To start, I am the type of person that school came amazingly naturally to me. I was the kid in school that got straight A's in practically everything, all while never studying for a test. I was in the gifted children's classes through out most of elementary and up until 8th grade, the last grade the program entailed. Without sounding like a braggart; I am a very brilliant person. In 2007 father died and I had to move to a new school. I went from having a senior class schedule of European History, Honors English, and Pre-Calculus to be shunted into Civics and Remedial Geometry because I technically didn't have any classes with that exact name on my transcript, and a normal English class.The quality of education I received in felt amazingly sub-par in comparison to that of the school I grew up with. In general I was completely unstimulated, along with depressed, and I ended up skipping a lot of school and sleeping through classes. My love of learning was also completely dashed, and I assumed college would fix that and present me with a challenge, yet I was dashed again. I dropped out, a fact I sometimes regret today. I digress though.
I feel as though I can't truly comment in the same way as everyone else, most of my school was in a school that, in my opinion, did wonderfully. It was also a really small school (7-12th grade in one building, approx. 550 kids).My last year of high school, however; was in suburban school outside of the Baltimore Metro area, not only was it a culture shock (My senior class had 660 graduating students) but I was astounded to learn that they had such lower standards than my old school. I feel that this large metro schools are a determent to the educational process of many children. With high capacity schools the focus is on quantity, and quality is put into the wayside in order to find the easiest way to school that many children at once,
These a few of the things I notice were different between my small school, and the large metro area school:
The failing point where I grew up was 70; in the new school it was 60.
My original high school had mandatory tutorial sessions if you fell people a 75 in a class, and you usually had to stay there until you were above an 85. This did not exist in the new school, in fact many teachers did not offer tutorial periods at all.
I went through 5 years of school being used to having 8 40-44 minute long classes (Plus a 40 minute lunch); same classes and teachers each day, except P.E we had that every other day all year long, every year. This usually alternated another class, usually a health class. The Baltimore metro school area had 4 1.5 hr long classes one day, and a different 4 1.5 hours long classes the next, with most of those classes changing in the second semester. They also only required one year of P.E for each student, that you could elect to take at any time.
The teachers in my original school I knew for most of my high school career. They understood how I did things, and I knew I could trust and rely on them. They took the time to actually help me when I had problems, and were always there when i needed them. In Baltimore I was just another face and my teachers barely remembered who I was half the time. I think only my AP Art History teacher remembered me, because the class itself wasn't that big. My English teacher remembered me, but only because I was the only student in my class that knew how to properly write a paper. I'm not joking; he thanked me in the middle of class for being the only one not to use text speak on one of my papers; and for using correct punctuation and capitalization. I was appalled and embarrassed simultaneously.
I know this is a longer post than the others, and probably not as on topic due to the fact I cannot watch the video while at work. I hope it still had some impact on the conversation and that my point was able to be properly communicated.
Kiru