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American public schools are some of the most toxic, self-destructive establishments ever to exist.

Americans are always just destroying themselves (and many other people), if history's anything to go by, and I believe it starts at these schools, where the children know nothing and are wholly impressionable.

Bullying to the point where kids are either committing suicide or shooting people up.

Absolutely horrible curriculum where students aren't learning anything that'll benefit them in the real world.

Faculties that care nothing for the kids, content with being completely apathetic to ther problems.

And on, and on, and on.

And it's pretty obvious what the results of such things are. Just take a look at the news. Take a look at what's happening on sites like Reddit and Tumblr.

Take a look at who's our president.

American public schools need to change, and quick, because American society, as bad as it is, is one day going to collapse upon itself.

And it'll all start at school.

I remember an English teacher of mine back in Junior year of high school, said she was nostalgic for Egypt where there’s hardly any pressure to stick to the teaching format the board invents or big emphasis on grades, just her and her students learning at their own pace. Not sure if it’s entirely true, but it’s one of them things that make you go ‘hmm’, seeing your favorite teacher point out how terrible American schools are

Take a look at what’s happening on sites like Reddit and Tumblr.
now just what are you insinuating by this? i’m not sure if you mean there are idiots on Reddit and Tumblr or something else

I'm insinuating there're idiots on Reddit and Tumblr. The amount of ridiculous shit that's happened on those websites can attest to that.

Because over time it became less about learning, and more about meeting a quota. Nobody who actually goes to school likes it. Not the students, not the teachers, not the principles and other staff.

The decision makers at the top want to be able to see whether or not whatever dumb new test or program they've introduced is working, and to do this they use grades. Problem is people learn things differently and at different paces. As a result public school has basically just become all about memorizing and not actually understanding the material.

The whole bullying thing has always been a problem. Its not just school, its a matter of people just being assholes. Kids and teenagers are worse because they don't truly understand the ramifications of their actions. But that honestly stops being a problem in college where most people are mature adults and could give less of a shit about how weird you are (hell chances are they're weirder than you). But school staff just need to be quicker and better about preventing it and dealing with.

I feel like you're just confusing the stupidity of Youth in general, with the failing of the American Education System. Those websites exist all over the planet, not just in the US, and all over the planet we see young people posting dumb things, believing dumb things, and being overly passionate about dumb things.

There is an entire soft-psychological condition called 8th Grader Syndrome in Japan, a country with one of the more higher end educational standards, which is pretty much what people who frequent reddit or tumblr in their youth believe, That they're special and unique beyond anyones ability to approach.

If anything, what we are seeing is the result of Social Media, becoming a standard part of our lives. Never before has it been so easy to find out what people really think about things. Never before has the distribution of information, be it helpful, harmful, correct, or inaccurate, been so easy to do. Nor have people been able to find like minded individuals who share in their beliefs, and reinforce their mentalities so that they never have to conform to societies greater standards.

The only thing that Public Schools do, is pack a bunch of strangers together and force them to spend time with one another. In an age of Social Media, this allows people to be bombarded both in real life and on the internet, by their fellow peers. And the horrible things usually whispered behind closed doors about others between peer groups, now is out on social media for everyone to see, allowing for a pretty inescapable state of bullying, if one isn't willing to completely unplug from the internet and basically not carry a phone or labtop, which in this current year is a pretty tall order not even most Adults can do.

Well, a big problem is how different one school can be from another. I know at my school, bullying was taken extremely serious and if someone got into fights two or three times, they were expelled. Just one incident will get you kicked off the bus. But i've heard other schools don't seem to care at all.
It is hard to really make change since what needs to be changed is different for every school.

I'm not an American but a Canadian, but I did witness some of public school horrors like you said. So, Is this story time ?

I frequented a class for autistic people during most of secondary because I was autistic, except it was clearly not helpful to its students. Most of the time, all you did is basically homework while facing a wall. You were on your own 90% of time. The remaining 10% was where you request help for a teacher, except they could become annoyed and punished you by removing points in some sort of report card.

About the other students, dear god. While some of them are cool, but most of them liked to bullying me and even encouraged others to bully me. They were on my school bus for fuck's sake. I've got told once by one of their teacher that ''These people are autistic. It's normal that they bully people.'' Seriously, NEVER say that to anyone. Autism is not the main factor of bullying. It took them leaving the school the next year just to have some goddamn peace. I have also seen other students from this class getting bullied like mad so this is not a unique case.

