Problems with public school in America
1. It kills innovation
The world right now doesn't care what you know, but what you can do with what you know. Forcing students to spit back out information that they were taught in class doesn't develop their problem solving skills. Problem solving skills are much more important than knowledge but there is no focus on that in American education.
2. It discourages interest
By forcing students to learn subjects they do not want to learn to a high level in order to graduate, school makes students lose interest in those classes and thus students will not pay attention. For example a good math student is not likely to care why the symbol of the river in Siddhartha contributes to the theme of the story, while a future literature major will not care about adding and subtracting natural logarithms.
3. Funding
America spends far, far more on its military than its education, and funding for education is dwindling at a rapid pace. When money does come in, it is usually to fix the schools rather than to decrease the enormous class sizes.
4. Discipline
When a student has behavioral issues, making him/her sit in a room quietly or kicking them out of school for a few days is probably the second to last thing that could possibly fix the issue. The last thing is kicking them out of school for good.
5. It discourages exploration
A rigid curriculum is the greatest enemy of learning because if there is something else to explore or some other question to pose, it can never get done. The teacher must stick to the curriculum given. This is particularly terrible in the IB program where there is no time to go off on tangents because of the ridiculous schedule constraints and the specificity of the information that absolutely must be taught.
Well, that's not all, but here ends my rant.
