I'm in Pre-IB, and my Pre-IB classes have much better behavior, than the ones that don't have IB alternatives. And people learn faster, and you don't get dragged back by the losers. They're classes that have more work, so it's more for over-achievers, and you only need a 3.2 GPA to get accepted.

I think that highschool shouldn't be expected. I think it should be like college. Go if you want. If not, then not. The reason we have highschool is because of the Great Depression, when they were trying to keep as many people as possible out of the work force, not because of some educational reform.

I think I'm currently attending one of those.

We could create a concrete holding tank for such children, lock them up with an indestructable metal object to serve as a surrogate teacher, and give them finger paint rations once weekly.

Alternatively, before we cut the budgets of inner-city schools once more (the next time it will probably be security or food cuts, seeing as they've already taken away AP classes, teachers, and paper), they should issue specially designed high impact-resistent nalgene helms and kevlar coated carbon-composite brigadine armour to all teaching staff. This way, when the students, when they learn how to fashion crude projectiles, begin to assault teachers with thrown objects, no one will have to be hospitalized.

I am naturally speaking of high school students. The grade school kids seem to have some degree of curiousity about them and thus can be tricked into thinking aspects of school are enjoyable.

On a serious note, I think what we really, really need is a total revamping of our educational system, especially in urban areas where the situation is patently insane.

1. Put more emphasis on learning than on rote memorization and test performance.
2. Recognizing that everyone has a right to an education, recognize also the complementary responsibility of not preventing others around you from getting an education. If a student is disrupting the school, kick that student out.
3. Give schools the funding they need.
4. Create districts that operate on the basis of logic and not on the puzzlingly interesting but clearly irrational basis they currently use.
5. Direct funding towards the entire educational community and not just towards reining in the bad kids. There is reason to direct money towards more security and in-house suspension, but that shouldn't happen at the expense of AP classes.
6. ETC.

By "disrupting" I am, by result of my own subjectivity, using standards I have developed from attending my high school. Disruption here means things such as setting mace bombs, bringing in weapons, inciting minor riots, setting rooms on fire, etc. These things will get someone at my school maybe a couple days off on suspension.

Clumping those who "do not want to learn" in a separate environment from those who do have that ambition is the most absurd idea. Although reluctant to consider this from the offender's point of view, any hope there ever was for accomplishing something will be gone when all of the high grades disappear, when all one's expected of is simply to show up and be a bother.

I am in honors/AP courses and am the type with straight A's from the 1st grade. Before high school I was also the type to look down on those whose grades did not place at the top of the class or whatever. I hit 9th grade, however, and all of a sudden my smarts alone were not enough. I suddenly had to work for the A's. I spent and spend hours and hours doing school work and extra work to understand concepts everyone else seems to grasp in no time. When I place in the 1st percentile of my class of 1020, people assume it's due to my "smartness," never does anyone consider the fact that for ever pathetic A I receive on an essay I spend hours and hours writing and rewriting. I write the autobiography to show that I was lucky to have an easy time with school for a while so that when school became the struggle it is now I had the motivation, simply because I did not know myself to get anything less that my absolute best. Some kid who was not lucky with genes to begin with, who was not the best at spelling in elementary school and who had to watch others get recognized for their wicked math skills in middle school, for whom every test was a fight...Well, what motivation does that kid have? It is a choice everyone makes, yes, education, I mean, but oh, how much easier I and everyone else with natural smarts had it.

I am also surrounded by people who never do work, sleep in class if they show up, and their grades are superb nonetheless. The moments which they grace with their attention are spent debating with the teacher, because, as someone mentioned, they oftentimes know more than the instructor. I noticed this year (now sophomore) that the people I've known for years who have gotten by on their genuis now suffer from their lack of work ethic. I also watched them get frustrated (suddenly those less intelligent than they are outranking them) and eventually they figure things out by observing what others do.

Weeding these kids out will definitely not work. When expectations of people are lowered by an outside force, the expectatioins of the individual are lowered, too. If that individual cannot see that he/she is trading in freedom for ignorance/sloth, then the said person will not be able to stop the downward spiral, either. Most of the society is ungrateful for education to begin with and thinking of where we would all be if we openly permitted this majority to sit back is not pleasant.

quote:

Originally posted by clpo13:
If you don't want to learn, then you get flunked out of school. End of story.

