US has the worst educational system known to science

[Sunseeker]

oh boohoo we cant stall an advanced child's learning cause a below average child will be left behind. we need to stop wasting so much time and energy on the children that show negative responses to learning.

Ah yes our schools will be great if we only educate the smart kids! Just think how great our society will be!

Do you think before your write or does shit just normally come out of your mouth and not your ass?

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This all seems to hinge on the idea that public schools are strapped for cash. They're not. They're massively overfunded and fucking it up. The solution isn't pouring more money in, it's providing incentives to fuck up less.

Did you...read what I wrote? Because none of my argument hinges on any of that.

I already stated public schools are poorly managed.

The "incentives" we've been using don't actually address any of the cost problems.

[oxymoronic]

Ah yes our schools will be great if we only educate the smart kids! Just think how great our society will be!

Do you think before your write or does shit just normally come out of your mouth and not your ass?

we already do that to an extent... im saying we need to do it more and openly. just cause you disagree with somebody does make their opinion invalid. you and others like you need to relax. you would never talk like that in real life, dont by like that on the internet.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

People try to twist what the education system in the USA into something evil and stupid and in a lot of ways it is if its about learning the world around you. Really all it is designed to do is get you just enough skills to enter the work force and do entry level jobs. The super wealthy people that run the nation don't want people that can replace them and their childern at the top. Sure it happens from time to time but the odds are with them in the current system. Right now its pretty much the wealthy that go to private schools that have some of the best education on the planet. Then they go to the best private univercities on the planet and get some of the best edcuation on the planet. But for the vast majority of Americans that pretty much have to take the public route you are stuck just learning how to read, write, and do basic math so you can do most busy level base jobs. Jobs dont give a fuck if you think god made Adam and Eve or evolution, or intelligent design bullshit at all. Not many people are scientist and those that are get educated or push themselves to be so. Most science in the USA is imported and bought. The public education system in America is about making worker bees more or less. Then once you get out of high school or some community college / pitiful not very meaningful bat degree at some state college you just go to a job that trains you in a very specific skill set and you mill around and move up a bit into a decent living over time. Or you don't and are poor as fuck. Again, this isnt an absolute but for most people its the rat race they run.

Of course we will have the local 10 or so billionaries on MMOChapion begging to differ because we all know if you are here you are rich as fuck and a bad ass mother fucker. But American education is purely about building a work force. I am not saying it is a good system. I am not saying it is the right way to go. But it is what it is really about. It isn't about making smart people. It is about making it so companies can get people they are able to train to do jobs they tailor them to. Thats it.

[Sunseeker]

That's relevant to an argument about why education should be publicly funded versus private. I don't see how it's relevant to school vouchers though because the cost per student is theoretically the same.

Part of the purpose of vouchers is to de-fund public education. The cost may be theoretically the same, but the goal is to get taxpayers to fund private businesses and strip them of their ability to control education via the government and instead foist them into the model of "If you don't like it, go somewhere else!" but since the vouchers will be paid for by the government, they won't have the choice.

The system would be identical...except people would have substantially less control over their schools and private businesses would be making bank off the back of taxpayers....which is pretty much the current model of Republican governance. If you want to see why American schools are performing so poorly, just take a look at pretty much every Republican policy and tax decision related to them.

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we already do that to an extent... im saying we need to do it more and openly. just cause you disagree with somebody does make their opinion invalid. you and others like you need to relax. you would never talk like that in real life, dont by like that on the internet.

Actually, I do. Because I call bullshit when I see it.

But mostly what I do is I don't engage in conversations with morons who think we shouldn't educate some people. It has historically not worked and turned out very bad.

[oxymoronic]

I agree. There needs to be a push to create advanced tracks at large urban schools that start at a very young age (4th grade at the latest, at that point it's usually possible to determine which students have separated themselves), so that students who go to those schools can actually potentially access an education that's comparable to the education given in lily white suburban districts.

Right now in urban schools everyone is pushed into the same classrooms, and the large number of students with no parental support and, as a result, extremely low levels of education attainment, dominate and result in an incredibly watered down curriculum so no one learns anything.

I also believe in social policies aimed at improving life for the poor because I think the lack of parental support that is endemic to inner city schools is often a result of parents who have to work incredibly hard to barely surive.

true, but also a higher degree of parents that dont give a fuck. if you care, you can make it happen.

and despite what crazy guy is saying, the lesser intelligent children will still receive an education but one more suited for their needs.

