and in a bizarre twist, toronto offers segregated schools ag

[Gypsiyee]

.

My honors math class was a great example. I took AP Calculus as a junior and it was a complete waste due to several people who enrolled, but couldn't keep up. Our teacher had no choice due to the union setup but to teach to their level.

See, in my school you couldn't just 'enroll' in AP classes - you had to have a 3.5 or higher in normal classes or you weren't considered

You were in the gifted program. How did that correlate to college and your career?

I'm not sure if this is a knock at what I do for a living, but my schooling in high school is irrelevant to my college. You see, we don't all come from rich families. I literally slept on the floor, and it didn't matter if I went to private school or was homeschooled, there was simply no way for me to not have a job. From age 15 to age 18, I worked a minimum of 60 hours a week while going to school. Subsequently, I left the IB program and dropped to honors in 11th grade because I didn't have time for the workload. I did a semester in college and picked up a second job to pay for it, but didn't finish because I didn't have the money. My sister finished college at a private school before me, and any help provided to her ran out by the time I got there. Mom worked 2 jobs, so I didn't qualify for enough of a federal loan and my dad made too much money, not that that mattered to me since he was too busy spending the money on new hot tubs.

I could go into more details as to why I didn't go to college, but please spare me your pompous shit here and shove it up your ass if you're intending to imply that I wasn't good enough to go to college and it's the public school system's fault.

Note: I make more than my sister does (and more than my mom does) and have since I was 20 solely based on work ethic and ability demonstration without that almighty piece of paper that seems make wielders of it think themselves superheroes. If it's all a matter of public schools failing, by your logic I imagine that's a little flip-flopped, especially considering she went to a private college. I guess what I'm saying here is that this particular backhanded implication is moot.

No, my simple point is the system is flawed and fails the people at the bottom and top too often. I can cite a dozen people on this board who are very smart, but were held back due to the socialistic craptastic setup of school.

Without superior schools for the smartest kids, a revamped system that allows the cream to be with the best teacher, and the challenged to be with the best suited teacher and environment to help them succeed, we'll continue to have a vastly inferior system to most other first world nations.

This might work well for the gifted kids, but for those who aren't this is a horrible idea. "Superior" schools is such a snide way to put it. Just because your kid learns faster doesn't mean they're superior to anyone, and that's a horrid mentality. Different people learn at different rates, that's why everyone is different and there's a whole array of different careers - you can do as you will on a computer and you're well-written, but I'd love to see you dissect an aircraft engine and put it back together - I know lots of guys who didn't go to college who can do that, and they're the people who are helping keep your war in order; do you think yourself 'superior' to them?

This paragraph pretty much reinforced my points throughout this thread, I think, if you dig deep enough, evaluate it based on the truths of the public school system, and look at where most of the 'gifted' people end up.

High school generally does not prepare one for the college or adult environments, and certainly does not prepare one for how to accurately socialize. If anything, most public high schools are quite the opposite and generally detract from personal and professional growth due to the way they're setup, and all too often the inmates are running the asylum.

Again, you've had shitty experiences, but you can't assume to know what all schools are like. The problem is consistency, not the public school system. The problem is if you go into detroit you're going to have horrible public schools, but if you go into san jose you're going to have really nice ones. No matter how gifted someone is in detroit they're going to hindered because the school system isn't as efficient as in san jose. If you press for a minimum level of excellence among all schools, this wouldn't be a problem.

[Lyion]

See, in my school you couldn't just 'enroll' in AP classes - you had to have a 3.5 or higher in normal classes or you weren't considered

Same with mine. That didn't mean everyone should be there, and it also was still setup based on the lowest common teaching denominator, and not with an eye on excellence. Also, many of the AP teachers are just no better, and often worse than the regular ones. How's that advanced? It isn't to me.

