Has the school system turned into one huge social caste system and completely failing itself?

Question

You rarely hear of a teen aged student working on their homework anymore, you ALWAYS hear them asking:

what haircut should i get so i am h ot in school

will the boys like me better if I wear these jeans

rate me in this outfit, I need to impress guys at school

am I cute? boys at school think so

am i pregnant?

How can i get people to like me at school?

What can I do to be more popular

These kids are not going to school to learn, they are going to school to "check in with their peeps" and catch up on the latest fads, rumors and gossip. Would school uniforms solve part of this?

Answer 1

As a high school teacher, I know exactly what you mean.  Of course there are exceptions, but many kids really don't care about their own education half as much as they care about the things you listed above.  Of course, to a degree, this is completely normal, right?  Yet, even though we thought about all of those things when I was in high school, my friends and I still focused on our grades or we knew we'd have h**l to pay at home!  You wouldn't believe the number of kids in each of my classes who don't do any homework at all, and then I have to explain to parents why they aren't passing.  Even worse, some teachers have decided not to even assign homework, since kids don't do it anymore!  It is very frustrating.  Oh, and the other poster made a great point... technology is great, but a huge detriment to kids for the same reasons she mentioned.  My department made a policy to collect all cell phones as the kids walked through the door, and to put them in a basket on our desks.  Even with a school-wide policy stating there is no cell phone use in the classroom, kids were CONSTANTLY hiding them under their desks, in their bookbags, behind books, etc., so they could sit there and text their buddies a couple of doors down instead of listening to their teachers.  Absolutely crazy!  

To answer your actual question, I don't think uniforms will help much.  Kids are very much individuals, and would find ways to put their own spins on them, I think.  Besides, they'd only resent us more for making them wear them, and they'd still stick to their own little cliques, etc.  Then again, I could be wrong... I've never taught in a school that had them.  I see the benefits too, and now that I think about it, I'd love to see firsthand if they did indeed help with any of these issues.

I love teaching kids... but the job just keeps getting harder.  :)

Answer 2

That's what kids do thanks to the media and fashion industry. That's why I'm all for schools with uniforms. Castes are broken and everyone looks alike.

Answer 3

That's the nature of teenagers.  Even if there were uniforms, they would strive to get away with pushing the limit on how high cut/ low cut they could get away with, what weird hair they would get away with, etc.  And they would focus on who drives what car.  The cast system would still be there.  They are learning how to cope with social pressures.

Answer 4

Yes. However, this failing happened at least 20 years ago. We had the same issues when I was in school; there's really nothing new going on here.

I wouldn't mind uniforms for my kids.

Answer 5

I'm more worried about what we learn at school .It's amazing we learn the quadratic equation in 12th grade since my friends from European country learn it in 8th grade. Also, 2 years ago one of my friends came from Europe to study one year here (she was my age) and she always had 100% on all tests, always had A's on every subject and her explanation was "we studied that 2 years ago at school". I don't think we should be more stupid than our European peeps and I really consider moving to Europe one day, because if I have grown with the system which doesn't teach you anything than the easiest, then thanks but my children won't be in that dumb system too.

Answer 6

High school has always been like that, but I do think that the electronics age has made it worse.  Teenagers seem to spend so such time text messaging their friends, talking on the phone, and updating their MySpace pages (and of course, dealing with all the drama from people posting mean things on their MySpace pages about them).

Do they ever hang out with their friends and talk in person?

Answer 7

Uniforms help but don't completely stop it. By the very nature of school there is a hierarchy. The kids are in grades after all! Also there is a clear distinction between teachers and principle. The older kids are usually bigger kids and the law of the jungle applies. Within grades, kids vary greatly in size. So a definite stratification occurs and concomitant with this is the social stratification between the haves and have-not which allows a person to become overbearing and flaunting insignificant things as major achievements. A difficulty arises in trying to keep all this from becoming a distraction to learning. As a parent, you have to tie rewards to academic achievement or the social ladder at school will overwhelm them.