. Didn't take it.
Physics. Took a stripped down version in Germany.
Chemistry. Took a stripped down version in Germany. I know what acids and bases are sort of!
Biology. Took a stripped down version in Germany. Got a lot out of it.
American history, at least the basics, 1600-present. Failed it the first time, got a B when I retook it with the football coach.
20th century European history. Nope.
4 years of English, to include speech and essay writing. Nope. We read Of Mice and Men and wrote poetry.
Civics, to include the US constitution. Scraped by with a D in Government.
Literary study (Twain, Mencken, Kipling, etc) See English
Basic mechanics and electrical knowledge. Nope.

Electives added to round it out.

Anything less means you do not have an educated citizen, and 90% of the above is memorization.

I ain't doing to bad for all that!

[Luna]

Every high school graduate should have at LEAST the following under his/her belt:

Algebra & geometry.  MINIMUM.
Statistics.
Physics.
Chemistry.
Biology.
American history, at least the basics, 1600-present.
20th century European history.
4 years of English, to include speech and essay writing.
Civics, to include the US constitution.
Literary study (Twain, Mencken, Kipling, etc)
Basic mechanics and electrical knowledge.

Electives added to round it out.

Anything less means you do not have an educated citizen, and 90% of the above is memorization.

I got out without European history and physics.  Mechanics and electrical knowledge... well, I know enough not to fuck with what I don't understand.  I can rewire a phone jack (and have), and have picked up bits and pieces of the rest along the way.  (Hell, I've learned a lot here, alone.)  

One of the biggest problems with American education is the belief that, once you leave the building, you're finished.

[Freeky]

See, I'd argue that half the problem now is teaching to the fucking test. That takes up huge amounts of time, especially at the elementary school levels. I asked my mother once how much of her day was teaching kids how to pass standardized tests and she said it was something like 80%. How are you supposed to teach a kid to think if you're wrapped up in teaching them to pass a test?

I must have got into school just before this started happening, because I don't remember this at all.  How do you teach how to take a test?  You fill in the fucking bubble, you're done.  

Memorization is part of education, however, so is learning to fucking THINK.

Your average history class is all memorization.  Vomit back lists of dates, events, and names, but there's no understanding of WHY shit happened.

Which is a fucking shame because that shit's exciting, and exactly why I want to teach history.

I had some really awful history teachers.  Most of them tended to focus entire quarters to a single event or person (my least favorite teacher, Mr. Boobany [I shit you not that was his name] had a hard on for Reagan).

[Doktor Howl]

Every high school graduate should have at LEAST the following under his/her belt:

Algebra & geometry.  MINIMUM.
Statistics.
Physics.
Chemistry.
Biology.
American history, at least the basics, 1600-present.
20th century European history.
4 years of English, to include speech and essay writing.
Civics, to include the US constitution.
Literary study (Twain, Mencken, Kipling, etc)
Basic mechanics and electrical knowledge.

Electives added to round it out.

Anything less means you do not have an educated citizen, and 90% of the above is memorization.

I had all of the above sans mechanical shop. I would like to include art and music in there as well to a point. An elective in each should be required.

I knew I was forgetting something.  Music OR art should be required, and the alternate offered as an elective.

[Doktor Howl]

I got out without European history and physics.

You can't understand American history without at least an overview of European history, and you can't understand any of the sciences properly without physics.

[Juana]

See, I'd argue that half the problem now is teaching to the fucking test. That takes up huge amounts of time, especially at the elementary school levels. I asked my mother once how much of her day was teaching kids how to pass standardized tests and she said it was something like 80%. How are you supposed to teach a kid to think if you're wrapped up in teaching them to pass a test?

I must have got into school just before this started happening, because I don't remember this at all.  How do you teach how to take a test?  You fill in the fucking bubble, you're done.  

I think you're a year older than I am. 2006 was your graduation year, yeah? It wasn't as bad for us and quite isn't as bad at the high school level, ime. They only teach what's on the test, so students only ever see dry facts, names, and dates, with no emphasis on critical thinking or concepts. Rote memory has its place in history, but so does concepts and learning to pick things apart.

Memorization is part of education, however, so is learning to fucking THINK.

Your average history class is all memorization.  Vomit back lists of dates, events, and names, but there's no understanding of WHY shit happened.

Which is a fucking shame because that shit's exciting, and exactly why I want to teach history.

