Personally I feel PE makes kids dumb. It places too much emphasis on self-esteem and it has this bad attitude towards failure,. PE tends to think that failure is bad and kids should never have to go through it but all this has done is made kids dumber and made them less confident .
Here is a personal story, I was publicly education however in grade 5 I got sent to a private institution. My parents would pay about 10-20 dollars an hour and I went for 4 hours a week. It was much harder than the stuff you did in school and it seemed harsher in that you could fail their exams. When I first started I sucked at maths and did poorly in my exams by the end of the 2 years I ended up surprising myself when I saw how good I was at it.
I learned more in the 2 years of tutor than I did at school. They focused on quality, not quantity, so you went for less hours but got more out if it. They were teaching us things far ahead of the school curriculum but it was not tough or obsessive as some people might say.
By PE i MEANT public education, sorry guys
cupcake: what are some bad experiences you have had with public education
what are some bad experiences you have had with public education
All of them.
When I was in 3rd grade, I took a worksheet which had the statement, "The food is ready to eat," up to my teacher and asked whether it shouldn't read, "The food is ready to be eaten," instead. She responded by scolding me, "Oh, don't be so critical!"
I've since tried to live my life as one long act of defiance against that directive.
It's established with stolen money so it's immoral from the onset.
I was labeled the retarded ADD/ADHD my entire middle school / highschool career. I got everything from my teachers. Being called stupid, ect..... My dad never put me on drugs though and never let me get my spirits down. Ironically I ended up being the most successful person of the whole bunch. Seriously.
Since I live in Sweden there was never an alternative for me.
But me experience of school is not all that bad. Grades 1 thru 6 was pretty much shit (with the exception of English which is pretty useful and learning a language in classes is pretty standard).
I already know how to read and write and what + - * and / meant when I started school. Still I had to sit like the whole first year (at least it felt like that back then) and type a a a a a a .... b b b b b .... and so forth learning letters and number individually and then reading practice. This is a really horrible thing to do to a 7 year old kid that is excited about starting school and already know how to read.
It also illustrates the main problem of public schooling which is the complete lack of individual treatment that gets pupils that are better or have just learned more in home down and make them do stuff that is just tedious to them, destroying there faith in education and knowledge rather then nursing it with new challanges.
Up to grade 6 it was way to slow, simple and repetitive for me.
But I do think they have addressed some of these issues now. When my little sister went to school they had mixed classes grades 1-3 and so forth. So what see did is she simply studied with the ones that where one year ahead of her when she caught up to them and she skipped ahead 2 years in this manner.
Grades 7-9 we had a choice of advanced or basic maths and English. Also we started a third language and started specialised classes in natural sciences for real so there I felt I learned plenty of stuff. We had snakes on the floor in biology, blow lots of stuff up in chemistry and chocked our selves with electricity in physics so that was a laugh and a perfect way to learn at that age.
Grades 10-12 (our equivalent of high school) was good. We touched topics like theory of relativity and quantum physics. There where programming classes, philosophy, basic accounting and law, learned the American civil was wasn't about slavery but about big government, we programmed LED Christmas trees in some binary language used for code-pads and such and no fing creationism in biology. So that was good.
It could still have been better. More room for individualism and the high school programs designed to prepare for higher studies don't really do that all that well. I had no idea how to study on my own or write essays when I started university...
But in general if you just get the option to compress grades 1-6 which exist now our public school system seems pretty ok. Granted I growing up in one of the riches suburbs in the country (which doesn't say much in equal Sweden). So I attended some of the best public schools in the country filled with motivated students, but still it should be ok in most places.Except the ghetto schools, filled with kids who are mentally destroyed by the wars they ran away from and our broken down immigration system that teaches them how to apply for welfare and then put them in camps for ages with no knowledge of what will happen to them.
Escaping Leviathan - regardless of public opinion
"Democracy is the road to socialism." - Karl Marx
My only experience (apart from university: I confess choosing a public one because it was much, much cheaper... ) was teaching in private recovery courses to earn a few extra quids. When people say our schools are good quality and horrible public schools are just an American issue I laugh in their faces. I just cannot help it.
My job was to teach these students to allow them to improve their grades by the end of the year: I taught mathematics, physics and chemistry. Of all the students I've seen only one could be cataloged as "lazy". A shame since her brother was such an hard-working boy. But I am digressing again. Anyway when I first started teaching I expected to have basket cases in front of me. Instead I found pretty much all the students to be bright and eager to learn. The problem began when I asked them to bring over their textbooks and notes. I thought I saw bad mathematics textbooks at the university but they were nothing compared to these. When I saw the notes I was flabbergasted. Teachers did nothing to plug the huge gaps in the theory, nor did anything to stimulate the students. They just loaded them with homework. What good is solving twelve second grade equations in a row, each one a copycat of the previous? No wonder students were just giving up or doing barely enough to pass the course at the end of the year. Dumbing us down they say... they are still too kind. Physics and chemistry were even worse and I won't even dwell into it.
I went to a succession of private schools and have some excellent teachers. I am grateful to my mother for that. But up until I helped these students out I had an unshakable faith in public schooling. Now I believe it to be one of the greatest evils of our time.
Grayson Lilburne: When I was in 3rd grade, I took a worksheet which had the statement, "The food is ready to eat," up to my teacher and asked whether it shouldn't read, "The food is ready to be eaten," instead. She responded by scolding me, "Oh, don't be so critical!" I've since tried to live my life as one long act of defiance against that directive.
Excellent.
If I wrote it more than a few weeks ago, I probably hate it by now.
I have a bad experience with Public Education, better termed Stolen Money Funded Education each time I pay my tax bills.
Don't get me started on PE. When some sporto prevented stimulating debates in one of my favorite subjects by complaining about "how boring" or "how hard" they were, nobody took offense. But when I failed in one of those barbaric ball-tossing team games which unfortunately I had to participate in, everyone got upset because "WE LOST". Oh noes. What a pity.Edit: Oops, confused "physical ed" with "public ed", ha.
cupcake:Personally I feel PE makes kids dumb. It places too much emphasis on self-esteem and it has this bad attitude towards failure,. PE tends to think that failure is bad and kids should never have to go through it but all this has done is made kids dumber and made them less confident .
I, on the other hand, absolutely loved "PE". It was, atleast in 9th grade, the only reason that I actually managed to get out of my bed and go to school. I especially enjoyed dodge-ball, which we played very regularly.
Not my experience IN public school, which was bad enough, but current experience with local schools. We have a multi-town High School which is about 30 years old and crumbling. Of course, the school committee wants a $5 mil upgrade. They recently paraded residents through the buildings to try to drum up sympathy. My thoughts are, "If this is what you allowed to happen to an existing building, why should I pay you for another one?" To top this off, a recent study shows enrollment will decline by 30% over the next ten years due to population shifts in the area.
I imagine these things are typical?
I've been to both public and private schools and I actually liked public school until they overcrowded it with the worst kids from the worst black schools in the state.
The first private school I went to was super liberal and I hated it. The second one was more of a "do whatever you feel like" kinda school and I loved it.
The cool thing about public school is that teachers didn't care about me so they never bothered me about anything. If I wanted to do the work, I did it, if not, it didn't get done. I liked that.
I had 2 teachers arrested for dealing meth to students after class shortly after i graduated.