Experiences in Education

Basically what I'm asking is:

1:Where did you go to primary/secondary school

2:Do you feel like your education was adequate? Did it prepare you well for College?

3:Did you feel like the faculty and administration were generally fair and invested in doing their jobs?

4:How do you think the people in charge of your School/schools could've done a better job?

And anything else you can think of.

edited 22nd Dec '13 4:10:51 PM by AncientSaucer

I'd like to think my education was fairly adequate.

For instance, I learned how to spell "experiences."

Also, how to look a little foolish when a typo is repaired that you were snide about.

I went to public school in the American Midwest. It was a big, semi-rural school, and at that time was overcrowded and had a rather poor student to teacher ratio (about 30 to one IIRC). But the thing I regret the most about it was the absolute cluelessness of the adult staff regarding the interpersonal dynamics among the students. I have to think that group and social skills are important things to learn when you are young, but they received zero attention where I went. My school was driven and fueled by a blunt emotional rivalry that undercut everything else that happened there, to the point that where one stood in the hierarchy and among the cliques took far more time, attention and energy than anything to do with academics or extra-curricular activities. If part of the purpose of a school is to build character, I'm pretty certain that we didnt learn the lessons that they intended...

I went to public school. I think I was pretty fortunate (for example my highschool had an advanced math program and offered lots of AP courses), but I don't think I really learned that much. I was mostly bored in school.

edited 23rd Dec '13 3:37:32 PM by storyyeller

Well, addressing the OP questions:

1. In Germany, Bavaria, then (when I was 14 or so; I do not keep track of ages well) in Switzerland.
2. I would think so, yes. That said, I learned a lot of stuff (including most college material) while reading books, Wikipedia and scientific journals in my spare time. On the issue of specific topics, the German schools did give a basic on "how to behave online" that I still follow today. The more elaborate IT stuff though was a bit lacking in both places, as was sexual education.
3. My parents had to do some effort there; co-educating someone with Asperger's syndrome can be a bit of a hassle, but I'd say it worked well.

1. I went to a pretty well sized school in the American south, North Carolina.

2. It was pretty good, had a great science and literature department, everything else was ok at best. Sex ed was hilariously bad and a good chunk of American and World History was pretty slanted. Was a push to have them try and teach creationism alongside a normal curriculum but none of the science teachers would go for it.

3. Most of the teachers were invested. Especially the two Chemistry teachers, the English teacher and the Theatre Arts instructor. We had awesome coaches and sports related stuff but that was never my thing.

4. Most of the problems were from the superintendent and the school board. If you know anything about North Carolina education it's that the pay and conditions were awful. We lost like a third of the staff my last year there after they found out tenure will be revoked and their pay slashed. All the good teachers left for better jobs though, I know my favorite English teacher went on to be a professor somewhere.

I had a great time. You know, once you ignore the fact that there were murders and shootings at the other high schools just one district over, that everyone was selling drugs and that it was full of just the worst kind of rednecks for students.

I'd hate to be there now though, all the good teachers gone and funding getting lower by the day.

1. I was home schooled until I went to college.

2. Yes, it was. It did prepare me well for college, I graduated with honors. Two of my siblings (also home schooled until they went to college.) had all A's and 1 B between them. They won the top honors of their college.

3. Very much so, 100%.

4. There are a few areas that I wish they had done better, but overall I'm happy with my education.

Overall, home schooling is not for everyone. However, for those it is for, it is hard to match the quality of the education you can receive.

At a small town in Eastern Finland. I had one year of preschool, but I don't remember if I learned anything much there; some of my relatives had already taught me to read and do basic math stuff like addition and subtraction and so on.

Primary school started at age 7, and back then it was divided into two distinct phases, though it's since been changed. When I was a kid we had 6 years of lower elementary and 3 years of higher elementary school before we got to choose whether we'd go to a vocational school or a high school - in either case it would've been three years or so. I went for the latter.

I did IB school for 1 year - my first year of high school - in a city about 600 kilometres from my home town, but I had some experience of living on my own from before, so it wasn't a huge problem. I had to move back, though, because of some stuff that was going on in my life at the time; the school, the city, living on my own - all of that was great, but unfortunately other things got in the way. So I finished high school in the town where I got my primary education.

Finland tends to rank in the top-3 of virtually all international comparisons of education systems, so I can't complain. It wasn't perfect but it was very good. Since my town was in the middle of nowhere, we didn't have all the resources that most other schools would have had - for instance, there were virtually no museums in the area.

Yeah, definitely. I had only one teacher that was consistently horrible - an arts teacher in high school. She was ridiculously unqualified, but because the school was so remote there were usually no other candidates than her for the position, so they couldn't fire her even though some of the staff privately admitted to me that they would have liked to have just about anyone else teaching arts. I had to retake the only mandatory arts course in high school a couple of times, but so did most of the boys in the school.

But yeah, that was the one exception. Everyone else was great.