I had some really awful history teachers.  Most of them tended to focus entire quarters to a single event or person (my least favorite teacher, Mr. Boobany [I shit you not that was his name] had a hard on for Reagan).

I was bored shitless in high school history, too. One teacher was a heroin addict who didn't actually do anything except sit in the corner (though he did pick a good book) and the other class wasn't interesting because I had already learned most of what he was teaching.
It wasn't until college that I began to enjoy it when I had a fabulous instructor who made it real and interesting.

[Doktor Howl]

See, I'd argue that half the problem now is teaching to the fucking test.

[/quote]

There's nothing wrong with teaching to the test, provided the test is generated in a common-sense manner.

You can't grade without a test, and you can't test what you didn't teach.

This is to be contrasted with the notion of the federal government giving a corporation a billion bucks to generate an irrelevant test, and then forcing the entire country to change its curriculum to match.

[Freeky]

I got out without European history and physics.

You can't understand American history without at least an overview of European history, and you can't understand any of the sciences properly without physics.

And you can't understand physics without the more advanced algebra, either.  Knowledge is crazy, how it all ties up together like that.

[Freeky]

See, I'd argue that half the problem now is teaching to the fucking test.

There's nothing wrong with teaching to the test, provided the test is generated in a common-sense manner.

You can't grade without a test, and you can't test what you didn't teach.

This is to be contrasted with the notion of the federal government giving a corporation a billion bucks to generate an irrelevant test, and then forcing the entire country to change its curriculum to match.

*froth*

[Luna]

I got out without European history and physics.

You can't understand American history without at least an overview of European history, and you can't understand any of the sciences properly without physics.

Oh, believe me, I know.  I've scraped together some on those topics on my own.  

I DID, however, refuse a second year of home ec in order to take shop.  It's been awhile, but if you put me in front of, say, a wood lathe, I could probably produce something without bleeding on it.

[Freeky]

I think you're a year older than I am. 2006 was your graduation year, yeah? It wasn't as bad for us and quite isn't as bad at the high school level, ime. They only teach what's on the test, so students only ever see dry facts, names, and dates, with no emphasis on critical thinking or concepts. Rote memory has its place in history, but so does concepts and learning to pick things apart.

Yeah, 2006 was my graduation year.  

My problem with what I see now, at the COLLEGE level, is that some teachers (and these would be the really terrible ones, very sub-par) don't teach for understanding.  My math class I'm taking, the teacher is basically just teaching the class how to use their calculators.  How is that going to help them when their calculator suddenly dies on them, and they don't understand how what they're trying to do actually works?

[Doktor Howl]

Home ec/child rearing is another interesting topic.

I would have been better off if I'd been shown how to change a shitty diaper, instead of on-the-job training at 3AM back in 1993.

[Suu]

I got out without European history and physics.

You can't understand American history without at least an overview of European history, and you can't understand any of the sciences properly without physics.

American History is godawfully boring in comparison to European history, also.

-Suu
Might be slightly biased.

[Luna]

Also, a lack of understanding of science leads to THIS sort of jackassery.

http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2011/09/20/trial_opens_against_scientists_for_italy_quake/

Seven scientists, on trial for manslaughter.  Why?  They failed to give advance warning of an earthquake that killed 300 people in Italy in 2009.

The seven defendants are accused of giving "inexact, incomplete and contradictory information" about whether smaller tremors felt by L'Aquila residents in the six months before the April 6, 2009 quake should have constituted grounds for a quake warning.

"We all know well that earthquakes cannot be predicted. This is not in the point here," said Vincenzo Vittorini, a relative of a victim, who attended the trial.

Rather, he said, because of the failure of the scientists to say a significant quake could be possible, victims and their relatives missed a chance to take preventative measures.

Prosecutors focused on a memo issued after an expert commission meeting on mounting concerns about the months of seismic activity in the region. Released a week before the big quake, it concluded it was "improbable" that there would be a major temblor, though it added that one couldn't be excluded.

Commission members also gave largely reassuring interviews to local media after the meeting which "persuaded the victims to stay at home," the indictment said.

The defendants' lawyers have insisted on their clients' innocence and stressed the impossibility of predicting quakes.

The 6.3-magnitude temblor killed 308 people in and around the medieval town of L'Aquila, which was largely reduced to rubble. Thousands of survivors lived in tent camps or temporary housing for months.