Private school (and apparently homeschool) curriculum.

I just know that I learned to read way before my public school friends, and I knew complex math WAY WAY before them. We stopped using the A Beka program in middle school. We used a mixture after that. Our literature and grammar books were still A Beka, but we used Bob Jones for Biology and a mix of other publishers for math and history in high school. Our school though always used Christian textbooks (such as A Beka and Bob Jones) for science because we learned the Creation view as opposed to evolution. Other than the science area, I feel the books we used were really advanced. Our textbooks didn't focus on expanding an imagination either. I like that. I HATE reading literature and trying to decipher precisely what the writer was feeling. It's just not my thing. Our literature books focused on key historical works of literature, and left all that other artsy fartsy crap out. I think memorization is important for young children, especially in areas like history and math. People need to know state capitals and Presidents. People need to know their times tables. A lot of public school kids struggle with that. This is just what I gather from working in public schools myself. I don't think I am better. I just know that I want my kids to attend schools where they learn at a fast pace like I did.

I went to Catholic School and was taught about evolution. I forgot, might of been Princeton-Hall, or whatever.

What are "historical works of literature"? And what literature books are "artsy fartsy"? I fee like even in the classics, you have to do some deciphering of the book. Personally, I feel like knowing and understanding the fundamentals is important, but that doesn't take away from the importance of having an imagination.

I sometime feel like I live in a secluded little bubble. Are public schools that bad? I mean the public school I went to and the schools my friends went to had a pretty high standard. Most people were taking AP classes their senior year, some started in their junior year, some were able to take classes at a near by university if the hs ran out of classes (I know this is not possible at most places). We also had pretty much every AP class there exists in this country. I knew this was somewhat above average, but it didn't feel like it was that hard to come by. I guess most of the people I know are sons and daughters of doctors, lawyers, professors, and other professionals.

AP classes are great. My school had no AP classes. The "dumb" (who were actually just lazy) got the same education we did. I think remedial classes are fine, but I think AP classes should become the standard classroom. Students in high school don't know what they want. Why should students whose parents push them a little harder have more opportunities than those who find out for themselves in their mid-20's that maybe they should have taken classes that taught them a little more. I don't know. I hate public schools. They are violent, drug-ridden, and lack a serious number of teachers who actually care. I'm not saying private schools are better when it comes to the teachers, but at least it's harder to come by drugs at a Christian school. At least they give out real punishments when students threaten others. Public schools lack balls.

Where did you go to high school, btw, Inferia?

My brother goes to a public school in El Paso right now. He learns nothing, and has several threats on his life. He has come home with a bloody lip, a compressed vertebrae, a fist-sized bruise on his chest, a sore knee... just this year along. Some kid told him he was going to stab him. He gets offered drugs at least once a week. Why? All because he has autism, and the kids think he is a retard (which he is not).

I have taught in Lubbock schools as a substitute. Students were not any different there than they are in El Paso.

I start working in Savannah schools next week, either as permanent staff or a substitute (depends on how my interview tomorrow goes), so I guess I will see how the schools are here.

Texas education is taking a quick slide to the craphole. Dallas ISD just cut several hundred teaching jobs because they went WAY over budget. Because of this, they are having to cut several programs. I don't know if this is true, but I used to hear all the time that DISD was one of the worst school districts in the nation. I can't imagine how shitty it is going to be now that all those teachers lost their jobs. Sad thing is, Highland Park (a suburb of Dallas) has one of the best school districts in the nation.

