my only two problems with education system is 1) they work toward the average.  if you are a kid who is a bit quicker than the rest or a bit slower than the rest, you get ignored, you get bored and you fall through the cracks.

2) Way too much rhetoric and political agendas/propaganda are involved in what students are taught.

Thanks for the input  +Tony Sandoval!

np.  my kids go to a small catholic school (I'm not christian, but it beats our public school system right now)  and I am the product of nothing but public schools.

one other thing I am about tired of is teachers doing more than being a teacher.  My daughter expressed an interest in being a baker and owning her own bakery when she gets old enough.   I love it.  she picked something for a future she really loves to do and has plans to follow up on it.  one of the teachers at her school literally tried to talk her out of it saying she was "too smart" to be "just" a baker. and she should look at being a scientist of some type.

that ticked me off.  Big time.  how dare she demean bakers and entrepreneurialism just because she has a hangup on girls in science.

just teach the subject matter and let her parents guide her on life choices thank you very fricking much.

When i look back on my days in school, it was the lack of grammar education that i resent.

Ask me again in a few years about current day once my daughter has started :-P

 I see a lot of people pointing toward the indoctrination thing that they see. Bottom line - It's easier to say "This is what/how/why/when things are/happened" than it is to lead a debate and instill critical thinking skills. I don't see a big conspiracy, I just see the results of underfunding, unrealistic expectations, emphasis on sports over educational achievement and the lack of an instant gratification reward system for doing well in school.

Here's a true story for you: My Junior year in high school several area school created the 4 day rule - If you had a B or better in the class and had missed 4 or less days of school, you were not required to take the final exam at the end of each half of the school year. Attendance and grades shot through the roof. The school board stepped in after the first year and killed the program, various reasons for that but they missed the lesson of that experiment: If you put a tasty enough carrot at the end of the stick, even the 'bad kids' will bust ass to try to catch it.

yes, but when the direct information they are teaching the kids are outright lies in the name of indoctrination then it's a bad thing.  it happened then and still happens now.

 I did not like high school. I attended, and tried to find my way. I found most of the education pedantic and ineffective. VERY few of the teachers appeared any more interested in what they were doing than I was. The ones that were excited to be there were the ones that made a difference. I can rattle off names but won't right now. In high school, I found theater. I was all in. Theater was the reason I went to school, and the rest was just killing time to get back to the black box and create something. During that time, the wood-shop closed. Ceramics was shut down. The arts were being dismantled. Vocations were being snuffed out. The years that followed my graduation saw the demise of the theater program as well, and I think photography. It is hard to teach people how to learn, when you are taking away the way were are built to learn, through play and with action.

Another rant: The worst thing I remember was a 7th grade transfer from a middle school in South Florida to a junior high in Brevard County. I was tutoring other children in algebra and was really progressing well. When the school tried to place me based on my classes, they saw that I was in algebra, but they didn't offer algebra for the 7th grade. They had Honors Pre-Algebra. Sounds great right? "Honors" I went from A's to a D. Obviously I was no longer allowed in the honors program and it wasn't until the next year, that I realized, I was in the wrong class. 8th Grade was learning what I already knew from my old school. What happened? They were teaching me fundamentals, that I did not need. I skipped over them and learned a different way and didn't know I needed to unlearn what I knew. I don't know how that could have gone better given the systems in place and the obstacles that they have to surmount. As it went, I lost my momentum and interest in math and never got it back.

Andy I shall address your comment shortly but first I must reset a viewpoint!

Indoctrination happens to every person in the world every single day of the week. Right now you sir are trying to indoctrinate the rest of us into the thought process that schools are doing evil things, whilst I am trying to indoctrinate people into the thought process that they are not. From different points of view, we are both right. I can point out examples where people go above and beyond to promote accurate information, you can point out examples where someone has distorted the truth to suit their own ends.

There was an article the floated around about how FOX was banned in Canada because it's illegal to lie on national TV. I encourage you to really dig into that and read the details of what happened, who the players were and then think about why it happened and why FOX news made the decisions it made. It has everything to do with a private company wanting to promote an agenda and using a media outlet to indoctrinate the masses into believing something that wasn't necessarily true.

On the other side of the coin is CNN - which promotes a different viewpoint that has a different target audience. CNN and FOX are two sides of the same indoctrination coin - They say the things that the target audience wants to hear in order to then provide ads which people are now interested in based on the reports they were just listening to.

