When you're unemployed and in summer mode, you have a lot of time to think. This post counts as having too much time on my hands.
I'm not a political junkie. I know that George W. Bush tried to enact a "No Child Left Behind" educational policy, which from my understanding was generally a failure. It sounds like the goal was to meet certain objectives that made the results more important than the process (i.e. only thing that matters is the scores - doesn't matter how you get there)
I think it's time we re-evaluate how America does education. It's still far and away the best system in the world, which is why so many international students come to learn. However, I believe that it is somewhat failing in truly "preparing" students for the "real world."
Think about how many things you learned in high school that, unless it pertains to your specific current career, you probably won't remember. Chemistry sticks out in my head. When have I used Algebra? Trig? Calculus? The history of the Aztec/Mayan empires? Couldn't tell you. I can talk about things that I found interesting and was engaged in - a few classes on government, my English classes, and I remember Latin. I hated Latin, but it was great to actually understand it and own it.
My point is - there's so many classes that we all take that we don't remember. It's like the concept of the show Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader? Because you may know more about how the world works, you may not know if a rhombus has four equal sides or if that's a parallelogram.
I know that the idea is to give youth a "general basis in all disciplines" and then hopefully they choose to study more of their interests in college and beyond. So nearly 70% of my educational time was on material irrelevant to what I wanted to do? I don't know what my future holds for me, but I am absolutely positive that it won't have anything to do with me in a Chemistry lab coming up with the next vaccine.
What I think could be done - and this is somewhat of a rip off of season 4 of The Wire - is to give students truly an education on how our society works. Call it a "life" class. Teach the students about things that are actually important to them fitting in and succeeding - how to work. What's involved in taxes? What's a 401k? How to build credit? How do mortgages function? How do you pay your bills? What is a good interest rate for a bank? The stock market. Health insurance? Everyone should know the details of Obama's health care bill - because it relates directly to them. Weather they like it or not doesn't matter - but they should be aware of it. Stuff that we can use because this is how society has been set up.
In those American Revolution classes you'd always learn about the Boston Tea Party and "No Taxation without Representation" stuff. What does that really mean for us now over 200 years later? How do I not only pay my taxes, but where do they go? I think that would be more helpful and beneficial than knowing the periodic table (I'm really ripping into Chemistry. You can see that it was my least favorite subject).
If you were to argue that by taking away any class to incorporate this "Life" class, then let's just add it onto the schedule - make the day longer or do something. In The Wire they took most of the "inner-city" troubled youth who seemed destined to be working the Corner and have an average life expectancy of 22. They didn't teach this kids how 2+2=4. Instead, they tried to teach them just general life behavior - how to order food at a restaurant, teamwork exercises. There was no real grades, because that wasn't the point. It was about teaching these kids how to live in the world and hopefully provide other options for them besides selling dope on the streets. I know that The Wire isn't real, but it's a feasible concept. The problem with it was that we are acknowledging these kids' likely outcome and stereotypically treating them different - as if they don't matter. I'm not sure that's the right answer, but something like what they did in the show would be more helpful than your average math class.
Which brings me to another point - the grading of education is weak. I don't know how to fix it. But it's garbage that I can take the same class as you - with different teachers - and our experience and our grades can reflect two totally different classes. Student X worked extremely hard to get a C, while Student Y didn't work so hard and cruised to an easy A. X knows much more than Y because X worked harder because the way it was taught was more difficult, but at the end of the day, when you judge purely on report cards, student Y did "better."
Think about those classes in college or high school that everyone took. The only difference was teachers. I can think of one class in college where all my teacher had us do was write press releases every other week. My friend was in the same class but different teacher, and she was stressing out over having to create a huge event for the school - for class! Two totally different learning experiences, two totally different work ethics, two totally different outcomes.
Then when you are making the transition from high school to college, or from college to grad school etc, your GPA is one of the key items of note. Using our friends X and Y from a few paragraphs ago, X may know much more than Y did, but Y had the easier teachers, and therefore was chosen before X. I know there's many other variables (pun intended) than just grades - but at the end of the day, it all comes down to GPA. And that can make the difference in being accepted or rejected from Z.
Another random annoyance - how we give tests. My grade on a test doesn't reflect what I know about a certain subject. The example that comes to my head is when a teacher asks a question on a test and you don't have the answer - but you could correctly answer questions that the teacher didn't ask. That shouldn't mean you fail the test - it's not a real accurate way of measuring how much you know. So much of test are just straight memorization. Does that prove I know a lot about European political parties or that I can remember how Parliament works "for the test" and then forget about it 20 minutes later. That's the flaw, that we learn it not to better ourselves, but to "pass the test" and then move on.
Again, I don't know the way to fix that, because we need to measure how well you are doing in class, but need it to be more regulated so that it is truly fair.
It's interesting because coming out of college I feel prepared to have a job - but I'm not sure about how to handle everything else that comes with being a "working" man. The stuff I mentioned above - how does it all work? Why don't I know that? Why wasn't that taught to me as part of my "education"? I know I'm not alone with that thought.
***ADDENDUM AUGUST 4, 2010***
Another thought came to mind - college is the exact opposite of the rest of the world. In high school, class goes from 7ish till 3ish. College is whenever you set it, and typically for around 16 hours a week. Then when you have a "real job" it's somewhere between 9-6 five days a week. Why give all that freedom in college? I know the stock answer - "to allow you to explore your passions and interests." I'm sure some people follow through. I'm sure other people didn't and instead slept, partied, slept some more, etc. I guess that is more of a "showing your maturity" issue, but it's kind of silly when you think about it.
With that said, I'm excited about going back in a few weeks. Oh wait.
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