There's a whole lot wrong with public education, not least of which is the idea that you can teach kids more by keeping their asses in the seat longer. I've been giving guest lectures in low-income schools and those kids have 5 minute breaks between classes, which they spend walking swiftly (running is prohibited) to their next class. That leaves no time at all to take a break. They do that for 4 hours, then they get a chaotic lunch break, followed by another 4 hours or so. Yeah, that's not going to work. There is just no way to absorb all that information. Then there's homework... which is frequently busywork that doesn't actually help retain information. And you can't necessarily blame teachers: given how many classes they teach, they might have 200+ students in any given semester. You cannot have an essay every other week, or really any substantial assignment. That is, of course, assuming the local school board hasn't prohibited homework entirely. You might as well write off those students right now, because there's no way to get enough practice with content during school hours to retain anything.
Then there's the constant, standardized testing. Children are being frightened about how
crucialthose tests are, when nobody will ever give a shit about them -- except for whatever state or federal funding is tied to those test results. The students themselves don't benefit from it. So they waste time preparing for tests that don't matter to them, become afraid of taking tests (thus hurting performance on exams that will matter), don't have time for actually useful stuff, and supposedly brainy subjects like economics displace the arts -- because you can come up with a standardized test for the former, but not the latter.
As if that weren't enough, you have organizations with agendas unrelated to teaching that just need to get themselves involved. Technology grants are huge. So a classroom is going to be equipped with a smart board (that adds nothing of value) while the students don't have textbooks from this century -- and in any case, they don't get to take those home anyway. But there's a cart with laptops coming around so every student has one of those during class. From what I've seen, it takes 15 minutes to get everyone set up with those, which kills a quarter of the available class time for... no idea what, actually.
Since I'm ranting, I'll also add something about personal finance classes. They're primarily funded by financial institutions and they offer nothing of educational value. They'll probably teach the formula for compound interest, but that doesn't make you financially savvy. And you'll not find any mention of when it makes sense to default, which blatantly outs these programs as propaganda rather than education. Anything related to economics or finance should always talk about tradeoffs... and they exist when defaulting, too.
But fear not. Despite evidence showing that students who have gone through these personal finance "classes" do no better than other students, the courses are becoming required for getting a high school degree in more and more states. Which is only slightly less dumb than the graduation requirement that you fill out a college application. (The people who can't be bothered to do it voluntarily really should not be taking on student loans to go to college.)
And in all of that, the teachers are pretty much powerless. They have to teach a standardized curriculum after learning, even in shitty education programs, that everything they do in the classroom is exactly what studies say should NOT be done. Is it any surprise that people with better options get the hell out of that line of work?
Maybe it's just me paying more attention recently, but there does seem to be an increase in students being expelled. The problem is they are being expelled for the absolute stupidest shit while the true troublemakers and I-don't-give-a-shit kids seem to remain.
And there is that -- including students expelled for what would otherwise be protected by the first amendment. Nothing tells kids that they should be critical thinkers than the threat of a suspension if they dare question school policy or take a stance that could, somehow, be construed as subverting administration. The way these rules are applied also tells us something about school administrators, of course. It's pretty pathetic if someone gets riled up over a 16 year old insulting them...