I'm not sure if this is a knock at what I do for a living, but my schooling in high school is irrelevant to my college. You see, we don't all come from rich families. I literally slept on the floor, and it didn't matter if I went to private school or was homeschooled, there was simply no way for me to not have a job. From age 15 to age 18, I worked a minimum of 60 hours a week while going to school. Subsequently, I left the IB program and dropped to honors in 11th grade because I didn't have time for the workload. I did a semester in college and picked up a second job to pay for it, but didn't finish because I didn't have the money. My sister finished college at a private school before me, and any help provided to her ran out by the time I got there. Mom worked 2 jobs, so I didn't qualify for enough of a federal loan and my dad made too much money, not that that mattered to me since he was too busy spending the money on new hot tubs.

I could go into more details as to why I didn't go to college, but please spare me your pompous shit here and shove it up your ass if you're intending to imply that I wasn't good enough to go to college and it's the public school system's fault.

Note: I make more than my sister does (and more than my mom does) and have since I was 20 solely based on work ethic and ability demonstration without that almighty piece of paper that seems make wielders of it think themselves superheroes. If it's all a matter of public schools failing, by your logic I imagine that's a little flip-flopped, especially considering she went to a private college. I guess what I'm saying here is that this particular backhanded implication is moot.

No, this wasn't a knock on what you do, but a knock on our school system that allows smart people not to reach their potential, while often times helping less qualified ones get everything.

I worked two jobs trying to make it through college my first go around, and I just couldn't do it. It's 100 times worse now since college has gotten so much more expensive and in many regards much worse via what they teach.

Also, as I said I wasted a lot of time in high school that really offered little to me college/future wise, and I believe it's the same for many,

This might work well for the gifted kids, but for those who aren't this is a horrible idea. "Superior" schools is such a snide way to put it. Just because your kid learns faster doesn't mean they're superior to anyone, and that's a horrid mentality. Different people learn at different rates, that's why everyone is different and there's a whole array of different careers - you can do as you will on a computer and you're well-written, but I'd love to see you dissect an aircraft engine and put it back together - I know lots of guys who didn't go to college who can do that, and they're the people who are helping keep your war in order; do you think yourself 'superior' to them?

Superior is a bad term. The point being in every county there are a small group that are advanced academically. It's unfair and holds them back to lump them with normal students.

Interestingly, you pretty much make my point for me. There are those who have different skillsets and should be allowed to moreso grow those, rather than sit in the same same classes underachieving and looking in envy at the advanced academic types .

If the mechanically, but not academically apt had been allowed to grow in a better environment suited to their talents then they'd get faster to a career/job they enjoy and can succeed it, instead of dropping out and taking the harder road.

If it takes them until they're 16 to progress to where the advanced academic types are at 10, it doesn't matter as long as they have the baseline skills. Plus, they've been aided by not competing against these types and put in an enviroment that allows them to truly nurture.

Again, you've had shitty experiences, but you can't assume to know what all schools are like. The problem is consistency, not the public school system. The problem is if you go into detroit you're going to have horrible public schools, but if you go into san jose you're going to have really nice ones. No matter how gifted someone is in detroit they're going to hindered because the school system isn't as efficient as in san jose. If you press for a minimum level of excellence among all schools, this wouldn't be a problem.

I had wonderful experiences in high school. It just wasn't what it shoud have been for my future, and I came from a top tier great public school.

If you enact change, remove the socialized standardized sameness of public schools and move to variety based on real learning and student needs, you'll have educated children who are ready to be adults. That's what we should aim for, and not just the bloated one size archaic system we currently have which is built around the teachers unions instead of the students.

I can point to a dozen very smart people on this board who were in good schools, gifted programs, or whom were just very intelligent and ended up not getting to where we should have gotten them, and the primary blame is on the way our schools are setup.

[Zanchief]

Same with mine. That didn't mean everyone should be there, and it also was still setup based on the lowest common teaching denominator, and not with an eye on excellence. Also, many of the AP teachers are just no better, and often worse than the regular ones. How's that advanced? It isn't to me.

Again, if you take all the best teachers for the "advanced" students, where does that leave everyone else?

[Lyion]

Well, given that in most school districts the 'best' teachers currently don't work for the public schools, I'd say what we're doing is helping the rest, moreso than hurting them.

Again, best is relative to most academic in rigor and competition.

