# Does anyone else think that the educational system is setup very poorly?



## Desolan (Nov 14, 2011)

The goal of general education should be the following:
1) To prepare a person for living in the current world 
2) To steer them towards and provided guidance for their future possible occupations 
3) To teach historically significant facts 
4) To provide some level of morality guidance
5) To indoctrinate into them some level of nationalistic and community loyalty 
(granted, that last one is a hard pill to swallow but more or less necessary for society)

Currently the general education system does almost nothing to prepare a person for living in the world. You end up with very little economic, tax, business, or law based knowledge or experience, and almost no one leaves school knowing how to work with most of the societal systems that are in place. I'll leave Sex, health and relationship topics off this, but we all know how inadequate those programs are.

They provide personality and question based skill tests to try to determine the occupations you are suited to, but rarely follow up with guidance or put emphasis in the tests to help you achieve or determine the goal of attaining such a career.

History may be one thing that they provide, but besides cramming mind numbing facts for tests they rarely provide any motivation to retain such facts.

Moral guidance, while available, is only really offered to those problem children that stick out, and the truly disturbed ones can easily be missed. Also problem children cannot be behaviorally corrected or even disciplined due to educators not being empowered to do so.

Sports may provide some level of civic loyalty but with the selfish entitlement so ingrained in kids these days you will find they mostly display apathy towards current worldly events.


Much of General Education is a joke. The important things you are forced to learn and stumble through on your own. Trade Colleges can be quite valuable as they gear towards actual job training. Much of University, though, isn't much better than general ed as they do very little actual job related training, and the higher learning programs require you take many general courses just so you can gain access to the material that you are actually pursuing.

All in all I would say that 70-80% of education is a test to prove and to show that you are capable of conforming and have the aptitude to attain the paper rather than to teach and educate.


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## KevinHeaven (Apr 6, 2015)

True. I feel like the education system was founded to control the masses and brainwash them. The gov. can easily control someone that had been taught how to think. Real and authentic education is either you have the questions and want the answers or they have the questions and you can answer them (what a teacher should do). They need to teach us how to make history not to teach us history. 

- high school kid who needs to be studying for a test but is debating education instead.


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## bigstupidgrin (Sep 26, 2014)

Like any government institution, it's spread out too thin and underfunded to be perfect. And the major decision makers either have little understanding of the real issues in school (legislators, citizens out of school), a justifiably narrow focus (parents), or have specific financial gains to be made (publishers). There's private schools, which could be great, could be poor. All I know about them is that teachers are generally paid much less, and have no union protection, so as someone getting their masters in teaching I'm dubious of them as a future employer. 

I'll respond to the OP's points:

1) To prepare a person for living in the current world 

This is true, as long as we can also look to the world of the near-future. 

2) To steer them towards and provided guidance for their future possible occupations 

Agree as long as we're keeping possibilities open, instead of narrowing them. I'm not one of those teachers that think college is for everyone; however it's much better to prepare for a college you don't go to, than to later want to go to college and be unprepared. 

3) To teach historically significant facts 

History is a great lense to look at all other subjects with. However out of all the things we can look at through history, the two most overrated IMHO are facts, and individuals. While I would guess that most of us learned history through great man theory, I'd rather you learn what the average person went though; and how the world worked (technology, economics, culture, civics, religion even) of the period you study. 

4) To provide some level of morality guidance

Sure: as long as we realize that morality is subjective, and we shouldn't be the only ones teaching that. I personally have my own values, and I'll share some of them with future students, but I also know that I shouldn't be dictating their future behavior. If I have a rule in my classroom, I'd rather have a child know a) why the rule is there, and b) how following that rule benefits the class and themselves. 

5) To indoctrinate into them some level of nationalistic and community loyalty
(granted, that last one is a hard pill to swallow but more or less necessary for society)

As my sig says, think for yourself, question authority . I'd put that up in my future classroom but I think I would get in trouble if somebody recognized the quote. Note that 'question authority' is not the same thing as 'reject authority'.


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## KevinHeaven (Apr 6, 2015)

Exactly facts and individuals are overrated. Like really I wouldn't want to know what my father did as a kid to study about boring stuff. I am not against knowledge, but memorizing something for a test to forget it the next day is not knowledge.


