America's Education System Is Fine

After seeing some people, mostly Europeans, claim that all Americans are stupid because our "education system is worse than North Korea's" and making other baseless claims like that, I've decided to share my own experience with the education system of the United States. After going through America's 13 year system, let me say this, it was easy. I wish I could be one of those people who say that high school (the last 4 years of the education system; the last 6 years, if you count junior high school), but they weren't, in fact I am a much happier person now than I was in high school. By no means am I implying that the American education system is perfect, since no system is entirely perfect, but it's definitely not as bad as the liberal media makes it out to be.

No, I'm not a prodigy or anything, but I went through the education system and it worked fine. I didn't go to some fascist Orwellian high school with metal detectors, school uniforms, strict dress code, drug sniffing dogs, or police everywhere. I also didn't go to a run-down high school with gangs, violence, bullying, or anything like that. I just went to a normal American high school. Please note that I am basing this entire thread upon my personal experience, which was with a high school in a semi-rural area, and by no means represents urban (city) high schools, which are likely gang infested.

I went through the system like everyone else, did my education like everyone else, K-6, 7-8, and 9-12, and I wasn't generally a straight A student, nor did I have perfect behavior. I definitely could have been a straight A student had I applied myself more, but that was not the fault of the education system, that was a fault of my own. I am an extremely intelligent human being, and have been since I was about 13. I can code and design an entire fully functional website in less than an hour, I am informed about almost all political issues and have opinions on them, I study political ideologies and religions in my free time to further my knowledge, I know how the world works both in high school and after it, and I was always a step ahead of most of my peers, and still am today in many cases.

We teach our children and later our teenagers just fine, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Does that mean I want to lessen funding towards education? No, in fact I want to increase funding towards education. I feel as though education is very important for today's young people, but remember, high school is all about learning how to become a productive and social member of society, K-6 on the other hand is all about learning basics such as the English language, science, mathematics, and other core classes. My school district never had the best funding, and in my final year of high school it was/is crumbling now, because of lack of state funding. It has gotten so bad that they had to close down a lot of elementary schools in the area, and merge them with other elementary schools. They're even planning on merging an elementary school with my local junior high school, which many of the locals, myself included, are strongly against.

Now lets get down to the social aspect, high school has virtually no bullying, bullying is something little kids do in the K-6 system, not teenagers. No, I wasn't some popular football playing jock who had a cheerleader girlfriend, in fact, I was the opposite. I was the video game playing geek with practically no friends. Sure, I had some "friends" who I would hang out with at school and talk to online, but like most people, I only had maybe one or two real friends. But even within my own group, I was one of the people who just didn't fit in entirely, despite me being one of the two leaders of the group, and the administrator of the group's official message board. We had cliques, of course, like every high school does, there were the jocks, the emos, the stoners, the cheerleaders, the preps, the band geeks, the goths, us gamers, and all other kinds of cliques, and of course there was also individuality. But cliques are nothing like what Hollywood makes it out to be, everyone gets along with everyone else, and everyone has friends in every group, and all groups peacefully socialize with each other.

There were no gangs, but again, I've never lived in a major city, especially not a poor area of a city. We did have some drugs though, of course there was alcohol and smoking, but never on campus, and those are of course general things teenagers do to rebel (or because they get addicted). There wasn't any peer pressure though, no one ever pressured you into doing drugs, or even really asked you too. Of course, there's the occasional pot, but pretty much no one got into the hard drugs, maybe a few of the stoners did some of the hardcore stuff like meth, but no one I know (aside from one girl, but she graduated a few years before me). Now then, teen sex, sure, there was a lot of that, but most people played it safe and used condoms and/or birth control. There were a handful of pregnancies each year, but they brought that upon themselves. As for fashion, let me say that, like most guys, I'm not very adept when it comes to fashion. I would just wear whatever I felt like, and never got made fun of or singled out too much. Sure, there were the preps who always wore Hollister or the emos who generally wore darker clothing, but it certainly wasn't a fashion contest or anything like that.