[Sunseeker]

true, but also a higher degree of parents that dont give a fuck. if you care, you can make it happen.

and despite what crazy guy is saying, the lesser intelligent children will still receive an education but one more suited for their needs.

Awww, soft eugenics, how quaint.

You'd get farther with me if you just said you wanted to exterminate the poors and the stupids.

I like how I'm the crazy guy in this discussion ya know, for wanting to give everyone a fair chance.

[Sunseeker]

No one is saying don't educate people at all. We are saying stop trying to fit everyone into the same mold. Stop pretending that every high school freshman is supposed to take algebra, and stop watering down algebra so that everyone can take it. Stop socially promoting every middle school student and then pretending they accomplished something at eighth grade graduation (there's a school in my area which has a policy that the lowest grade a middle school student can be given on an assignment is a 60. It's literally impossible to fail).

We're trying to fit square pegs into round holes and it doesn't work, and we get all these messed up contortions in our system to try to keep perpetuating the lie.

Some of these things you mention are not like the others and some of them have no bearing on the quality of education at all. Like graduations. Who fucking cares? Do we need one at the end of high school even? Do we need one for college? You don't need to attend them to graduate. If you passed the classes you get your degree, end of story.

But this has no bearing on education. These are designed to be celebrations of achievement, and nothing more, they're parties.

Why wouldn't you want every HS freshman to take algebra. I mean there's some pretty basic mathematics that get covered in algebra. And really, who are you to determine who should, or shouldn't take algebra? I was bored out of my mind in Geometry and couldn't stand Calculus, but I LOVE and still love Physics, which includes both of those things and I doubt I would have done as well as I did in physics if I hadn't taken geometry, calculus and algebra and I doubt I would have known I loved physics so much if I hadn't taken it, and of course, algebra was a pre-req to geometry and geometry was a pre-req to trig, and trig was a pre-req to calculus which wasn't actually a pre-req for physics but physics uses calc so....

What YOU are trying to do is figure out how you can simply not give a shit. How you can take the dumbs and the poors of society and tell them "Hey, you're not so good at school, how would you like to skip this school stuff and take out my trash? Because I'm tired of trying to make you smart." You're not actually trying to customize their education for where they're strong and where they're weak, you're not trying to encourage them to succeed, you're trying to figure out how you can make society okay with creating second-class citizen.

Oh sure you're going to tell me that's not what you're doing, but it is. It's the outcome you will produce. Because first you'll start saying Johnny and Susie are "dumbs" who get "dumb people" educations. Then Johnny and Susie will have a kid, who will be raised by poorly educated parents who are also likely low-wage earners, and then Billy will go to school and guess what? He'll be one of the dumbs too. Why? Because you said his parents weren't worth your time to educate.

You educate people and you raise them up out of poverty and stupidity. You follow your plan? You ingrain poverty and stupidity into the fabric of society.

And I'm the crazy person who believes in freedom, equality and justice. Riiiiiight.

[Sunseeker]

He called you the crazy guy because you keep ratcheting up his rational argument to mean things that he probably considers abhorrent.

His argument is irrational and abhorrent. It is a mockery of free society to say that people from poor backgrounds, that people who appear less intelligent should be given "reduced" education. It's disgusting. It's insulting. It is anti-American.

Last post you compared his idea, which is basically that we should try to match the curriculum a student consumes to their current level of attainment, to eugenics, which is forced breeding. Then you said that you'd find his argument more palatable if he just proposed mass murder.

Can you see why someone might view you as "crazy"? Just stick to your argument, don't start cartooning what the other person is saying and ramping up the drama. It's not constructive.

Tough. That is his argument. I am not cartooning. It is the inevtiable outcome of his argument. We select a group of people based on X or Y characteristic and decide they are entitled to something "less". Less education. Less justice. Less freedom. Less equality. Less rights. Less life. Because some arbitrarily chosen characteristic makes them "less" human beings. Less worthy of our time. Less worthy of our investment.

If you do not find that argument irrational and abhorrent, you're quite frankly not worth my time.

Bee-Tee-Dubs: Eugenics is WAY broader than just "forced breeding". I suggest you read up on just how comprehensive the concept is.

[Deleted]

Indoctrination in what?

IN GOD WE TRUST - WE ARE THE BEST COUNTRY IN THE FUCKING WORLD AND WE ARE ALWAYS THE GOOD GUYS !!!!!!!

pretty much this.