Not in the UK, and it makes things horribly awkward.
Cute post though soccerchic, i'd love that! Maybe it sounds mean but I quit school when I was about 13 becuase of all the disruptions I'm currently educating myself, its a process and a half but I'm trying.
Frankly I find the kind of kids who go to school because they have to dont get any much better of a head start, it doesnt make it easier for them it'll make them more of a rebel. I think the authorities (especially in the uk) need to sort the system out, its so messed up.

If you don't want to learn, then you get flunked out of school. End of story.

There already is. Where I come from we call it the South Carolina State Correctional Facility.

In the public schools that i went to hear in canada. Everyone was in the same classes with the exception of those lucky enough to do well on the honors test in freakin grade 7 to get into advance math and science. Otherwise too bad. This created an interesting problem for me and other smart students. As we went through the classes we felt no real challenge and the dumber kids would get all the attention, so we would just slack off. we got poor grades because we didn't care because we had covered the same material in class 8 times and these idiot stoner kids just wouldn't get it. i actually was tested for a learning disorder to find i was in the 10th percentile.

Quick point - they did that with my school.. not a good idea. I think there should be alternatives for kids who drop out of school, so they can go into a trade or something, but not seperate classes in high school. It really messes the kids up academcially - plus some kids who shouldn't be in there get put in there just because of their family circumstances.

[COLOR=hotpink]i think schools should be split up for the ones who want to learn and the ones who dont. i would be in the ones who dont want to learn. i find school is a wast of time and we have better things to do.why do we have to go to school? they say to et smarter well u learn things everyday and thats not all in school. [/COLOR]

quote:

Originally posted by futurepres2:
Making a seperate school for those who don't want to learn sounds good in theory right...only the kids who want to learn get a chance to be in a intellctual and engaging environment, everything will be peaceful and interesting, and no one will have to worry about bullying and bad behavior from students. But the fact is all throughout life we have to be around people who aren't always the smartest, most respectful, and interested people.

Are you saying that all those who want to learn create a peaceful and interesting environment and that those kids aren't ever bullies? Wow, you've never met the smart kids at my school. We're almost worse because we can yell at others while quoting Shakespeare. Smart kids aren't always respectful. They're almost worse at that too because some of the kids at my school are smarter than the teachers and don't feel a need to respect them. And they aren't always interesting. They get boring after awhile because they know everything that the other smart kids know.

And there are people who want to learn who aren't necessarily smart. They may not be geniuses but they also aren't beating kids up in the middle of lunch.

quote:

Once you get into the real world, you will face some of the same people, but it's a part of life and something we as humans who all live together have to deal with. That's why we have prisons and a criminal justice system, to handle those who are deviants of society and who cant't follow the rules. The same goes for expulsion, in school suspension, and out of school suspension in our schools. Most of the time kids who don't want to learn tend to have educational learning disorders and need help, rather than rejection. You can't just leave out a whole segment of our population just because they don't share the same ideas of learning as someone more goal oriented will.

Actually, this is the same argument I use when I argue against vouchers for kids to go to private schools. Often the reason the parents want them to go is simply because public school isn't good enough (which I wholeheartedly disagree with) and I argue that their kids won't always get to be around nice, innocent Christian kids in the real world (as a general stereotype of the average private school kid that all parents imagining their kids interacting with).

But the program my school has basically keeps the kid in the separate school for either one semester or one school year, I can't remember, and then sends them back to the regular school for the following semester or school year to see if they have improved enough to not be a problem. This way, kids still have to interact with those unwilling to learn but they don't have to deal with it to an unnecessary extent. And, like I said, separate schools doesn't necessarily shield students from different personality types (including unpleasant ones), just from a disruption of the learning process.

quote:

But parents need to take more responsibility for their kids and offer the support and guidance every child needs to develop in life. Just as our schools need to provide a real and hands-on education for students so they won't feel left out and bored in class.

But all parents won't which is where the problem occurs.

quote:

Deep down inside every kid wants to do something with their life, whatever it may be from being a cop to joining the marines or being a doctor.

I don't agree with this statement at all. I know someone who is very important to me who I know will be very happy if he never does anything at all. "Not all who wander are lost." - J.R.R. Tolkien

quote:

Life is filled with many challenges and road blocks and going to class with kids who don't want to learn is just one of them, because the real world and work force is the same way.

Not true. If someone in the work force is overly disruptive in his job to the point that it catches the wrong kind of attention from his boss, he could very well be fired. He's not even sent to someone else to work; just fired. We need to teach lessons such as respect through separate schooling before we really screw kids lives up in the real world.

