College

Best wrote:

prplmonkey wrote:

Thanks for insulting my perspective of things; I appologize for giving a world view of things, I didn't realize that anything outside of western europe doesn't affect us. Also western europe is not as stable or strong as it once was, but if I add any more facts from the college board then you won't be able to comprehend. (the civilization being hard to define came from a college textbook, not that you would know anything about that)

Your sarcasm isn't appreciated. Now if you actually want to have an earnest discussion with me about these matters instead of making insinuations that I don't know shit 'cuz I haven't read this book you seem to be referring to so frequently, I'd gladly add you on MSN Messenger or Steam. On that note, I'm not going to apologize for the things I said, though I will admit I was being a tad insulting to you.

I don't have either of those, but for the record I only referred the book once and I was trying to play an insult, but I suppose I'm not the most coherent right now as I'm kinda groggy and its late. My wantonness tends act up under these conditions; I'm sure I'll appologize when I come to my senses in the morning.

On that note, I'm pretty sure we've gone off topic, I wonder if this is what Battle Zone was like...

I quite realized you were trying to insult- but I don't much see the point of getting insulted by it. And I really don't see any reason you need to apologize, I much prefer to let these things sit unresolved and creating surface tension. More honestly, I'd rather you didn't apologize since I have no need for niceties that you don't earnestly mean.

And while you are right about us moving a bit off topic... I'm sure it's not a big issue... Right, mods?

prplmonkey wrote:

Dizzy wrote:

Wait I'm confused.

When did some guy in Texas get a feel for the entire American school system? Its a bit ironic that I just spent weeks researching that exact topic in order to write an article for the school newspaper, but here's what I found; the one thing that this school system does best, is helps you proportionately to how much work you put into it.

You hear all the stories about how its the teacher's fault, or anything like that. But honestly? It's a bunch of excuses. I'll go into more detail if you want but honestly going into writing that article I almost already knew the answer, and I'm fairly sure most everyone pretty much knows the same thing but either won't accept it or don't care.

I never said it was the teacher's fault, but the fact remains America trails behind in education compared to the rest of the globe (in everything except for confidence), and also not all school systems try their best, it is very rare but sometimes (mostly happens with teachers associated with teacher's union and tenure) it is the teacher's fault (its a little biase but watch Waiting for Superman, it explains on that better than I can).

Bringing up workload again, lots of people complain about having too much homework/studying/etc.. On an international scale (not including peripheral countries), America's school system doesn't actually force too much work on its students (in Taiwan, Japan, and other asian countries they have almost mandatory summer school, you can opt out of it, but there's a major test on the first day of school).

As for the school system helping you proportionally to how much you put into it, I agree. Though I want to mention that not many people are know are willing to put effort into the school system.

I'm not really sure what you were trying to say in that first paragraph, due largely to the fact you phrased you're sentences, like this, with more commas, pretty much putting sentence fluency, down the drain. Either way you're missing the point. I'm not entirely sure where you get this whole idea that America is "trailing in education" (whatever that's supposed to mean) from a seemingly anonymous or very general and undefined source, but it's probably true. Yep. You've pretty much repeated that over and over again. Regardless whether its true or not, that has almost nothing to do with how well America's education system works! You cannot bash on a "system" that you really know nothing about. Public school systems (I'm going to assume you're ignoring private schools, seeing as most private schools rival the intensity of Japanese "cram schools", otherwise known as Juku.) are operated in slightly different ways school district to school district, and very differently state to state. Yes the fundamentals stay the same but other than that, things change very dramatically depending on where you are. But you know what? That doesn't matter.

You just said that you agree that American school systems can make a person very successful, depending on how much work is put into it. Now, how can you agree to that and not realize these "Asian" school systems (which I remain unconvinced that you know anything about how they work.) depend on the same thing. Personal motivation, drive, whatever you want to call it, it's the same everywhere. The culture in Asia (should I be generalizing? Probably not. Saying that Asia as a whole is better educated is idiotic, but you get my point.) dictates that kids spend a whole bunch of time under incredible pressure from their parents and peers. This causes the public schools to rise up to the level that students are willing to perform at (does this sound familiar? It should.) and intensify the school environment. Would this be possible in America? Absolutely. In fact, in many places it already has. You want to know how I know? It happened. Right next to my home town. US News rated a school called International School the 10th best school in the nation and it resides in Bellevue, Washington right next door to my home town. Want to know what happened there? Students enrolled at that school took heavy-duty AP classes and quickly forced the school to adapt and add tougher courses and course material.

Do not make assumptions based on something you've heard or think you know.