[Sunseeker]

Here was my point with that statement: if we have a system where everyone is guaranteed to graduate (in many places we do through eighth grade), then people who graduate haven't accomplished anything. I'd prefer a system that celebrated actual accomplishment.

But we cannot achieve that by simply holding people back until they "get it". Some people need more help than others, this is life. If we are unwilling to provide help to those of our people who need it most, we are a shit society.

If a high school freshman cannot multiply, they don't belong in algebra, but our system puts everyone there. I have actually heard educational bureaucrats argue why this is a legitimate thing: "Well, they should have learned multiplication in 4th grade. If they didn't learn it in 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, or 8th, what's going to change if we keep trying to teach them multiplication? Might as well let them use a calculator and move on."

They didn't learn it because all we did is repeat the same steps. They either require more help or a different kind of help. But they should not be given a reduced education. Our goal should always be to lift people up, not let them wallow or fall further down.

Again, you're changing my argument into something it's not. The #1 thing I would push for is to have high level classes in low level schools so that people who do work hard in those schools have access to an excellent education. Under our current system, that opportunity and access doesn't exist. It's concerning that the school you goes to effectively determines the level of education you get. I think that my system would create far more social mobility than what we have now because that path to a good education would actually exist.

Like oxymoronic your concern is limited to the extreme few who are already successful to whom you want to provide more success and access to greater tools to enable them to get even more success. Meanwhile your solutions for the many who are falling behind is coming Blizzard-TM "Soon".

So now you're effectively saying that I don't believe in freedom, equality and justice. We have a difference of opinion but our goals are similar. Stop trying to paint me as something I'm not.

I don't believe our goals are similar or not. We haven't actually spent a single moment discussing the reasons why we spend so much on schools and why, for all that money, kids are still falling behind. The money going to waste isn't going to waste on educating the stupids and the poors.

For the record, I spend every day working to teach low level high school students mathematics. If I didn't give a shit I would find other things to do. I'm the one sitting there trying to teach the factoring quadratics to someone who can't recognize that the square root of 100 is 10 or multiply 2 times 6. I'd rather be teaching that kid his times tables because I think that'd be more valuable. That doesn't mean I'm some sort of Nazi. Slow your roll.

Okay, that's great. The students aren't the problem though so at this point I'm wondering what the purpose of this conversation is.

oxymoronic did exactly what he came here to do. To shift the discussion away from where wasteful spending is going and instead talk about how we need to stop giving proper educations to "certain people".

So, I don't know about you, but I'm done.

[Fencers]

That's not really a 'source', it's his opinion.

As of 2013, the US was 5th in Education Index according to the United Nations.

Last year the US was ranked 8th in global competitiveness relative to education by the World Economic Forum.

The US is ranked in the top 10 in Human Development Index by the UN as of 2016.

The Programme for International Student Assessment ranked the US 30th in math and 19th in science out of 71 nations.

The Pearson Institute ranked the US 14th in overall education.

The US has 6 out of the top 10 best universities in the World as ranked by the Times Higher Education Foundation in 2016.

In 2017 the Top Universities Rankings ranked the top 4 higher education institutes as US schools. With the US having the most 5 star rating schools in 2017.

[Pawstruck]

Wow, a Christianity-bashing thread disguised as a discussion on education.

Filled with exactly the kind of sophomoric, hackneyed foolishness that the "New Atheists" have been peddling for the past decade.

Consumed by exactly the kind of antisocial, likely personality-disordered trolls that have been on the internet since its inception.

...

Keep trying this shit guys, I'm sure it'll work one day!

[RaoBurning]

I wish we could bring back physical punishment, but for parents instead of students. Your kid fucks up and causes a ruckus? I come to your house and jab you with a stick after hours.

But seriously, I work at an junior high, and I don't know what the fuck is up with these kids. The language and the general attitude is well beyond the early pubescent level that I remember as a kid. It's a constant stream of swearing and garbage, and they don't give a hoot if there's a teacher or the damned principal right next to them. It's a pretty dramatic shift for just a year difference in how my oldest elementary students used to be. I expected a couple kids to be handfuls, but I it's a much shorter list to count the ones I don't want to jab with a cattle prod. Maybe we need something more robust than lunch detention. I mean, we have 3 staff members and a cop whose functions are entirely devoted to dealing with problem students, and even they seem overwhelmed most days.

I don't know. Maybe it's just my school, or my district, or my city. Maybe things are different in the higher income areas where none of the kids have dirt floors. I like my job and I like my coworkers, but fuck, these kids.