At some point, this class got a student who managed to win some medals in regional and possibly international sports. He is a great swimmer and a generally great person. The problem is that the teachers have spent at least an entire class and some more showcasing him and how great he is. While this could be fun and a change of pace, this was not good where you know most of the students stuck in this class got treated like garbage by both teachers and other students. If someone tried to bully him, the teacher would never said ''These people are autistic. It's normal that they bully people.'' to him and actually take harsh actions against their bullies.

A teach told their students that ''Babies does not come from stark.'' This happened where some of us were near adulthood.

Eventually, I got the chance to be in regular classes and complete up to high school once and for all. I accepted the challenge and never looked back. I completed it and make some nice friends. I am now in CEGEP, the equivalent of a College in Quebec, and history continues its course.

I talked with a specialist about how autistic students are like in those classes. He has a kid here. A lot of things changed for the better. There is now at least 6 classes in the school I frequented. The walls are gone. The students now faces the teacher. The report cards are gone. There is now an emphasis on team work. Amazing where the only team work I have done in this class, my companion never stop complaining, even where correcting a type, and the teachers blamed me for all that. That kid from the specialist also doesn't seem to get bullied. According to what the specialist said, autistic students get a way better service than before.

I eventually participated in a conference about autism on my own as two of the students who want to talk about their autism in public. It was one of my dream since I was in CEGEP. My part was done with one of my favorite teacher of all time, and we impressed the audience. The irony is where autistic people are known for being shy yet one of my favorite thing to do is to do oral presentations. There is one of them where I was disguised as Jim Sterling of all people. If you wanted to know, my subject there was Greece austerity so this disguise was oddly fitting. My name was on the local newspaper, and I feel accomplished.

Being on that class nearly ruined my life and thinking about it still make me rage today. I still hope that special needs students in general should receive a more normal education despite their problems. Seriously, better education is a must, not only for students with special needs, but also for everyone.

I can say from personal experience that most of the time in school I found myslef really just trying to meet a quota and education was just a byproduct. The way that school and society treats grades kind of gives the idea that you've got to be good at everything the first time you do it.

I remember with Overwatch back in season 2 of competitive they changed from a 0 – 100 scale to the current 0 – 5000 scale because people felt like they were worse than they really are since many people have been conditioned to think that anything below say 70 or 80 on a 100 point scale is bad. School defiantly plays into this, although i'm not sure if this is an issue with just the American school system or more global.

The biggest problem is that the schools are underfunded, some of them deliberately so.

Well the main problem from my old Highschool was trying to create an environment where, in my old principles words “We are a family”. I don’t know any family that’s perfectly resolute in face sucking in the science hallway and openly hostile to one another. Still the main issue with most high schools is that they focus on meeting a quota by the end of the year. They focus more on shoving content on you and expecting you to get it and apply it. It’s very rare that a teacher is willing to go the extra mile than just “stay after school to retake that test you bombed” I can name on one hand how many teachers I’ve meet who was willing to go the extra mile to aid their students. Plus the environment for most schools is ultra competitive to try and get a better grade to get a scholarship to any four year college. Simply putting it, American public schools are starting to crash because they care less about individual students and care more for meeting a quota of students who passed.

The strange issue of American schooling is that its not because of underfunding. While there are certainly underfunded schools, America actually does on average put more into education than a lot of other countries.

Its kinda not an issue as a result that has any nice root to tackle.

I hate to say this, but I do think there is a cultural problem in this, Americans don't seem to want to learn and retain knowledge. I teach college mathematics, and its really sad how many adults don't know how to add fractions. I know they learned how to add fractions in elementary school, but they seem to want to go out of their way to not use them.

I sorta agree with you but I don't think it's that American's don't want to learn, it's the the way schools are, they make learning the most agonizing and monotonous thing possible.

When you make Math class about memorizing formulas rather than teaching the students how math works, it becomes the most forgettable, irritating and hated subject by a long shot. People are only going to learn and retain the things they learn if they somewhat care or understand why they need to know this stuff.

When you teach algebra by telling your students how to plug numbers into a formula and then doing that for a month straight without ever telling them what the formula means, how it applies to the real world and to science because all you care about is getting enough students to be able to solve the mandated test questions in a month or you'll get yelled at or fired, you get students who forget the formula a month after they move on to the next subject.

