American academia is the envy of the world. I haven't met a single ambitious person in the US who dreams of teaching in a high school. It's kind of sad that secondary ed isn't high-prestige in today's American culture, but it's not.
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America's High School Graduates Look Like Other Countries' High School Dropouts
31–40 of 371 posts
Re: America's High School Graduates Look Like Other Countries' High School Dropouts
#32I don't expect the public school system to teach my children anything. Hence why they won't be attending. Most of the schools I attended growing up were completely useless. Filthy, full of drugs and gangs. Sadly I even listened to some of my teachers more than I did my own parents (indoctrination) which I now see lead me down the wrong path.
I don't expect the public school to teach my kids any kind of career skills or path. Think they'll teach them Python or Swift? Even if they did, it'd be boring as heck and wouldn't happen until they're 16 years old. Conversely, I fully expect to start "outsourcing" my web dev work to my children when they are 13. My wife thinks it won't work. I think having them make $60 an hour while their friends make nothing will be a large deciding factor.... And by the time they're 16, I am expecting them to be taking classes at the local community college which is just a few miles from here.
Re: America's High School Graduates Look Like Other Countries' High School Dropouts
#33I'd be much more interested in a study that compares the top 1 percentile of graduates between countries. Of course the bulk of US graduates are going to be unskilled... that's just how the bell curve works, and the US has the resources to support lots of unskilled laborers. It's the top of the bell curve that matters. How do the smartest engineers and scientists in the US compare to their counterparts in other count…
The US may also have bulges at both ends of the spectrum. With lots of children of undereducated domestic and specially poor immigrants our average will suffer.
Re: America's High School Graduates Look Like Other Countries' High School Dropouts
#34This is what happens when no child is left behind. How can EVERYONE graduate from HS without lowering the bar?
That appears to be an unfounded assertion. The US graduation rate is well under the OECD average. http://www.data360.org/dsg.aspx?Data_Set_Group_Id=1653
Appearances can be deceiving. Secondary education is compulsory in the US, whereas it's not in every OECD country. In some countries such as Japan, high school is not only optional but you have to take exams just to get accepted into a particular high school. This effectively stratifies students such that you end up with much more homogenous classrooms and allows for more consistent teaching.
Many countries also offer vocational alternatives over academic classes at the secondary education level. While some districts in the US offer vocational "tracks", they still have to abide by the federal and state academic mandates, so they're not usually purely vocational.
Not that the structure of the US system isn't a problem in itself, but the fact that we have compulsory, academic-based secondary education that requires public schools to accept all students zoned for it leaves the US in a tight spot. We'll already have a lower graduation rate simply from people dropping out that would otherwise never have started if it wasn't compulsory here. But it's even worse since we don't optimize it to the students (such as the purely vocational options and competitive high school entrance acceptance that allows for a more homogenous student body and more tailored teaching that I mentioned previously)
Re: America's High School Graduates Look Like Other Countries' High School Dropouts
#35This is what happens when no child is left behind. How can EVERYONE graduate from HS without lowering the bar?
Outcomes vary greatly by school, zip code, and socio-economic class. Are children in the wrong zip code just lazy? Why do the children in poor families perform so much worse than in rich families? It doesn't, by any measure, appear to be a consequence of the children's efforts.
>It doesn't, by any measure, appear to be a consequence of the children's efforts.
What basis do you have for saying that?
Re: America's High School Graduates Look Like Other Countries' High School Dropouts
#36I'd be much more interested in a study that compares the top 1 percentile of graduates between countries. Of course the bulk of US graduates are going to be unskilled... that's just how the bell curve works, and the US has the resources to support lots of unskilled laborers. It's the top of the bell curve that matters. How do the smartest engineers and scientists in the US compare to their counterparts in other count…
> It's the top of the bell curve that matters. I think that this attitude has gotten us into a pretty big mess.
You can't force somebody to learn.
Re: America's High School Graduates Look Like Other Countries' High School Dropouts
#37Not able to send a text messsage? That I don't believe.
The study is about comparative data, and I can well believe (having lived in another country) that there are countries where a larger percentage of adults than in the United States can use commonplace technology of today. The math literacy (numeracy) advantage for other countries I absolutely believe, as I have read the textbooks from other countries (I am an American who can read Chinese), and the textbooks are simp…
I think part of the issue is the corporate lobbying culture that exists in America.
I read an article a while ago about what goes into selecting textbooks in American schools apparently textbook companies lobby the education departments to use their brand of books so rather than getting the best textbook schools get the book from whichever company "bribed" the officials the most. Because it all goes through politicians they can push their own agendas into textbooks hence you get books trying to teach kids intelligent design or whatever.
From someone like me outside of America it seems absurd.
Re: America's High School Graduates Look Like Other Countries' High School Dropouts
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Absolutely utterly agreed. Trying to pull along students who want to fail pulls down the ones who want to succeed. The American dream used to be about letting those who work hard succeed, and letting those who didn't fail. And anyone could choose to more from the fail to the succeed pool.
> The American dream used to be about letting those who work hard succeed, and letting those who didn't fail. I've never heard the latter. When was this true? According to one history I read, one of the appeals of the New Deal programs in the 1930s is that we would be better than the Old World (i.e., Europe) and not leave our own citizens in the gutter.
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Re: America's High School Graduates Look Like Other Countries' High School Dropouts
#39And in this age of information and technology, many of these people are voting to decide the next leader of the only superpower left on Earth. This may sound grossly elitist, but democracy can be super scary sometimes.
Democracy is a really shitty form of government. It prevents tyrants, and it prevents a single party from holding power for too long. Which are great benefits over, e.g. monarchies. But the average voter isn't informed enough to really understand all the issues. So who wins isn't really correlated with who is best or who is right.
In my ideal form of government, the representatives would not be elected, but randomly sampled from the population. There would also be an education and IQ test, and it would only take from the top 5% of the population or so.
Re: America's High School Graduates Look Like Other Countries' High School Dropouts
#40And in this age of information and technology, many of these people are voting to decide the next leader of the only superpower left on Earth. This may sound grossly elitist, but democracy can be super scary sometimes.
I don't mean to be snarky here. I am honestly just trying to put these issues in context by pointing out that if you believe today's "uneducated" people being able to vote is "scary", then you should take a gander at the average level of education of voters in 1960. Even fewer college grads, even fewer high school grads, even MORE people that we would today term "dropout". Additionally, the further back that you go timewise, the more poorly educated the populace was.
I'm just saying that if you believe it to be bad today, then you would have certainly believed it to have been much worse in the 50's or 60's before the protocols for avoiding certain types of war had been fully established and implemented.
But we, as mankind, survived. And I think it's fair to say that we, as mankind, thrived.
There is a lot of negative information out there about the world today, and it can be demoralizing. But it's not about how many negative things happen to you, or your nation, or your world. It's more about our reactions to these things.
In this particular instance for example, do you say... "Hey... let's educate more people!" ?
Or do you say "Hey... let's take away the right to vote!" ?
It's not really what happened to you that determines your future... it's your reaction to it that determines your future.