Do parents/teachers expect too much from their kids in school

cause im in high school and theresno doubt that parents expect their kids to do good, but the tides have changed since they were in school.....


like all these dumb powerpoint notes, we're expected to take pages of notes in one class period, do internet projects, haul our books home blah blah blah


all teachers have to do is go onto a website get the powerpoint and boom they are done for the day



is it me or are the schools and teachers expecting too much from their students?

Also, everything has the be typed to make it easier on the teachers, what if we dont have ink/printer/even a computer? we have to drive to the library or whatever, it's really annoying


Scantrons are used to take tests now adays all the teachers have to do is put the paper into a machine and boom its graded. Whereas the students are punished for marking too darkly, not erasing enough, and how would we know? we wouldnt because we never get our scantrons back because its too much of a pain


How about teaching through movies, always happens now and never back then we cant really learn from movies

Also, soem of my teachers I dont know about other schools but im sure that there isnt much difference have a lot of substitutes and then our learning gets all messed up, the teachers come back like everything is normal which it isnt because while we were slaving away all day they were in some "meeting" which seems to be the reoccuring excuse.

How about Teachers Aids they grade all the the papers for the teachers, now the teachers virtually do nothing and the students do everything!


Also with all these new grading programs on computers and the teachers say "oh if i make a typo then its your responsibility to tell me that your grade is wrong


PLEASE TELL ME----WHAT IS THE TEACHERS JOB ANYMORE?


also please inform me if this is only my school that seems backwards, im hoping its in other schools too lol thanks

I don't think enough is expected in schools these days. That seems to be what they want though don't they? it seems as if they don't want you to think for yourself, which is why they don't always have the best curriculum.

You'd think that if they really wanted you to learn, they would cover much more aspects of the subject than they do.

Example: They can teach that evolution is why and how we became, but they won't teach that we became out of an intelligant design by a creator. Why can they teach us one possibility and not the other?

i think back then they taught more subjects that effect the lives of them, whereas today we're doing tons of useless work on stuff that really has nothign to do with school or our lives

(i.e all the greek gods and goddesses stuff)

Yeah, I'm only 20 years old so I graduated not long ago and I hated most of what they taught me, because aside from the basics, it had no relavance to the real world at all.

Maybe if you sugest to your teachers some topics you'd like to learn about, or study and get credit for that you think is important, maybe they'll teach something.

In my 10th grade Social Studies class, my teacher was an ex-CIA agent and we did segmants on the JFK assasination and stuff. Where I would have regularly got a D-, I got an A+ and helped me to think outside the box more often.

the only teachers i have little respect for is for language teachers because they actually have to kinda know something besides for the fact that they all went to college


and yea thats a good idea but i dont think any of my teachers would let us do anything on the kennedy assinations

The crazy thing about our JFK conspiracy segment was that it was completely the teachers idea.

I found it fun in highschool to challenge the teachers opinions on issues and get into a full out debate with them. Also whenever I would have a government report to do, it was always on topics that challenged the system, not just another boring paper confirming the system.

yea thats what i like to base all my art porjects on


still irritates me that the teachers get it pretty easy

As long as you learn from it, that's all that matters.

I prefer to seek knowledge myself.

Here in Australia, they expect to little of us, however, the scools just keep up with easy work relentlessly over our education, which becomes really boring. The end result is I'm really bored, and I HATE going to school. I learn more by browsing ATS.

Here in Australia, teachers always give us our work back, and teachers grade them themselves. So in America, they just put them in a machine right? That's REALLY slack.

How about teaching through movies, always happens now and never back then we cant really learn from movies

Over here, I've watched six movies in class this year. Heh.....

What they should tell us to do is this:
"Learn this, this and this, you can choose to do the test whenever you want, you can use any recouces availible".

Meaning we learn ourselves, then get tested on it to make sure we are working, I feel it should also be more like University. We pick what we want to learn then we do the course.

Boom, then we have a perfect ciriculum were we can learn what we want when we want. If that were true, we should shave years off the education system, without smart kids having to wait up for the idiots and/ or slow teachers.

[edit on 5-12-2006 by PisTonZOR]

High school sucked, and now that i'm in college, it sucks too.

Why the heck do you have to take stupid requirement classes like math and english when they don't even deal with what i want to get my degree in.

I'll tell you, those colleges just want you for your money, hopefully i'll be done with the stupid requirements soon.

I say college is a bunch of BS, you can learn more on your own.

And what do you need to go for? so you can get some stupid paper that doesn't mean jack s***t, I know people who graduated from college that are as dumb as rocks.

Sorry, had to get that off my chest.

You guys never saw the education system in Quebec, it sucks even more...

you don't have those little Cegeps things... Hell of a lost of time

you get lousy courses and those are essentially places of drugs and sex abuse, not really a learning environnement

Except a few of my best teachers, I have yet to see practical applications of my learnings in school

Yes students are expected to do a lot of work. Education today is little different from the earlier times. Those shows like Happy Days etc. are fantasy's not reality at any time. I remember doing not only all my homework on typewriters but having to endlessly retype pages due to one error. The knowledge I got went some where else but the discipline I got has paid off in dividends later as I have entered my third career in life.
Enjoy the high school years but learn the discipline that studying teaches. It is that discipline that will decides where you end up either having your dreams fulfilled or whining and crying that life owes you things. Life does not owe you squat as nature shows us all. You get what you work hard for and then you die. Enjoy the ride.