I'd say the school system is pretty damn good, if not the best in the world. Sure, after high school, like most people, I missed it, and still do sometimes. I wish I could go back and be 13 again, a teenager, and start my adult/teenage life over. But all-in-all I'm glad of the person I am now, I'm not rich or overly successful yet, but I work hard and I'm getting there, since that's what America is all about, hard-work and making your own future. The school system has already vastly improved, my baby brother learned in 3rd grade what they taught me and everyone else in 5th grade. He was learning multiplication and division in like second grade. So yes, I'm glad our school system is making strides to become better, because our young people are the future of this country. Do I think we need to completely overhaul the school system? No. Do I think we need to take extreme stances like metal detectors, teachers beating students, school uniforms, strict dress codes, search and seizures every 2 hours, drug sniffing dogs, or anything like that? No. But I do think we need to fund education more. Of course, you have to remember that every high school is different, and with that, I bid adieu.

I currently attend the best high-school in my state (based on size,) and a ton of new freshman have absolutely no intelligence to do anything. When I was in middle school and even elementary the teachers had no idea what they were talking about. It was like they read the books, said "What?", and still taught anyway. I would've been totally unprepared for high school if I didn't get really good teachers who were experienced in middle school.


So yeah, I think there is a problem with our education.

I live in the UK (England) and feel much the same way on this and have basically had the same experiences as you, although there seems to be a few more geeks/gamers for me to socialise with, and we have a uniform so fashion isn't really an issue, much to many of the student's disgust.

America is slowly killing itself by cutting educational funding. China and India will gladly take over our lead in science in technology until we have nothing left to outsource.

Ex: http://www.azcentral.com/news/election/azelections/articles/2011/03/30/20110330arizona-education-intel-ceo.html

Well I don't think they teach that Creationism is a science but Evolution is an unsubstantiated belief propagated by evil atheists who hate their country in North Korea; so I guess NK does have the advantage over the USA on this point.

In my experience, the failure is with the students, not the education system. I mean, you have all those cases where Americans get basic facts wrong, and I guarantee it isn't because those facts aren't being taught, it's because those lazy idiots didn't bother paying attention. I mean, that's pretty much how a lot of my classes went - I'm something of a nerd, so I always paid attention and studied, but if you tested the classes I was in, it would probably appear that they hadn't learned anything because I was always surrounded by students who never paid attention and didn't care.

I see the same thing as a teaching assistant - you'll have great teachers in classrooms where no one is learning anything because the students can't be bothered to put their damn cell phones away or what have you. It always bothers me whenever someone complains about how horrible teachers are because I see on a daily basis the apathy they have to contend with.

The problem is it's practically become a crime to suggest that any failure is the student's fault. Parents throw a goddamn fit if you suggest their children are anything less than perfect angels.

Gez said:

Well I don't think they teach that Creationism is a science but Evolution is an unsubstantiated belief propagated by evil atheists who hate their country in North Korea; so I guess NK does have the advantage over the USA on this point.

We don't teach evolution or creationism here in America.

samusaran253 said:

rambling account of boring, high school

Just because you didn't hate it doesn't mean it's not broken. The quality of a school system is also heavily dependent on what it manages to teach most of its students. You can write better than most high school graduates I've met (including non-Americans), so we know that much worked in your favour. How about your peers, though?
You barely address what anyone learns, except to say it was easy and hint at what isn't taught.

Notice how you said science was for kids? What? Most people who manage any real understanding of science won't be able to do it when they're in elementary school. That stuff needs to be ongoing and everybody needs it to have a clue what's going on around them.

Why aren't they teaching you much science? Probably because they're teaching to their standardized reading and math tests. And they're probably doing that because they get funding removed for doing poorly on those. How does taking away funding to teach help educate people? I've used science as an example because you mentioned it, but that kind of thinking destroys everything that isn't on government tests.

It's good that your school wasn't hell and that you were able to dell well in it, but if you want to know how well it works you need to compare what you and your peers can do and know at the end of it with people from other places in America and everywhere else. A big part of high school should involve learning to be good at that.