[oxymoronic]

I wish we could bring back physical punishment, but for parents instead of students. Your kid fucks up and causes a ruckus? I come to your house and jab you with a stick after hours.

But seriously, I work at an junior high, and I don't know what the fuck is up with these kids. The language and the general attitude is well beyond the early pubescent level that I remember as a kid, and it's a pretty dramatic shift for just a year difference in how my oldest elementary students used to be. I expected a couple kids to be handfuls, but I it's a much shorter list to count the ones I don't want to jab with a cattle prod. Maybe we need something more robust than lunch detention. I mean, we have 3 staff members and a cop whose functions are entirely devoted to dealing with problem students, and even they seem overwhelmed most days.

I don't know. Maybe it's just my school, or my district, or my city. Maybe things are different in the higher income areas where none of the kids have dirt floors. I like my job and I like my coworkers, but fuck, these kids.

kids for the longest time have always wanted to be "cool". being cool usually means rebelling in one form or another and since its all been done many times before kids these days feel the need to take it a step further. parents dont understand and this cycle continues for generations. most grow out of it, but a lot ruin their lives before they do. i dont have the answers other than better parenting and i know that is impossible for all.

[Themius]

US universities are ranked in the top by all ranking measures.
People from all over the world, go to US for studies even with its ridiculous pricing
There are more than 350 Nobel laureates from US
Surely they must be doing something right.

In any case, it is FAR FAR FAR from the "worst system known to science". The rankings alone, suggest it is one of the best

we make up the majority of the top 100 schools in the world.. and many of our state schools even make it on that list... yet we are the worst...? this makes no sense.

[Spectral]

we make up the majority of the top 100 schools in the world.. and many of our state schools even make it on that list... yet we are the worst...? this makes no sense.

Yeah, it always makes me laugh. If someone wants to say that our system is too stratified, too expensive, or doesn't do enough for the least well off, sure, that's a conversation. The idea that it's just plain bad though - classic weirdo inferiority complex being expressed. Pretty much everyone actually knows that winding up at a flagship state school in the United States means you're getting among the best educations in the world and that the elite private schools are matched only by elite British universities. Every other system is laughably far behind.

[ArguesWithStrangers]

But you're missing my argument.

The money that is taken from school budgets to given parents as "vouchers" (which by the way, do not provide a free-ride to private schools) reduces the ability of the school district to educate everyone. It is significantly cheaper to educate all in a public institution than it is to educate a few in a private institution to the individual. (That's why your average middle-class income earner pays about $300/year towards public education). Significantly MORE money than that is taken from public schools in order to provide vouchers.

It's nothing but an excuse to subsidize private business. If parents can't afford to send their kids to private schools because private schools are that much more expensive than normal schools, then guess what? Their kids don't get to go to those schools!

Those schools aren't better because they're "better schools" because of magic. They're better because of smaller class sizes, better educated teachers and a higher parental emphasis on learning.

This is typical Republican nonsense. The government is bad and everyone should pull themselves up by their bootstraps....except when the government should just give money to private businesses.

You're ignoring some basic economic truths, chief among them that where a market exists, providers start popping up like dandylions to fill it. Furthermore, the only entity being given money by the government in this case, is the parents, and not just some of them, all of them regardless of their economic sitation. In order for said to have incentive to pull their children from existing public schools, there'd have to be a viable competitor local to their area. If there isn't one, nothing changes and you can just calm the hell down. If there is, than the better school will win, or at least take a larger portion of the market share, thereby giving a better education to more people than we would have under the current system.

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Of course we will have the local 10 or so billionaries on MMOChapion begging to differ because we all know if you are here you are rich as fuck and a bad ass mother fucker.

I'm a fucking billionare?!? This is great news! My gun collection is about to get wayyy more impressive.

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Yeah, it always makes me laugh. If someone wants to say that our system is too stratified, too expensive, or doesn't do enough for the least well off, sure, that's a conversation. The idea that it's just plain bad though - classic weirdo inferiority complex being expressed. Pretty much everyone actually knows that winding up at a flagship state school in the United States means you're getting among the best educations in the world and that the elite private schools are matched only by elite British universities. Every other system is laughably far behind.

While I don't want to characterize the situation as completely not being a problem, because it is, Carlos Mencia was on to something when he said that Asian kids have proven all our bitching about even public schools is overblown. Good parenting in the form of high expectations and steady involvement can do more to help your kids achieve than shitty public schools can do to harm them.

