What is high school like in your country?

[Beefy187]

Hey all. In University, I want to take a course on Education to fulfill my ambition to make a awesome school in Japan.

Education system in Japan are not that great in my opinion. For example, we have a little choice in what to learn as most school don't offer alternative course other then the usual set. Science lessons are mostly about learning rules, history are memorizing 'facts' of what happened in year blah blah and who did what. English lessons are only about learning grammar and after 6 years of English learning, they can barely communicate with native English speakers.

Also due to the low quality of our teachers, many rely on night school to up their grades.
Their main focus is to get into a good Uni rather then to actually learn anything.

Now of cause there are excellent schools around, but the majority of school is still rather poor in the method of actually teaching. We used to be the top in Asia but now, Korea and China proved them selves to be far more efficient in terms of education.

This made me wonder. What is high school like in your countries? Is there an curriculum that teacher has to follow, or rule that teacher must teach in certain ways?

[Strike For The South]

Most of my teachers were just average. I had one really good history and one really good bio teacher but other than that my high school career consisted of drinking women and football but then again thats generally what public high school in Texas is like. Which would explain the high teen pregnancy STD and poverty rates.

But you win some and you lose some.

Props to you though. I want to teach when I grow up to and think what your doing is awesome!

[Beefy187]

Most of my teachers were just average. I had one really good history and one really good bio teacher but other than that my high school career consisted of drinking women and football but then again thats generally what public high school in Texas is like. Which would explain the high teen pregnancy STD and poverty rates.

But you win some and you lose some.

Props to you though. I want to teach when I grow up to and think what your doing is awesome!

Cheers

From my impression of American education in general, it seems that teacher has more freedom to teach what ever they want to as they aren't any necessary curriculum to follow. For example for teaching English, can they choose what ever text they feel like using?

Also how would you get assessed? Do you get assignments, tests or both?

I hope you become the manliest teacher ever.

[Strike For The South]

Cheers

From my impression of American education in general, it seems that teacher has more freedom to teach what ever they want to as they aren't any necessary curriculum to follow. For example for teaching English, can they choose what ever text they feel like using?

Also how would you get assessed? Do you get assignments, tests or both?

I hope you become the manliest teacher ever.

No there is a curriculum (at least in Texas all US states are different) however many teachers are allowed to tailor it to there needs so every teacher is different.

Most teachers are underpaid and under appreciated

My first tears at uni (Im a freshman right now) will consist of me getting my basics my last two years will be spent on my major (General History) and general education (dealing with kids, how to teach, ETC) I'm also going to get a minor in general science so I can teach the lower level science classes as well.

I will get assesd by the TEA (Texas Education Agency) through a test. At which point they will give me my license. Throughout my years I will be required to go to seminars and workshops to "better" myself (many teachers go to the non-required ones as well. Lots of innovation happen here, surprisingly)

I will.


EDIT: Some of the specifics may be off. I'm just trying to get through basics right now! lol but thats how it was explained to me.

[Beefy187]

I see.. It seems that teacher are underpaid in lot of countries.

As for Japan, teachers are one of those stable jobs as you get paid more regardless of how well you do or teach and once you become a teacher, you cannot get fired (you can get sent to another school, but not fired unless you commit crimes). Well at least thats my understanding.

I see your also interested in teaching history (me too). How do they normally teach history in high school. And are they biased at all?

[Strike For The South]

In the US it's kinda like that. The union is very strong and tends to close ranks.

In my classes they stressed original documents and looking at more than one source. For instance, my junior year we read "A Peoples History of The United States" By Howard Zinn to balance out our (rather) conservative textbook.

I would like to point out however that I took AP classes. The regular classes were just allot of facts but not as biased to American nationalism as you might think.

Are you going to teach in Japan?