what are some bad experiences you have had with public education

Economics Economics Questions
1

Personally I feel PE makes kids dumb. It places too much emphasis on self-esteem and it has this bad attitude towards failure,. PE tends to think that failure is bad and kids should never have to go through it but all this has done is made kids dumber and made them less confident .

Here is a personal story, I was publicly education however in grade 5 I got sent to a private institution. My parents would pay about 10-20 dollars an hour and I went for 4 hours a week. It was much harder than the stuff you did in school and it seemed harsher in that you could fail their exams. When I first started I sucked at maths and did poorly in my exams by the end of the 2 years I ended up surprising myself when I saw how good I was at it.

I learned more in the 2 years of tutor than I did at school. They focused on quality, not quantity, so you went for less hours but got more out if it. They were teaching us things far ahead of the school curriculum but it was not tough or obsessive as some people might say.

By PE i MEANT public education, sorry guys

2

All of them.

3

When I was in 3rd grade, I took a worksheet which had the statement, “The food is ready to eat,” up to my teacher and asked whether it shouldn’t read, “The food is ready to be eaten,” instead. She responded by scolding me, “Oh, don’t be so critical!”

I’ve since tried to live my life as one long act of defiance against that directive.

4

It’s established with stolen money so it’s immoral from the onset.

5

I was labeled the retarded ADD/ADHD my entire middle school / highschool career. I got everything from my teachers. Being called stupid, ect… My dad never put me on drugs though and never let me get my spirits down. Ironically I ended up being the most successful person of the whole bunch. Seriously.

6

Since I live in Sweden there was never an alternative for me.

But me experience of school is not all that bad.
Grades 1 thru 6 was pretty much shit (with the exception of English which is pretty useful and learning a language in classes is pretty standard).

I already know how to read and write and what + - * and / meant when I started school. Still I had to sit like the whole first year (at least it felt like that back then) and type a a a a a a … b b b b b … and so forth learning letters and number individually and then reading practice.
This is a really horrible thing to do to a 7 year old kid that is excited about starting school and already know how to read.

It also illustrates the main problem of public schooling which is the complete lack of individual treatment that gets pupils that are better or have just learned more in home down and make them do stuff that is just tedious to them, destroying there faith in education and knowledge rather then nursing it with new challanges.

Up to grade 6 it was way to slow, simple and repetitive for me.

But I do think they have addressed some of these issues now. When my little sister went to school they had mixed classes grades 1-3 and so forth. So what see did is she simply studied with the ones that where one year ahead of her when she caught up to them and she skipped ahead 2 years in this manner.

Grades 7-9 we had a choice of advanced or basic maths and English. Also we started a third language and started specialised classes in natural sciences for real so there I felt I learned plenty of stuff. We had snakes on the floor in biology, blow lots of stuff up in chemistry and chocked our selves with electricity in physics so that was a laugh and a perfect way to learn at that age.

Grades 10-12 (our equivalent of high school) was good. We touched topics like theory of relativity and quantum physics. There where programming classes, philosophy, basic accounting and law, learned the American civil was wasn’t about slavery but about big government, we programmed LED Christmas trees in some binary language used for code-pads and such and no fing creationism in biology. So that was good.

It could still have been better. More room for individualism and the high school programs designed to prepare for higher studies don’t really do that all that well. I had no idea how to study on my own or write essays when I started university…

But in general if you just get the option to compress grades 1-6 which exist now our public school system seems pretty ok. Granted I growing up in one of the riches suburbs in the country (which doesn’t say much in equal Sweden). So I attended some of the best public schools in the country filled with motivated students, but still it should be ok in most places.
Except the ghetto schools, filled with kids who are mentally destroyed by the wars they ran away from and our broken down immigration system that teaches them how to apply for welfare and then put them in camps for ages with no knowledge of what will happen to them.

7

My only experience (apart from university: I confess choosing a public one because it was much, much cheaper… [;)]) was teaching in private recovery courses to earn a few extra quids. When people say our schools are good quality and horrible public schools are just an American issue I laugh in their faces. I just cannot help it.

My job was to teach these students to allow them to improve their grades by the end of the year: I taught mathematics, physics and chemistry. Of all the students I’ve seen only one could be cataloged as “lazy”. A shame since her brother was such an hard-working boy. But I am digressing again. Anyway when I first started teaching I expected to have basket cases in front of me. Instead I found pretty much all the students to be bright and eager to learn. The problem began when I asked them to bring over their textbooks and notes. I thought I saw bad mathematics textbooks at the university but they were nothing compared to these. When I saw the notes I was flabbergasted. Teachers did nothing to plug the huge gaps in the theory, nor did anything to stimulate the students. They just loaded them with homework. What good is solving twelve second grade equations in a row, each one a copycat of the previous? No wonder students were just giving up or doing barely enough to pass the course at the end of the year. Dumbing us down they say… they are still too kind. Physics and chemistry were even worse and I won’t even dwell into it.

I went to a succession of private schools and have some excellent teachers. I am grateful to my mother for that. But up until I helped these students out I had an unshakable faith in public schooling. Now I believe it to be one of the greatest evils of our time.

8

Excellent.

9

I have a bad experience with Public Education, better termed Stolen Money Funded Education each time I pay my tax bills.

10

Don’t get me started on PE. When some sporto prevented stimulating debates in one of my favorite subjects by complaining about “how boring” or “how hard” they were, nobody took offense. But when I failed in one of those barbaric ball-tossing team games which unfortunately I had to participate in, everyone got upset because “WE LOST”. Oh noes. What a pity.

Edit: Oops, confused “physical ed” with “public ed”, ha.