Back to the schools - Lies to indoctrinate are incredibly subjective, especially when it comes to history and discussing the politics of it. I challenge you to provide some examples of what lies are being spread in the name of indoctrination, and I'll find you proof which proves the lies true AND false at the same time. Should be a fun game.

I believe you have indoctrination and influence mixed up.  per the dictionary..

Influence: the capacity or power of persons or things to be a compelling force on or produce effects on the actions, behavior, opinions, etc., of others

Indoctrination: the act of indoctrinating,  or teaching or inculcating a doctrine, principle, or ideology, especially one with a specific point of view:

each word has it's own meaning, we can't just make it up as we go along.

David, Not Evil... Misguided. Formalized schools in America, the way they are today, didn't emerge until around 1910 along with the industrial revolution in the United States. They were essentially geared towards giving a baseline set of skills for industry jobs. It took off from there and we have been assembly line educating for over 100 years. We don't have the same end game to our education system now. There isn't an assembly line job waiting for us to walk into. Even college now is expected where once it was a very honored and respected thing in families.
I am working off the premise, that the way schools operate, is not the best way for children or humans in general to learn. That is what, in my opinion, is broken.

Andy post 1 - I think this points toward what I was referring to. Kid's get lost in the existential question of "What the hell am I doing this for?" For many of us (Myself included) I lacked the wisdom that extra years on my age and life experience has granted me to understand fully why trying so hard was important. Getting a letter at the end of each semester didn't matter to me one way or the other, as long as I progressed forward (didn't matter whether I leaped or crawled) I felt like I was doing well enough. The honor roll seemed neat to me but nothing more. It wasn't until the 4 day rule showed up that I took a sudden interest in going above and beyond the bare minimum needed to succeed.

Andy post 2 - That points toward a lack of standardization, which is impossible unless you elevate setting what kids will learning to high levels of state and federal governments. Which flies in the face of states rights to decide what's best, which usually gets delegated down to the county level. In addition, they did a very poor job assessing what level of math you needed to be placed in, and so the screw job, while likely unintentional, happened.

I think what it may point to more to a lack of proper analysis of the individual. The system that we have in place seems to be wary and reluctant to use placement tests to determine the proper level of the student. They are very hung up on keeping an age group together from start to finish. Grade skipping and being held back are all under the blanket of "no child left behind" and yet more standardized tests, for a non standard populace.

this was my point in saying they focus on the group average and those a little quicker or a little slower get ignored, get bored and fall through the cracks.

TONY! How oh how do I indoctrinate someone without first having the ability to influence them? Indoctrination is the end result of having influenced someone to the point where the 'actions, behaviors, opinions, etc' more closely mirror your own because they now share the same 'doctrine, principles or ideology' that were spewed forth from your point of view.

Sure it happens in schools, it absolutely does not stop there.

It's built right in our nature as human beings to inluence those around us to the point where they follow blindly. For lack of a better term, it's how we build our personal empires and legacies.

personal empires and legacies?  wow.   I wish I had a personal empire.

"You" individually don't indoctrinate.  it takes a formalized and usually required closed system to indoctrinate others, like public schools, military training, even labor unions with "training" requirements engage in it.

individually, we exert influence.

I realize now that the whole argument of indoctrination is a tangent.

As a kid, I almost always hung out with older kids. I found that I had very little in common with the rest of my classmates other than the material we were all learning.

Perhaps they need to be testing regular for emotional level vs intelligence level. Group kids by both emotional and intellectual scores.

But still my sticking point is providing a carrot on the stick that kids would really strive for.

on that  I agree completely.  Incentive is very important.  but it, in my opinion, is not up to the school to provide incentive, but the family.

They took away all the classes that prepared kids to get a job out of high school in meaningful tasks.  shop classes, etc...

Now they tell kids that high school diplomas aren't enough to get a decent job and push everyone to college.

What is left besides personal motivation for the kids if they can't count on the education they are required to participate in doesn't even help them get decent job skills?

