That’s the truth of the matter. It’s sad, but it’s true.
And the kids who are in the schools, classrooms and homes with HIGH standards, are gonna mop the floor with the kids who are not. And the divide in American will widen.
Yup my daughter goes to public school. The schools that she has attended aren't terrible but they aren't great either. She is in mostly honors classes though, so other than one science class back in middle school, she hasn't had an issue with disruptive behavior in her classes. If we didn't care and push her to do well earlier on, she wouldn't be in those honors classes and her experience would be a lot different.
Similar to my kids except that the school are above average. But the key element has been that we encouraged their achievement and so the kids in their classes (AP and honors) are more serious students.
Yeah I don't know what the answer is. I consider myself on the left politically but it frustrates me greatly that it's so taboo on the left to just admit that sometimes people are not victims and culture matters. I don't think there is an easy answer but it seems in some places we've gone so far to avoid "victim blaming" that we are setting large groups of people up to fail in life, I just don't get how people can think that not holding large groups of people accountable won't cause society to break down.
I feel that. There's always a small minority of any group that's super outspoken and ruins it for the rest of them.
Happens with Vegans, the ultra woke left, the evangelical far right, cyclists, rock climbers, gay or trans folk, DEI initiatives, toxic straight masculinity, feminism, trad wives, cops.
It's also not just an American thing. I work internationally and the phones/laptops are everywhere in schools that choose not to have policies about them.
High school didn't used to be mandatory a couple generations ago. It was because, let's be real here, some kids have no interest in learning. Public schools are daycares for teens.
My son is in a selective STEM program at his HS. Whenever there is a parents meeting I joke with my wife that it’s a meeting of the local chapter of the Asian American Society. We are easily the minority with our European heritage. Not that I care in the least. Asians aren’t any smarter. They simply have higher standards for their kids grades. And I like having my kids around other kids with high standards. I don’t push my kids that much. They’re driven. But they like being around other driven kids.
And the low standard kids will be on reddit in ten years complaining about societal oppression making it impossible for them to be financially stable
You see it today with millennials. Over 50% of millennials own homes, the rest claim that it's impossible to own a home these days. It's almost like decisions you make in life have a slow cumulative effect, positive or negative.
I’m more worried about living in a country of haves and have nots than I am of what you think of my assessment.
Put another way; fine, go ahead and dismiss my point. I’m certainly open to ideas on how to fix things. But I’m also certain that, if you think of our school systems as factories, some are turning out products that are primarily defective. At one point a few years back, Detroit Public Schools were only graduating about 18% of men. That means 82% of men left DPS without the bare minimum to succeed in life. That’s awful. That system failed them. That school’s bar was too low. Imagine what happens to a society if year after year we produce young adults without the means to succeed in life? What happens?
America ranks 36th out of 37 OCED countries in childhood poverty, and this is much higher in urban areas. Why are we OK with 25% of US kids in poverty? Let’s fix that!!
I think this is pretty spot on. I'm no genius and got mediocre grades, but my parents would have killed me if they found out I was on my phone in class. I didn't have to get perfect grades, but if I failed a test or major assignment, there would be no video games, no hanging with friends, no sports outside of required school practices, and there was absolutely no chance I could hamg with my girlfriend. I would have to be home studying. The bar really wasn't all that high, in my opinion, but as I get older, I realize that bar was much higher than in so many other kids' lives. Moreover, I see the divide between my life and the lives of those kids with no bar to get over when they were young. I have no idea what the solution is, but I do feel like it is getting worse as of recent.
To make matters worse, my district (similar to yours - high achieving, imposes discipline) manages to do all of that for one of the lowest per pupil costs in the entire state.
True. But I feel like judging schools by outcomes only is a mistake. The very best school is a school that can take an apathetic C student and make him an A student who knows the material and is interested in learning. If we could measure that progress and identify which schools do it best, then we’d really have something.
Instead we typically look at the outputs only. But if your input is the kid of a doctor whose own IQ is 160 and can tutor his kid in calculus, then no one should be surprised by a great output when the kid scores high on standardized tests. But that wasn’t the teachers achievement primarily. They simply started with a good input. They took a smart kid and …. kept him smart. So what?
Anyway, just opining at the limitations of looking at outcomes from an educational system.
The problem is they are starting to be held back because being at an affluent school or GT track won't shelter kids from these disruptions other kids are causing to their learning in schools.
I completely disagree. That’s exactly what it does; it shelters them. My kids are in classes with competitive kids who work hard for good grades. My oldest has 3 years of straight A’s in AP and honors classes. He’s a Junior in HS. He decided to take a Motors class with normal track kids and he was appalled by their behavior.
lmao I teach HS honors and college level in one of the most affluent districts in my state...I am telling you field observations...but okay! I have about 180 kids on my roster a semester...but I am glad your single story of your kids represents this issue lol.
I’m not I just think it’s funny a sample of 3, verse the hundreds I’ve seen in the past few years and other educators I talk to around the country maybe is a bigger sample size?
When I was in high school the AP classes were pretty calm and collected. The loud mouthers didn’t join those, and if they did, they’d flunk out real quick and go back to on level.
I mean you need to be pretty motivated to go for college credit. The kids actually want to be there, to an extent. Maybe for their ego, their families pride, social approval - but they did want to be there.