I was taught calculus for half a year in high school and I, for the life of me, could not tell you what calculus even is without looking it up because after that half year, I have never used it in any other class or in life and it was just lost to me. Because the only thing I remember about that class is learning formulas and plugging numbers into the formulas so I could solve them. I took CAD so I can tell you all about Geometry, and because I'm a nerd, I remember a lot of my science class, but calculus is lost to me, because it was just memorizing formulas I never used after that. I don't even know what it was supposed to be used for. I don't think the teacher ever told us.

Just memorize the formula you little monkey so I can meet my quota. When you have quota's that don't care, teacher's that don't care, faculty that don't care and a department of education that doesn't care, surprise surprise, you get students that don't care. The classes I remember the most were always taught by the teachers that cared the most. I know a lot about wars because we had a war and conflict teacher that was passionate about the subject and teaching, and taught his own way instead of trying to meet quotas (surprise again, he got reassigned the year after I graduated because he cared)

The one English teacher to get me to care about English cared. He had us read stuff like Beowolf and the Iliad, and he would stop and make sure everyone understood what was going on, and the context of when the story was written. When we did private reading, he didn't choose our book for us and then make us do a chapter by chapter essay about our thoughts on a book we didn't care about, he lest us pick from a selection of books and then let us read the fucking book at our own pace I remember "First Men in the Moon" far more clearly than any other book read in school because of that.

I don't remember shit about Chemistry because we got the one Chemistry teacher that took all the fun out of the subject and bogged it all down with tests after tests, yet I remember a bunch of Physics cause that teacher had us do our own experiments and had us actually figure out the shit on our own. I can't tell you how many History classes taught the same US history up to WWII because that's what the curriculum dictates, and we can only get so far in the year. I was never taught I thing about the Korean War, or the Spanish-American War, cause even out war and conflict teacher couldn't get to them in time.

Quota's and a focus on tests are the death of education.

first of all, why even have the indecency to disrespect one person in order to try and take down the thrill of bagging a teac-CHAIR so that with out no doubt lose the only thing that can be identified as:

"Wot the fok did ye just say 2 me m8? i dropped out of newcastle primary skool im the sickest bloke ull ever meet & ive nicked ova 300 chocolate globbernaughts frum tha corner shop. im trained in street fitin' & im the strongest foker in tha entire newcastle gym. yer nothin to me but a cheeky lil bellend w/ a fit mum & fakebling. ill waste u and smash a fokin bottle oer yer head bruv, i swer 2 christ. ya think u can fokin run ya gabber at me whilst sittin on yer arse behind a lil screen? think again wanka. im callin me homeboys rite now preparin for a proper scrap. A roomble thatll make ur nan sore jus hearin about it. yer a waste bruv. me crew be all over tha place & ill beat ya to a proper fokin pulp with me fists wanka. if i aint satisfied w/ that ill borrow me m8s cricket paddle & see if that gets u the fok out o' newcastle ya daft kunt. if ye had seen this bloody fokin mess commin ye might a' kept ya gabber from runnin. but it seems yea stupid lil twat, innit? ima ****e fury & ull drown in it m8. ur ina proper mess knob."

Okay, but this time in English.

It was a spooky moment when, several years into college, I realized I couldn't point to any one thing I learned in high school. All the mathematical formulas and historical events I memorized were long gone. I faired better in college, though by then I had realized that if I truly wanted to improve my knowledge and skills, I would have to do so on my own time. Self-directed learning is much faster and more effective than the alternative.

Also the Prussian education system is still used. However, I don't know what schools of other western countries are like.

>American schools
Heh…

Then again, we are part of the US.
Really makes you think.

However, the fall of our education system is mostly our own fault.

Yes, it is your fault, isn't it?

From what I've seen, most of the students/classmates I'm around usually dick around and gives the teacher shit when they happen to fail tests that they didn't study for nor bothered to listen to the lessons that was being taught. There also seems to be this huge quota for schools (in my area at least) to give tests huge curves that are either partially or way below the passing score so the graduation rates can stay at a near 100% at all times.

Also on a side note, World history > US history.
There's just more to learn about the history of the world than the US alone imo.

Since that I'm currently in a high school for 4 years, I'm going have to admit that the American public schools are awful when it comes to the behaviors of it.

