The Discussion Corner

[lordpat]

Hello! I waited a bit so that I would updatethe corner during the weekend. Anyway, let's get this moving!

"What do like about your education system? What would you change/borrow from other systems? Why?"

Proposed by our friend Venexis, thanks Ven!

[NanTheDark]

My educational system ensures that there will always be a huge difference of classes.

[Supershroom]

Education in Germany could be ... better, actually. What really sucks is that it's federal and every state does its own ♥♥♥♥ and curriculums differ extremely. What sucks the most in Baden-Wuerttemberg is the thing with G8, completing high school in eight years instead of nine liked it used to be. The consequences are: More classes per week (in 10th grade I had classes until 3:30 pm each day), rushing through learning matters, everything being more stressful. I really hope we get back to G9 soon. The thing called "ministry of culture" sucks as ♥♥♥♥ in general, the final exams get tougher and tougher and really unfair, especially in Math there have been many complaints from both students and teachers about the difficulty level.

I also really disapprove the system of separating kids after 4th grade into lower secondary school (Hauptschule), secondary school (Realschule) and high school (Gymnasium). Instead, we should try harder to strengthen our primary schools and support kids from the beginning, because many kids on Hauptschule or Realschule would actually have more potential, but they didn't get enough support at the start. With more support, one of the three separation grades could possibly removed. Of course success in school highly correlates with social circumstances, it's actually impossible to give everyone the same chances, yet there could be some effort to prevent the gaps from widening further.

I don't know the situation in other German states, but in Baden-Wuerttemberg somebody should come and tweak the whole system.

[Oranjui]

There are some exchange students from Germany (from another state) at my school and they basically told us what you said about it, so I'm pretty sure that's a national thing over there. Either way, I don't live in Germany, so I can't really comment on it.

In the US, or at least where I am, everyone pretty much takes the exact same classes up until high school, where you can choose what you want to take as long as you meet requirements. One of the biggest issues I've noticed is the huge number of people who seem to simply not care about education and end up dragging a lot of others down with them. Maybe it's just me, but for my entire life I've felt that a lot more could be done during a typical school day that can't really be done because people are too lazy to keep up with the pace or think about their work. It's the opposite of stressful (aside from maybe my English class this year which I like to whine about the projects for); I'm bored out of my mind, and it sucks because there's not much that can be done to change it. Another thing I'd like to see is more variety, earlier on. Instead of drilling everyone through the same classes constantly, why not allow some freedom in people's schedules to choose electives and stuff? I know a ton of people who have never liked or been good in art classes and would have been better off just being done with them after elementary school, and I know a ton of people who loved them and would have exclusively taken those classes if they could have. The same goes for other things, like music, foreign language, programming, tech ed/shop, and even academic classes. Instead of allowing us to choose, they prefer to force students to take a few weeks of classes like this each year to expose them to variety, or something, even though they already have been. There was definitely room for them to fit real electives in back then, which I don't see why they did, because they never even were able to expose students to the full variety of things that they might have wanted to take, most notably leaving out foreign language and programming, both of which I would have started as soon as I could. The stupid political stuff I don't really pay much attention to, so I can't comment on it. A lot of what I said probably doesn't apply to others for various reasons, but I'm still going to voice my opinion.

[Doram]

This post by Harmless was thumbed up by: 2

Doram (March 29th, 2015, 3:41 pm) • Oranjui (March 29th, 2015, 2:05 pm)

[Oranjui]

Oh god, just remembered something. Three words: zero tolerance policies. Holy ♥♥♥♥ it makes my head hurt to try and understand why schools think that this is a good idea. The concept is that if there's any sort of violence, all parties are held accountable and usually either suspended or expelled, no matter what the circumstances were. If anything, they encourage further violence, because if someone throws a punch at you, you know that you're going to get kicked out anyway, so there's no reason not to fight back. There's a lot of other ♥♥♥♥ involved with them, too: I remember seeing a news story a year or two ago where a guy was suspended for three months and sent to a correctional school because school faculty found a fishing knife in his car (there are so many problems with this it's not even funny).

And you're definitely right in that schools really do need to be better staffed.

[Harmless]

Yeah. The principal of Westlake is a lazy ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ who doesn't care the slightest about what goes on in the school. He's just there for the money, that's it. Even when I brought up bullying to him several times over several months in 4th grade, the response I get is 'I'll do something about it', and he does nothing.

[Supershroom]

Wow guys, the things you're telling here sound very horrible ...

about the thing with selection of subjects, you would have to merge an entire age-group to make this really work, because somebody wants this, another one wants that. For the last two years of high school in Germany, you can choose your 4-hour subjects and 2-hour subjects, with rather many restrictions; German and Math must be taken 4-hour, as well as a foreign language, and many other subjects must be taken at least 2-hour. The classes of the entire age-groups are split up into multiple courses, yet those last two years were the ones I've enjoyed the most, because this split up encourages a communal spirit of the entire age-group, which has been separated into segregated classes before.

I actually wish that Music and Visual Arts are optional classes, as these are really special aptitudes. I've struggled hard at Visual Arts and I hated it. As for sport, it should stay an obligatory subject, but students shouldn't be necessarily marked in there, or at least not in every category. Some people are better at athletics, other prefer swimming or gymnastics. I've sucked extremely terribly at gymnastics and literally ♥♥♥♥ on the very poor marks I got there.

[Oranjui]

Mixing of grades is done here all the time, at least in high school (usually grades 9 through 12). I suppose it wouldn't be as smart to do it as early as elementary school, but I feel that during late middle school (middle school generally being grades either 5-8 or 6-8), it shouldn't matter much--students in grades 7/8 are probably mature enough. Besides, exposure to your older and younger peers is probably a good thing, since it's done without a thought about it in high school here. Of course, standard classes like English, science, social studies, and (to a lesser extent) math are restricted to grade levels most of the time (with a few exceptions :333), but several of my other classes have people from all grades in them. People aren't really kept together in any way; everyone's schedule is individualized so that their classes fit. Also, our classes are usually closer to somewhere between 45 minutes and an hour, though it does vary from school to school. Sometimes there's "block" scheduling where classes are double-length, between 1.5 and 2 hours. Nearly all classes are the same length, with very few exceptions, for instance if an advanced science class requires a lab period in addition to the lecture period.

I still don't see why this "mixing" should be such a concern for younger students, though. The benefits of instilling more freedom into their education seems to far outweigh any possible emotional consequences of combining age groups, or whatever you're saying might happen. Of course, policies still vary from school to school. Nothing is really standardized in the same way it is in other places around here except for things like college entrance exams, though the whole "Common Core" thing is staring to be pushed more as of late (I have so many issues with this. Dumbing down the populace, much?).

To summarize my thoughts so far in a sentence, I really just think that the education system isn't doing enough to cater to everyone and give them the freedom they deserve in their education (with freedom corresponding to more happiness and interest in school).

[Harmless]

This post by Harmless was thumbed up by:

Oranjui (March 31st, 2015, 4:15 pm)