What’s the number one thing you think schools could do to improve the education system in your country?

35 comments

1. Ban private schools. Reclassify education as a universal public good, and watch how fast their funding and staffing problems vanish.

2. Pay teachers more.

3. Feed every kid and staff for free

4. Having gymnastics/sports class everyday. We used to spend 8 hours sitting every day and gym class only 2 a week. During those days we were filled with energy and joy to go to school. JUST DO IT.

5. Teach hard shit

6. Free lunches. Seriously wtf is wrong with people. Feed those damn kids!

7. We’ve made the world more and more complex. Less homework at young ages, instead of forcing kids to learn more than any before them had to in the same amount of time, lighten the load and let school take longer.

   Public education probably needs to go at least 2 more years of education… let them pick academics or trade.

   Critical thinking and media literacy would be helpful.

   Give more assistance to families so they are more equips to raise kids to be productive members of society who have integrity and are emotional balanced/mature.

   Physical activity… it’s fun, releases hormones that will help with stress and make school more enjoyable.

8. Off the top of my head …

   1. Re-write the history books and tell the unvarnished truth. From the pilgrims on through the triangle trade and everything after.

9. Teach stoicism. In depth.

10. Stop trying to emulate the American system

11. Teach financial literacy

12. Force parents to be involved.

    I know it’s not possible, but that’s the only way to better education.

13. Personally, I think the entire U.S. Education system needs to be trashed and rebuilt from the ground up.

    The children that are graduating are not prepared for the life they face. Yet we basically just kick them to the deep end of the pool and hope they learned to swim.

    On top of that the entire pay structure needs an overhaul and more importance placed on our educators.

    We also need to seriously curb any political subjects out of the curriculum and encourage the students to research those subjects privately and decide what is important to them.

    Our children need to feel confident when they leave school that they are actually prepared for the life they face. Right now it’s just trauma and chaos.

14. Letting the teachers and administrators choose the curriculum not these stupid parents.

15. Hire morally sound teachers.

16. Get rid (not kill Reddit) of the evangelical Christians pretending to love children and Governor DeAsswipe.

17. Went to public school my whole life. Biggest gripe was method of teaching especially in subjects like math. No mastery/understanding is taught it’s simply learn how to do this to solve this problem, causes people to end up learning math in a memorization style similar to history, and the people who aren’t understanding it end up with gaps in there knowledge that build and build till suddenly they’re “not good at math”, when really their foundation is just too shaky/incomplete to even be able to successfully tackle classes like calculus down the road. Also I think elementary and middle school doesn’t challenge students enough. High school algebra 1 and geometry/trig 1 should be taught in middle school. No reason you shouldn’t graduate high school without taking at least pre calc and a introductory calculus class.

18. Eliminate standardized testing so teachers can teach curriculum rather than teaching for a test.

19. The federal government should fund them. Double the current education budget. Take it out of military spending.

20. Focus more on critical thinking, less on remembering what date a certain battle of whatever happened.

    Learning how to access accurate knowledge and thinking critically will serve students and society far better.

21. Greater emphasis on developing critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving skills among students. While Singapore’s (My country) education system is well-known for its academic rigor and high test scores, there has been criticism that it focuses too heavily on rote learning and memorization.

    By encouraging students to think critically, creatively and solve problems, they can prepare them better for the challenges of the future and help them become lifelong learners who are adaptable and resilient.

    Additionally, incorporating more hands-on and experiential learning opportunities, such as project-based learning and internships, can also help students apply what they have learned in real-world situations and develop practical skills.

22. How about we take steps to teach children critical thinking instead of political ideology.

23. I’ve been teaching 30 years. Sorry, I’ve got four and I can’t bring it down to one, even though my fourth would be something we can do RIGHT NOW! In my opinion this isn’t about how much schools could do to improve education in our country, it’s about how much the government wants to fund. Here’s what I wish would happen:

    1. Much more funding for after school programs that take place on campus for elementary and middle school students. This would likely mean a second shift staff coming on when teachers were done with their day. Social services, athletics, tutoring and academic support that is available until 7pm or later at night. Provide a place for lower income students to be after school and provide the community a built in safety net for working parents, gang and crime prevention, and helping the little ones to get the support that need.
    2. For high schools, start a trade track. This idea that our high schools should prepare all kids to go to college is absurd, especially in a country where only 30% of the population has a bachelors degree. Trade tracking in the past was considered socially unacceptable because middle class white kids were always put into the college track and minority and poor students were always put into the none college track, which often had these students graduating with marketable skills. Why shouldn’t a 17-18 year old kid that knows they don’t want to go on to college not be able to go into a trade track? What if junior and senior year students could take their basic civics and English classes and then spend the rest of the day learning a trade? They’d graduate high school with marketable skills in trade along with being a member of the literate voting community. This is very similar to what is done in Germany and we should be trying to implement a similar model. This is how you fight poverty.
    3. Get off the agricultural calendar. We don’t need to run schools on the current calendar which gives summers off for kids to work the fields. Summers off are a tradition that hinders education. One month off in the summer and the month of December off would serve learners of any age much better (no summer learning loss), provide parents with much more support than they do in the summer, and still give students the time off for experiences with family.
    4. Provide a place for a students phone to be locked and put away in every middle and high school classroom. Nothing is harming our students ability to learn more than social media and smart phone addiction.