I went to high school in Michigan, mid-Michigan. One of the things that Michigan, or the mid-west (like Illinois, Wisconsin, etc) have going for us are our public school system. I'm not going to comment on inner city schools, I think those are pretty shitty no matter where you go. I feel like if you live in a suburbish place or near a suburb in Michigan you will get a decent education. People around here comments on how rich Okemos (my town) is. Granted there are some rich folks there, but I feel like for people who make a middle class income you can afford to live there. One of the math teachers in my hs used to live right next to one of my best friends. I don't think I've ever worried about school violence. There were only a few fights that broke out, that I've seen when I went there, and those ended before they started because everyone pulled the people apart. People at my school did do drugs, but I didn't know anyone who did (I think I've only smelled weed one time in my life, imagine that huh?). Most people try pretty hard academically, I remember my school used to bolster our college entrance rate was 90% or something like that. I'm not sure what the quality is like now since Michigan is going through a recession, but I feel like education is one thing that Michigan has going for them, they shouldn't loose it.

My high school.

sucks that inner city kids don't get the same education

Florida has a weird program where they "redistribute" smart kids. Essentially they put all the really really good education programs in really bad schools. It's kinda messed up there's some sort of segregation between the kids who enter the school by being accepted into this fancy program, where as the rest of the kids have to walk through metal detectors. They say it's the only way for them to get money into poor performing schools. I dont' knwo about that...

I went to private school all but one year. I lived on the North Side of San Antonio, great public school. If you were on the other side of town, school would of sucked.

In Catholic School, i think less than half of my class went to college.

they redistribute kids in Texas too, but they do it to keep a more equal race count. I had a half black half korean friend that lived across the street. The high school she should have gone to was a 15 minute walk from our house. Instead, she was sent to a school on the complete other side of town, about a 45 minute drive away. Of course, they sent a school bus to pick her up. I think it's dumb to do that. She was one of only a few black people at the school. Sometimes I think schools should be slightly segregated. My brother-in-law who is 15 goes to a school that 95% black in Richmond. The kid is cool. He really is, but has no friends at the school. They either need to redistribute that school (nearly impossible in a city that is mostly black) or they should send him to a school where he can make some friends. Back in El Paso, he had a ton of friends, and now he doesn't have any.

Do you even know where the term "third world" originated? I don't think you can reasonably classify 18th or 19th century America as "third world".

Missed this one. Show me a school that has 40 kids in a general education classroom. Think the most you can have to a classroom is 25:1 or 30:1. Depends on the state laws. I'm pretty sure 40:1 is not allowed. Also, there are some that fall under the school of thought that teachers don't teach critical thinking but they facilitate it and don't suppress it. Unfortunately, by the time they get to me, it's too far suppressed and they want to be spoonfed answers still. It's a very difficult process to reverse. Very difficult. I'm sure I've lost more than one year on my life for each year I've been teaching.

My wife has the same problem. A good portion of her Algebra Academic (lowest level) kids can barely do basic math and they expect her to spoon feed them everything, rather than learning it and applying it.

Well, redistributing kids based on scores to poorer schools is pretty much the same thing as redistributing kids based on race... In Florida I think they have a choice, you could go to the school 5 minutes away from your house or you could go to the one 45 min away. It's just that the 45 minutes away one has a better education program. So, people tend to opt for the further away one...

I don't believe schools should be segregated, it's one chance for people to interact (like really forced to interact) with people of different backgrounds. The more you push it off, the more difficult it would become. My elementary school was probably one of the most diverse schools I've ever been too, you have people from Africa, from Russia, from places all over the world. At that point kids don't really get what "different" means yet, once you get to hs it's a little different, people clique off. I mean if I had the choice to go to an all Chinese school, I might've gone. It would've been much easier for me, dealing with people of similar background and view of things. But how good is this? And really, living in a predominately white suburbia, do I really have a choice? I see all these Chinese people cliquing off in college because it is easier for them to be with people from similar background. I understand why, but I feel like it's somewhat limited. You only hear one view of things, you have a back up choir of yes people who agree with you. I guess in the end it doesn't really matter, people do whatever they want to do to make themselves happy.

Though it's been awhile and obviously, laws have changed, but when I went to school in California, we had a teacher to student ratio of 1 to 42. Even 30 to 1 is bad. Explain to me how my point is changed by this?