That's a huge chunk of motivation right there taken away from them tot be replaced by what?  "sorry kid, you invest this time of your life in education but it won't get you anything at the end that's worthwhile"

So  +Tony Sandoval where do we go from your last statement? By "we" I mean society. Your statement is pretty darn bleak, and also frighteningly accurate. We have a legacy of a nanny state to contend with. Government controlled programs such as Public Education, serve some interesting needs and have existed long enough, that if we were to pull the rug out from them, we would be doing a dis-service to those that are in the program. School lunches (another topic for another Tuesday) may be the only good meal some children get. The tax money being returned to the tax payers for education services would not be enough to offset the cost of private education and given the state of our economy an overwhelming majority of families are dual income, leaving no one to tend to the care and education of our youth during the work day. Of course then we have the basic question of qualifications to teach basic skills. So many adults fell through the cracks in the last few generations that without professional teachers where would they learn?
Now we need to brainstorm. How do we repair the education system? 

in my opinion, we need to stop being a consumer society.  move away from that idea and get back to being a product society.

"Made in America" is a joke because only about 1/3 of the product is actually required to be assembled here to qualify.  and assembly is not quite the same as being "made" here.

When we have the production jobs, we have something for our schools to prepare students for.

In today's America, being an Entrepreneur means to sell something made somewhere else.  Where are the opportunities to build, create and repair the products here?

you can't just open an auto shop anymore because of the technology built into the cars.  it's being part mechanic and part computer tech now.

woodworking, cabinetry, metal working.  those are all things farmed out of the country anymore by and large.  imported and assembled instead.

What are we preparing students for is what it really boils down to I think.

If the politicians say "jobs" then what jobs? because according to the "experts" a high school diploma don't cut it anymore.

if we say k 1 12 is to prepare for college, but not all kids get to go to college because while k -12 is mandatory and funded, college is not.  so that's just a huge lie right there.

We need to answer the question what are we educating our students for.  to what end?  Just for educations sake?  That isn't happening effectively enough to justify mandatory school attendance if so.  Too many high school kids are still graduating at horribly low reading and writing levels to justify that.

Perhaps an idea would be to break the mold of you are in this age group you are expected to move forward at this pace. But that requires a different kind of classroom I would think.

I like history. Back in the old days when my grandparents went to school, it was a 1 room school house, the kind with the big bell tower, and you were there from 1st grade through 12th, along with all your brothers and sisters no matter the age and everyone learned side by side. It was a holistic education, one where everyone learned everything if they could grasp the concepts. I am now inspired to dig deeper into the practices used by those pioneer educators, just for comparison sake. Now of course, that was when a graduating class was 12 kids or less. Small towns, few families, maybe only 1 formal teacher and the parents to help where they could, though most of them were not very well educated themselves. The truly fortunate had tutors. Today, there are many great resources, such as  www.Kahnacademy.org and countless other free online education services. Our society has changed since the school house was enough, and there are obviously logistical problems when you have to handle class sizes over 30. I may be delusional, but there is a sense of change about us that I can't shake, and I can't help but look to the past to understand where the future could take us. 

+Andy Cowen I find your question amusing, disturbing, and curious, all at once.  Amusing, because we all have interesting stories, and it's been fun to read some.  Disturbing, because it takes only one point of view on the education system, and does not give any service to what actually DOES work in it - and yes, I believe there are some things about it that do work.  That isn't to say it isn't still in a dismal state.  Curious, because it brings to mind some of the reasons my wife and I intend to educate our children in what would be nowadays considered non-traditional.  But to answer your question, and to provide counterpoising perspective:

What went right and wrong for me:  Teaching relies on an unwritten contract between a teacher and a student, and it's as much the student's responsibility to learn as it is the teacher's responsibility to teach.  Yet, too often the burden of an entire class leaves many students without sufficient "teaching" in a manner that works for them.  Example - 8th grade I took Algebra-1, and did poorly, even though I had excelled in math in my prior school (a private school).  Against my teacher's wishes, I proceeded into Geometry in the 9th grade, and did quite a bit better.  Algebra-2 in the 10th grade was a blast for me.  I attribute all of this to the teachers teaching in a manner  I found effective for learning, or not (in the case of 8th grade).  11th and 12th grade I began to slack off, for reasons beyond this conversation.  In other classes, my interest was simply not held, or I questioned why such topics were important, like many other students.  Having been out in the world now I can appreciate those topics much, much more, and believe I could impart some of that appreciation to my children at least.