Oh, and then we get into all the weirdness that seems to come with American education discussions: creationism as science, entire cities with 30% graduation rates, etc, etc. Those are totally beyond the scope of my argument.

EDIT:

samusaran253 said:

We don't teach evolution or creationism here in America.

Did you somehow avoid taking any biology at all? Really? That's a scary thought.

Additionally, what geekmarine is describing is often true, but rather than just a student failure (teenagers are often useless in wealthy societies), it's a sign of a broader cultural failure. Well, I suppose he hints at that with the mention of parents throwing a fit over discipline of any kind.

Isn't creationism as a science some type of overblown thing that probably only happens sometimes in southern states? I don't doubt that it happens, but I never even heard anything like that come up in science classes

Ralphis said:

Isn't creationism as a science some type of overblown thing that probably only happens sometimes in southern states? I don't doubt that it happens, but I never even heard anything like that come up in science classes

Intelligent Design isn't being taught yet, but it's the wedge that'll open the door into teaching religion in schools. Intelligent Design has a much bigger purpose then simply teaching creationism.

geekmarine said:

In my experience, the failure is with the students, not the education system. I mean, you have all those cases where Americans get basic facts wrong, and I guarantee it isn't because those facts aren't being taught, it's because those lazy idiots didn't bother paying attention. I mean, that's pretty much how a lot of my classes went - I'm something of a nerd, so I always paid attention and studied, but if you tested the classes I was in, it would probably appear that they hadn't learned anything because I was always surrounded by students who never paid attention and didn't care.

I see the same thing as a teaching assistant - you'll have great teachers in classrooms where no one is learning anything because the students can't be bothered to put their damn cell phones away or what have you. It always bothers me whenever someone complains about how horrible teachers are because I see on a daily basis the apathy they have to contend with.

The problem is it's practically become a crime to suggest that any failure is the student's fault. Parents throw a goddamn fit if you suggest their children are anything less than perfect angels.

I was about to say something along the lines of "Of course, it's because kids these days have their heads in their 'phones' texting each other or watching youtube on their iphones or whatever instead of learning anything.", but it seems you beat me to it on the second paragraph. It's plain damn laziness, apathy, "instant gratification", "our kids are special little snowflakes AND FUCK YOU IF YOU THINK OTHERWISE". Those are the main problems with today's education system, and to an extent, modern society as a whole. God forbid you have to give up your "fun" and "social" activities to learn something.

It's even worse in urban areas, but those are generally cesspools overall.

I have a very mixed view of our education system. Keep in mind as you're reading this that I went to one of the top 100 high schools in the country and that I probably have an undiagnosed learning disability (my teachers gave up trying to figure it out after about 4th grade, and my parents stopped bothering to raise me at the same time so they could deal with their personal issues).

First of all, I have to say, I guess I might be lucky or it's because I'm in a blue state, but there was NEVER even the slightest inkling that they would WANT to teach creationism in the classroom. Even among the Christians around here, virtually none of them were creationists. Hell, I took a Bible as Lit class for fun in my senior year, and everyone in it was pretty chill, even though I was one of two atheists in the class. I wrote an essay about how the 10 Commandments really have no place in our school system and got at least a B on it from the teacher, who was a southern Baptist. So yeah, I never understood the whole debate about Creationism or prayer in schools. Seems like a non-issue.

Secondly, I really fucking hated the basic structure of the education system. For one thing, I fucking hate classroom/scholastic learning. I never fucking learned anything from them. I only ever learn stuff by reading or by doing hands-on stuff. I always tried to get the hands-on crafty sorts of classes in high school, but most of the time they wouldn't fucking let me take them because my grades weren't good enough, which just turned into a huge downward spiral there. Case in point, one of my favorite classes was Material Science. It allowed me to finally finish my science credits (at the end of my senior year), and most of the work was making stuff out in a workshop environment while learning why different materials worked as they did. We got to make pottery, LEDs, light bulbs, glass, metal castings, electroplating, etc. and I had a blast doing it. Plus, I now know a shit ton about different materials and I actually sort of put that to daily use these days. Hell, I know what those numbers on the recycling symbols on plastics mean. :P We were supposed to be doing paperwork alongside those, but I never did them. I still passed because the teacher knew I knew what I was doing. So yeah, those classes were fun but rare and hard to get into. In the damned classroom environment, I spent 90% of my time staring out the window and daydreaming because I couldn't be bothered to listen to the teacher droning on. So fuck that.

