What would you change about the education system?

I was appalled upon revisiting my old elementary school a few years back, to find an Obama poster hung up on the wall, like a shrine.

I don't care what candidates you support, but to push your beliefs on naive children and essentially spin your own view to them, especially without parental consent needs to be done away with.

I can only imagine how bad it is now with the Anti-Trump baby mentality going about. Teachers should never, ever force their politics, and if I was a parent, regardless of where I stood, I would be outraged to find my child parroting back the bias coming from either extreme.


To be fair, I seem to recall it happening as far back as my old elementary school experience. I recall a lot of pro-Clinton talk, but we never had a picture of him, at least.

Pretty sickening that teachers now have this much authority over children who don't know any better, further spreading either extreme. I hate it.

I suggest looking into NPR's content about funding schools. Their barebones argument is that funding schools is important, but a school having a lot of money doesn't matter if they use it poorly (using the money to pay for the Principals and not the Teachers or using the money for the students).

https://www.npr.org/series/473636949/schoolmoney

The basis problems isn't about the schools themselves, but the limit of teaching in general. It is impossible for everyone to have their own personal Teacher who can help out their student on every issue.

In highschool-- at least in the USA-- a teacher can teach 20 to 30+ students in one classroom, and a Teacher could teach 8 periods. They could teach anywhere from 160 to 240+ students in a given year. This a ballpark estimate as it is used to illustrate a point.

It doesn't help that a class in highschool can last about 40 minutes or so, and only 180 days to get through the material. It results in Teachers pushing through without being able to engage with their students and challenge them critically.

On top of this, in many highschools, Teachers need to grade what the students turn in, which limits the ability of the Teacher to help students outside of the classroom (in college, you can email your Teachers for help).

You could extend school, but then you will cut into the time in which Students come home (as some have extra school programs they attend). You could extend the days students are in schools from 180, but then you would need to pay the Teachers more because you are making them work longer for the same pay.

My thoughts are that Teachers need to be paid more. This will help Teachers want to stay in their field longer, and develop the skills needed to teach their students. Also, remove homeroom and standing for the pledge of allegiance. Homeroom is pointless. Just have students go to their first period. Next, I think Highschools should set up a website that allows Students to contact their Teacher on a School website. It will help students who want to ask their Teacher more questions. I also think that having reserve classrooms would be nice (depending on what is being teached), so they do their homework in the classroom, and they can watch the lecture online. Students will be able to learn the material at their own pace, and be able to ask questions about the homework in class. Since trying to ask your parents about homework is pointless as many tries the parent has no idea what is being taught. Finally, I do think that parents need to be involved more in reinforcing the material at home. Putting on the work on Teachers doesn't make sense to me. Maybe have the parent sit down with the child and attempt to learn the material with them, instead of not helping until the child actually needs help.

In one word: "everything".

The most important change I would make is higher funding for schools along with better pay for eduators. I believe kids need to be able to get a good education if the parents do not wish to pay high tuition costs of private schools ($10,302 yearly in the US), homeschool children (including cyberschooling), or do not want to participate in a pariochial facility.

For example, schools in Detroit are infamously lackluster including but not limited to mildew and mold damage, buckled floors, exposed wires (electrocution risk), watermarks, crumbling infrastructure and so on. If Secretary of Education Betsy Du Vos really cared about education, she would direct more funding to failing schools instead of directing students to private schools regardless if the parents or guardians can pay the tuition (some schools are funded based on student population).


On the line of teacher salary, this plays into my first point because in a school with appalling conditions and low pay, this ultimately make the instructor less motivated to provide a quality education to their pupils, thus leading to many problems in the education system. I believed the quality of education can be improved if teachers are motivated by a living wage and great conditions. Just my opinion.

Pay teachers more and fix up the god-awful sex education.

Trev said:

Pay teachers more and fix up the god-awful sex education.

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I forgot about the lackluster quality of sex education in America. I should know because my Middle and High School experience that sex ed can be of meh quality (Middle School was anatomy, pregnancy, STDs along with an abstinence-only approach, High School was only STDs and Pregnancy (did not mention contraception or birth control)). Thanks for brining this up.

like someone said earlier, change how much pressure is put on knowing what you want to do with the rest of your life at 16 and earlier and even later. when i was 16 i was just focused on getting stable mental health (my mental health was not the best at the time however it is manageable as of right now) and graduating. hell, i'm 20 almost 21 and still don't know what i want to do and my mom makes me feel like crap for it. it sucks. i'm only going for a gen ed degree because it'll give me some sort of degree and gives me some time to at least somewhat figure out what i wanna do.

also, exams are a big no no. i hate exams. they're ridiculous. i'd prefer more hands on final projects or something of the like. most of the time with final exams i end up just memorizing everything and not remembering what was on it at all after i'm done with the courses.

Random thought I had the other day: colleges that aren?t specialty school should require students to take upper division Biology/Business even if it?s not part of their major on a Pass/Fail score. I feel like so many people get duped by ?science? nowadays, and many of these people have college degrees, so supposedly they?re really smart but still get tricked by this stuff. I feel like if these kids were forced to take Human Physiology or Ecology or Intro to Environmental Science then there wouldn?t be such widespread ignorance.

A lot of colleges offer intro classes but at a lower level if it?s not your major. Fuck that shit. Put those kids in the same class as the major kids, but grade them on a Pass/Fail or don?t incorporate their grade into their main GPA. That way the non-majors don?t get a watered down version and potentially a lowered GPA (since science classes can be hard) and they still have to learn most of the material.

Like can you just imagine if this knowledge was widespread? Less people complaining about and getting tricked by ?chemicals in their food?/?GMOs have chemicals?/?Triglycerides are bad for you?/?0 cholesterol is best!?

Altairis said:

Random thought I had the other day: colleges that aren?t specialty school should require students to take upper division Biology/Business even if it?s not part of their major on a Pass/Fail score.

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Why business exactly?

Nah said:

Why business exactly?

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I haven't super thought about that one but I have never taken any sort of business related class in my life and I feel like maybe it would be useful? But I would never ever take one now because it could affect my GPA and they're not really accessible at my college to non-majors.

I think a major problem with the education system is the problem of political or philosophical bias creeping into lessons. I think the following things would help solve this:
- more transparency for parents about what their kids are being taught (maybe have daily lesson plans emailed out to parents, etc.)
- development of a fair standard for determining what kinds of things qualify as bias
- some form of oversight to make sure teachers are abiding by these standards