There are a lot of great teachers who teach to the other end of the spectrum, also. They are the best at what they do, which isn't working with the top end of the academic spectrum, but I'd argue they are also the best. Pairing them with the students who need them is equally as important as pairing the top ones with the best academic ones.

The goal isn't for segregation, it is for helping all levels to achieve and more importantly to prep for real life. For many, that isn't going to MIT or Yale.

[Zanchief]

Yes but if you're putting the "stupid" kids in the schools with the least amount of money and the most unmotivated teachers, aren't you setting them up for failure from the get go?

Here's a funny clip that pretty much goes against my point but Freaks and Geeks is the own.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acaowkdnKvU

[Lyion]

Yes but if you're putting the "stupid" kids in the schools with the least amount of money and the most unmotivated teachers, aren't you setting them up for failure from the get go?

I never said either of those things. If anything, the special needs and normal schools would have more money.

Also, many of the best pure Academic teachers are the worst at dealing with those who cannot keep up or are not academically focused. Putting those teachers in a psuedo college atmosphere helps the kids who aren't into academic rigor, and probably prevents some from dropping out.

[Zanchief]

Well I'm not even talking about the slow ones. How about all the average ones. You want to make things easier for the smart kids, and leave out everyone else in the process.

[Lyion]

Not at all.

I want to group the ones who are academically focused and want to be challenged.

Grouping by ability is common sense. Academia is not an equal setup.

The whole point is to allow the greatest number of students to succeed and be put in an environment conducive to their becoming successful, regardless of their path. Many are not suited for the traditional school environment, and others just would be much better off in an environment geared towards mechanical or non academic challenges.

At the end of the day, yes, I want the smartest kids competing against each other and making themselves better. I want the regular students competing and also in an environment that is conducive to their success and life preparation. I want the ones who need the help getting it, and not just put in bottom tier classes in a socialized setting that really creates a craptastic caste system where most do not even get the basics of education, which is the real travesty in American Public Schools.

[Zanchief]

That sounds like a disaster to me. I'm all for programs that help kids that aren't necessarily into academics as much as the rest. Maybe set them up into a profitable trade. But the minute you start giving preferential treatment to some kids at the expense of the majority that's when it becomes a big problem.

How do you test this stuff? You'll be testing kids at 10 and if they do bad, screwed for the rest of their life, with sub par teachers, remedial curriculums and less money because all of the perks went to the smart (rich) kids.

[Lyion]

All the perks already go to the rich kids. They have the good private schools with the best teachers. They have the top 5 college entry due to nepotism. What I want is to open the field, and also reinvent the educational wheel, so to speak.

Again, the rest of your arguments points back to socialized one size fits all schools which in my opinion is already proven to be a disaster and holds back the best, while dropping off or hamstringing many of those in need.

It isn't lumped into good and bad, anymore than being an auto mechanic is bad, and being an investor or doctor is good. Both are necessary and good valid careers and should not be disparaged.

[Zanchief]

It isn't lumped into good and bad, anymore than being an auto mechanic is bad, and being an investor or doctor is good. Both are necessary and good valid careers and should not be disparaged.

That's fine. Having a specialized curriculum is a good idea, with options for students. I completely agree. Having kids put into super special academic programs where they get more money and better teachers is not the same though.

To me it's exactly like two tier health care. The privileged get more at the expense of the others.

[Lyion]

The privileged get more at the expense of the others.

I'm not sure where you are extrapolating that from my posts.

[Martrae]

It's the way he thinks. He equates having teachers who are better at teaching AP classes actually teaching those classes as somehow wronging the 'normal' students.

Other teachers may be better at getting into 'normal' students heads the info they need, you know. Should they be put with the AP kids to somehow even things out?

[Zanchief]

It's the way he thinks. He equates having teachers who are better at teaching AP classes actually teaching those classes as somehow wronging the 'normal' students.

Other teachers may be better at getting into 'normal' students heads the info they need, you know. Should they be put with the AP kids to somehow even things out?