Then there's homework. Don't get me started on that bullshit. Why should I let school interfere with my free time? So yeah, I never did that, and my parents never made me do it (like I said, they stopped bothering to raise me). Luckily, I'm stupidly good at tests. I could always ace any test I took, and I usually got in the 99th percentile on standardized tests. It's not that I'm smart, it's just that I can figure out the systems they use for the tests really easily. I never studied, and even on tests where I didn't know shit about the material, I still rarely ever did worse than about 80%. So anyway, you could tell which classes weighted homework over tests, and vice-versa. The test-heavy ones were the ones I got A's and B's in, and the stupid-fuck ones that were entirely homework-based were the F's.

By the way, I should mention I graduated high school with a 1.6 GPA and a half credit short. They still gave me my diploma along side both the valedictorians and the kids who showed up to graduation drunk. So that goes to show the education system is 100% participation-based. "Well, you didn't meet any of our requirements, but you did stick with it the whole way, so we'll give this one to you anyway".

On the subject of bullying and cliques, there really wasn't any. Bullying stopped after grade school, name calling pretty much ended after Junior High, and the jocks and popular kids never really picked on us nerds and goths. Then again, the Columbine incident pretty much coincided with me going in to high school, so maybe they were just scared. :P Seriously, though, the nerds hung out with the metal heads, the metal heads hung out with the goths, the goths hung out with the skaters, and the skaters hung out with the jocks. There was so much overlap, you couldn't really tell who was in what clique, if there even were any. Plus, it was hard to keep track of it all considering there were like 1,100 kids in my graduating class (IIRC we were some kind of fluke, as we had nearly twice as many kids as either the previous or following classes and THOSE classes were rather large). There was a sliding scale from the weird kids no one liked to the ASB staff, but it was rather gradual, and I remember some of the popular kids coming up to me for computer advice or help on classwork (obviously in some of the test-heavy classes I was doing well in) even though I was on the lower end of the scale. Hell, some of them even friended me years later on Facebook. :P At the end of the day, we all played hacky-sack together between classes and at lunch. Fuck, that should have been our school's official sport.

Lastly, I just want to comment that the education seems fucked right now and should probably be reformed. They instituted the No Child Left Behind Act a few years after I graduated, so I don't know how much damage it did from a personal level, but I know basing the education system off of standardized tests and the "knowledge" needed to ace them is just retarded (see above on my opinion of them, plus standardized tests are for TESTING students, not for making them PASS - it defeats the whole purpose of them). I've heard as much from various teachers all across the country. I say we just go back to the basic Prussian model...with more options for hands-on and honors-level classes than they do these days.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-students-you-are-exploited-debt-serfs

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2460499

http://ry4an.org/readings/short/student/

"school is a holding pen to keep adolescents from interfering in society" -paul graham (paraphrased)

