Lately the US education system has come under heavy fire due to various failures. However I would like to argue that the idea itself is a good one, it's the implementation that is lacking. I would like to describe my high school experience which is a great example of success.
After finishing eight grade in India, I moved to New York City with my family in April of 1999. I was just in time to be eligible to take a test to qualify to get into one of the three top high schools in NYC. I got into Brooklyn Technical High which is the third best school in NYC. Freshman(9th) and Sophomore(10th) years were fairly routine. I had to take Math, Science, English, History. I ended up getting easy As in the Math and Science classes because I had already learned a lot of it in India. However, I was struggling in my Social Studies and English classes. This was because I was no longer tested on how well I could regurgitate facts on a test.
We had to take two years of World History. My first world history project was the New York Times Project. I had to pick a region of the world, and collect twenty articles about my chosen region from the New York Times (FYI, I still read this newspaper everyday). Then write an essay by taking the twenty articles and tie current events to history. I got a 65% (barely passing) on this project because I had never written an essay that made me think about historical context. But I learned a lot about Europe (my chosen region).To this day I am compelled to think of history when I listen, watch, or read the news. If gives me an appreciation for the butterfly effect.
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I still remember reading your letters describing the varied subjects you had... music and photography included :)
ReplyDeleteand I used to compare it with our once a week PT & Music classes :)
Would love to read more on this subject plus your college education too....