[Biomega]

One could argue that a top-heavy system with a number of really, really good schools but also a shit-ton of really, really bad ones is, in fact, bad. There's a reason things are usually looked at as averages, because peaks (just like troughs) are a skewed metric subject to many distorting factors, and not representative for the population at large. It's the same with many systems. Take healthcare - the US has some of the best hospitals in the world, but if you go bankrupt every time you need surgery that is still a terrible healthcare system.

US education is overly stratified, and very clearly biased based on income and racial background (though the two are, of course, also connected in many ways). Averaged out, the US does poorly - and that DESPITE the extremely high peaks owed to institutions like the Ivy League. Why this is then taken as an excuse instead of a flashing warning sign is in itself mind-boggling.

Don't get me wrong: there's plenty of things wrong with other countries' systems as well, and plenty wrong with the way things are tested and averaged. But "other people have problems too" doesn't mean you don't have problems, or you shouldn't fix them. And just because a change is not a perfect solution doesn't mean it isn't an improvement (a classical argumentative fallacy employed far too often).

As someone who's worked in academia for over 10 years all across the globe (Europe, Asia, and the US), it's clear that there are many things wrong with the US educational system - things that, frankly, are embarrassing to still be present in a First-World nation. It's not just math, reading/writing skills, or fact knowledge - things like critical thinking, empathetic viewpoints, or differentiated perspectives seem, to me, markedly underdeveloped in US students and academics. Part of that has ideological roots, but part of it also has systemic causes that can be traced back to bad education policies. Again, don't misconstrue: there's plenty wrong with students from Japan as well (rigid focus on factual knowledge, for example, or unwillingness to attempt things with a significant chance of failure to name a few things I've personally been faced with), or with students from Europe (unused to stringent testing, low learning discipline). There isn't a perfect system you can just look at and copy. Even the ones often held up as paragons, such as Finland, come with their own sets of constraints and are not simply replicable in different contexts (Finland has 2/3rds the population of NYC alone).

What's most frightening, though, is that the US seems so radically short-sighted in these matters. Education is one of the BEST investments you can make - but it's also one of the least visible, and the most long-term. Historically, education has done more to improve the standard of living than all the sciences combined (not in the least because education made those sciences possible in the first place), and more to achieve and maintain peace than all the military might that ever existed. Yet education in the present day is taken for granted, a fact of life that just happens on its own as long as you give it the bare minimum. It doesn't work like that. All nations, not just the US, should be POURING their money into education, raising new generations of ever smarter, better adjusted citizens - but it appears that they're fine with just maintaining a status quo that is essentially traced back to the early 20th century (if not the late 19th). Children are thought of as these unfinished products that just need a secure shelf to ripen on on their own; while a much better analogy would be that of diamonds in the rough, requiring a lot of work and effort to free from their stone and polish to a brilliant shine (Diamonds, not Bananas - you heard it here first).

As the wealthiest nation on the planet, the US should - and COULD - have an educational system leagues ahead of everyone else. Instead, they're fine relying on a supply of thinkers from other parts of the world, using their top-heavy super-institutions to attract them. That works, for a while - but it's not a long-term prospect, and it's a terrible way to care for the average citizen. "Half of the children are below average" is very true, but instead of taking this as "let's focus on the good half", how about you take it as a call for action to RAISE THE OVERALL AVERAGE? Very often it's much easier to raise 95 by 1 point than to raise 5 people by 95 points, and that way, you actually do something for 95 people instead of 5. But that 1%-mentality seems inextricably linked to US self-understanding and the American-Dream identity of old. Focusing on the top, ignoring all the masses piling on below. That cannot work forever, and we're starting to see it crumble already.

In the end, education is the only real solution we have. To anything. To everything. We've come this far because we're smart, and to get further we simply need to be smarter. Status quo does not work, and if nations like the US can't get it right, then how are those with magnitudes less means supposed to do it?

[Deletedaccount1]

Awww, soft eugenics, how quaint.

You'd get farther with me if you just said you wanted to exterminate the poors and the stupids.

I like how I'm the crazy guy in this discussion ya know, for wanting to give everyone a fair chance.

[Super Kami Dende]

Wait, isnt that the guy you sometimes see in these wacky time travel/aliens shows on discovery?

Yeah, but in his defense nearly all his appearances are him saying "look it is entirely possible, but without proof or evidence is just a theory" Which is literally what most scientist follow.