Don't you think its odd that the educational paradigm is based on teaching rather than learning? Teaching is when self proclaimed authorities force others to waste glacial hours of youth behind bars, preparing them for their clock-punching futures, dictating retarded things to learn, like "minority literature" where I was forced to read and be tested on assfiction merely because the author was a minority. College was just more high school to me; use the rote memorization trick mnemonics to briefly pass some test, then forget it all.
Learning, on the other hand, is much more obvious and natural, involving a brain actively seeking out things that interest the neural network in our skulls. Its practically inevitable for a brain to be interested by things; its the educational system that made learning 'uncool' as can be seen in many cultural references like nelson from the simpsons punching smart kids or something. My college had an awesome library, but the 'homework' (fuck, that glacial 8 hour time block even extends beyond the classroom) and time consuming mnemonic learning and pointless busywork like reading their shitty 13th edition required 200$ course books (they change 1 word as an excuse to release a new edition to kill the resale market of previous editions, talk about an obvious troll scam) BLOCKED me from... learning (the whole point supposedly)... on my own by choosing books MYSELF.
Everyone should merely be taught how to read and write, then be an autodidact from then on (not meaning entirely 'self' teaching since you learn from books that others have written.. but you choose your own educational path based on what interests you rather than being fed shit to pass a standardized test). The internet, and even books pre-internet, makes the educational institution obsolete. If I can choose my own teachers (book writers), then I can stand on the shoulders of giants by carefully selecting who I learn from.. and skim or skip anything I find uninteresting.
And this hasn't even touched on the socially ill situation involving bullies and such inside the institutions. They make sure the hedges are neatly trimmed and lawns are mowed to deceive parents with an externally positive school image. I drove past my high school the other day and gave the whole block the middle finger. Fuck that youth stealing hate teaching institution. Imagine if all the enormous property of middle/high schools/colleges were turned into cheap apartments to reduce the cost of living for everyone instead. Nothing in terms of education would be lost; we still have books. Ok, I'm done converting my brain diarrhea into text.

Aliotroph? said:

Did you somehow avoid taking any biology at all? Really? That's a scary thought.

Says the Canadian.

Ralphis said:

Isn't creationism as a science some type of overblown thing that probably only happens sometimes in southern states?

Yes.

gggmork said:

Derp.

Yes, there is a certain amount of propaganda in public education, but if you have half a braincell (even a teenaged braincell), you realize this and take everything with a grain of salt. Anyone who gets brainwashed by the public education system would probably be the kind of person who watches reality shows when they get older, anyway. They DO honestly try to teach useful information, even if it is with an outdated model. Or they DID before George W. Bush fucked it up.

samusaran253 said:

Now lets get down to the social aspect, high school has virtually no bullying, bullying is something little kids do in the K-6 system, not teenagers.

You are a fucking idiot.

First off: Anecdotal evidence =/ actual proof. Just because YOUR school was OK (and that's assuming that you're not just bullshitting in order to get your point across, which I'm fairly sure you are) does NOT make it the norm.

Second: Look up a fairly infamous school shooting that happened in 1999 for instant refutation. Outside of that, I can bring up my own past issues with depression (and the accounts of people I know who went through the same thing), this poor teen, and many others.

I mean, fuck. This is the attitude which allows teenage pricks to torment others freely: if no one THINKS it's an issue, nothing gets done. Why do you think MA took so long to adopt a strong anti-bullying stance? Stupid bullshit like this.

Ralphis said:

Isn't creationism as a science some type of overblown thing that probably only happens sometimes in southern states? I don't doubt that it happens, but I never even heard anything like that come up in science classes

It probably depends on the county involved but yeah, I've never heard of anything like that outside of the south.

Technician said:

Intelligent Design isn't being taught yet, but it's the wedge that'll open the door into teaching religion in schools. Intelligent Design has a much bigger purpose then simply teaching creationism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope

geekmarine said:

In my experience, the failure is with the students, not the education system.

Really, it isn't. The students aren't lazy, they're just understimulated by horribly simple curriculum.

Let me give you an example with our worst system, Mathematics.
In first grade, we start learing problems such as "__ + 3 = 2; fill in the blank". Now fast forward to high school, where people are starting with Algebra. What's an example of an algebra problem, you ask? "X + 3 = 2; find X". It's the same shit with a line replaced with an X. We learn pretty much nothing between 2nd grade and middle school here.

Of course the students are going to screw off when our educators and politicians give a half-assed approach to designing our curriculum and funding our schools. When we have schools in inner cities with rat problems, leaky ceilings, outdated textbooks, and oversized classes, what do you expect them to do? Work hard in gratitude for our obviously caring system? We send a clear message to our kids; "We don't care about your education, so why should you?".

