Stupid?

[samurai999]

http://www.abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1500338

Interesting story by stossel. Has a clip of a belgian kid calling the US kids stupid. With the system we have, I'm really not surprised. I'm fortunate that I had decent teachers along the way, but HS all in all was pretty boring. If it wasn't for AP classes, I woulda been done with my homework in 1hr and spend the rest of the evening playing video games...

Tim

[Wes Nazo]

Prayer in school will solve this problem.

[Optomitrist]

Prayer in school will solve this problem.

Are you being sarcastic?

Prayer won't help. Beating the children would. Anyway I think this article isn't about bad children but bad school systems.

[Nanikure]

Yeah I watched that. It really pissed off my parents haha. I've been lucky to get into magnet and high school college programs. The rumors from the other high schools creep me out.

[samurai999]

I remember my friends HS where his home room teacher threw a hissy fit and started to throw chairs and pencils in random directions.

Tim

[ahmed61086]

Atheism will solve this problem.

[nodachi]

"...I think this article isn't about bad children but bad school systems."

There may be school systems that are not doing well, but it is not a matter of the school being bad, but that society is not so good. Schools are merely a product of the resources the school can use and the clientelle that attends the school. Even brilliant teachers who are good at teaching burn out when the student body doesn't give a crap. Some students can be motivated, some can be motivated with great effort, and others just don't care. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't force it to drink. Also, like most systems, garbage in, garbage out. If the students don't want to take part in their education or try to make school a worthwhile place to be, then you can't make a nobel prize winner from someone who refuses to try and work with the system instead of against it. Enough cliches though...

Now there is no reason to throw pencils and things in front of a class, but most of you would feel like snapping too if you worked everyday in a typical school. Society likes to blame the school and educational system for the faults of our failing home environments and other social problems. The school is a part of society. If society is crap, the school cannot magically fix it. The blame needs to be reasonably distributed. Yes, some of the fault is with schools, but not to the degree that we are always reading about.

Now to break away from the seriousness... did you know that US teachers have the second highest degree of blader/urinary tract health problems, following only truckers who are number 1.... you would get upset if you couldn't go to the bathroom when you wanted to as well...

And now I leave you all so I stop getting upset so I can get back to the sumo tournament on TV... Kotooshyu is the man!!!

[Wout]

"Has a clip of a belgian kid calling the US kids stupid" and in English no less.
BTW why did they take Belgian kids to compare: you guessed it: because we are oft viewed as a stupid sort of people. (while we tend not to be, ironicly)


I think the problem and why you see the such a difference between performance in public schools is a borne into the difference of stakeholders in the two systems.
In the US public schools are for the not so rich people, a lot of people actually go to private schools, where they a pretty penny for their kid to recieve an education. So the richer class won't care about a good public education, while in Belgium, the public school system IS the school system, it serves everyone (because in Belgium we believe everyone should have acces to a good schooling). On the contrary in Belgium you went go to a private (expensive) school: it gets an aura of 'buying your grades' especially if you failed in a public school first and got through with honours in the private one. So in Belgium, the gouverment organised school system is importtant to every parent.

The voucher system isn't that extreme, teachers are civil servants, so they get paid indipendent of the amount of teachers, the school itself IS dependent on the amount of students though. Also teaching in belgium is a very atractitve job, be it that you have to be idealistic to do it still, but reasonable pay (they are people who did higher education after all),pretty nice workconditions, secure job, a pretty demanding job but it still atracts a lot of young people.

BTW: but it still doesn't mean that if you would take kids from a US private school the outcome would be different.

[Ignatz]

To put it in perspective, the Belgian kids got 76% and the Americans got 40 something. So that is a D minus for the Belgians and an F for the Americans.

I would stop and think before I'd go bragging on a D minus.

Before all the little fingers start typing responses, I'm not saying that the American schools are good (I don't want to endanger the new found peace among the U.S., the Republic of Texas, The Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Kingdom of Belgium) but let's remember that ABC News is really ABC let's sell some ad space so we use provocative teasers to get people to watch and get our arbitron ratings up so we can charge more for 30 seconds. We really don't give a rat's patoot about the truth because none of you dipsticks can handle the truth.