11

I think it has some negative emotional impact as well. For starters the kid is forced to sort of accept a complete stranger as an “authority” figure. Then you are forced to put up with a group of thirty kids from the same birth year (also something which doesn’t exist in nature). Finally you’ve to be careful what you say, because it might contradict what the teachers believe and they can penalize you for this without being hold accountable for this. So I think it serves the purpose of turning people into herd animals or lemmings.

12

I, on the other hand, absolutely loved “PE”. It was, atleast in 9th grade, the only reason that I actually managed to get out of my bed and go to school. I especially enjoyed dodge-ball, which we played very regularly.

13

Not my experience IN public school, which was bad enough, but current experience with local schools. We have a multi-town High School which is about 30 years old and crumbling. Of course, the school committee wants a $5 mil upgrade. They recently paraded residents through the buildings to try to drum up sympathy. My thoughts are, “If this is what you allowed to happen to an existing building, why should I pay you for another one?” To top this off, a recent study shows enrollment will decline by 30% over the next ten years due to population shifts in the area.

I imagine these things are typical?

14

I’ve been to both public and private schools and I actually liked public school until they overcrowded it with the worst kids from the worst black schools in the state.

The first private school I went to was super liberal and I hated it. The second one was more of a “do whatever you feel like” kinda school and I loved it.

The cool thing about public school is that teachers didn’t care about me so they never bothered me about anything. If I wanted to do the work, I did it, if not, it didn’t get done. I liked that.

15

I had 2 teachers arrested for dealing meth to students after class shortly after i graduated.

16

I can’t remember exactly when this happened, may have been 3rd or 4th year in school. I got some maths homework from my teacher, it was some stuff to do with arithmetic or unknowns. I don’t really remember, but we were expected to do it with a calculator or at least show working. I did the homework in my head, and so there was no working. When I gave it in, the teacher didn’t believe me, mocked me in front of the class, and said I cheated by copying answers from someone else.

I remember being so disappointed; I think that was when I lost both my initial interest in maths (which never really recovered) and started skipping on doing homework too, a problem I had for years after that. Amazing how easily damaged children can be.

Come to think of it, I can’t remember that teachers name or face now…

17

… That’s a unproven accusation. All he could have said is that you didn’t comply with a part of the instruction.

That’s why I say: forced public schooling is child abuse.

Of course being an alien attacking/humiliating you in front of the class, such pertinent, unsavvy and onoxious and to some extent intrusive behaviour will lead to resentment. Looking back I think I could have dealt with the 12 year school knowledge content easily within 4 years. That makes up for more then 8 wasted years.

18

Well my bad experiences with public education would fill a War & Peace-sized novel. Let it just be said I ended up going from a sweet kid, top of my class to a rebellious flunkie and a drop out who measured among his greatest achievements the many and varied disciplinary measures taken against him in school.

Evening school on the other hand was the best year of my life. The difference was that there was a casual, business-like atmosphere where teachers were there simply to teach and no other reason, so they did not take it personally or treat you like a criminal in need of cracking down on if you failed to apply yourself to their subject to the best of your abilities or the like.

The contrast between freedom in the evening school and the oppression in the public school was so huge it must have played a big role in setting me on a path towards libertarianism. Because the evening school was organised by and utilised the resources of a regular public school (a different one) and followed the exact same curriculum. So the problem was obviously not in the teachers as such and it was not the curriculum. Making it obvious the cause of the tense atmosphere experienced previously stemmed from the very nature of a free-of-charge, compulsory, public institution.

19

Lol dude, this reminds me. It was the next math lesson after a test. I had a good feeling about the test since I had ‘solved’ three out of five problems and figured maybe I got a passing grade. After we got the test I saw that it was not to be as I had only correctly solved one of the problems. So just moments after the teacher, who had somewhat of a reputation of being a hardass and was to be our substitute for three or four months, approaches my desk and starts getting on my case for apparently having correctly solved only the most difficult problem on the test. When making the test he had imagined this was going to be the problem that was going to be the difference between the pupils getting the highest grade and the second highest grade, therefore in his mind I was mocking him by correctly solving this one but none of the others. He couldn’t explain how but apparently this made me some sort of an asshole who had it in for him. I didn’t know what he was talking about. Half the time I didn’t even know what lesson we were taking at the time so all the problems had seemed pretty damn difficult to me. I just gave him a look like you give a retarded circus act. A hint of amazement embedded in a bedrock of cool indifference. What was I gonna do? Promise him to next time screw up all the problems? Ask him to next time mark the problems not meant for the bad students? He walked away muttering that “he had been warned about me” before he took over the class. Unfreaking believable. My regular math teacher of two years and a half made sure to “warn” a substitute about me! What the hell for? I never had homework and rarely listened in class, but I never gave him any problems. I didn’t disturb his lessons, so what the fook was the problem?

20

I don’t know where to begin.

I was put in special education (ESL: English Second Language) from elementary through high school. I didn’t know any better and I never realized my potential. Yet, I always excelled on standardized test (especially in mathematics and physical sciences). I graduated from high school and joined the armed forces because this was one of the few options I had as a career. It was during my tenure in the military, I realized that I had the potential to excel (through hard work of course) and further my education (Ranger school has a way of installing intestinal fortitude deep within yourself).

I’ve since received two Bachelor of Science in molecular biology and chemistry (physical). Recently finished my Masters in Theoretical Chemistry and I have approximately 3 semesters left in my Ph.D Chemical Physics.

I can’t begin to tell you how much hard work I had to put forth to do well in college that I should of learned in high school. I slipped through the cracks and no one questioned or cared-central planning at its best. It was only when I realized that I was responsible for my future did I begin to change.