Originally posted by thexsword
Example: They can teach that evolution is why and how we became, but they won't teach that we became out of an intelligant design by a creator. Why can they teach us one possibility and not the other?

Because intelligent design is not science. Teach it in religious education (Oh wait..they do) as that is where it belongs. Creationism as a science is mearly ad hoc used to back up a thousand year old book.

On topic, i am in school in the united kingdom and i think that school is just fine. I also greatly dispute the idea that teachers dont have to do any work. Im not going to pretend im the picture perferct student becqause im not, in fact im quite a pain in the ass for most teachers but..my mother is a teacher, so i see what it is like after school and behind the scenes, what you dont see..anyway it may well be different over here in the u.k though so i dont know if my reply is of any use

Crackity Out

I think a huge problem is low expectations of students.

And I also think your view of what teachers do and the ease with which they do it is sorely mistaken. It's not as simple as grabbing a powerpoint and that that. It might seem so, but I can assure you it's not that easy. Teacher's have a heavy load in terms of preparations for classes, as well as marking. It's not a lopsided relationship - teachers give a lot and expect their students to give a lot, too.

thehumbleone, you need to take maths or sciences, even when they are not related to your degree subject (presumably an arts degree if you have to take math/science?) as a breadth reqirement, which is to say that it helps make your education more well-rounded. I think it's a good idea to make arts majors take math and sciences, and sciences take humanities. It does us all good!

What do teachers do that requires them to do any work at all? Moving their arm to put the test into a machine? pressing a button to download powerpoint, make copies, and everything else



the only difficult thing it seems to me that they do hard is the colelge they go through, but to "get a good job" you now HAVE to go to college

I agree, college is a bunch of BS like i said before, even though i am attending college right now, i think i learn more on my own.

But nowadays everyone need a paper that says you graudated in order to get a "good job".

What BS, i know tons of people who are smarter than some people who went to college.

Originally posted by racerzeke
What do teachers do that requires them to do any work at all? Moving their arm to put the test into a machine? pressing a button to download powerpoint, make copies, and everything else



the only difficult thing it seems to me that they do hard is the colelge they go through, but to "get a good job" you now HAVE to go to college

That is a very narrow view. Yes there are some teachers that couldn't care less about their job as educator's, I've met them, but I've had may teachers and Prof's that gave a damn and went out of their way to impart KNOWLEDGE. THAT is their job. I've heard this "We don't need this info", "It's different than 20, 30, 40 years ago." Yeah, yeah, yeah, my kids are saying this, I said it OMG, 25 years ago and I have NO doubt that my parents said it too. Guess what, the world is different than 5 years ago. 10 years ago. 50 years ago.

Teachers usually have to go through 5-6 years of post secondary education. That's damn near as much as a doctor. Why? Teaching is a damn important job. Cull that one bad teacher out of your experience and learn what you can in the time there. KNOWLEDGE IS POWER!

Anything else is just an excuse to fail. That will not be ANY teachers fault, only your own. I don't mean to be harsh but the system is there for YOU, make use of it.

BTW, to 2 decimal points, what is the square root of Pi?

Originally posted by racerzeke
the only difficult thing it seems to me that they do hard is the colelge they go through, but to "get a good job" you now HAVE to go to college

Similar to what intrepid said, one must go through at least 5 years of post-secondary school; you think highschool is difficult so don't try and tell me that is easy.

Furthermore, from my own personal experience, while I may have background experience with a topic or parts of a topic, when I go into a classroom to teach a topic I have to be familiar with the topic quite intimately. I'm not doing my job properly if I'm just glossing over everything. One has to be very familiar with the subject matter and that takes work. Also, particularly as a new teacher, resurces aren't just sitting there. Sure, some stuff comes in teacher resource binders, other stuff comes from colleagues, but trust me, developing materials such as assignments, finding creative ways to present the material, finding external resources (stuff outside the textbooks) and stuff like that takes time and isn't easy. That hasn't even touched the time one will spend on marking assignments. There's a lot to consider, and I'm will to bet that even your worst teacher has spent more time preparing and working than you've given them credit for. But to answer your question, I don't think what you're experiencing is a widespread occurence, at least here in Ontario, Canada.

Here teachers are very much responsible for their classrooms and generally do their best to enhance student learning by any means possible.

It seems your problem is with technology and what you see is an ease of access that teachers can access it and you can't. A good, mindful teacher will make allowances for students who do not have either access to a computer or cannot print freely. It's unfair to require all students to hand in typed assignments because that makes the assumption that all students have access financially or technologically when they simply don't.

Like I said before, I don't think the expectations of students are too high, and quite frankly I don't really see you talking about academic expectations of students either. You seem to have issues with teachers more than anything else and I'm not sure how that translated to expectations but it seems clear that you think you're giving too much and your teachers aren't doing anything.

The education system has declined into a joke, but teachers are not to blame. Teachers have very little choice in what or how they teach nowadays. My father is a teacher in middle and high school, and now hates his job due to the way that it has changed. Due to standardized testing, he can't teach what he thinks is important. If a kid fails a test because they're lazy and don't study, parents complain to the administration to find out "what is going on".

This is largely due to the federal and state government intruding on education. The Constitution does not make ANY provisions that allow the federal government to interfere with education. AT ALL. The state governments have a little more leeway, but it would still be much better to localize education as it was always intended to be.