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brainwashing - to mislead the innocent with mistruths and assumations. Or to indoctrinate the ignorant with your way of thinking.

It's true, education IS required for people to do readin, writin & arithmatic... but there are some teachers and some school policies that hinder a student's inquisitive mind rather than promoting it. I, for one, will be happy when we have a more customized education system that can fit a student's interests and possibly support home-schooling more fully. Well, there are some people that SHOULDN'T home school, but it would definitely help build bonds within the family if the family learned things together and shared ideas.

I had too many arguements with close-minded teachers with a power-trip. I remember asking my science teacher about black holes and all the odd possibilities that were possible from them. He was clueless, uninterested and actually tried to punish me with mundane-ness for going outside the lines. I was also reading Scientific American at the time... while I think he was reading Sports Illustrated. Also had a 2nd grade teacher who was pissed off that I bought 5th grade level books because it would put me "too far ahead" of the other students. Well... my fellow students all borrowed the books and we completely floored her b/c she was teaching us such low-level d**k & jane crap.

The education system is too rigid and built around the "average" student, completely ignoring any child who actually has an inquisitive mind and wants to advance their knowledge. Must move at a snails pace... and those kids who have problems learning compared to the "average" kid are also left out... often b/c they learn in a different manner than other kids, or they just need more coaching. My mom was a special ed teacher and used to get really annoyed at how both advanced and challenged students were ignored by our cookie-cutter education system.

Starlock, you bring up a point. I was raised in Michigan, and have completed two years of Illinois schooling. Neither of these states has a high education priority. Hell, I doubt Govs. Granholm and Blagojevich even really give a damn. I've got one year of high school remaining, and then it's off to college, and a real education for me.

I've had some decent teachers, but most of them have been crap. I have to thank ochimaru for defining brainwashing where I couldn't find the words. I was in a program for "gifted" students, but considering that only one or two of them even compared to me in terms of intelligence and personality...it wasn't worth it. Half of the time, "gifted" students in said programs aren't truly gifted at all. The true genius lies in the subconscious, I believe.

And God forbid you should be slower than the average. You'll be slapped in LD classes and forgotten just like that. The education system is based around the "average" student.

I used to find time to sleep a few minutes at the beginning of tests, at the end of tests, and in the middle of tests, while my classmates were working diligently the entire period. They all thought I was an underachiever, but when the tests came back, who sat on top? Me, that's right.

And I don't think they let students vote in school board elections. I'll vote after I get my own home, et cetera. I've got other concerns than education right now.

Here's a fun fact: in the US, usually people go to public schools and save up money for college, right? Here in Brazil, it happens the exact opposite way: most people go to private school - public schools are utterly precarious, alas, mostly (if not all, in most cases) students of the public system are much less fortunate; poor, if you will - and attend to public colleges, which are quite satisfatory.

Anywho, back to the subject at hand. If the US is anything like Brazil, and I'm quite sure it is (at least in this matter), the big problem in schools is not the fact that the teachers are under qualified or unwilling to teach properly, but that the students - most of them - don't want to learn. They do everything during classtime, except pay attention to what's being taught, and get mad when the teacher calls their attention.

But, of course, there are the bad teachers. The thing is, you can't just sit around ranting about how annoying and incompetent said teacher is. First step would be trying to talk to the teacher to let them know what's bothering you. If that doesn't work, I'm here assuming the classes have someone to represent them; if so, request the representative to take this matter to the principal, if not, do it yourself.

So, basically, what am I saying? Here we have a saying that goes "When one doesn't want, two don't fight". If the students (or most of them) don't want to learn, the teachers won't give a rats a** about improving their classes.

Hmm. I agree that the method of education (in the public school system, anyway) is outdated. However, what do you think should be changed about how children are taught?

I don't think that it's the school that "isn't working," but rather the newer generations of children. There are many differences between kids who are growing up now and those who were growing up in the 19th-Century. One major difference (and a problem!) is that modern kids don't seem to have the motivation to do well. There are many bright and intelligent students who are lazy and slack off, letting themselves do poorly.

It's because of the changes in each generation that the old system is outdated. It no longer functions properly because the people in the system have outgrown it.

Public School (or even Private/home schooling because its basically the same material) is neither mediocre nor brainwashing. The only reason that it would be such is because the students do not put forth the effort, or do not feel comfortable/are not encouraged to put forth the effort. Most students, as was stated, go through school taking in information and taking it as truth. I had a discussion with a gentleman a few weeks ago about 'information'. We both agreed that a majority of our 'information' could have been tweeked to match what we want to believe. Are the World Wars taught the same in America as they are in Japan, Germany, England, France, etc? I highly doubt it. Until we can gather all forms of information, we should NEVER take anything as true fact! Isn't that what philosophy is about? Unfortunately, we don't really learn this concept until we reach college. We do need education, and presently, schools are the most organized institution to get it from. It should only be a start though. We should not just leave it at that. I had a professor who would instruct us on his subject, then he would go home and watch the discovery channel and hope that nothing he stated in class was contradicted on there! If it was, he would come back to class the following day and explain, whether anyone had seen it or not, that he had known one thing to be this way, and that the Discovery Channel stated it another way. He would even check other sources to see if maybe there was just a change in theories or evidence! He was also probably one of my best college professors thus far because of that. My high school AP Biology instructor pushed us to look things up for ourselves. He stressed the importance of research not only because we would have to do it in college, but also because it would benefit us personally if we ever wanted to be more than just everyday bums going to work. We went so far in that class to even discussing how to create a working time maching (which really doesn't have anything to do with AP Biology), and how to cure AIDS (and here we always ran into ethical problems of testing...). For me, these are the best kind of professors. The ones who actually CARE about their student's futures as functioning, THINKING, problem solving humans. These are the professors who care about their pay, but care about making the world a smarter place to live in more. It really depends on who is instructing, and who is learning. It is definitly a two-way street here.

I'm sorry.