| I'm in the southeast US. Have been my whole life. Went to public schools in populated wealthy counties, and in a sparse, poorer county. > I had multiple teachers discuss note taking habits... I had similar, but it wasn't part of the official curriculum, so didn't get the amount of focus it might have required to get students to take it seriously. Now that I'm an experienced adult, I know that I had a way of learning that worked for me, and having a teacher who A) knew what good note taking looked like and B) could identify my own peculiarities and help me adapt the techniques for me would have helped tremendously. > encouraged to find an after school club/activity ... More time at school? Ugh... didn't want that. Offer me a "job" doing something I enjoyed? OK, I'm there - I need the money. > ... career counselors ... These people talked like my extended family - "Why would you want to do that? Clearly you're more qualified to swing a hammer..." uh, no thanks. I recall one specific instance where a supposed mentor replied to one of my stated career goals with "do you think you're smart enough for that?" > ... English course where we covered professional skills ... I think I got a total of two weeks of that in four years of high school. At least this was part of the official curriculum, but there just wasn't an actual focus on it. > ... evolution and the cell Only AP classes for us. Elective AP classes, which personally I did choose. (By 'elective' I mean students had to choose these classes - there were required science credits, and these fulfilled the requirements, but why choose the harder classes when the easier one will suffice? I was interested, most other students were not.) I guess my point is that although you might have had access in your public school education to these things, they're just not as ubiquitous as the need to be. IMO, the entire problem with the US education that I experienced is the insistence on a bullet pointed list of things to cover, a minimum grade on how well the students retained that specific knowledge until the test, rather than gauging students' understanding and ability to learn and adapt. |
I 100% agree and I think the educators I've spoken to (several friends are teachers) would also broadly agree, but that's not what the post advocates.
My understanding of your reply is that your school had many of these elements, but they weren't quality or weren't emphasized appropriately to students which is fundamentally different from the post's view that these things didn't occur.