Hi there Heronumber0!
I have just come out of the education system you speak of and have been attending college on a British National diploma level course. I have to agree
with you on many of your points. I'll try to give a students perspective of this system.
- At the school I attended I think most students do/did achieve the grades they needed for further education. I know most of my friends did, but I was
there on the day to pick up my results because of an operation, so I didn't get to see the big mix of gleeful and distraught faces.
- As far as I'm aware school funding has always been a problem. I remember there being 'offsted' inspections a couple of times a year. I was rather
surprised to find that if the school scored well it would be given more money. In my opinion it should work almost the other way round. If a school is
failing then it needs help.
- I rather identify with the comments about irrelevant information. I'm now on a media course, and as far as I can currently see, I'm never going to
have to review the conflict them in MacBeth, nor am I going to have to find the tangent of x. The interesting thing that struck me is I spent 2 years
learning gcse math to attain a B grade, now only months later I would be lucky to gain a D if I took one tommorrow. This opens up another issue... Is
this useless information taking up space in our brains that we could use learning something relevant to our lives? I'll have to read about it when I
get the time...
- When I was at school I always felt sorry for the teachers, especially the ones who couldn't handle the class. Of course... I am not completely
innocent... Mucking around was fun back then. I can see that being an educator is a very difficult job with disruptive student... But I don't think
students being bored is the only factor. It's the whole social dynamic of modern youth and school life. There is a lack of respect there that past
generations never had, because students know that their actions will have little consequence.
- I'm not sure I agree on the teaching us to be obeying citizens. School did the opposite for most people I know, and the individual teachers
themselves seemed to actually WANT to help us learn as much as possible. But When I say that I really mean help us get a good grade via learning of
useless information. The education system we have is certainly now a very mechanical one, and due to the growing amount of students coupled with the
dwindling funding is meaning teaching is getting less and less personalized as schools struggle to cope.
- Point 7 I just could not agree with more! Theres nothing more to add to that...
- I didn't see much change in the education system when I was there. It all comes back to funding, change costs money. The whole education system
needs to be completely overhauled and re-personalized in order to make sure everyone achieves to the best of their ability.
So being a student, the way I see it is people are failing because of the mechanical nature of the currents system, coupled with the current social
culture today. Some students are just bad apples, (the kind who see 'bunking off' as a cool thing to do... maybe due to their background,
whatever... It just causes disruption in the class an slows learning of the irrelevant information we need to get good grades.
Continued...