How should high schools function?

yeah dude that would be cool

>start gender segregating classes (like we did in the old days)
Why?

>put more emphasis on professionalism and discipline on both teachers and students (uniforms, timely attendance, proper etiquette, etc)
Why have uniforms? They promote conformity, not creativity.

>(what we have right now amounts to propaganda rather than actual history)
splain for a non-burger how this is

Most useful aspects of education take place during the elementary school years and a little in the middle school years. Later levels of compulsory education are just redundant and mainly for keeping teens occupied during the year.
The internet also fills in a lot of the gaps.

he's being retarded.

standards for education vary massively even between cities.

not him, but I went to an all-boys Catholic school with a mandatory uniform
whenever we had a non-uniform day (at a cost, raising funds for some charity or other) the whole day was more like a pageant show for all the lads with a peppering of sweaty fellas coming in in hoodies or pretending they didn't know it was a non-uniform day and coming in in their uniform due to being poor
bit shit, desu

World needs ditch diggers too, son.

>Most students are visual learners anyway and learn best from PowerPoints and the chalkboard through traditional lecturing and reading.

Lectures, yes. "Traditional" lectures, no. A teacher standing up and performing a routine for an hour is completely obsolete and arguably has been for centuries. (It dates from a time when books were so expensive that a university would only have one copy of each.)

"Lectures" should be short, preferably interactive experiences, that students watch on their own, frequently interrupted by applications of what has just been learned. The classroom should be more like "office hours" in university, where students go and ask questions about whatever they had trouble with (or just whatever interests them).

>aptitude test in 9th grade
>that + choice of student decides whether they want to take more vocational courses or go into STEM, liberal arts, etc
>increase teacher to student ratio
>less homework
>more resources going to improve Special Ed for the retard-lites (those in resource room with a chance of educational success)

>They promote conformity, not creativity.
Creativity exists in the mind, unlike clothing which exists on the body. In my experience, good clothing only shews an inauthenticity of character, and everyone wearing the same clothing allows this inauthenticity to be bypassed.

Japan weeaboo detected.

Canadian here, just graduated high school a few days ago.

First of all, all high schools should be charter schools funded through a voucher program at the state level.

There should be more electives and less required courses. Learning about sedimentary rocks was absolutely useless to me in grade 9.

Teachers should require at least a bachelors degree in the field they teach in. I am sick of seeing people straight out of teachers college trying to teach history. My teacher in grade 8 taught the 7 Years' War as "the french attacked the british so the british got pissed off and so the british attacked the french but then the french got pissed off." I shit you not that is what we learned.

Get rid of the whole "muh minorities in this time period" crap in history curriculums. It is counterproductive to the study of history. The history curriculum should have a firm basis in ancient history and where our culture originated from, how it got here, and how it evolved up until the present day. There is no room for irrelevant shit.

Math should be more intense. This past year I took a course on "Calculus and Vectors" when calculus is the only one applicable to any of the future endeavours of 99% of students taking it. Just go ore in depth into calculus and drop the useless baggage, it will be more beneficial for students in the future.

There should be less homework and more time to work on assignments in class. This way it is easier to get help from the teacher and students will have a more stable learning environment. More free time later is better. Either go through course material more quickly or give students a research assignment later to make upper material lost.

Make English stories read less depressing. I am sick of reading texts where people die or some shit like that. It is bad for the morale of the students, who already suffer form enough stress of being in high school.

1/2

Boot Camp like Sparta

that is probably because they could not wear uniforms for that day the entire year, everyone was excited for it.

nah they were all cunts honestly
>tfw dont live in burgerland so no school shootings

>implying we don't have enough of those already
I for one feel no contentment in having the poor around as a visible blight.

It really needs to be separated into a 3-track system: One track for people who do not intend to seek a college education that will be focused on practical skills and trades. One track for students who intend to seek a STEM degree that emphasizes rigorous math and science over other subjects. One track for students who intend to seek a non-STEM college degree that emphasizes reading/writing and philosophy.

One of the biggest problems with modern high school is the "this shit doesn't matter" problem. As it is now, about half of the students in any class will care absolutely nothing about the material being taught and know that it doesn't relate to anything they want to do in life. These bored, disgruntled students end up diminishing the learning of the students who actually are interested in the material, whether by disrupting class or just generally struggling with the material enough that the teacher has to slow down and cover less material to accommodate them.

If most students spent most of their day in classes that they enjoyed or at least understood were relevant to their educational goals, it would improve everyone's high school experience enormously.

thunderdome

Textbooks, aside from math textbooks, should be source books, not the entire fucking course. I am sick of teachers, especially history teachers, just assigning reading in the textbook without teaching us anything. Sourcebooks would be significantly more useful for research, using them as the entirety of course material is a waste of time when you could find more in-depth information on Wikipedia. In contrast, finding sources is harder, so this would be a significant improvement.