That's just a justification. There are good teachers and bad ones. Sure some people might be better suited for teacher more gifted students, but that would be the very rare case. You think all the people you know would be gifted and would easily out perform the average Mongoloid student so you don't care much what happens to the average kid, but how would you feel if your kid was stuck in a situation WORSE the public school system now? Keep those great teachers in the public system, and the service will go up for everyone.

Yes it's the way I think Marty. I care about people I don't know, you only really care about things that affect you directly. How is that a fault of mine?

[Kramer]

from what i have been reading it seems the primary ingredient to someone's success in school has far more to do with parental involvement and motivation, particularly at younger ages. changing a system will certainly help to some extent, but i was a remarkably average student who's parents didn't give a crap how i did in school.

i ended up going to community college for 2 years and learning how to learn and study. i then went on to do well in a undergrad and got a grad degree also. and the only reason i am not doing doctoral work is that i don't have the $150K minimum it would take to get through it, as i would be in a health field and would not be able to earn a salary for 3 years in my study.

a. public school system gave me basic and below average tools to work with and nothing more in me reaching this place.
b. further and more articulated segregation of students seems like it would foster even less of a chance of average students achieving beyond what they normally do

the system i was in never had time to take me aside like a parent potentially could and teach me all of these intangibles.
and it seems that a system that is more discriminatory (i don't mean that negatively, just descriptively) would just make a larger divide for those average students who could do quite well if given motivation and opportunity.

[Martrae]

No, I care about people, too. Just my way of caring doesn't involve enabling or making them codependent.

I don't think you understand the problem here in the states. Everyone focuses so much on inner city kids they forget about the vast amount of students in other schools. The basic problem, in Ohio at least (which is where I'm most familiar with how things are done), is that the schools used to do different tracks based on kids performance and ability. The upper tracks would move at an accelerated rate and scored higher on tests. The middle tracks would do 'normal' work and the lower track was the learning disabled.

Several years back someone's parent got upset that their precious child wasn't in the advanced track and caused a huge stink about how the kids ego was crushed by only working up to his ability. So no more tracks. The bright kids were put into classes where the teacher was forced to go at the pace of the slowest child there. This, naturally, caused boredom and bright kids were suddenly being labeled with a troublemaker brand or, worse yet, hiding how intelligent they were so they could get some of the attention the teachers were lavishing on the slower kids.

Schools are getting around this now by forming 'gifted programs' but those don't have the scope that the older tracks did and many are grossly misnamed.

I'm sorry you can't see how wrong this situation is and how it affects the future of my country. We've let the brightest minds lie fallow for a generation and that's tragic.

[Lyion]

from what i have been reading it seems the primary ingredient to someone's success in school has far more to do with parental involvement and motivation, particularly at younger ages. changing a system will certainly help to some extent, but i was a remarkably average student who's parents didn't give a crap how i did in school.

To some degree, yes. Good parental involvement can overcome the poor setup of our schools, but my whole point is the schools should be part of the solution. Too often they are part of the problem.

The school is the educational catalyst that helps kids move on to careers, college, and other goals. The problem is they are socialized and about the teachers. Not about the needs of the students.

Your point is the same as many others, in that parents essentially use school as daycare for their kids until they suddenly have a 17 year old without strong study skills, real world job skills, or the capability to succeed in college and they toss this person out into the sea of reality. At best they go and party at State U for 4-5 years and get a liberal arts degree. At worst they are high school dropouts or GED acquiree's who have a lot of years embedded into our union teachers daycare system without the real skills needed to make a dent in their immediate future and any sort of understanding of what their real strong suits are in life.

[Arlos]

All I can say is that neither Lyion's nor Martrae's complaints has any resemblance to the schools I went to. PUBLIC schools. No, my teachers were not uniformly excellent, but I did HAVE excellent teachers.

In 7th grade I had a math teacher who, on her own time, coached a team of some of her best students for a statewide scholastic math competition. Somewhere in storage in my parents' house, I still have the trophy for our team coming in 3rd place overall, when we went to the finals in Sacramento.

My AP biology teacher voluntarily spent his spring breaks taking groups of students to 29 Palms for Desert Ecology. He was also such a good teacher that, nearly 20 years later, I walked into a biology test at SJSU blind, cause I'd been flat in bed sick for 2.5 weeks, and got a C on the test based nearly solely on stuff I remembered from that class in high school.

