Leonardo wrote:School is the best bloody thing that will ever happen to anyone.
My girlfriend will argue vehemently with you on that one. You may have enjoyed your schooldays; mine were okay. But don't assume that the old adage of "your schooldays are the best days of your life" applies to everyone, because it really don't.
As an example of her school; her younger sister, upon leaving school, was the only girl in her year who hadn't attempted suicide. Can't have been that good.
My school life was alright; I don't really remember it with tremendous fondness, nor with particular dread. I never really had any issues with bullies; the only guy who tried to punch me cracked his knuckles on my face, which I found quite amusing. I had one teacher (for metalwork) who my dad had to come in about (threats were made), but frankly, that git hated kids and should never have been a teacher in the first place.
I sort of breezed through lessons; I tended to do pretty well in most subjects without trying too hard. Art was always my favourite subject, but maths came close second, and was my best subject. And my maths teacher was a top bloke.
I don't know about the States system, but in the UK it's like several have already said, they don't really teach you anything useful anymore except how to pass the exams. Kids don't learn to read and write, they learn how to do well in literacy and numeracy tests, and then their parents are surprised (if they notice) when they get to secondary school and still can't string a sentence together...
And of course there's all the red tape. Lessons
have to be taught as they're laid out in the curriculum, whether it works or not. A teacher friend of mine got in trouble once when, after taking her kids to a petting zoo, she got them to write about their day there instead of studying a "shared text" as in the curriculum.
My girlfriend's got the right job; she's doing what teachers should be allowed to do - working with kids who've dropped out of the education system for one reason or another, teaching them what they need to know using whatever methods get the job done.
i find it very hard to see the benefits of that, speaking for m a technical point of view it hardly even counts as a schooling system-although granted if u have exceptionally dedicated and knowledgeable parents results would be fantastic-but only if u take ur interpretation of school as meaning "Stuffing childrens heads with knowledge and getting them ready for exams", as an educator i gotta say that the most important things u learn in school are not found in the books, large scale social interaction with peers be it positive or negative is far more useful in a board sense than any facts or figures.
