I read this file a few days back. For the most part, it's right on the money (all motivations for the kids sound plausible - and finally someone has the guts to post that kids are cruel because it's *fun*).
However, I respectfully disagree about most of the staff just going through the motions of teaching. Perhaps I just got lucky, but virtually all of the teachers I had in my high school days (at a public high school in Canada) did seem to care about the students' education. The amount of material they presented was limited not by apathy, but by the fact that they had to keep most of the class along for the ride. The smart kids still ended up bored; it's the cause I disagree with.
My high school education was very useful to my future career. You learn a lot more than the article's author seems to recall - you learn how to work, and you're at least *exposed* - kicking and screaming - to subjects you may have to learn more about when you get older. Even a student who doesn't want to learn (which covers most of the students) will at least learn that the material _exists_. A student who, against their better judgement, actually tries to retain the material will gain a lot of the "doesn't everyone know that?" class of basic math and science and literature/culture familiarity that we take for granted without remembering where we got it.
Given that high schools are dealing with students who for the most part don't want to learn, I think the ones around here, at least, do an admirable job of teaching them.
The social problems mentioned in the article, of course, made my school life a living hell from about grade 9 to grade 11 (and for the latter half of elementary school before that). The teachers helped by being friendly and by giving me safe havens between classes (did stock-room work in grades 7-8, and coded in the computer lab in high school). I gather that many people weren't lucky enough to have teachers that cared, but I seem to have lucked out for pretty much all of my school career (which makes it unlikely that I'm a fluke).
I read this file a few days back. For the most part, it's right on the money (all motivations for the kids sound plausible - and finally someone has the guts to post that kids are cruel because it's *fun*).
However, I respectfully disagree about most of the staff just going through the motions of teaching. Perhaps I just got lucky, but virtually all of the teachers I had in my high school days (at a public high school in Canada) did seem to care about the students' education. The amount of material they presented was limited not by apathy, but by the fact that they had to keep most of the class along for the ride. The smart kids still ended up bored; it's the cause I disagree with.
My high school education was very useful to my future career. You learn a lot more than the article's author seems to recall - you learn how to work, and you're at least *exposed* - kicking and screaming - to subjects you may have to learn more about when you get older. Even a student who doesn't want to learn (which covers most of the students) will at least learn that the material _exists_. A student who, against their better judgement, actually tries to retain the material will gain a lot of the "doesn't everyone know that?" class of basic math and science and literature/culture familiarity that we take for granted without remembering where we got it.
Given that high schools are dealing with students who for the most part don't want to learn, I think the ones around here, at least, do an admirable job of teaching them.
The social problems mentioned in the article, of course, made my school life a living hell from about grade 9 to grade 11 (and for the latter half of elementary school before that). The teachers helped by being friendly and by giving me safe havens between classes (did stock-room work in grades 7-8, and coded in the computer lab in high school). I gather that many people weren't lucky enough to have teachers that cared, but I seem to have lucked out for pretty much all of my school career (which makes it unlikely that I'm a fluke).