Preparing our Kids for the Future
U.S. high schools are not properly preparing kids for the college experience. The primary purpose of a high school in the United States is to get teenagers into college. The courses taught in U.S. high schools are way toolenient in their grading policies and offer students much leeway. High school courses are too lenient because high school teachers make them that way. One good example that proves just how much leeway secondary education offers students is that on average, professors at the high school level accept late papers. Of course late papers are marked down, but this policy voids the purpose to having deadlines. Most universities, both public and private set strict guidelines on these matters and openly encourage their professors to do the same. I turned in papers a week late in high school and still received a grade of 70 % on them.
This is coming back to hunt me in college because I now have a big problem meeting deadlines. Although I do not like to admit it, if high school had been stricter in this respect I might not be going through these many difficulties right now.
Most public high school teachers are astoundingly underpaid and overworked with sometimes over fifty students in a single classroom. In the last ten years the average class size doubled according to a Time magazine study published in 1995 stating that throughout the whole nation classes have doubled in size. The article mentions that this
problem has occurred and will worsen due to illegal immigration, a population expansion,
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and people migration to cities and urban sites. Some students that can afford a private tutor or the cost of private education follow that path. This is not fair to the majority that can't afford...
My opinion
I'm on the opposite side. I don't think the education we get in high school these days is too lenient. I remember back in 7th grade when my math teacher was trying to explain to our class that the government is always adding more into the cirriculum so that a few years from now 7th graders will know what high school students will know, and high school students will be learning what college students learn and so on. I think that is true because if you think about it, parents can't even help us with highschool homework these days because in their time they didn't have to learn all the things we did. I really don't think teachers are too lenient, and if anything, they push too hard or too much.
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