Anyway, the results speak poorly of the education in both countries.

[Paikea]

Prayer in school will solve this problem.

Praying for stable funding, maybe. Raising expectations and standards, probably. Paying teachers as if they were qualified professionals, absolutely.

Then again, my kid's school district is lampooned regularly in "Doonesbury".

[Stimpson J. Cat]

Even brilliant teachers who are good at teaching burn out when the student body doesn't give a crap. Some students can be motivated, some can be motivated with great effort, and others just don't care.... If the students don't want to take part in their education or try to make school a worthwhile place to be, then you can't make a nobel prize winner from someone who refuses to try and work with the system instead of against it. Enough cliches though...

You don't need an education to be a criminal or a welfare recepient and in the worst schools that's where most of the students know they're headed, and they don't care. The welfare system in this country has done an excellent job of relieving people of any sense of personal responsibility and teaching them to think the world owes them something whether they apply any effort or not. It's far from the only influence in that direction, but it's a big one.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't force it to drink.

Ok, I can't resist
"You can if you tape a hose in it's mouth - I've tried it." - Dogbert

[pgsmith]

Anyway, the results speak poorly of the education in both countries.

I do not believe it is the education system that's broken, it is the parents that are broken.

P.S. Slapping everyone that feels that they have to introduce religion, or the lack thereof, into any conversation would help to solve the problem.

[samurai999]

"Has a clip of a belgian kid calling the US kids stupid" and in English no less.
BTW why did they take Belgian kids to compare: you guessed it: because we are oft viewed as a stupid sort of people. (while we tend not to be, ironicly)


I think the problem and why you see the such a difference between performance in public schools is a borne into the difference of stakeholders in the two systems.
In the US public schools are for the not so rich people, a lot of people actually go to private schools, where they a pretty penny for their kid to recieve an education. So the richer class won't care about a good public education, while in Belgium, the public school system IS the school system, it serves everyone (because in Belgium we believe everyone should have acces to a good schooling). On the contrary in Belgium you went go to a private (expensive) school: it gets an aura of 'buying your grades' especially if you failed in a public school first and got through with honours in the private one. So in Belgium, the gouverment organised school system is importtant to every parent.

.

Well in California, there are a lot of immigrants, illegal and legal. They spend a lot of money and time into teaching these kids how to read and speak English. Supposedly, when you enter elementary school or preschool, you should be able to understand what the other ppl in your class are saying. In my elementary school where I went, there were ppl speaking Tagalog, Spanish, and broken english. I couldn't really understand what most of them were saying. So in California, a lot of money (don't recall what percent of the total school budget) and time goes into providing ESL (english as a second language) classes as part of the schools curriculum to help those students out.

Tim

[Mr. T.]

To put it in perspective, the Belgian kids got 76% and the Americans got 40 something. So that is a D minus for the Belgians and an F for the Americans.

Help me out here. The "American system" goes from A+ to F-, right? The Dutch and apparently Belgium people go from 0 to 10 (or from 1 to 10 at some schools, the 1 for the effort of showing up and being able to put your name on the exam paper) or 0% to 100% (depending on the school). That means that the Americans score a D and my Belgium neighbours a B or B-. The people from Belgium keep surprising me

I don't want to endanger the new found peace among the U.S., the Republic of Texas, The Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Kingdom of Belgium

Peace to the Republic of Texas.

[Lloromannic]

To put it in perspective, the Belgian kids got 76% and the Americans got 40 something. So that is a D minus for the Belgians and an F for the Americans.

I would stop and think before I'd go bragging on a D minus.

That depends on the criteria, as Mr.T said. For example, my school uses both the Mexican system and the British UCLES system of A levels. For the mexican system it goes 1-10 with 8 being the average, get below that and you need to take an extra exam, get above that and no exam. In contrast, the british one uses letters that go from E to A and a U for a fail, getting a C means you are quite good (average is D) so getting an 8, while only sufficient in the mexican system is suficient, in Britain it's really good.