Standardized testing, except in mathematics, should be abolished, and it is just an example of laziness among educators. Essays should be written and marked, not based on what specific buzzwords they use but the actual content of the essays. Luckily I only ever had to write one of these in high school, and half of it was government propaganda.

More languages should be offered and a person must be required to take two. I say this as a person who had to take French, Hebrew, and English and was shit at all three of them. Learning a second language is integral to thriving in an increasingly globalized world. English, Mandarin, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Spanish, German, Arabic, Japanese, and Russian should all be offered, and if there is no teacher available, then they should be taken online.

Bring back home economics it is extremely useful.

Get rid of the requirements to take arts courses (music, drama, art, etc) in all of high school it is a waste of time. If people don't want to be cultured then just let them.

high school history, social studies, and english teacher here. (new zealand).

schools should run pretty much the way they do here. there's a reason so many british and american teachers immigrate here.

this thread is pretty depressing. I hope most of you never get any kind of legislative or executive power over education

>high school history, social studies, and english teacher here.
u a female?

It would be great if we could have classes on constitutional rights and it would also help to have a course on economics. Also high schools should spend more time instructing students on financial literacy than forcing them to learn increasingly advanced literature, geometry and pre calc.
Excessive homework is the number one cause of students failing to keep up though.

no. history/social studies has an oversupply of teachers, and since most teachers are women, women find it quite difficult to get hired for this subject area.

Huh? My high school made everyone take a class on civics and a class on economics and personal finance in senior year.

Like said, no two highschools are alike, especially in the US.

It should be spread throughout the school years rather than in just the senior year since many drop out before then.

>It really needs to be separated into a 3-track system: One track for people who do not intend to seek a college education that will be focused on practical skills and trades. One track for students who intend to seek a STEM degree that emphasizes rigorous math and science over other subjects. One track for students who intend to seek a non-STEM college degree that emphasizes reading/writing and philosophy.

This times ten. Earlier education should be rigerous enough to expose children to enough ideas to show them avenues of education, and later education should be flexible enough to deal with how different those paths can be. Those three groups should be taking drastically different courses.

>more about learning
And how do you decide what they should learn

>entrusting children with the responsibility of what track their lives will take while their brains are still in development.

>make it more about actual learning
agree

Learning and growth as a person should be valued as a goal within itself as opposed to a nonessential byproduct of getting a grade. If properly implemented, it might even help with the "this is useless" dilemma as learning would be the goal rather than a mindless push forward to nonspecific success. Remove standardized testing and make high school more about finding the right path for the individual instead of trying to funnel them in to college to figure it out there and regarding those who do not go by the "correct" path as failures.

Also, as a personal gripe, don't punish smart students for not doing the homework if they don't need it to understand the class, especially if the ace all the tests.

Most of your recommendations are impractical or make a mountain out of a mole hill that's why schools don't use them.

This 3-track system would work if colleges weren't anti-intellectual job factories.

So people should be specializing as early as 15?

What 15 year old had any fucking idea what he wanted to do in his adult life? Specializing that early would just cut people off from any experience outside their specialization as well. That is, if they even get a choice rather than their parents deciding for them. At least students having an opportunity to be bored in classes they don't like will tell them what they don't like, rather than them not ever even being exposed to it.

There are enough intolerably narrowminded jackasses who single mindedly pursue their one thing with absolutely no perspective. They're also usually the sorts who think their chosen profession is the center of the world.

You make some good points, especially about vouchers. But language is very difficult for many students, and many people around the world speak English now precisely because the world is increasingly globalized.

we got this system in france, it simply doesn't work. there is a multitude of paths a student can take to get his baccalaureat or an equivalent. In theory , it should be good.

In reality, the french society is so focused on higher studies that every single parent stupidly pushes their child to pursue a STEM i school cursus because universities here and around the world are less lenient for students coming from other fields. heck, i saw an uni refuse my candidacy because i took a litterature path (while having good grades) while accepting studens from the stem path (in which there were no fucking class preparing the students for what's to come in that uni.)

so yeah nah, the three branch system won't work.

Segregate classes (but not schools) by sex. Teach boys the way boys prefer to be taught, and girls the way they prefer to be taught.

you sound like the kid during free dress days who come dressed in cringy clothing like a three piece suit and didn't realize that free dress day is meant to flex siq eshay clothing with nike air maxes.

An aptitude test that forecasts the future for a 15 year old is a horrible idea. The amount of career changes someone that age has is enormous and many pick up their game during senior year.