24. End the stupidity that is Ted Kennedy’s “no child left behind”. Seriously, 7 US President’s wouldn’t touch that thing with a 10′ pole, until George Bush tried to play nice with the Democrats, and they hated him anyway.

    Teachers knowing various ways to teach a child is important. It’s a big part of the reason to want teachers that are college educated and certified. Those alternative learning methods should absolutely be taught to children that are struggling to learn in the way that the majority of students learn. Taking until 5th grade to learn the multiplication table to to 12 is just dumb. Not the student or the teacher, the system that leaves kids learning the same lesson over and over again in a different way, that’s dumb. Teaching math the way it is currently being taught in school systems that implemented the federal mandates associated with “no child left behind” guarantees that children are going to think they aren’t good at math and shy away from it.

    In elementary education, a return to teaching cursive writing and penmanship, reading, and reading fundamentals (phonics, for example). Computers and computer literacy are great, but there is no reason that those skills can’t wait. When I say reading, I mean physical copies of the books, not on line. The reason is to address the disturbing, and now multi-generational and accelerating, decline in overall ability to accurately, or at all, articulate an idea in a manner where another person, or even the person attempting to articualte, can understand what is being thought. The primary, and maybe only, reason for this is a lack of reading and introduction to how one uses words to effectively communicate thoughts and ideas rather than modern heiroglyphs, by which I mean emojis.

25. As someone who lives in Florida, stop taking all of the fucking books away for starters. Stop letting people teach who don’t have backgrounds in education.

26. Since the USA was number three in the world concerning education before the Federal Department of Education was formed in 1979 with the task to make us number one, and now we are seventeenth. I would say give the power back to the individual states instead of having another layer of bureaucracy to siphon off funds before it is returned back to the states.

27. Fund it appropriately

28. After 10th grade, allow kids to go to 2 years of community college. Give kids 2 years of education in either a career/trade or two years of college prerequisites.

    Allow kids to become realtors, tradespeople, mechanics, whatever sort of education, so that once they turn 18, they can be prepared to contribute earlier on, or can dive into their studies at a university which would cut two years off a bachelor’s degree, which would cut college cost in half for most students.

29. Give money to schools and teachers. Hold kids and parents more accountable. Stop making teachers jump through hoops. Actually try respecting the profession.

30. Make education about teaching people rather than sorting people.

31. Teach things that will actually be useful in the real adult world

    For example:

    -How to do taxes (People will pay a good chunk of change to have someone *else* do their taxes for them.

    Plus if your smart enough and know a thing or two about doing taxes then you could save/make more money

    -Financial Management such as Working with banks, getting credit cards, debit cards, How to build your credit, take out loans, find good interest rates, ect.

    -Auto Repair and Maintance. People regularly spend 100s or even 1000s of dollar on fixing something with their car.

    Learning how to fix your auto vehicle could save you so much money in the long and short run of life

    -Electrical Work. Learning how to handle the wires of one’s home is a must. Again people will spend 100s of dollars to have an electrician fix something wrong their with house’s wiring.

    Doing it yourself could save you LOTS of money

    -Plumbing. Same story different verse. People spend lots of money on this when they could easily do it themselves and save that money for something else

32. compensation teachers fairly, not just based on what the union says is correct and fair. they will be more motivated to work and teach

33. Admit that some kids aren’t reachable in a school setting. Get the disruptive ones out of the classroom so the kids who want to be there can be.

34. *sigh* there’s no “number one” thing, but I have a few ideas. These are mainly for grades 1-9 (ages ~7-16, the compulsory education every single kid gets), as the upper secondary and tertiary education is mostly fine. At least from what I remember. Also, it has been a long ass time since I was a teenager, so I can only say what I’ve so far perceived to be problems at school for those ages.

    Pay teachers more.

    Separate the problem children to a specific class from the “normal” children.

    Enforce a “no smart device” policy in all lessons/lectures. And I mean ENFORCE, not just get a strongly worded sentence (“Please put your phone away, Jonne”).

    Start teaching philosophy maybe around grade 7-9.

    Remove compulsory Swedish and maybe replace it with a choice of between Swedish, Russian (the second largest minority language), German, etc etc.

    Financial literacy. It’s touched upon lightly at a “social studies” class, but not enough.

35. Pay teachers better.

    If teachers are paid better, more teachers who are actually competent will be willing to teach. More good teachers willing apply means more good teachers being hired, and likely taking the positions of teachers who aren’t as good. Now the quality of educators has increased, and the quality of education they can offer will increase with it.