Kid Suspended for Refusing to Answer Exam Question

I personally can't stand the No Child Left Behind Act, or standardized tests, or anything of the sort. I can barely stomach public schools as a whole. My girlfriend and I got in a huge argument because I saw a campaign sign on someone's front lawn that said "No Excuses! Invest in Public Schools!" and laughed derisively and said "how about NOT."

You'd think a principal would be a little more grown up, and not so childish that she can't find out WHY the kid wouldn't answer the question, and try to understand from his point of view. She shouldn't be in any leadership position at all, period.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by RacinReaver

I'm actually curious, what's so bad about public schools?

Well, I suppose it's subjective, really. I like public schools in that there's a LOT of social interaction with many diverse types of people, but most of the public school systems (high school, anyway) that I've seen or been in have had a few nasty flaws.
One is that the classes are too large for the teacher. 30+ kids in the same classroom with one teacher is, unfortunately, probably NOT going to help them all learn at the same speed. It's been shown that some children learn faster or slower than others, and placing them in a class with 30 other kids isn't going to change that, especially when the blocks of time that have been allocated for each class are too short for the teacher to give personal attention to each child. Now, I know what most people would bring up here in reference to my last post, and yes, I agree, if public schools received more funding, they could probably build more classrooms and hire more teachers. That makes sense.
But the second flaw is that the teachers are usually NOT proficient in what they're trying to teach. To put it simply, 80% of all math and science teachers at my senior high school were first and foremost SPORTS COACHES. They also taught Driver's Education classes. They would teach classes out of the textbooks. They would answer questions from the back of the book. And sometimes when the back of the book was wrong due to a typo or something of the sort, I would have to correct them. A student correcting a teacher shouldn't happen THAT OFTEN. Now, once again, yes if they had more funding, they could probably hire BETTER teachers.
But here a problem still remains, the third and biggest one that my school had, which was the administration. Every GOOD teacher we had (and I'm not talking just "fun" teachers, I'm talking teachers that made you want to learn and inspired you, which is what teachers are supposed to do) was FIRED, or was refused a pay raise while one of the ubiquitous sports coaches got his salary practically doubled.

My father taught junior and senior high for about 13 years, and finally ended up quitting due to the politics and shenanigans of the school administration board. He swore if he ever got into teaching again, he would get certain things in writing from the board, before even beginning the job. That's how bad it was in his eyes.

I had it fairly good, in my opinion. I was homeschooled, excelled in math (completing Geometry by the time I was 9, and Algebra by the time I was 12 - learned a bit of pre-cal and trig in between those years as well) and english, though my grammar, punctuation and capitalization all speak contrary to that, I'm sure. When I was 13 I decided I wanted to go to high school, as a 10th-grader. So I did. I fit right in socially, which, in retrospect, was odd - I was always a shy kid, but I felt more at home with people 3-5 years older than me. Then again, it's always been that I felt more at home with friends that were older. Everyone thought of me as "the smart kid" as well, and I had quite a few girls asking me to help them with their homework, which I never took them up on because I was too shy the first two years of school.

I do blame the shyness partially on homeschooling, though. I had very little social interaction, though the interaction I did have has garnered me lifelong friends that I still regularly communicate with to this day. Besides which, a lot of people who go to public schools are very shy anyway, so it's not all the fault of isolation per se.

So overall, public schools are OKAY, but I feel it should be an alternative, rather than the norm. Homeschooling, being taught one-on-one with a parent or guardian, has consistently shown (at least around here) more rapid education. Some would argue that it is also far more biased, but I doubt that, considering how biased teachers can be despite the rules, and besides, kids are going to be influenced by their parents anyway. At least this way you know your mom and dad are actually smart.

There's nowhere I can't reach.