Making a seperate school for those who don't want to learn sounds good in theory right...only the kids who want to learn get a chance to be in a intellctual and engaging environment, everything will be peaceful and interesting, and no one will have to worry about bullying and bad behavior from students. But the fact is all throughout life we have to be around people who aren't always the smartest, most respectful, and interested people. Once you get into the real world, you will face some of the same people, but it's a part of life and something we as humans who all live together have to deal with. That's why we have prisons and a criminal justice system, to handle those who are deviants of society and who cant't follow the rules. The same goes for expulsion, in school suspension, and out of school suspension in our schools. Most of the time kids who don't want to learn tend to have educational learning disorders and need help, rather than rejection. You can't just leave out a whole segment of our population just because they don't share the same ideas of learning as someone more goal oriented will. But parents need to take more responsibility for their kids and offer the support and guidance every child needs to develop in life. Just as our schools need to provide a real and hands-on education for students so they won't feel left out and bored in class. Deep down inside every kid wants to do something with their life, whatever it may be from being a cop to joining the marines or being a doctor. Our society really needs to look deep down into itseld to figure out exactly how it's going to help us get to that point rather we love school or hate it. Life is filled with many challenges and road blocks and going to class with kids who don't want to learn is just one of them, because the real world and work force is the same way.

Peace,

Josh

I say whip it
Whip it good
Into shape
It's not too late!

well, i agree with your idea but i think its very far fetched. Teachers have the power to actually take the distraction(s) away, they can do that. although most teachers dont use the power, they dont want to come off like a bad person. But if there was a seperate school there would be difficulty weeding through the kids who want to learn and dont, damn near impossible, they could just say "this person is distracting, they must to here" that might work. Well, it would probably work better for people to add another section or wing of the school devoted to these people. They should have the same classes but in a much stricter setting, but more personally, i think if they reallly dont want to learn, they shouldnt have to, but hell, someones got to whip them into shape.

quote:

I mean really what KIND of a teacher would do that?

I think you meant to say kid or student rather than teacher. Or by "do that" do you mean set such low standards for learning environments? Either way, my story was from middle school experience a bit over a year ago, so that could explain some of the immaturity. I know, those acts were absurd. But there was hardly any student-teacher respect in that class because that teacher was the most disliked, and the children the most rowdy (while also the best students in terms of grades). Don't get me wrong, this happened the day before winter break, and other than that, my school was really great and had obidient, harmless kids. I loved my school, but we still had the usual wild kids who would do just about anything for acceptance among their peers.

quote:

Originally posted by faerienite:
Honors classes at my school hold many of the very troublesome kids. In my Honors English class, the students spit in the teacher's water bottle and sprayed perfume all over her desk (surprisingly as a bother), and also spit on the white board. They wanted to do more, but the teacher finally entered from the bathroom. All of my honors classes have about the same amount of "troublemakers" as the "normal" classes. I think our loud honors students just generally feel more brave and accepted by peers than the students who are not interested in learning. Their actions are usually pretty funny, but sometimes they are so chaotic that the students get out of hand. What should we do with public school honors students who get the worst conduct grades on their report cards?

What kind of a school do you go to? My high school was great. I mean kids respected the teachers and the teachers respected the students. In the honors and AP classes, a strict enviroment is so expected, that a thought of "spitting in the FREAKIN water bottle of a teacher" is unheard of. I mean really what KIND of a teacher would do that?

if they don't want to learn why should they be in school at all? Yes its true we all complain about school but its a hell of alot better than ignorance

Honors classes at my school hold many of the very troublesome kids. In my Honors English class, the students spit in the teacher's water bottle and sprayed perfume all over her desk (surprisingly as a bother), and also spit on the white board. They wanted to do more, but the teacher finally entered from the bathroom. All of my honors classes have about the same amount of "troublemakers" as the "normal" classes. I think our loud honors students just generally feel more brave and accepted by peers than the students who are not interested in learning. Their actions are usually pretty funny, but sometimes they are so chaotic that the students get out of hand. What should we do with public school honors students who get the worst conduct grades on their report cards?

AP and Honors classes, at my school at least, are basically only available to the honor students. There are still plenty of other prefectly good kids who want to learn whom are lumped together with the troublemakers.

AP and Honors are all well and good, but there will always be classes without those options and those are the classes with the troublemakers. At my school, the alternative school is not a place where all the "stupid" people get sent. It is a learning environment away from the rest of the high school and it's reserved for the kids with learning disabilities, the kids who frequently get in fights, and the one who are just "slow". They learn life skills and useful things that they really need, instead of learning how to dissect frogs and write research essays.