Yes.

You'll be picking a college major in 3 years, user. I'd hope teenagers could at least know whether they want to go to college or not, and if so, whether they liked science.

>humanitiesfag getting absolutely BTFO by STEM master race
Fucking lel.

I didn't put out a platform buddy. I'm not against a 17 year old changing their mind.

You're asking them to make that decision with all the knowledge of a middleschool education. What did you learn in middleschool that made you so well informed that you knew you wanted to pursue a career in it?

Most people haven't figured it out after their 3 years of actually being introduced to the subjects in high school.

As I mentioned, I say this as someone who learned 3 and was so terrible at all of them that I just left high school fluent in only English, my first language. I learned French between grades 1-9 and Hebrew between grades 1-12, can't really speak either of them. Still think it is important though.

Then make it the last two years of high school. But pre-college specialization is key.

Specializing ever later is largely why we're witnessing the devaluation of ever higher levels of education. A few centuries ago, a teenager would be apprenticed in the career he'd work his whole life and wouldn't need any higher education. Then you got a generalist high school and suddenly people needed college degrees. Then you got generalist college and now we need graduate degrees.

Better to push back against generalism. I'm not talking about picking a narrow major in high school, just a vague differentiation between life paths. Are you really saying you couldn't figure out whether you wanted to pursue a higher education until high school was over, and if you did, whether you liked Mathematics better than History and English?

I hope you're ready for gender wars to be ten times worse than they are today.

Fuck off canuck

> shut the building
> government designed online courses (all kinds of material - audio, video, slides, pdf - so you can choose your desired method of learning)
> choose the subjects you like
> can still lurk courses that you don't have its prerequisite (no password or bullshit like that, anyone can access whether they are student or not)
> library style buildings for self-study so kids who don't have internet at home can still have access to courses
> have clubs (chess, drama, table tennis, anime etc.) so kids can still socialize through something they like to do. Those clubs can be in parks, libraries and sort.
> Homework submitted through internet.
> Only one test per course at the end of the semester. Everyone gets the same test even if they are in a different highschool. Tests will be in a pre determined place, like 2000 students in a room. But of course, since it is highschool most courses would favor a non-test approach to determine if student passes or not.
> people that you will never meet will mark your homeworks, and tests will be multiple choice so a machine will read the answers. If a specific homework is easy to mark it can even be marked by crowd source.

So, in short:
> no teachers
> no high school building
> no lockers
> no textbooks
> no attendance
> no bullies
> no uniforms
> no lunch boxes
> no hierarchy
> no teams (kids are encouraged to join local sports team)
> no cheerleaders
> no thought control
> no dark sarcasm
> no classroom lol

also ofc contents of the courses need some touch

I want you to be the president.

I like the fact that in Japan, students clean the classrooms before leaving.

I also like how some highschool, whose name I'm afraid I no longer remember, decided to get rid of the "years", thus making a more flexible curriculum making use of the many tools available today. In a way, it seems that most schools teach in the very same way they taught decades ago.

Textbooks are written to meet the curriculum requirements for a handful of large states and Texas tends to fuck it up pretty seriously for everyone.

I believe that the current system of high school, systemically (but not intentionally) destroys our capacity for creativity. It happens primarily because we've grown up in a system of public education that's mostly dominated by economic utility; aka 'What contributes to a job'. I believe students are benignly steered away from things they're good at in favour of this economic utility, and this is true of great writers, artists and actors, whose skills aren't able to monetized easily.

The reason for this is that the current education system employed by most western countries was created in the economic circumstances of the Industrial Revolution, and in the intellectual culture of the Enlightenment. Early public education was modelled around an Industrial imperative - a very broad-based system of elementary education (basics for blue-collar workers); and a smaller, more elite university sector laid across the top of it (for lawyers and government-types and doctors), with other specialists like grammar schools in the middle for white-collar/admin work. This structure shows, too. We do things process children based on how old they are; we assume that all 15 year-olds operate at the same level. It's a factory line. It even has bells to signal its start and end.

Cross that with the intellectual model of the mind of the enlightenment - that real 'intelligence' consisted purely in a capacity for an understanding of things like the deductive reasoning, the Classics, mathematics, pure science - things that we think of quite strictly as Academic Ability, and you have an issue where our current system still organises people into 'academic' and 'non-academic' lines. Vocational training is 'not as good' as academic, theoretical degrees, because they're more academic and are therefore inherently better people.

Children have access to incredible amounts of information. Why are we trying to tie their thought processes along archaic concepts and outdated structures of education?

And further to the point, school is mostly regarded as irrelevant to university beyond a series of marks; and university itself regarded as irrelevant to one's job beyond a series of marks.