Going to give my 2 cents here about my school

My school has a quote that is "What we are to be, we are now becoming" like Derptastic Derp Man has in his school.
All I ask about that quote is "what for"? The times where Armenians and Hispanics breaks rules every 30 seconds passed, the fights that happens in the quads, teachers who don't give a shit about the individuals yet wanted the student to just pass with daily homework, the fire alarm going off 20 fucking times in 4 months because some student decided to be a dickhead, the times where the walkout and the Columbine memorial in my school was unimpressive unlike the other schools did. I understand that my school is struggling because of the mass absences and misbehaving which caused my school to lose money, but it pains me that they're doing little effort from what I witnessed.
The times where my school is going political is what lost me, the feelings over facts, the protesting, the IEP students in the front stage. I literally never seen a school go like this.
Even though other schools has suffered worse than this, I can't help but get livid at my own school doing mediocre effort. Even though David Hogg is literally 1 month younger than me, I can't help but feel disgust and disappointment at his behavior to others, which is why dont support him anymore. Even though I'm a person who has mild autism in my life, I'm concerned that the 21st century 1st generation American people won't have a bright future.

There, these are my 2 cents, apologies if I went off topic

I'd also like to add in that another reason could be the culture about education that the No Child Left Behind Act created and Common Core perpetuates. This attitude that, "as long as your child knows what bubble to fill in on a paper, he should be good," at least that's how I put it. It ties in to what TripleA9000 argued, except it also holds public schools hostage until they fulfill these inflexible standards; a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Of course there are other things like the shit wages and benefits teachers across the country have, the atmosphere of bullying and disregard for mental health(and zero tolerance policies while we're at it), and obvious religious pandering like the advocacy of abstinence-only sex ed, mandatory prayer, and intelligent design in the rural states, but I think that of our standards-based mentality is our biggest obstacle right now.

Smart-bombs and dumb children.

American students don't know where Serbia is.

So how do American schools address student self-harming and suicide?

Like the local secondary school ones here in the county that I live in Ireland, tend to avoid those topics, especially the religious school, despite students asking that they address it and have class or groups talking about it. And don't seem to have much gone towards that with admittedly already filled hands although I suspect that they don't know how to handle it and want to avoid getting into trouble with parents, although the religious school from what I hear avoids it like the plague for obvious reasons (admittedly, the topic of suicide and other dark stuff is being really better address these days than say several decades ago).

Universities, of course, I found handled those topics better and provide many supports for people who have these types of problems.

Sometimes I wonder how similarly run and organised the general US system is to the UK.

https://www.internationalstudent.com/study-abroad/guide/uk-usa-education-system/

There are quite some differences in terms of universities and likely secondary schools.

In terms of grading Ireland and the UK somewhat have a similar system

https://www.classbase.com/Countries/united-kingdom/Grading-System

https://www.classbase.com/countries/Ireland/Grading-System

And believe me getting a First class honours means that you really did your fucking work. Often I heard work that gets students that grade is probably publish-worthy, especially if you get past the 80 mark. And on the GPA scale, it is supposed to be a 3.7 – 4.0.

in their defense, Serbia and all those other Balkan countries shouldn't exist

Yeah, it's believable true that American schools suck.

Source: 11th grader.

Why shouldn't they though?

(Inb4 because they should be united in a socialist Yugoslavia)

I was wondering more about secondary and below, considering how growing up during that time is very impressionable and important and all that. I wondered if all these Americans complaining about schooling was comparable to the way our schools are run.

P.S. I still don’t know what a GPA is lol

It is not just one thing, but a series of things that exasperate a cycle of perpetual failure.

Primarily the sheer weight and power of public teachers union rules render merit meaningless. We have teachers who are on paid leave for years at a time while the investigation is pending. Additionally said unions protect the tenure policy which, greatly disfavors newer teachers.

Bloated beuracratic systems in inner cities which drain precious resources away from students and more towards faculty.

Government accreditation system that is often times outdated, rigid, and incapable of adapting to rapid and more personal changes that our society expects.

Funding emphasis on administration over actual teachers, and this is a huge in higher education.

Many people say that schools are underfunded, but no amount of funding is going to solve waste, corruption, and a system that discourages competition and innovation. And much of the statistics back me up on this. Education is almost half of California's budget, but California is one of the worst states for school performance. But we have an incredibly powerful teachers union.

Even though this thread is dead I might as well explain your GPA is Grade Point Average. You have a semester GPA and a Cumulative GPA for both the year and your total high school career.

It's an average based on the letter grade you recieved in each of your classes over a grading period.
A=4
B=3
C=2
D=1
F=0

Honors and AP classes are counted one higher on the scale with an A=5. This means you can get a score anywhere from 5.0 – 0.0. The Valedictorian is usually determined by the Total Cumulative GPA.

In secondary school they don't give the Honors a higher rating so the highest you can get is 4.0, a perfect score.