I had very good teachers, all in all, until college - and even they were not all bad.  Of all my friends, I am one of the very few to have achieved a bachelor's degree from a major institution (UCF).  I mention that only because I want to speak to the notion of what college prepares us for, and what it doesn't.  I certainly learned a great deal there, and have used my knowledge in my career.  Not every college degree will grant that, but I believe there is great value in upper-education.  What we must dispose of is the mythical promise of wealth and riches as the reason for upper education.  From a purely workmanship point-of-view, I can offer this:  I have seen the output of both a university and a technical school - UCF versus Full Sail - for software engineers.  Full Sail teaches the  how.  UCF teaches the  why.  That, I believe, underscores the awesome difference between technical/vocational schools and those that offer full accredited 4-year degrees.  If I could change anything about upper-education, I would combine the two schools into one.

That being said, I also learned in my post-graduate days that much of graduate school is designed to produce people who stay in the university system.  A Masters will get you a little farther than a bachelor's in the private sector, but a Ph.D. will get you tenure at some big-U, if you can pull it off...of course, in the US, you then spend your days peddling for research money for the university.  That's part of the reason I decided that a Ph.D wasn't for me.  (Sometimes Ph.D.s make it into the private sector, but really the degree tends to become a liability there.)  Yet its frequently Ph.D.s that make inventions that change the world.  Point is: people in this country need college a lot more than anyone is willing to admit, because frankly they're not getting that quality or quantity of education in the primary schools, and it's the sort of advanced knowledge that other countries (Germany, for instance) believe should be provided FOR FREE.

There are many things I find disturbing about our current culture, and our public primary education systems.  First, the notion that we send children to schools for the "social experience."  This has got to be one of the most laughable excuses people pipe up with when they want to rail against homeschooling.  Social experience?  I was bullied, taunted, and generally depressed - how does that help my learning experience?  Not everyone experiences that, but the point is that school is supposed to be a learning environment, not a social conditioning mill.  While it's important that children be taught the ways of the world and how to interact with others, I think it's perfectly achievable without having to resort to public, or even private,  education complexes.  It starts by removing them from under the rock and letting them see the real world.

Second, no one takes public education seriously enough to invest serious money in it.  We took my son to the county school office and I was surprised at how dismal the building looked.  I quipped to my wife: "Yep, this must be a government building."  Money doesn't cure every evil, but a lack of money certainly doesn't help either.  We don't pay good teachers worth their feed, we don't keep our schools in good order, we don't have enough teachers to go around...  So that's certainly broken.  But supposing all of that was fixed...would public school still be broken?

My son currently attends a day-care that has a learning curriculum.  I spent a day there recently to observe and interact.  I was interested to see how two teachers in a classroom of 9-to-15 2-to-3-year-olds managed.  I can say this much: they needed a lot more help.  I also saw a lot of missed opportunities for interaction, involvement, and interest stimulation.  That's a private institution, and of course they  are three-year-olds.   I wonder how it will be in public school?

Not just anyone can be a teacher, but a teacher could be any one of us.  What is it to teach?  How many who have responded to this post have taught?  I can only say that, as the parent of a child with a communication delay, I and my wife have worked hard to teach my son how to talk, to interact, and in some cases to learn.  But until we learned how to teach  him, we had no idea what we were doing.  It turns out that teaching is more about understanding children than it is about understanding the topics we're trying to teach them.  I think that's where many people get it wrong.  You can teach a topic 100 different ways and never be understood - understand how your child learns, and now you can teach them exactly how they need to be taught.  But what are we trying to teach them?

I pine for my math skills, slowly deteriorating from lack of use and a poor practice when I had time to practice and a teacher to question; my joy of reading has taken off so many years beyond when it mattered for a grade; I would love to really  learn some foreign languages, yet it's ever more difficult with age; politics, economics, chemistry, physics...so many interesting topics, so little time now.  I want my children to be forces of good in the world, to be part of positive change.  For them to be that, they have only this one chance to learn as much as possible about how the world, the universe, science, nature, math, language works.  One chance.  This is their only time.  It's not that our education system is broken, it's that it is overburdened and crushed under its own weight and the various beliefs that people hold against it.  Society is broken - we believe we just need to pawn our kids off on other people who are "qualified" to teach, when in fact we have an innate responsibility to teach our children ourselves - to be part of the teaching equation, to build up their self-esteem and the belief that they can learn and achieve great things.  We need to teach them the  joy of learning, rather than sitting by while random events stomp out all desire.