I think it's a mix of the kids and the system. First off, I think they need an atmosphere where the kid actually wants to learn and for the most part that's not there. Now you have this kid who doesn't want to learn, and then he pulls out a cell phone and starts texting with 10 different people at once. This leads to his attention being split 11 different ways instead of focused on a single topic.

Danarchy brought up the point of hands-on learning as well. I personally wasn't a hands-on learner in high school (though that's changed slightly later on), but I think that would create a fun and exciting environment to learn in.

Lastly, I'll bring up this point, as at least for me personally, it's pretty important in my area. All through High School, I was pretty good at math, even taking an honors class my junior year. I graduated in 2008, and went to college a few months later. I'm not sure how it works anywhere else, but for English and Math I had to take a placement test to see where I would start at in the respective courses. For the math part, I scored either the lowest, or the second lowest (I can't really remember now) and I was pretty surprised by that. Come to find out, most of the students I graduated with who went to the same school had a very similar score. A semester or two later, my professor was talking about that and she flat out said we were taught the right way in high school. Despite doing so well in high school math-wise, I understood it a lot better in college, so I think there's some truth to what she had said.

I guess I was wrong when I initially thought it was both. I think a lot more falls on the schools than the actual students.

TL;DR I think the education system could use an overhaul.

Mr. Freeze said:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope

Bullshit, asshole. If your too ignorant to research the idealisms of Intelligent Design, then there's no helping you.

ERIC HARRIS WAS A PRODUCT OF YUOR AMERICAN SCHOOLS!!!!!!!!!

Y&OUR SYSTEM MAEKS B ABIES INTO KILLERS!!!!!!!!!!!!

darknation said:

ERIC HARRIS WAS A PRODUCT OF YUOR AMERICAN SCHOOLS!!!!!!!!!
Y&OUR SYSTEM MAEKS B ABIES INTO KILLERS!!!!!!!!!!!!

Preach on brother!

"I think it only makes sense to seek out and identify structures of authority, hierarchy, and domination in every aspect of life, and to challenge them; unless a justification for them can be given, they are illegitimate, and should be dismantled, to increase the scope of human freedom." - Noam Chomsky

Can you guys tell I spend a lot of time on the internet?:
1 of 4:

darknation said:

ERIC HARRIS WAS A PRODUCT OF YUOR AMERICAN SCHOOLS!!!!!!!!!

Y&OUR SYSTEM MAEKS B ABIES INTO KILLERS!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dummy, they're obviously a product of violent video games, atheism, socialism, and rock and roll music.

lol americans

Mordeth said:

lol americans

If our forum roles were reversed, that'd be your title now.

Technician said:

teaching religion in schools.

Sometime after I graduated in 2004 the Ontario government added a religion class to the grade 9 curriculum. Now I have no idea what it covers exactly, but it ID may be a part of it. I remember the debate in the southern states being in the news a lot at the time.

Plus we have those nice state funded Catholic schools.

Scet said:

Plus we have those nice state funded Ontario Catholic schools.

I'm a product of the Catholic curriculum. Interesting enough, the mandatory religious classes were never as doctoral as one would assume. Though, if given the choice, I eradicate all religious or ethnic oriented schools. It's hard to learn tolerance when you are isolated by race or belief.

I don't really have a problem with a religious program per se, as long as it's a cultural overview or study, no doctrine. We had a world religion class that I really enjoyed.

I'm a product of Arizona State Public Schools who was fortunate enough to get a scholarship to a private school to which I credit my ability to get into college with scholarships as well. I do not know where the OP attended school but I can assert that likely it was not in the state of Arizona where the graduation and literacy rates are abysmal and many people graduate without the ability to read or speak English.

samusaran253 said:

By no means am I implying that the American education system is perfect, since no system is entirely perfect, but it's definitely not as bad as the liberal media makes it out to be.

liberal media

We teach our children and later our teenagers just fine, and I wouldn't have it any other way

Which is why we rank dead last is most areas of study in the developed world? Or is it something else?

