I can’t say that I know the right way of doing things.  But I can certainly identify the WRONG way of doing things.  And America, you’re doing it all wrong.

As I grow further and further into adulthood and meet more and more people with backgrounds different from my own, I grow more and more disappointed in our society.  Mainly, I blame this on the education of our people.  Or, really, the lack of education of our people.  Most of the people I associate myself with are filled with a natural curiosity about the world, and so as a result they’re all pretty well-informed no matter what their educational background.  Because they supplement their high school and college curricula with their own research and reading.  But not everybody does this, of course, nor should everyone be expected to.  But there are some basic things that a civilized human being should know.

Obviously, I believe strongly in good math education for everyone.  I’ve written about this before, so I’ll try not to ramble on and on about it here.  Then this topic leads us to a good science education, so that students can see some of the power of mathematics.  (Yeah, that’s right, I just framed science as a vehicle for mathematics.  What are you going to do about it, scientists?!  Haha.)  I experience every day at my job the ramifications of the shitty nature of America’s high school math education, so you don’t have to tell me about it.  My students come in completely unprepared to learn new math.  I have students who come to college unable to add, subtract, multiply, and divide without a calculator, let alone perform these operations on fractions or algebraic expressions.  So I’m well aware of how math-stupid the American youth is as a whole.  My last note about math education here will be this amazing table of data I found through the Education Commission of the States that details the math courses required for high school graduation by state, which is eye-opening in my opinion.  My favorite is my home state, Pennsylvania, which only requires the need to “demonstrate proficiency in Algebra I.”  Dream big, PA, dream big.  This explains so many things about some of the people I encountered early in life.

I also believe that English is an important piece of the education puzzle.  Specifically focusing on vocabulary, grammar, and literature.  I haven’t done much research in this area, but it’s been my experience that the importance of English has been beaten to death in the high school curriculum.  Maybe this isn’t the case for everyone, but even so, there could be an overhaul that would help students absorb the information.  Just go to your favorite news website and peruse the comments on the top articles, or visit a social media website and look at random posts.  America could benefit from teaching its children from a young age how to read and write and speak.  Also, in the intersection of English (as a subject, not as a language) and math is the ability to make logical connections and to form logical and convincing arguments (remember those thesis papers you had to write in high school, or those proofs from abstract mathematics?).  This is also an important skill in the business world that you don’t need an MBA to pick up on.  Writing convincingly and clearly and understanding cause-and-effect are important skills in the realms of English and math that can be applied to real-world situations that can earn you large sums of money.  So we need to teach our children that (since America is motivated by money these days anyway, let’s face it) so that they are motivated to fucking pay attention in school.

By the way, I know I end sentences with prepositions and sometimes write with sentence fragments.  I figured I wanted to put that disclaimer in after preaching about English education.  My writing style here is a more conversational than formal.  And that may be the case for some of the news story commenters and social-networking-posters.  But I’m convinced some of these people are putting their best foot forward on the Internet, and it’s just sad that that’s the best they can do.

I also believe that the arts and foreign languages are important in education, but I’m not going to really get into all of that because this entry is long and I still haven’t gotten to my main point.  Rest assured that I haven’t forgotten about the important skills that come from music and visual arts and theater and learning a second language (if we can somehow teach the students English as their first language, that is).

As for social studies and history, I’ve recently had a change of heart.  I took these subjects for granted when I was young.  Now, a lot of this was because I learned about the same historical events over and over and over every year from the time I was 5 to the time I was 18.  We have thousands of years to pull from, America.  Humanity has been around a while.  How about we put the 13 years of mandated education to good use and broaden the curriculum?  I learned about ancient civilizations and hundreds of years of war in Europe and the Middle East.  I learned about the Industrial Revolution.  I learned about the French & Indian War and the American Revolution and the Civil War and the World Wars of the 20th century.  (And I learned a LOT of religious history, but I went to a Catholic high school, so that makes sense.)  I couldn’t tell you a damn thing about the history of Africa or Asia.  Or anything that happened between 1945 (where my history education ended) and 1998 (about the time my own brain kicked in and started remembering events as they happened).  Everything I know about the Vietnam War (which isn’t much) I learned from TV and movies.  And are kids today learning about 9/11?  I feel like they should be if they aren’t.  I know it’s still a part of our current political climate, and so it would be hard for teachers to give an objective viewpoint without injecting their own political beliefs.  But THAT’S THEIR FUCKING JOB.  It’s 2012.  September 11, 2001 was 11 years ago now; do you think most 17-year-old high school seniors know much about what happened that day?  Or 13-year-old high school freshmen?  I think it’s important to teach that part of history because it is actually affecting the lives of the students.  Like, right now, as they’re living and breathing.  Recent history is as important as ancient history, especially when there’s a big event in recent history, because it can inform the students of the cause-and-effect related to the world AS THEY SEE IT right now.  It would be a super easy connection for them to make if they have a good teacher.