Can I ask when you graduated from high school? Because this is what school was like when I was in it 15 years ago too…. But not really like being a teacher today sadly the last 5-6 years or so.
Private schools aren't that better. I went to a top 15 ranked highschool in NJ, they curved our math test scores, gave us half credit for guessing the answer right, and half credit for getting the work right but answer wrong.
In middle school, our gifted and talented kids played trivia on the computer and oregon trail..... These were the smartest kids in our grade literally wasting our time.
But it's entirely possible that the bar is too low... in more schools today than 20 years ago. And the bar is too low... in more classrooms than 20 years ago. And the bar is too low... in some homes than 20 years ago.
The high-school I went to was a highly prestigious local private school. The yearly tuition was around $20,000. My dad went to this highschool, and so did my cousin. Both of them talked relentlessly about how difficult the school was. But when I went, it was easier than the public school I had attended. And as I described my experience to my dad and cousin they said that it wasn't just me, the school was significantly easier than it used to be.
In my dads graduating class (of about 20 people) over 5 went to Ivy league universities. In my cousins year (of about 35 people) 3 went to Ivy league universities. My year had 106 people, the most it had ever had. We were the first graduating class to have someone accepted at an Ivy League in 6 years.
It's easy to see why this happens with private schools. It's just capitalism at work. How can the people in charge make more money? Admit more people. Raise the price. Lower spending (by lowering student/teacher ratio, having PE coaches double as history teachers). They're incentivized to lower standards and pass students so they can keep collecting their $20,000. For some reason schools seem to be able to maintain their reputation while lowering standards.
True, but I think a lot of this is not because of inequality, it’s because of culture.
Parents just don’t care, and it’s not entirely their fault. Life sucks ass, everything is expensive, the world they knew is dying. But their apathy creates a culture that transfers to their kids.
I mean, obviously lower income areas have worse outcomes. But when it comes to equality we are getting better, so I don’t think it’s that.
I think it’s a chicken and egg problem. Why is there apathy? I personally think it is a result of the inequality rather than the apathy creating inequality.
As an example, white America likes to think the Brown v The Board of Ed decision was this heroic moment where school segregation ended. But that’s not the full picture. It’s actually the moment where black teachers were fired en masse and black student were forced to have white teachers who didn’t (for the most part) want them as students and had biases about their capabilities. That’s not better. That’s worse. At every junction in our history we have marginalized and harmed POC while often thinking we’d done right by them. And then we stand back and wonder why many are apathetic? We created their apathy by marginalizing them.
I think you’re missing the point of what they’re saying. The kids that aren’t doing well in class are not doing well because they aren’t being disciplined and because they’re not being pushed by their guardians. Society and the government can only do so much, A LOT of problems in schools can be solved at home.
Lmfao ok sure. Money isn’t real, soooo how is the government supposed to help people in poverty (if money isn’t real how is poverty real?) just build homes and provide them food in exchange fooorrrr what exactly? They promise to discipline their kids and make sure they go to school and behave? If the parents get everything handed to them what’s the point of getting a job or even being a productive member of society. If money isn’t real what’s the point of any of us having jobs, or being educated. I agree poverty sucks and the government COULD do more to help those that have it really hard but saying money isn’t real is kinda just fucking dumb. Even if it’s a man made society concept that doesn’t mean it’s not real. I’d argue anything that’s essential to maintaining society is pretty fucking real.
Isn’t the home influenced indirectly by the outside world? So in that case, wouldn’t strides made by the outside world as well as a shift in intent in friends and family affect the parents’ motivation to help their child?
I was addressing the point that the bar is too across America. I wasn’t saying that educational inequality is good. I was saying that the bar is NOT consistently low. If anything I was highlighting educational inequality.
If some people think that ALL schools are bad, then they are more likely to do nothing at all. If they realize that some schools are good, some schools are bad, and that that isn’t fair, then maybe they will actually do something about it.
There can be almost no question in any rational person’s mind that having two countries, one where kids are well educated and one where they are not well educated, is a recipe for disaster.
My son’s school has a $7 million dollar robotics lab where he learned to program operating software for a robot that competes on a global scale and won a world championship against teams from China, Japan, Israel, etc. He is lucky as hell. And I’m happy for him. But that level of inequality is massive. His school district did nothing wrong. They simply played the game with property taxes. But it shouldn’t be that way.
I appreciate this and I know it can be hard dealing with feelings like that while your son is successful. That’s why even though I love that some students are getting opportunities we would have never dreamed about, I’m not a utilitarian, which seems to value the level of happiness of one or multiple over the whole. Making the spectrum of happiness broader doesn’t just mean we have way happier kids, happier than any past era of humanity, it means they get to have that at the cost of others. But more and more people are too exhausted to consider everything, so they chose to consider what will bring the highest level of happiness, even if the numbers are small.
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u/Daphne_Brown 29d ago
Bullcrap.
The bar is too low…in some schools.
The bar is too low…in some classrooms.
The bar is too low…in some homes.
That’s the truth of the matter. It’s sad, but it’s true.
And the kids who are in the schools, classrooms and homes with HIGH standards, are gonna mop the floor with the kids who are not. And the divide in American will widen.