Why are we doing this to kids?

>t. Ken Ronbinson

Because we can't think of a better way to sort our worker drones.

Organize the classes and curriculum based on IQ testing

I thought I hated science because I had shitty science teachers, and didn't go back to college till I was 22. Turns out I liked science, and things came out pretty okay.

Yup he's retarded

>IQ testing
is literally a meme

>>start gender segregating classes (like we did in the old days)

What if I self identify as a genderfluid white rhinoceros, shitlord?

If it ain't broke don't fix it

It is broken, though. The Finnish school system outclasses every other school system on the planet. You won't find many teacher droning on for hours on end there.

Reminder that every nation needs lots of losers for asswipe labor.

I think we should reform schools so that they're not neccessarily more accessible, but less confined to work-ethic and more about teaching kids to LEARN shit. The earlier we can get them settled into their personal growth, the earlier we're able to teach them about opportunities the real world provides, which in turn allows them to make earlier (but not binding) decisions.

I attended a private school. The amount of pretense involved in the school is astounding - they pretend that it's their tradition and structure that gives their students an education that's a cut above everyone else's, but in reality the difference lies in the teachers and the structure of the curriculum based on ability; not 'they are this old so that's what they do.'

Done correctly, I believe we could eliminate the need for higher education entirely.

I know for a fact that this is already done in Germany and the Scandinavian countries, but not along the lines of IQ testing.

IQ testing, as any serious academic (ironic that I use that term after my other longpost) will tell you, is not an adequate measure of intelligence in any realistic sense of the word, and purely measures your aptitude for things like problem-solving and recognition of patterns. It's practical, but it fails to serve as an accurate measure of creativity or social intelligence. Grading children on this score alone neglects other important deficiencies of mental ability, too (like autistic children; children with learning difficulties, etc). It also creates a lot of divides between people who have the ability and people who don't, so I'm not sure it's the best way for things to be.

Eliminate midterms and finals entirely and make all testing cumulative.

Pre-record lectures and make them readily available. The advantage of being physically in a space with other students/knowledgeable staff lay in the ability to quickly and efficiently engage, so leave the info-dump word-vomiting to the net and use school hours as an opportunity to ask questions of staff.

No homework. Weekly testing, at minimum. Make example questions readily available. Create a forum for students, teachers, and intermediary tutors to all collaborate and analyze and chat with each other.

Stop wasting everyone's time with superfluous coursework for the sake of 'exposure'. Most people don't need calculus or earth science. Offer focused courses in high school specifically- architecture, computer sciences, psychology, whatever, but no contextless nonsense.

Ideally, and this may well be a pipe dream, but make college free or significantly reduce the cost. Stop teaching unrelated general-knowledge coursework in undergraduate programs- a degree should be about its subject, nothing else. Make it easy (financially) to switch majors.

That's basically the gist.

>He finished his understanding of long division in his senior year.

Considering how automation is lauded by you reactionaries that may not be the case much longer.

what would force students to learn?

...

Then you realize Finland is a small, nearly homogeneous society.

on another board.

Separating schools is a good idea. Over here, you have three different tracks in secondary schools: a low one that is supposed to focus on practical jobs like plumber or carpenter. It lasts four years and in the end you'll be able to enter a low tier college. Then there's the second track: a mid tier one. It allows you to enter a high level college, maritime college for example. Many of these high level colleges also offer courses you'd be able to do at a university, but simply at a lower level of difficulty. This track lasts five years. Finally, the third track is the highest level and is geared towards kids wanting to attend university. It lasts six years. The best part is that schools are often separated: you have plenty of schools that only offer the second and third tracks. To put it bluntly, you'll be able to attend a school that doesn't have the scum from the bottom rungs of society that don't want to learn and just fuck it up for everyone. Makes life easier for those students actually interested in getting an education.
Continued.

The three tracks themselves are also subdivided in different tracks called subject profiles. There are four of those: one focusing on social studies and the humanities. This is the easiest. The second one is the same as the first, but it has subjects about economics, and maths. The third subject profile is focused on health and nature, includes chemistry and biology, and is necessary if you want to study medicine. The last subject profile is a true STEM profile, with physics, biology, and chemistry. Usually, this profile allows you to go to any university you desire, provided you have good grades.

Up to the third year, everyone follows the same subjects. Students pick these profiles in their third year and start following them in year four and up. By then, you should have a pretty good idea of where your interests lie. If you don't, but have the brains, teachers will recommend you to pick the STEM profile. Besides that, you can always swap your subject profile later.

I'm honestly satisfied with this system, and I think the US could benefit enormously if they implement a similar system.