But I digress.  The change of heart I was referring to was about civics and “social studies” for the sake of studying our society (not history for the sake of history).  After a conversation with my youngest sister recently, I realized that high school students need a good civic education.  It is a presidential election year and she didn’t know who was running or what the American political parties are or even have a basic understanding of what democracy is or how it works or what the alternatives are.  The only things she could tell me about politics are that Obama is a Muslim and Saddam Hussein caused 9/11.  Seriously, American youth, that’s what you’re going with?  Shame on you, and shame on us, the American adults, for letting this happen. Also, shame on anyone who’s reading this because they Googled “Obama is a Muslim” and were directed here. I’ve cooled down since this conversation with my sister, but it is still deeply saddening to know that kids are growing up knowing NOTHING about the place in which they live.  This is how we get the adults with the random bullshit that they believe.  It starts when you’re a kid and no one teaches you the truth about the world.

And now to the main event…  health education.  I have been wondering this for a long time now and no one can answer me.  WHAT DO THEY TEACH IN HEALTH CLASSES?  If I walked into a random high school somewhere in the United States and attended a health class, what would I learn?  I thought my health class in high school was useless and stupid and I hated it.  But when I talk to the people that I know, I actually find out that I learned a LOT in my high school health class.  Where did I learn about the human reproductive system and how it works?  High school health class.  There’s really nowhere it fits in.  So it occurred to me that if a person attends a high school where this is not taught in their health class, they just NEVER fucking learn it.  It’s even worse for men than for women.  I think schools are more likely to teach women about reproductive health because when you’re in high school you’re starting your menstrual cycle, so you kind of have to know what’s going on or else you’re going to freak out when you start bleeding from random orifices on a regular basis with no warning.  I’m sure all of you women out there have encountered a boyfriend or good male friend who had never even heard of ovaries (actually that’s been fixed by Anchorman: see 45 seconds into this clip) or the uterus or Fallopian tubes.  They have no idea how conception or menstruation or pregnancy works.  There are some Hollywood movies out in the last couple of years that challenge that and highlight how little men know about human reproduction (so many movies about babies in the last few years!), but that still isn’t teaching anyone about what’s really going on.

This isn’t about sex education or abstinence vs. birth control or anything like that.  It’s about the human body and how it works.  These are practical things to know in adulthood that a significant portion of the population is simply never exposed to.  I really don’t trust parents to teach their children all the ins and outs of the human body.  I mean, what qualifications do they have?  They never learned it themselves.  If you think I’m making ungrounded claims about what is and isn’t taught in a high school health curriculum, I would like to point you to this specific study conducted by the CDC (Center for Disease Control).  The data is from 2006 (my high school graduation year) and details statistics about high school health class curricula and requirements for all 50 states.  The most interesting piece, in my opinion, is Table 2 on page 7 (labeled page 414 in the journal), where they break down 14 health subjects and how common they are in a high school curriculum by state and district.  Only 60.8% of states require coverage of human sexuality at the high school level (if you go down to the district level, 80.4% of school districts require their high schools to cover it).  Only 58.0% of states require teaching pregnancy protection (85.9% at the school district level).  85.9% sounds like a big number, but what about the kids in those other 14.1% of school districts?  That’s a lot of students.  Anyone who says the states are taking too much power over health education and not letting schools decide for themselves should look at this data and other sources.  Like this chart of number of credits in each subject area required by the states.  No state requires more than one full year/credit in health education, and many don’t require anything at all.

All of this is just so frustrating.  The country is talking about education reform (quietly, it doesn’t seem to be a big issue in this year’s election yet, although there is all the ridiculousness about not covering women’s health on insurance plans, which is obviously related to this problem and this ignorance), but I haven’t heard of any realistic proposals for actually fixing the problem.  Granted, I’ve just started looking into and reading about these issues, and maybe there is a glimmer of hope out there somewhere.  But the education majors I’ve met in my time here at a big university do not give me any hope that they’ll be able to solve the problem.  So I hope SOME education professionals out there actually see the problems and want to try to fix them.  I can get myself all worked up about these issues, but the education field is not my calling.  Over time I may become involved in the fight, but it probably won’t ever be my full time focus, because I have other things that are vying for my time and attention and energy.  And frankly, as worried as I am about the fate of the world and the country, I’ve been able to overcome the system and become a well-rounded adult.  The little bit of optimism that’s left in me wants to believe others can too.  But if they’re ignorant of their ignorance, then how do they know there’s a problem?

Alright, I’m done now.  I’ll just leave you with this comic: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/senior_year
Also, this one is relevant.  Hehe! http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2483