We waste our children's opportunity to learn if we ourselves, as parents, are not active participants.  Asking if their homework is done and going to PTA meetings does not quality.  Of all the things I could do with my spare time, all the things I could do for myself, I gladly sacrifice it all for my children and their continued learning and development.

Thanks  +Matthew O'Connor. I agree with everything you said. Do begin a good debate, I choose to look at it from that side. It gets things moving well and left it up to others to bring the counterpoint. I posted this conversation on Facebook as well (I'd link to it but it's not as easy as it is on G+. Check my timeline for Tuesday.  https://www.facebook.com/ghephetto) One of my teachers from High School chimed in from the other side of the "fence". No matter what this is a valuable discussion to have and get everyone's story. At the end of the day, we are responsible for ourselves. We are not taught self reliance or how to learn in school. Society has the crutch of a system and have largely forgotten how to teach or how to learn. We now relegate those tasks to the noble teachers that have taken up the torch of knowledge, and the system that is supposed to serve the task. It is taken for granted, that there will always be people to perform this task. It's true that there will be, but they will be in the institutions less and less if things do not change, as the incentive to remain there diminishes. Society certainly needs to be turned on it's ear. I get the thought that to move forward, we must look back and learn the lesson of history, from as many angles as we can find.

Without jobs , or job prospects , those not involved in technology will never find work no matter what we throw at them in education.
The educational "system " just did not keep up with reality.

"the world needs ditch diggers too." Having worked in construction, it is one of the more gratifying jobs I have ever had. It was hard. I was sore. I was hot. I was sometime hungry and thirsty and bathroom breaks could be restrictive. It did not make me rich. On the other hand, I was in great shape. I was using my hands and that felt good. I could see progress being made in minutes opposed to maybe never at all. I got to work outside, and most of the time had fresh clean air to breath. To be a laborer is to be honest. I will always contend that there are jobs out there, but there are cavetes to that statement. One may not make what you are worth, and more likely not as much as you need, and the job may fall below your "station". For my part, an income is better than no income and I would dig a ditch, frame a house, lay cement, install fences, and nearly any job that Mike Rowe have ever done. It feels good to be dirty, and everyone should have a dirty job once in their lives so they can feel a little respect for those that can't or don't want to work in an office and attend meetings about nothing day after day.

+Bobby Shaftoe, opinion time: Which came first, the worker or the job?

This is a little off-topic, but while recently considering the various notions as to why the middle-class is displeased with the upper-class (in a blog post), the notion of "job creators" struck a key with me and I realized there was something very wrong with the notion of wealthy being touted as "job creators:"  it doesn't account for everyone else who is also a "job creator."  The fact is, we  all create work for other people to do - everything we choose not to, or are unable to do ourselves, is something someone else can and usually does do.  Think about how many services you use in any given day.  Think of all the work that has to be done to make those services available.  If you didn't buy those services - if few or no one did - there'd be no work and no employment in them.  Yet many somehow cling to the belief that there are two kinds of people in our country: those who create jobs, and those who work them.  Whatever we do to earn money, the minute we spend it we are "creating" jobs.

But how do we compete in a "global market?"  There are so many problems - standard and cost of living differences, education differences, environmental concern differences...  Back before the world got really small, I imagine it was a little easier to compete in your "local" market for work.  For a living, I can't compete in a market like eLance, because regardless of my skills or education people in India can afford to charge 20-50% less.  This is no exaggeration.  As we watched thousands of jobs disappear overseas with the promise of "lower prices" or higher profit margins, those in our own country who were displaced felt the sting of the global economy.  Our education woes underscore the current war of attrition unconsciously waged on us, and as we have waged on others, by the very nature of open and unregulated competition between very different populations of workers.  How will we ever compete with a people who are better educated, better skilled, and whose base income requirements are significantly less than our own?  It occurs to me that of all the ways our education system fails, the teaching of money and economics matters is the way in which it fails the absolute worst.

+Andy Cowen "I've often thought of becoming a golf-club..."

Nasty bit of trickery there Mr. Cowen , chicken and egg. Hmph.
Dead dino laying at the cave door . "Well I'm not moving that sucker ! , Dave , you move it."
Dave, " Gimme some stuff and I'll move it."
Dexter, " I'll move it for less stuff."
Sue, " It's moved , I own you."

Unless that's a boy named Sue, she was going to win the whole time anyway. :-)