My school district never had the best funding, and in my final year of high school it was/is crumbling now, because of lack of state funding. It has gotten so bad that they had to close down a lot of elementary schools in the area, and merge them with other elementary schools. They're even planning on merging an elementary school with my local junior high school, which many of the locals, myself included, are strongly against.

I graduated from a school in a town with ~800 people. My graduating class in 2000 had 59 people in it. So we are on similar grounds. What difference does that make? Shall we exchange stories? Pointless.

Now lets get down to the social aspect, high school has virtually no bullying, bullying is something little kids do in the K-6 system, not teenagers.

First of all this is complete and utter bullshit. Secondly, I'm only quoting this first sentence because the entire paragraph is pointless and irrelevant. Bullying is something that people do their entire lives. It is not restricted to k-6 or highschool AT ALL. It doesn't just magically stop once people graduate high school. The reason that it is a concern during youth is that it can have profound impacts into how people make decisions in how they wish to live and how they fell they may fit into society when they become adults.

There wasn't any peer pressure though, no one ever pressured you into doing drugs, or even really asked you too.

Oh, you're once of those idiots. Look, 'peer pressure' is not some drug dealer standing on a fucking corner saying that he'll give you a free 'hit' of 'drugs' since he's such a nice guy and suddenly you're hooked. Because people IRL don't do those things. Peer pressure is something people feel inside themselves to try and emulate those around them and to engage in the same activities they do to gain acceptance into a social group. It really is that simple. And again, it's not something that disappears when you leave highschool.

I'd say the school system is pretty damn good, if not the best in the world.

'Best in the world' based on what metric exactly?

I know how the world works both in high school and after it, and I was always a step ahead of most of my peers, and still am today in many cases.

So, enlighten me. Please do so with your pointless anecdotes.

but I work hard and I'm getting there, since that's what America is all about, hard-work and making your own future.

Yep, you're darn tootin', that why people that spent decades in certain industries are out of jobs now from outsourcing and various other layoffs...they just weren't working hard enough! Lazy-ass steel workers.

In almost a decade of being a working adult in the US, I can tell you I LOVE the 5 days a year I get as 'vacation'. I cherish them, a week of free pay really. Unfortunately, I either have to use them during the week of christmas because I am unable to use them at any other point in the year, or I have to use them during days I'm 'technically 'laid off' but not 'laid off' because of course it would be a bad idea to file for unemployment, I don't want to lose my fucking job if I did so. I'm making the exact same amout of money I was making 6 or 7 years ago, it sucks but that's the way it is. But you know to the world better than I do, so what am I doing wrong? Am I just not working hard enough? How do I work harder?

Technician said:

Intelligent Design isn't being taught yet

samusaran253 said:

We don't teach...creationism here in America.

This is incorrect. There are in fact public school districts that teach ID along side evolution in biology classes. It's not every school in the nation, it's not even a fairly large percentage...but it DOES EXIST. There are school districts that have little warning stickers in the front of their biology textbooks that state that evolution is only a theory and such crap.

Ralphis said:

Isn't creationism as a science some type of overblown thing that probably only happens sometimes in southern states?

If Pennsylvania is a southern state, then yes.

Technician said:

but it's the wedge that'll open the door into teaching religion in schools.

Religion is already taught here in schools. Though understandably, America has a much more serious equal rights agenda than some unremarkable European countries, and teaching religion in schools would be a PITA, because the teacher and the students would have to decide on which religion to believe in order not to fight...

samusaran253 said:

By no means am I implying that the American education system is perfect, since no system is entirely perfect, but it's definitely not as bad as the liberal media makes it out to be.

samusaran253 said:

Please note that I am basing this entire thread upon my personal experience

samusaran253 said:

We don't teach evolution or creationism here in America.

If this is a troll, it's a very bad one. Try to work in some obfuscated logical fallacies and thought terminators.

/CSB

Xaser said:

If our forum roles were reversed, that'd be your title now.

Nah, that'd be his username.