The schools didn't really do much wrong - but since before I was born, Finnish municipalities have had to cut education funding. In Finland virtually all healthcare and education is free, and it's provided by the municipalities and has to meet standards set by the national government.

The municipalities have had to deal with demographic problems - the Baby Boomers are retiring, and because of advances in technology and social equality they're living longer while being more expensive. Young people (like myself) tend to move to cities from the countryside, so the municipalities end up with a slanted age structure, with more pensioners than young people entering the workforce.

So the municipalities are getting less money from taxes while their expenses are growing, and one of the things they've had to do is cut education funding - which usually means closing smaller schools and having all of the students in a large area go to one or two schools near the urban centre of the area. These things were already happening when I was growing up, and they're showing no signs of stopping. The result, for a student, is that there's always some administrative change going on and the schools just have to adapt. Ideally, this sort of thing wouldn't be so frequent as to be a nuisance to the students and staff.

Here in Glasgow. I did seven years of Primary School (from age four to age eleven) then the full six years of Secondary education (in Scotland, only four years of Secondary-level education is mandatory; anyone who has done those four years and is sixteen or over can leave. Fifth and Sixth year are optional).

I suppose so. I passed all of my exams at a canter (which is incredible considering how little effort I really put in), picking up Highers (can't remember how many exactly off the top of my head, but I do know that Physical Education and Administration are two of them) and Advanced Highers in English and History.

Advanced Highers are the equivalent of first year in University, which means I already have the qualifications for Uni' when I leave college in 2015.

Honestly, I don't recall ever interacting with the staff outside of the classroom, and even that I generally tried to keep as brief as possible. I liked my English teacher in my last two years; I felt more comfortable there. But I'm the only one who seemed to actually like him, and it wasn't for his teaching ability.

I would probably call them "bureaucratic", but as for whether or not they were any good... I don't know. Frankly, I never cared enough to notice.

1: Mostly finished in Arkansas, USA.

2: Hell no! The schools here are complete jokes. I got into college by my own merit.

3: No. I had a teacher who thought it was a good idea to crawl on the desk and bark at you if that gives you any idea.

4: Fire themselves. And hire real teachers.

Seriously, if I didn't have my own interest and desire to get to school I wouldn't have made it.

In Finland you can't be a teacher if you don't have at least a Master's degree. I think every country should do that.

Right then, let's do this.

I went to my village Church of England primary school for 6 years before going to a private democratic boarding school for 6 years and finally spending two years at a local college (UK college, which is the equivalent of the last two years of American High School).

Which bit of education? My academic education at boarding school was pretty crap but my social education resulted in me learning how to be an active and functional member of society with reasonably good social skills. My college (remember, UK college) education prepared me for uni very well however.

Very much, though I will point out that at boarding school things were run democratically, so in most issues I had as much of a way as the headmistress.

They could have listened to me more when I suggested things in the school meetings. At both boarding school and college they did a lot without much money, so I'd say give them more money.

Best of, that would be brilliant! A Masters can give you the right to teach college here, but you can't teach K-12 without an education degree, praxis, and a few other requirements depending on the state.

I find that disturbing.

I'd be up for that if teachers were actually paid anywhere near enough to make staying in overpriced bloated ticks of colleges for a Master's degree remotely feasible.

Pacific northwest, USA. Catholic elementary, homeschooled around most of middle school, public high school.

To an extent, and mostly only because I pushed my way into high-end classes.

The Catholic school was for the most part really good, and my problems there were all social — even for what are typically hot-button topics like sex ed and evolution, they taught it considerably better than most public schools I hear so many horror stories about.

The middle schools in the area are a joke. Definitely got more out of curling up in front of the fireplace with textbooks than I'd ever have gotten there.

The high school was a very mixed bag. General core classes were glacially-paced wastes of oxygen that desperately tried to flush super-seniors through so they'd stop hanging around to peddle drugs. Accelerated and AP classes were really, really good, mostly by virtue of a couple standout teachers that rallied their whole department. Arts classes were good by virtue of all the ones that weren't getting cut by a greedy football coach that held more political power than the mayor.

It prepared me for college insofar as most of college was even more of a bad joke.

In the upper-level classes (and any lower-level classes taught by those specific teachers) and the arts, yes. Anywhere else, there was a lot of "Fuck all y'all, I'm tenured".

Expel the super-seniors who were trying to sell pot in class (and on at least one occasion to the teacher) instead of catering to them with entire classes that have had all meaningful curriculum excised as a desperate attempt to pass them — if they're failing in a class that offers more extra credit than actual work, "accidentally" leaves the answer key on the overhead during tests, and whose final is to watch Biodome, they can safely be considered a lost cause.

Stop trying to base the budget around our shitty football team.

Examine the qualifications of tenured teachers. Allow them to stay if they pass an in-class inspection (most of the good teachers did not in fact have Masters' — they were just good teachers).

edited 31st Dec '13 9:15:46 PM by Pykrete