[a_Guest03]

I wrote a poignant complaint against the students, teachers, and parents involved with the United States public and private education systems. It got erased when it asked for my login. I guess I should write more quickly to avoid logouts.

I went to several school systems in several cities. I attended private school in Japan with princes of the world, from Indian rajahs to Saudi Arabian princes, to Austrian upper class. It sounds more interesting than it was when I was six. The Catholic and British school system was full of caring teachers, who were intelligent and good with students. We learned from up to 4 teachers every day. The system was rounded, and the students were all motivated and pushed to become as educated as possible.

In that system, my grades ranged from good to bad. The teachers never curved. 69% was an F, and an F was an F. At worst, I had gotten two D's, and I was the shame of the family. I had earned those D's, and I'm glad now that they didn't just give me a C and move me along the line.

I moved to California when I was ten, and attended public school. The teachers assumed I was stupid because I would spell colour and honour and behaviour and capitalise with the proper British spelling. My math teachers used different techniques to teach and were about one year behind us at my other school. The teachers cared about their jobs, and cared very little about the students' educational benefit. My grades were always cushioned there, and my fellow students' grades were adjusted as well. A girl who had misspelled a word out of every three she wrote was getting B's in spelling and grammar.

I moved from the public school back to the private school again, and was still in California. I had only attended a year and a half in public schools, and was largely bored. In my new private school, I was probably half a year behind, and caught up quickly. The material was in the books, even if the teachers didn't cover it. My grades weren't inflated, but the material was less cumbersome. My grades improved. The teachers placed me in advanced courses, which was a surprise to me.

I moved after half a year in California private schools at the age of twelve, and I finished my private junior high school in Dayton, Ohio. The private school I attended in Ohio was very elitist, and as a "foreigner", I was rejected immediately. This came as a surprise, because the princes and rajahs in my Japanese school were less uppity than Ohio's upper middle class. In the Ohio private school system, I found that infrastructure stifled the learning abilities of the students. Many of the students were very motivated to become educated, but grade inflation and curving had placed many intelligent students at the dumber end of the education system.

I scored a perfect math SAT in my junior year, after two years of disappointing my parents with pSAT's of 129 (1290 equivalent SAT). My overall score was 1490, 800 math, 690 verbal. I didn't bring a calculator, and was amazed that they were even allowed to be used. What was the purpose of first through fifth grade math if one never needed it? The verbal test was challenging, but I knew that I had everything but one question right on the math test. I asked my dad about it in the car on the way home, and he verified that I had marked it wrong. Apparently, they had curved the test by eleven questions when I took it, but only for math. If they had curved it only for verbal, I would have had a 1590. Curving always seems to punish my grades to make a better bell curve. I never understood the grading policy on that damn test.

This is where infrastructure of school becomes a problem. This is where rules get in the way of education. I had dropped from advanced math courses to the regular courses. The teacher of several of the advanced courses hated me because a rumour went around that I had hacked all the school computers and planted two viruses. He was the school computer programming teacher as well as the advanced math teacher. He made my life hell one year, and I dropped to regular to avoid him.

I earned a B+ in my regular math class junior year, and tried to sign up for AP Calculus the next year. With an 800 math SAT without a calculator, I thought I was a shoe-in. The teacher wouldn't sign me off. The one working the sign-in was the programming teacher. He stonewalled my attempts to waiver in.

In between my experiences in Japan and California and Ohio, and my sisters' experiences in public schools in Ohio, I learned a few things.

1. Education takes more than just two people, a student and a teacher. Blanket statements blaming the other for every shortcoming will only show the immaturity of the parties involved. The community is important for shaping how the average student will come out of an education system.

2. Learning and education are very separate entities. I feel that I'm one of the most scholarly pupils from my high school. It had little to do with the education system there. I learned on my own time, while ignoring the teacher, or by reading the books at home or at lunch. Teachers were only necessary to tell me which books to read.

3. Grades have no indication of progress. I was a 2.0 student for quite some time. I could school any kid in 90% of my classes at the material we had covered. Getting lower than a 90% on a test usually indicated that the class average was below 50%. Grades are inflated and deflated to keep a teacher employed. Often, I would find my extra credit marked as 0/0, and my final grade a B+, shy of an A by only 2 points. Grade manipulation is why our education system is failing most of all.

Coursework grades and testing grades should be separated to show course progress and course effectiveness. If they had separated the two, one could easily see that I was bored, that my homework was 0% for the quarter, and that I still earned a low B or a high C, with test grades in the high A range. It would show that I was either lazy or bored, and that the material had been sufficiently covered to educate me. How can you tell the difference between a low testscore B and a high testscore B? Wouldn't you want to be able to know which workers are smart and lazy, and which are hardworking and dumb? Machiavelli (unsure of spelling) once separated his lieutenants into smart and lazy, and smart and hardworking; dumb and lazy, and dumb and hardworking. I would separate those under me similarly. Some work is best done by the clever and lazy; some is best done by the dumb and hardworking.

4. Education systems pander to the least common denominator. In Japan, we were all forced to pursue education because we were all very capable. Teachers were aware that it cost enough money to go there that most students were either given a scholarship, indicating potential, or that their parents were so wildly successful that the children would be forced to be as well. In California, the school system slowed down significantly. I read the textbooks to educate myself, because the teacher couldn't occupy me. While this is beneficial to the least common denominator, the intelligent students are forced to fend for themselves. They often become so separated that they become discipline problems.

5. Education systems are products of the community. The only reason the local high schools are acclaimed is because the teachers and children are motivated. We have two public high schools here, which are among the top rated in the country. The students come from affluent families, who usually earned the money and moved there. The homes have a low divorce rate, and the students are on average quite intelligent. Good teachers go there because good students go there. Bad teachers are usually identified by the students and the principal. Because there are no major stumbling blocks to ruin a child's motivation here, many of the children push each other to achieve.

In California, at the one "common" public school I went to, the students worried about their parents' jobs, or divorce. They weren't as concerned with school as they were with security. The tests in that school were beyond easy. The grades still fit the bell curve. Sometimes that makes me worry.

6. Society is full of the undereducated, and they don't care. We keep lowering our standards, and what we will accept. I know that correcting Mattmeck won't make him a better speller. He won't be able to use intuition to know which words are french, and how he should assume they are spelled. I can't teach him that by correcting him. What I can do, however, is make a stink from time to time, to indicate that I still think spelling is important. If it isn't, we should wipe it from our education. I don't think enough people make a stink. I don't think enough people are at that level of education where they feel comfortable making a stink. Society as a whole is undereducated, and we can blame students and teachers alike. At some point, we as a whole stopped caring. Throwing more money at the problem with education programs won't solve the problem. The problem is us.

7. Americans are stupid. Sorry. It's true. I've seen the rest of the world, and much of Asia has us by the balls. Africa may not have country infrastructure, but their pupils are very smart, and the education systems are more rigorous. On top of that, the kids WANT to learn! Among the U.S. upperclass and the princes and rajahs, I'd say we're probably tied. I would think that we would be as smart or smarter than the common citizen in much of Europe. Asia has us bad, though. You should see those Japanese and Chinese kids study. They make bugs look lazy. In between Kumon (math cram) and english and science, they work so crazy hard. They're no smarter than us, but I would say that many of the young kids make our young ones look very stupid.

8. The true failure of an education system to me can be represented by this example:

Every day, 25 students pass by a sign, written by the teacher, which includes 3 spelling errors in 3 words.

How can we expect more from our children than what we give them as examples?

I recently turned 22, for the record.