John Stossel's 'Stupid in America'

[Otter Mii-kun]

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1500338

When I saw this being advertised for the broadcast last week, I was expecting it to be yet another piece of advocacy journalism calling for more regulations such as globalist curriculum mandates and attacks on civil liberties such as mandatory kindergarten. After seeing the report broadcast, needless to say though, I was suprised that the mainstream media would run something this critical of our government school system.

 

[Misty]

They should, the American school system is a joke.

 

[GrnMarvl14]

Boils down to a simple fact: School districts put WAY too many regulations on what can and cannot be taught. What IS taught bores the teachers and bores the students. Teachers stop caring, students couldn't give a shit. I was taught more in my first year of college than the entire four years of high school. And you can throw in middle school as well. Elementary, on the other hand, was a continual introduction of new material (until...about the fourth grade).

And the mainstream media does a new piece on the shitty school system every year. Nothing changes. No one cares. Either you don't have kids and it's "not my problem" or you DO and you just bitch about what needs to be done. It's one of the two reasons why I didn't want to be a teacher.

 

[Argy]

Middle school and high school were awful for me. The teachers couldn't control the students at all, and the "administration" in my high school was a joke. Those in charge seemed to have no idea whatsoever what the students wanted or needed, and thus, the students rebelled in any and all possible ways.

College, on the other hand, has been a blessing. Instructors and students actually have respect for each other, and the material is interesting. Students actually want to learn. There was so much busy work and idle time in high school; I felt like my time was being wasted.

 

[Carbon_Zephyr]

Yeah... They mentioned the Kansas City Missouri school district on that show. I'm from KCMO and went to high school in a nearby district where the story was pretty much the same.
The money we got was used to convert our schools' libraries into science labs and to build new libraries and other additions.

District GPAs dropped. Why? Because no teaching/lerning was done in the classrooms. It was all state testing this, and state testing that...
No one taught the subject matter and the district didn't care, as long as we were doing state test prep. So students didn't learn anything else.

I graduated near the top of my class, because most everyone else had a GPA of 2.0 or lower.

 

[Otter Mii-kun]

Yeah... They mentioned the Kansas City Missouri school district on that show. I'm from KCMO and went to high school in a nearby district where the story was pretty much the same.
The money we got was used to convert our schools' libraries into science labs and to build new libraries and other additions.

District GPAs dropped. Why? Because no teaching/lerning was done in the classrooms. It was all state testing this, and state testing that...
No one taught the subject matter and the district didn't care, as long as we were doing state test prep. So students didn't learn anything else.

I graduated near the top of my class, because most everyone else had a GPA of 2.0 or lower.

In todays politically over-correct globalist society, more regulations are supposedly better-and smaller government/less regulations=bad.
I don't see why it's so damm neccesarry to be competitive with the rest of the world academically-what it really is is forcing our children to live like those in "highly educated" countries-just as immoral as nationbuilding in the Middle East (read: Iraq)

 

[Girafarig_Magcargo]

In todays politically over-correct globalist society, more regulations are supposedly better-and smaller government/less regulations=bad.
I don't see why it's so damm neccesarry to be competitive with the rest of the world academically-what it really is is forcing our children to live like those in "highly educated" countries-just as immoral as nationbuilding in the Middle East (read: Iraq)

It's so that we have Americans doing things like engineering, physics, mathematics, computing, etc. rather than depending on people in China or India to do it.

 

[GrnMarvl14]

In todays politically over-correct globalist society, more regulations are supposedly better-and smaller government/less regulations=bad.
I don't see why it's so damm neccesarry to be competitive with the rest of the world academically-what it really is is forcing our children to live like those in "highly educated" countries-just as immoral as nationbuilding in the Middle East (read: Iraq)

So it's wrong to want to better our children? It's wrong to want to be competitive with other nations? Let's just teach them 2+2 and leave it at that. See how great a nation we are then.

 

[Otter Mii-kun]

So it's wrong to want to better our children? It's wrong to want to be competitive with other nations? Let's just teach them 2+2 and leave it at that. See how great a nation we are then.

You think I'm that crazy? We can be successful in our own selfs without having to worry about what the rest of the world is doing (what other countries are teaching their students is none of our business anyway)

What I propose:
-Close down the unconstitutional federal Department of Education
-Separate unions from politics and Enact right-to-work laws nationwide
-repeal compulsory school attendance laws and minimum age requirements for employment
-get rid of minimum wage.
-Abolish all federal testing and curriculum requirements

 

[Fig]

It's so that we have Americans doing things like engineering, physics, mathematics, computing, etc. rather than depending on people in China or India to do it.

Hell must be chilly, we agree on something.

 

[GrnMarvl14]

You think I'm that crazy? We can be successful in our own selfs without having to worry about what the rest of the world is doing (what other countries are teaching their students is none of our business anyway)

What I propose:
-Close down the unconstitutional federal Department of Education
-Separate unions from politics and Enact right-to-work laws nationwide
-repeal compulsory school attendance laws and minimum age requirements for employment
-get rid of minimum wage.
-Abolish all federal testing and curriculum requirements

You DO know what the minimum wage and minimum age were set up, right? And their connection to the compulsory school attendance laws.

The rest I either agree with or might as well happen so people will appreciate unions again (and maybe some of the corruption will go away...false hopes, I know). But federal testing is horribly flawed and should be abolished. Dulls the nation's creativity and does more to hurt education than help it (like the No Child Left Behind crap).

 

[Girafarig_Magcargo]

You think I'm that crazy? We can be successful in our own selfs without having to worry about what the rest of the world is doing (what other countries are teaching their students is none of our business anyway)

What I propose:
-Close down the unconstitutional federal Department of Education
-Separate unions from politics and Enact right-to-work laws nationwide
-repeal compulsory school attendance laws and minimum age requirements for employment
-get rid of minimum wage.
-Abolish all federal testing and curriculum requirements

Then we have little kids working in factories and mines like in the 1900s, while the adults are paid a pittance. You're obviously completely unaware of the social hardships that occured due to exploitative company practices during the Industrial Revolution.

And it's a pretty damn big deal about whether our schools match up to other schools in different countries. If we raise a generation of dumbasses then there will be no Americans left to run our companies and then someone else (probably China or India) will take over American companies completely and America will wholly depend on nations that aren't even our allies. This is why I dislike extreme libertarians almost as much as liberals. They want to "reform" our nation until it becomes ridiculously weak.

 

[Fig]

Mandatory (relatively) free education is the single biggest difference between the XXIst century and the Middle Ages.

Abolish it, and odds are half of us, and you as likely as any other, wouldn't have learned to read.

(Not that you being unable to read, and thus, make this sort of post, would be necessarily BAD, but...)

 

[Otter Mii-kun]

explain

Mandatory (relatively) free education is the single biggest difference between the XXIst century and the Middle Ages.

Abolish it, and odds are half of us, and you as likely as any other, wouldn't have learned to read.

(Not that you being unable to read, and thus, make this sort of post, would be necessarily BAD, but...)

Then how was our country lush with nearly the highest literacy rates in the world years before public schools were brought in?

 

[Zeta]

Then how was our country lush with nearly the highest literacy rates in the world years before public schools were brought in?

We didn't have TV back then.

 

[Fig]

Highest literacy rate in the world, pre-XXth century, is pretty much like winning the special olympics...

 

[Girafarig_Magcargo]

Then how was our country lush with nearly the highest literacy rates in the world years before public schools were brought in?

Only some parts of early America, like New England, had high emphasis on education (mostly so everyone could read the Bible). In other areas, the population was too spread out for effective schools. While the wealthy could afford live-in tutors, most everyone else had to do without.