The Strongest Matthew For Whenever Options

[Dr Strum]

Back for it's third iteration, and still longer than any other.
You know what to do. Just post about stuff. Your life, your insanity, or even your favorite cardinal direction.

[chrishawke]

Our public schools suck because US society is generally favored towards credentialism, and it raises the bar for the minimum requirement to achieve the same status for what it takes to get a job now compared to what it takes for that same job 10 years ago. Because of that, the expectations for public schools are raised, and when schools don't meet expectations, they don't get looked upon favorably well. The school may suffer budget cuts, classroom atmosphere may turn sour, and parents start fussing over their children failing school. Some schools do pass, and when they do, yay, kudos and rewards to them!

The problem with this isn't because of that. You don't reward bad children for doing bad things. But you don't leave them out of the education system and let them stay dumb. That's socially unacceptable. The real problem is that there is an imbalance of available resources spread across the whole freakin' country. Public schools at one state don't get the same quality teachers and teaching materials as another state. Hell, public schools in one area within a state don't get the same quality teachers and materials as in another area in that same state. Try giving out 1,000 pieces of Snickers to 100,000 kids. Try giving 1,000 pieces of Snickers to 100,000 kids who are waiting in a line for your Snickers. First come, first serve, baby. You can't divide those Snickers to feed and satisfy the first-comers and give enough to feed the rest of 80,000 kids.

So what our public school systems do is try to standardize things. Standardize tests. Standardize education. "This is what all you kids should know by the time you graduate high school. AND THEN WE'RE RAISING THE BAR FOR THE NEXT GENERATION!" Some systems do fairly well, others don't.

Then there are the private schools, but their costs of attendance for one student can cost as much as going to a decent university, so you can say they should have more than enough materials to meet and/or exceed standards. I've never been to one, so I dunno.


Because many people want to continue their education to get better jobs and better lives (due to credentialism, aka raising of minimum requirement to get a specific job), those same kids who went through the hellish public schools start attending universities and colleges. Imagine the problems that can brings. Student-to-faculty ratio rises. The lowering the quality of prestige, degrees and diplomas. Kids who aren't adequately educated struggle like hell in their first couple of semesters in college. Some transfer out of a good college to go to a community college to raise their grades and transfer BACK into that good college. Oh, wow. Those numbers are gonna look bad to the local government. BUDGET CUT. That good college has less to work with now. There are more to it, too, but I'll stop at that as a more general outlook to it.

There are reasons why each university/college do things the way they do, but you really can't group all universities/colleges into one general entity and evaluate it at that. Several handful of universities may actually fit your definition of a "good" college, but they may only be one-in-a-thousand spread across in the whole country. For example, my university requires me to go through electives, which I had chosen Classical Music, Astronomy, Sociology, and European History. Despite them not really related to my degree of interest, they do help expose me to several topics I've never had gone over or taken in high school. This diversity helps build character, and that's the point of electives. Even if they're crappy electives, by passing them you show your peers and supervisors that you can handle tasks that you don't particularly like as well. As for the rest of my classes... well, they're pretty important to my major, so I'm not sure how to answer your concern with constant attendance and tests. You don't want kids to fuck up the structure of a bridge or building that you constantly use, do you?