Obama's education plan

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

the link first
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090927/...us_more_school

after reading this I was like finally. Now I don't know about the rest of you but my schools sucked balls they hardly taught, and unless you played sports(which also sucked sucked balls) or was the band there was nothing no extracurricular activites the whole time I was in school my family had problems (still does) and my neighborhood wasn't what you'll call ideal so more time in school(clubs and the like) would of greatly benefitted me. Granted I wasn't interested in school while attending(Had a good reason though). Now I've been helping my little cousins with school/home work for the past 2 years and noticed in public schools they don't teach kids anything new(I first noticed when I hit hit high school). Now I given I've been watching anime since I was a child I proposed having mandatory clubs to a couple anminstators in middle school one they approve of it but said unlikely, in high school everyone told me I was crazy. I understand it would make more time money spent for school projects and such, but I also remember telling them not that isn't a big price to pay for a future. Well I'll like the opinoins of others now

Link's broken, and I can't make sense of your comment.

I'll just list the pros and cons here.

Pros: The U.S. might get higher grade point averages compared to other countries
Unproductive students might become more productive, not just hanging out and shopping or whatever kids do these days.

Cons: Some kids have jobs. Some have extracurricular activities. Some have extracurricular activities and at this point have trouble catching up with school.

The thing is, that the reason Asian schools seem to have higher grades is due to

A.)Longer hours
B.)Shorter Summer
C.)More School Days

But the fact is, if you were smart then you were smart. And if you were kinda... stupid, you would have a problem with school and end up in a dead end. America has more of DIY lifestyle for me it seems.

Here's a better link http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090927/ap_on_re_us/us_more_school

Ok tell me what didn't make sense to you and I'll try to make it so you can.
Also that's the only I have I'm looking for another one now. Nevermind.

I understand where you're coming from, but from my POV it would of helped me, and shorter summer vacations can't really be that bad.

I forgot thanks for the update on a link

This doesn't sit well with me. I was always of the opinion that standardized testing isn't the best way to go in terms of education. Why? Because all this really does is represent the student (the person) as numbers and letters. That doesn't show who they are on the inside, nor does it show what they currently know on the subject. It only says that on a certain date, this person got this grade on a test. Yet the school system insists on these scores being very important.

Well on to the topic at hand: This will not sit well with the people in America. I can also predict that because of this (~3 hour) increase in school time, you will see a lot more students cutting classes and increasing apathy in the general student population.

Edit: I fully read the OP and I have to say that as long as the school administration includes a huge variety of clubs in which people would be able to choose from, and also the opportunity for new clubs to be created, then why not go for mandatory clubbing?

(last part) That's why I say the schools I went to sucked balls.
(second part) also I honestly think that would be for the first couple years, but for the long run that will be for the best
(first part)I understand that arguement, because people have bad days especially considering we're talking about pre/teenagers, but that would have helped me becuse I would finish in the top 90 percentile in my state but still have a D avg

RE:
Last part - I am pretty much supporting your idea on extracurricular activities, and lets face it: most schools (at least in America) aren't very club extensive.

Second part - The cutting may of course decrease, or it may not.... this can be argued back and forth. Though the main point of that statement was the creation of apathy. All of these school related problems (apathy, rising stress levels, suicide etc. would only be more intensified by more work and more specifically, less rest.

First part - In terms of a system, standardized testing should at most be only one (and certainly not the most important) aspect out of many that decide how academically fit a person is. So are you saying that standardized tests would have helped you in the long run (I couldn't understand your last sentence)?

I don't know, maybe it is because I'm out of school and not planning on attending college for a while yet, but I feel very apathetic towards this situation. The way I see it, just about any change in the education system of the United States would bound to have more positive effects than the current system.

No I think he's saying that having to only do the test once helps him because otherwise he would have a bad score if the test was repetitively done.

Zeronum: That is what I was thinking about when I assumed that he thought that S. tests helped him. Though I'm honestly still not sure about what he meant to say.

Let's not dwell on this. I pose the question, how is this beneficial to children?

Quality over quantity.....

well actually, for my former high school its both.


If I were to change anything about my school life, it wouldve been the teachers.

Some of them literally said, "Ah well this doesnt matter, you wont need to know unless you [whatever] so Ill just skip over it and let you read it all." So in reality there wasnt really much teaching going on.

And also, my high school was absolutely packed with people.

We only had around 100 teachers in the whole building... yet we had over 4000 students... and over 1500 of them were just Freshman, so not only were there over 40 people in each classroom all over the school, but there weren't enough teachers for all the Freshman so there were even more of those undisciplined bastards in the rooms.

I don't know where Im going with this but I thought I'd share it. :|

I don't think that this plan will help the children much. What I believe that Obama wants is higher cumulative averages, which would be used as comparisons to other countries (ie. bragging). Hell I honestly don't believe that more time in school is necessary. Either you know the material or you don't. Even if kids don't know certain material, they could look it up themselves, or ask a teacher for help. Many schools offer after school tutoring anyway, so there really is no need to lengthen the official school day.

I will agree with the plan to change how long summer vacation is, it's entirely too long and interferes with time that should be spent learning. It would be beneficial to shorten the time students are out for a vacation.

I don't agree with his plan to make the school day longer. The school day is already quite long, and if you throw in an after school job or extracurricular activities then you have even less time after school to study or do homework. I can only see this resulting in more cutting of classes and more apathy towards school.

And there should be more clubs and a better quality in the teachers. My school had a rather narrow choice for clubs and there was little chance of being able to start a new one. As for the teachers in my school, there were a few good ones, but only if you took the most advanced classes. I did take those classes, but some of my friends took basic classes, and those classes taught nothing new and much material was skipped over. As for foreign languages, the teachers were not able to speak fluently and there was a very limited choice of what could be learned.

So I'm hoping Obama will think more towards the quality of education and not just the quantity, but his plan right now should certainly help improve American education.

Yes!!! Someone who agrees with me!

This sounds like a good plan, not entirely the perfect since it's been mentioned that some students have jobs and extracuriccular activities, but I think it'll eventually be changed and molded to fit better with everyone.

On a side note, considering how many states have cut budgets for schools and mandated furlough days, it's great to see something being done to address how unprepared students are for college. As my sociology professor said, "Education and Knowledge are the great equalizers in a society that concentrates on personal success while simultaneously ignores socioeconomics roadblocks".

Why is the Federal Government concerned about this?
Edit: I get what you're saying, but this isn't really something that should concern the president. States have boards of education for a reason. They should be worried about bigger problems, like war, imports, and inflation.

I personally believe that this is just Obama trying to make himself useful in the eyes of the general American population. As you can tell, this is much easier to make happen as opposed to solving these other massive problems.

The problem with most schools is not they don't have enough time, but they screw around.

I once had a class with only 45 minutes and there was a lot of stuff to cover. But the teacher knew how to keep us quiet and she explained everything in excellent detail and most of the kids were fine.

If the teachers learn how to discipline the children to be able to learn and listen, then the current school hours should be fine.