Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

[Toe Knee Nose]

I worked with a woman that went to school both in Mexico and the US. She said she felt the schools in Mexico were better. After transitioning to a US school she said they were covering stuff she had already learned.

It's always been strange to me that while US public schooling is generally seen as pretty sub-par, US post secondary schools - universities and the like - are the most highly ranked in the world. The majority of the top 100 uni's in the world are all in the States. If US public schooling is so bad, how come their uni's are so good? Something doesn't seem to add up.

Canada's in the same boat really. Canadian public schools are not terribly well regarded, but, everyone and their mother wants to go to uni in the US or Canada.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

It's always been strange to me that while US public schooling is generally seen as pretty sub-par, US post secondary schools - universities and the like - are the most highly ranked in the world. The majority of the top 100 uni's in the world are all in the States. If US public schooling is so bad, how come their uni's are so good? Something doesn't seem to add up.

Spoiler: Context

I’m an army brat who has been to public schools in 5 states and 2 countries, and I have a small collection of degrees. My grandmothers taught 1st & 2nd grade; my maternal grandfather taught in college; my paternal grandfather taught HS & college and was also a principal. Mom taught music in HS.

Keeping the politics to a minimum, here’s some key factors I’ve seen in the different levels of the American education system:

1) Public schools’ curriculums and funding are controlled at the state and local levels, and the funding side is often driven by property values. For a long time, that meant schools in poorer communities were extremely underfunded and had outdated supplies and decaying infrastructure. (No joke, I attended one school with history books that ended with speculation about if & when men would reach the moon- an event that happened 2 years after my birth.) Some states are only a few decades into the process of making school funding more equalized.

The localized school boards have also resulted in an extremely politicized book & curriculum approval process. It’s a constant battle in some regions to teach actual science and history.

2) Money, money, money: the universities are in a global competition for it, in all of its forms. Colleges & Universities that get too visibly entangled in American culture wars lose international students, investments from foreign & domestic businesses & governments, and so forth. And the feedback loop between those income streams and the quality of recruits & graduates- and the statewide economies- is very strong.

3) our public schools are structured to maintain the status quo. Our institutions of higher learning are about upward mobility.

 

[Ryujin]

Man. I spent about four hours Monday shoveling; 3 in the morning to clear mine and my wife's car so I could get to work, and one when I got home so I could park somewhere. Here it is a day and a half later and I still hurt everywhere. When I was thirty-five, it would go away probably after a day. When I was in my twenties, it would go away in half a day. I'm in my late fifties, and it is really lingering.

Getting old sucks, but it sure beats the alternative.

Yes, to both. I slipped on ice that was concealed by snow when I was going into work, on January 15th. Went down hard on my right shoulder and, somehow, right heel. Both still hurt today. As little as 20 years ago I'd have walked it off in an hour.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Looking out my back door, most of the stuff on our porch and driveway has melted, but the downhill alley we’d immediately transition to upon exiting our property would be GREAT for luge or skeleton racing.

I know what this is. However, I got a visceral mental image of everyone throwing their (potentially oversized) Halloween decorations down a hill and seeing whose made it to the bottom first, and that is much more entertaining of a definition so that's what I'm sticking with from now on.