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## xForgottenOne (Mar 7, 2015)

What I think is worst about the American system is the fact that there are no levels. Where I live, high school (ages 12-18) has five levels, so everyone is separated based on intelligence. People in lower levels are prepared for jobs, while people in the highest levels learn difficult theories and are prepared for university. That works so well!


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## Hurricane Matthew (Nov 9, 2012)

I'd be surprised if anyone thought the education system was set up well. I really don't have anything good to say about the education system I had to go through while growing up and all of the important stuff I had to know ended up being things I had to learn on my own. When I graduated high school, I was left wondering, "What was the point of the last twelve years of school?" because I really didn't know. Now college is stupid as fuck and not helping me develop any skills that will help me with a future career. It's such a huge waste of money. I want to switch to a trade school but my parents are like "COLLEGE IS IMPORTANT" e.u; It doesn't help that I have an Asian mom.

Troublesome kids weren't given any moral guidance in my school and instead were just separated off from the rest of the class and got the second rate education. I know because I was one of these kids in high school when I was having a crisis in life. Two of my "classes" weren't even real classes: they were sitting in a room and doing work packets. No lectures, no supplementary videos, no activities... just photocopied packets of work sheets every day. The teachers and counselors didn't even try to help me with anything as my counselor wrote me off early as "school shooter personality" despite having talked with me for no more than five minutes ever and thus didn't know me at all. Troubled kids are always treated like lepers because the school wants to nurture those who are already doing well on standardized tests and forget the ugly side of their student body even exists.

History is a joke in school. I enjoy history a lot and it's one of my favorite subjects, but only because I study it on my free time for fun. History classes are so boring and stale and are only about memorization rather than actual learning the material. I had one really bizarre history class in high school where it was taught in "themes" rather than as a story of events in chronological order and it was really confusing and honestly the stupidest idea for a history class ever. History makes the most sense when done chronologically because you need to know what lead up to big events in order to understand them. There is no such thing as spontaneous history! The "themes"-taught history class made things seem like they just happened because they did with no explanation as to why.

There were also the bizarre math classes focused on group work that I kept having, even in college _calculus_. There would be a lecture and then immediately after, we all had to get into groups of 4-5 to solve problems together for the rest of the period. The problem is that most people are not fast learners at math and having only seen the lecture that day, I kept finding myself in groups where no one knew how to do the math yet. I'd be trying to figure out the process with my textbook open, only to be hassled constantly by my group mates about how to do it. It's so frustrating that teachers keep expecting students to teach other students. THAT IS NOT MY JOB. Especially when _I'm still trying to figure the material out for myself_. The learning of the lazy asses in my group isn't one of my concerns. I have no responsibility over teaching them a difficult subject that I'm only barely understanding and only started learning the lesson that day.

If I ever have kids in the future, they will all be homeschooled because the public education system is borderline child abuse. I would rather let them learn than waste their time on school.


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## Rough Coat (Apr 7, 2015)

Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.
Albert Einstein


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## Glory (Sep 28, 2013)

Cultural disorder is also a good way to create a sty of hedonistic idiots. God is dead and all that... We're living in an age of decline.


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## Rough Coat (Apr 7, 2015)

Meh.
Schools are a holding pen, (to teach social correctness and for _moulding_ them to be the next generation of drones) so the parents can get out and work for the system. 


:th_woot:


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## Desolan (Nov 14, 2011)

xForgottenOne said:


> What I think is worst about the American system is the fact that there are no levels. Where I live, high school (ages 12-18) has five levels, so everyone is separated based on intelligence. People in lower levels are prepared for jobs, while people in the highest levels learn difficult theories and are prepared for university. That works so well!


But of course to discriminate against people based on an intelligence aptitude quotient would be wrong . . . But it would also be very effective.

I've actually thought that general education should be at a completed state by the time a person finishes junior high. Which means at this time you should be prepped to enter the world. At this point a person can get a job, enter into a specific career training path, follow into secondary general education(for those who don't know what they want), or enter into advance education, which may then lead to higher learning in the sciences.


