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What’s the point of high school anyway? Over the years I’ve often wondered that, and I’m a high school teacher. I used to think I knew but the longer I teach the less sure I am. I’ve been told that high school is supposed to prepare kids. Prepare them for what- work, college, university, life???
When I’m wearing my special education teacher hat, I’m just trying to teach students learning strategies to help them over come the disadvantages they have because of their learning disabilities. I am trying to help them pass each course so they can graduate. That really isn’t much of the big picture view, I must say. It’s like not being able to see the forest because I”m too focused on the trees. When I’m wearing my student success teacher hat, I’m doing basically the same thing with at-risk kids. As a math teacher, I’m trying my hardest to engage my students to motivate them so they will pass the course. It seems that my purpose as a teacher in 2009 is getting students to pass grade nine so they can go to grade ten so they can go to grade 11 etc. My focus is on getting kids to pass. Is that what it should be? Is that what the focus of high school should be? Obviously, I’m not the only one wondering about this.
A recent study found
9 percent of high school teachers say their primary mission is to prepare students for college, versus 48 percent of students and 42 percent of parents who say college preparation should be the chief focus of high school.
I think that high schools should focus on more than getting kids ready for college. If we really want to pay more than lip service to respecting students, we need to do more than focus on their intellect . Students are mind and body, heart and soul. Educators like Maria Montessori and Rudolph Steiner recognized this in the late 19th and early 20th century and set up schools that focused on educating the whole child. This notion of educating the whole child isn’t new. It dates back over 2000 years ago to Aristotle.
It seems to me that in the last ten years or so, more and more parents are looking to schools to provide holistic education. Parents are looking to schools to provide character education, to stop bullying and to provide a breakfast program. I have had more than one parent tell me that they don’t know what to do about their children. Their children just won’t listen to them, and they just don’t know what to do. This cuts across all socioeconomic levels. Just recently, a parent told me he doesn’t understand why his 14 year old child is acting out the way he is. He told me he gives him everything he wants and yet his child just keeps acting out. He asked me for parenting advice. This isn’t an isolated incident. Who is to “parent” these kids if parents are not able to. Parents need support and they are asking schools to help educate more than their child’s intellect. Is it the job of schools to educate parents, too?
What do you think?
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6 Responses to “What’s the point of high school anyway?”
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I honestly don’t know if there is any purpose to public schooling after age 16. I think we should stop at the 10th grade. After that, students should elect to attend (or not) two years of publicly paid prep school. This would prepare them for the career of their choice. They would not take ANY classes that did not meet that goal. Too many 11th and 12th grade students are clueless as to why they have to take many of the required classes. They don’t see value in Algebra II, when they want to be a chef or a cosmetologist, or they don’t see the value of British Literature when they are planning to be an auto mechanic. Are their math classes that would help a chef, sure there are, but not Algebra II. Are their technical reading and writing classes that would help an auto mechanic – yes. But a general high school can’t provide these. In most mid-sized towns up to large urban cities, schools could be changed to accommodate a curriculum that really prepared kids for work. I know this would be difficult in small towns, where the high schools are already tiny. But I think we are wasting two years of high school with meaningless requirements.
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The problem I have about this issue from my school is that we really do set the expectation too low. I work at a high school that has a fairly high African American population, and our expectations for them seems to be two-fold a) passing the state reading/math tests and b) just graduating. While I personally don’t think a school’s main priority is to prepare students for college, we could do a better job, especially in poor, minority schools of promoting college. The expectation is already there for white, middle/upper class students. While I am no supporter of charter schools, or fall into the school of thought that “reformers” like Bloomberg and Michele Rhee fall into, I understand the appeal of their message. It really is about expectations. They should be realistic, but we shouldn’t be afraid to raise them.
.-= Kansas Special Education Teacher´s last blog ..What is my primary mission as a high school teacher? =-.
[...] read this interesting blog post by Elona Hartjes exploring the purpose of high school, and I feel there are [...]
After 12 years of my son being in school, I have to ask what does he know how to do now? shouldn’t he have some kind of a skill after all those years? Why does he now have to go to college? So he can take more nonsense classes for nothing? I really feel like we were cheated, and its not the schools fault. We need to live in communities where we work together, where are children learn life skills from when they are able to stand. I really feel that school just makes you dependent on the system. You have to go to school to get a good job, right? Why do we believe that???? Something has to change….
Thinking logically, social competence and completing something worthwhile are just a few of the accomplishments shared by high school grads. Expanding one’s horizons, ability to communicate, and ascribing to community standards might also be regarded as part of the worth of a diploma. I had filled all of the squares by my senior year for the academic side of things. I ended up having a great senior year learning how to make the most of friendships and talents. Our 17 and 18 year old adolescents need to continue their development in a safe environment. If they are lucky they will enjoy the nurturing into their early twenties when their frontal lobes will have reached maturity.
What I believe when a child acts out in a classroom is that they lack attention, which is true. What I come to find out is that most kids who don’t seek attention have fathers (good ones) who pay attention to their children. The ones who have bad fathers or no fathers have been found to act out during school and at home.
Now for the whole high school issue, I would have to agree that most high schools should really focus on the childs intellect rather than test score. Down here in Florida, if the child get’s a better test score, more money goes to the school, if the child get’s a bad test score, the less money goes into the school, which is dumb because all I have been doing is taking test in high school and learning the same thing over and over again all four years. Now when I took AP courses, it was a totally different ball game. I enjoyed coming to school because the education system focused on my intellect rather than some state test. Now I have been on both sides, the normal kids who take normal classes who don’t want to go to college, should really stop after 10th grade cause in my opinion, they waste government money by foolishness and all they do is act out and talk back to the teacher(s), who are just trying to do their job. All that saved money should be saved and and focused on much more inportant things like a childs upper education to get them ready for college. I think that should help the over population issues in high school…right??