Education

Really?! Three-four month summer! We get 6 weeks max here...

That just blows my mind about how much that affects the time to complete the child's education, the teacher's period of no income, the parent's time caring for their children whilst having to go to work, etc, etc, etc.

Where do you live?

Oh soz, I'm from England. I thought that would show on my profile down the side...

Ok. But after our 12 month summer, it is pretty much a straight shot from Sept. to June. One week break for Christmas and New Year and another week in the spring. Thats about it.

It's not underfunded, but mismanaged. Pressure by both internal and external events have made the U.S. education system feel that it needs to catch up to what it feels are good standards. For example, The No Child Left Behind strategy cause the US to pour millions down the drain for nothing, because we felt that too many of our students were failing compared to other countries. The problem with that is that all of our education systems are different. For example, I have been told that you are not held back a grade in the UK if you fail. I don't know if this is true, and I would be glad to be corrected. In Japan, the high school you go to matter when going to college. Don't go to the right high school, don't go to the right college. So, many Japanese just don't go. Not listed as dropped out, and not listed as not going. That fact I heard from the horse's mouth. Because of that difference, comparison is illegitimate and not factual. The problem with the US educational system is that we are not satisfied.

My physics teacher and another physics teacher calculated the average amount of hours they work for school during and after the school day. He told me that it averaged out to about the same as if they worked only during the school day for the entire year.

No that's right, we aren't kept behind a year. What happens is that you get a grade, no matter if that's an A* or a G (the lowest grade without getting a U; ungraded), usually through many different tasks you have to do throughout the two years of higher education - years 10 and 11 (14 - 16 year olds). There are plenty of opportunities for retakes (although you do have to pay the exam board a resitting fee sometimes) and there are also some takes that are pretty much guaranteed or are piss-easy. All of this contributes a certain percentage to your overall grade. In some subjects, such as Music GCSE, the final exam is only worth 20% of the overall grade.

Whilst this is good for some subjects, it makes other's a whole lot more difficult to teach, and restricts the amount of time spent on all. One of the more problematic occurrences with this is when your teacher does not explain the task properly and springs it on you with no warning. This happened during my Statistics GCSE when my teacher announced that there was "Controlled Coursework" to do and told us to get on with it with little explanation of what criteria we were supposed to meet and what the end result needed to look like.

I have to say, I like the idea of splitting up the GCSE, however there comes a point where there are so many different things to think about when you are taking around 11 different GCSE subjects at a time that you can't keep track of all of them, especially when there are 'difficult' tasks that are not explained properly, and 'stupid' tasks that bear very little relation to the subject you are taking (just Google 'previous Science in the News questions' for an example of these)

It seems to me that the system is set up to make the schools look good by providing easy tests. But could you explain more about these GCSE. I am too lazy to look it up.

Very well, I will explain. GCSE's (General Certificates of Secondary Education) are our standard end-of-school qualification; we all leave school after Year 11 in England and Wales, year 12 in Northern Ireland or S4 in Scotland (all of these are ages between 15 and 16), with our GCSE's or equivalent basic qualifications. These can help to boosting our salaries, achieving the job that we desire (although it would be a fairly basic job if you were just going on GCSE's), or allowing us to study the subjects of our choice at college (which many people call sixth form). From college we can achieve A level qualifications, which can be further broken down into AS and A2; the first and second years. After this comes university with a harder to describe system of years and qualifications toward certain subjects. As with most other places, the more advanced the qualification, the more you get paid, the higher ranking job you can achieve from beginning work, and the more likely it is that you can move onto the next form of education. Of course, these are just the standard qualifications; the are a whole range of alternatives from high school to university that usually consist of a focus toward practical applications, or a set boundary of subjects to take which are usually very demanding, but pay off the most.

Any more specific questions I will be happy to answer

Oh and yes; much of the new move toward Controlled Coursework and Timed Tasks (from normal Coursework in some subjects and just the Exam in others) is in my opinion partly to make the qualification easier to get due to it being divided up across the two years rather than all at the end, but also to make it look like the government (and the last few) are performing well and that the change was needed to benefit the new generations passing through the system. I personally do not believe many of the changes made to numerous subjects are beneficial to everyone, although they were beneficial to me as I was (and still am) terrible at the build up to exams, as was my performance in many of them.

I have to say that some of the best organised of these are IT and Music, which have a good division of the GCSE into 4 and 5 parts respectively. Others have seen a little bit too much 'modernisation' such as English, which has so many small parts (some of which only count for 5%, but take a decent length of tie to complete) that it seems there is no end when you are studying it...

I will assume you pay taxes that the government uses to fund these schools. Public schools in America are paid for by the surrounding community. Problem is that worse communities get worse schools. You legally have to start school at age 5-6. Elementary school is grades 1-4 usually. Then middle school which is grades 5-8 usually (can change depending on district). Then high school is grades 9-12. most graduates are 18 years old. College and university (same thing in America, also are optional) are not free. One huge money pit. There are cheap colleges that are good but the really good ones are pretty expensive. Can be between $20,000 and $40,000 a year. (14,500 and 30,000 euros) After you complete that, depending on what you studied, you may have to go to graduate school for more learning.

Private schooling is available optionally for grades 1-12, but you have to pay.

I am a public middle school student from a pretty wealthy area in new york state, and what I think is a biggest issue, at least in our area, is that some of the curriculum is really unnescsary, and if you ask anybody who goes to my school, they will tell you the same thing. A lot of things, mainly in math and science, are stuff that people will never use in their future career. If a student wants to be a culinary expert, I don't think that they need to know the different forms that rocks are in. Sure, some people will end up using some of this information, but important life skills that you will need are never taught in high schools such as understanding human natures and personalitys. And the entire fact that this is happening demotivates the students even more. There should be some more choices when it comes to classes, or at least teach more useful things that people might need to use in their future college and post college life. But that is just my opinion.

And you make a very valid point. The thing is, people in this age group don't understand this, and it just makes them not as motivated to do well and performance drops.

And that is why they don't make the rules...

Seriously, if people don't understand it, there's nothing to be done actually. I understand EXACTLY what you're talking about (and I'm sure Pedro3131 also does), but one day you and your friends will look back and conclude it was actually the best for you, and maybe you will even develop some interest in areas you hate now, when you are not 'forced' to learn it...

All of this is supported by a low population and exorbitantly high taxation, tradeoffs which I would certainly consider undesirable. Public services only get you so far—consumer goods are where most people prefer to spend their earnings. Not to mention that all of the Scandinavian countries experience very low immigration and have seen shrinking economies for some time.

And privately owned schools in the US still dominate tertiary and quaternary education; primary schooling does little but prepare students for higher education.