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## Desolan (Nov 14, 2011)

Another glaring problem with education these days is that a high proportion of people end up in university because it is the expected place to go after graduation, but they don't really know what they want to do. These people would be just as well off to get on the job training at a workplace straight out of highschool or going to a business college, but instead they waste a bunch of time and money at the more expensive university before either failing out or changing majors as they finally decide what they want to do.


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## Iris186000 (Sep 23, 2014)

Wow, @xForgottenOne, that sounds interesting. What country, or other countries, is that system implemented in?

How is intelligence determined? How often is it measured?

Just curious... :happy:


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## Iris186000 (Sep 23, 2014)

@Desolan:

I can relate to that. I got straight-As, honors, all that...but in the end, I'm just like, "What's the point? I don't know what I want. I just know that I want to DO something, and yet after all that work I seem to have no skills." Sure, I can develop them on my own, if I completely abandon a need for sleep. I don't think the educational system has its priorities straight.


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## Gman1 (Mar 3, 2015)

The fees could definitely be looked at


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## StElmosDream (May 26, 2012)

In the UK at least 'education' hasnever made much sense to me, doing High School, Community College, an undergraduate level degree and finally a current postgraduate degree in different institutions of learning that all seem to have their own political agendas. Chronologically, supposedly almost failing to even achieve a High School education, later advancing to an average student, then top of my class and finally someone studying a degree course teaching the equivalent of 2. 5 years of a new subject in a year at Masters level... yet still meeting 'more academically minded students' that lack critical thinking or intellectual awareness to discuss deeper learning.

In essence feeling that the whole process of becoming more educated has become too fragmented and overcompartmentalised with philosophy, history, sociology and literature for example now being seen as 'more boring intellectual topics' people often avoid if their degree choice differs, in effect losing critical awareness and deeper understanding of learning opportunities available.


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## ninjahitsawall (Feb 1, 2013)

I think it is set up to please everyone (or at least, the max number possible), and as a result, it spreads itself thin and it's a toss-up whether it pleases or disappoints any given person.


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## xraydav (Jan 3, 2013)

I agree with you entirely. Many of these things will change some day but the education system is definitely not about teaching an individual knowledge as much as creating "obedient workers" as George Carlin would put it.


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## Diminuendo (Jun 1, 2015)

I especially agree with the second point. Young students need the opportunity to explore different career options to find what they're suited for. Not everyone's going to end up in an office doing paperwork.



Desolan said:


> 5) To indoctrinate into them some level of nationalistic and community loyalty
> (granted, that last one is a hard pill to swallow but more or less necessary for society)


Why is this necessary? I'm genuinely curious.


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## xForgottenOne (Mar 7, 2015)

Iris186000 said:


> Wow, @xForgottenOne, that sounds interesting. What country, or other countries, is that system implemented in?
> 
> How is intelligence determined? How often is it measured?
> 
> Just curious... :happy:


Here, in the Netherlands. I don't know about other countries, but I think Belgium has a comparable system. 

Intelligence is based on results during primary education (4-12) years old, advice of the primary education teachers, and an important test at the end of primary school, testing your basic Dutch, math and general knowledge skills (I think it's kinda like SAT or ACT, but I don't really know...). Based on these three things, they get an advice for one of the levels. Most people follow this advice. 

What I think is weird about the American system, is that everyone can go to college. Here in the Netherlands, you can only go to college if you've completed the highest level (approx 18% of people completes it). Aren't there really shitty colleges if less intelligent people can also go there? Or can you also do studies like haircutter or maid on your colleges?


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## x_Rosa_x (Nov 4, 2014)

Learning is self romarity. 

So when a person is colliding and using there self-access hierarchy 
through towards most diverse way possible there considered educated .

Now take that sentence above and compare it towards what you see around the world and there is all 
your suffering of education related access hierarchy and collisions 
that needs offsetting as soon as possible.


Definitions :
romarity that can be defined as 
"realizing, observing and using access hierarchy and access hierarchy collisions" 



MBTI access hierarchy : ENTJ - External Accessor
NEURON FLOW access hierarchy : Kinetic
CONVERSATION access hierarchy: Learning


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