As I mentioned before, my AP English teacher senior year in high school offered a pre-1st period Latin class just because some students were interested, and because it might help them on the SATs.

I could run down a much longer list of good or excellent teachers I had, but I don't want to make this post TOO long.

Hell, even as good as I had it in high school, there were much better ones nearby, especially in Palo Alto, and a couple up in SF that I know of just off the top of my head. In my graduating class we had 3 of us get 1500+ on the SATs, of which I was one. We had people go to Harvard, Stanford, Boston University, Berkeley, UCLA, USC, Yale, Columbia, etc. etc. etc.

That's the point. Good and even excellent public education DOES exist. There ARE excellent teachers involved in it. Brighter students DID have a chance to challenge themselves. Just because public education in YOUR areas sucks balls doesn't mean that it's a universal condition. I have fundamental first-hand proof it can work, and work well. You would be much better served trying to fix the system and improve the schools if they're bad, then just proclaiming the system doesn't work, because it's manifestly obvious that it can and DOES work.

-Arlos

[Zanchief]

All I can say is that neither Lyion's nor Martrae's complaints has any resemblance to the schools I went to. PUBLIC schools. No, my teachers were not uniformly excellent, but I did HAVE excellent teachers.

In 7th grade I had a math teacher who, on her own time, coached a team of some of her best students for a statewide scholastic math competition. Somewhere in storage in my parents' house, I still have the trophy for our team coming in 3rd place overall, when we went to the finals in Sacramento.

See that's my point. Think of all the teachers you had while you were in public school. Now think of the two best you had. Now think about how your high school would have been different without those two.

[Lyion]

We spend more money for much less results in our public schools compared to most other first world nations. Fact.

There are a lot of good teachers out there. Unfortunately there are a lot wedded to the unionized tenured setup we have that prevents our schools from being top tier, and allowing variance, parent choice, and more success in their futures.

The public school system gets an extraordinary amount of cash per student and does not provide anywhere near the results it should. It is a bloated, nasty beast that the union lovers will praise regardless of the simple fact it is overall a failure.

[Arlos]

Your pathological hatred of unions blinds you to the realities of the situation. Sorry, but unions are not the problems, or if they are contributors, it is an infinitesimal portion of it. Far more serious is idiotic meddling like the Kansas school board and their banning of teaching evolution, etc.

Do some actual looking into some school systems that work. They're unionized and produce excellent education, which, by your rights, is impossible.

Sorry, but I'll buy reality and personal experience over your unreasoning detestation of unionism.

-Arlos

[Lyion]

Simple facts refute that. Sorry. I realize you are a hardline union backer, but truth is truth.

I have kids in school. I have friends who are teachers.

[Arlos]

Simple facts refute what, that schools with unionized teachers can work? I *WENT* to them. I have friends that went to even better ones than I did. Your claim that they do NOT exist is utterly spurious, because I have direct experience refuting your position.

Possibly schools in Ohio blow goats. Not ever having even been to Ohio, I cannot say one way or the other. If they do, either move away from Ohio, or look to the schools that DO work, in all those places that they do, and find out what they're doing that your local schools are not.

-Arlos

[Martrae]

Actually, Ohio schools are considered pretty good. I believe they're ranked 14 or were not too long ago.

[Lyion]

Simple facts refute what, that schools with unionized teachers can work? I *WENT* to them. I have friends that went to even better ones than I did. Your claim that they do NOT exist is utterly spurious, because I have direct experience refuting your position.

Possibly schools in Ohio blow goats. Not ever having even been to Ohio, I cannot say one way or the other. If they do, either move away from Ohio, or look to the schools that DO work, in all those places that they do, and find out what they're doing that your local schools are not.

You are missing the entire point of this thread in your zest to say uinionized public schools are swell. You have not refuted any of my points.

I'm glad you and a few of your friends did lovely. Millions of drop outs and others who failed out of college and were totally unprepared for life disagree with you.

In addition, statistics show we spend way more than other countries and get much less in return.