schools

I will try my best to provide a most intelligent debate. REBUTTAL I will address each issue that you have presented. I will cite each issue with a few words of your pieces. 1) "...40% of pupils not achieving even 5 GCSE's at grade A-C..." I will admit that I had not known this fact prior to reading it. If you do not mind, I would like you to provide a source or evidence that presents this data, so that I may evaluate it myself. 2) "...the body clock of an adolescent...is set to wake up around 11.00 to 13.00 and go to bed about 23.00-00.00." There is a reason that most secondary schools start a school day relatively early. (I cannot speak for all schools. I understand that the hours of operation of schools vary per region.) Schools do not implement these early times with the intent of angering students, or, as you put it, "[reducing] their capacity to learn and memorise..." According to an article, "[s]chool schedules tend to be based on non-academic factors such as sports and extracurricular activities, transportation arrangements and parents' desire to see children off to school before work or have older children home in the afternoon to supervise younger siblings." (1) It seems that most schools recognize your issue, but they also realize the realistic nature of most adolescents' lifestyles. People have lives, and much of their lives are committed to the afternoon/evening. The most convenient place of a school's schedule is in the morning, it seemed. 3) "All you get from school are GCSE's, they are the holy grail of your education." First, I would like to say that I am not from Europe. By this, I simply imply that I do not understand the GCSE system as well you probably do. I had to do research on the GCSE prior to addressing this issue, so please feel free to point out any misinterpretations you believe I have made. I apologize for this inconvenience. So, as an analogy, for the convenience of myself and some of the voters, I would like to make the GCSE system and the United States A-F grading system synonymous. They are both nominal indications of a student's performance in a given class, I believe. Again, if you feel this is a poor analogy, please address this. I do not believe what mark you get determines your worth. As I said before, the purpose of the mark is to provide indications of a student's performance in a given class. There is are two reasons that students want to receive high marks: a) Students want to seek pleasure in having a higher mark than other students. I cannot think of an instance where a student would sincerely want to be "worse" than another student in a given subject, and would actively seek to remain in a "worse" state. If you can think of one and relate it to the education system, then I would be impressed. b) Generally, most college/universities assess a student's ability to perform by reviewing his or her marks. For the most part, marks show a student's motivation to learn and study a given subject. This is really important to education institutions mainly because of economics. Believe it or not, each student costs money. Why do you think most scholarships ask a student their GPA (I am not sure if this is the correct terminology in Europe; Again sorry for the inconvenience), as well as a brief description of why they should receive the scholarship? When money is given to students, the institution wants to have "insurance" that the student will put money to good use. Do do this by asking questions like: Does the student have motivation to learn? Does the student have what it takes to be successful? Now, I would like to discuss the "examinations and writing". These are just more assessments used to gauge the student's ability to perform. Here is an analogy. In this hypothetical situation, please imagine that you are a firm that specializes in law. There are two candidates that are presented to you as potential lawyers. Let's focus on one aspect, for the purposes of this example. Let's say that each of them took a test, as an application to your firm. This test just evaluates the person's knowledge of laws, loopholes, anything else a lawyer needs to know, etc. Now, realistically, do you take the wo/man who gets a high score on the test? Or do you take the person who gets a relatively low score on the test? Assuming each person took the test fairly, and it accurately reflects his or her knowledge in the field, whom would you pick? Now, I would like to discuss your examples. There are two issues that I have with your examples. One is that they are not contemporary. In other words, your examples are outdated. School, just like culture, is dynamic. I do not think your examples accurately represent the modern/current education system (not to mention that education systems differ per region; For example, Lennon was in the UK, and Einstein was in Prussia.) More importantly, here is the second issue with your example. Who gets to decide who is objectively "good" in music, dancing, or science? Specifically, music and dancing quality are, for the most part, subjective. The people who told John Lennon that he was bad had an opinion, like the rest of us. Don't get me wrong, I think John Lennon is an amazing musician, but it is hard to argue that he is a good musician objectively. Einstein was really proficient in mathematics and physics. However, he struggled in other subjects, such as language arts (2). The way that the school system was set up, to my knowledge, was that it wanted a balanced all-around student. Even today, schools require students to be proficient in the certain areas of knowledge. Einstein had speech difficulties, and this hindered his progress in his studies. I do not think that the schools recognized him as a "failure", but simply that he lacked certain qualities that would make him the balanced all-around student. Language is an asset, really, to everybody. Max Weinreich, a sociolinguist, described "[a] language is a dialect with an army and navy". Basically, what he is saying is that language can be seen as a representation of one's socioeconomic status. There are different "ranks" in language called dialects. "Higher ranked" dialects indicate a higher socioeconomic status'. Since Einstein had these speech difficulties, school recognized that he did not have the skills necessary to perform efficiently outside mathematics and physics. "On the advice of the Principal of the Polytechnic, he attended the Aargau Cantonal School in Aarau, Switzerland, in 1895–96 to complete his secondary schooling." (3) He was not deemed a failure, because even the school official associated with his schooling advised him on how to complete his education. His talent was recognized, so the school official provided an alternate pathway for him. 4) "...the specific methods in which they teach. They do not engage students..." But here's the problem with your issue. You are directly addressing teachers, but not the education systems. They are not synonymous. You cannot equate them. Like you said, "...some teachers may do this [engage students] of course, but its the exception." For the purposes of this debate, I would like to differentiate a school's education curriculum and the method in which knowledge is given. Here is why I want to do this. Each student is different, and each teacher is different. You cannot argue that every student would benefit from the exact same kind of learning. Yes, some students would benefit from watching videos, but what about the students that prefer reading a text or being lectured to? Watching a video on the student's own time is also unrealistic. For one, the student would require motivation to watch the video. And would the motivation come from sincere interest? Or would it come from receiving the good GCSE's (as discussed previously)? Also, this would mean providing a copy of a video to every individual student. This is really expensive because of the sheer population of students (and growing). A solution you might say to this is, "okay, so what? Individualize the learning. Have each student learn the way he wants to." Although this seems like the ideal method, there is a reason that education systems do not implement this. Like I said, each student is different. This means that in order to satisfy the individual learning needs of every student would require each student to have his or her own personal instructors. There are many problems with this, and I can discuss them, if you would like to extend your contention. 5) "Another point is that there are many things that are left out of the education system that I believe should be taught." Forgive me, but I lack an understanding of which education system you are referring to. It is here where I would like to provide my personal experience. I am in the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme, and I am currently a senior in high school. Particularly, in my district, there are core subjects each student must go to (Mathematics, Science, History, Literature/English, Health/Physical Education). Beyond these are electives. Electives are classes that students choose to take outside of their core curriculum. I will now address each subject you provided. HEALTH - In my school, this is a required class for graduation. I would imagine that there are other schools that require this class, as well. FOOD - Here, we call it Home Economics. It is an elective. PSYCHOLOGY - This is also an elective. I have taken this class. HISTORY - The description you provided closely fits with a Socio-cultural Anthropology class. Nevertheless, there are electives that provide wide overviews of history, such as SOCIOLOGY. I would discuss more, but I have reached my Characters Limit. (1) http://www.pressherald.com... (2) http://www.biography.com...; (3) http://en.wikipedia.org...