In England, I've seen education get consistently more rigid and inflexible over the years. All about tests, tests and more tests. Teachers leave the profession, children turn off. And as it consistently fails to produce better results, the answer is always to do more of what has failed.
Bring something like this to England, please!
Clearly not the same as taking time off before university when you are already an adult though. Participation in some activities is required, so it's a bit more structured - and I don't think you can take off on your own to travel the world!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2018/06/...
The aim was to create teacher evaluation systems that depended on student standardized test scores and observations by “peer evaluators.” These systems, it was conjectured, could identify the teachers who were most effective in improving student academic performance.
(it's not clear to me if this created any standardized tests for students, or just depended on existing ones)
Sounds like it ran from 2009-2015ish. If Bill Gates is going to be brought up, then I guess George W. Bush should be, too, with No Child Left Behind. AFAIK that's what kicked off the trend of standardized testing for students in the U.S.
Same in the USA. The old student question "will this be on the test?" is now also asked by teachers and administrators. If the answer is "no" they skip it.
we spent a whole class looking at an old O Level question from an exam.
all of us, including the boffins in the class, were completely stumped by it.
he explained it to us at the end, but it did solidify an appreciation in me that, at least 20ish years ago, we definitely had it easier than folks before us.
Many countries allow young people (under 30) to live and work in-country under a Working Holiday visa. Both are effectively Young People travelling (aka backpacking).
- https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/got-dough-how-billio...
Throw in the fact that in much of the country, teachers have to do things like pull second jobs to get by and beg parents for basic supplies like scissors and paper towels, and it's no wonder everything is falling apart.
I always remember my history teacher taking an entire term on the battles of the second world war. He brought in videos, old shell casings, all kinds of stuff. Everyone was into it, even kids who normally wouldn't pay attention.
At the end of term he apologised to us, since none of that would be in the test, and now we would have to work harder to get through the exam material. We didn't mind; he had hooked us on the subject.
But that is now rare. Increasingly teachers just teach to the test. And the number of tests the kids have to take keeps rising.
The best you can say about it is everyone gets the same tedious and stressful introduction to everything, which only proves their ability to remember lots of stuff under time pressure.
Transition Year is the 4th year of 2nd Level in Ireland - the conclusion of the 'Junior Cycle' of secondary school, culminating with the 10-14 Subject 'Junior Certificate' exam at the end of 3rd year. It is a regular year in terms of school attendance, but rather than academic modules structure against a strict curriculum, students tend to do a mix of practical and theoretical skills.
Things like intro to psychology, philosophy, an esoteric language or other college accession style intro classes are popular. Photography/Film Making, Cooking, Self-Defense/Martial Arts classes are all popular on the practical side.
Most of the religious schools (i.e. about 80% of all schools) tend to have a charity component as well - seeing TY students out collecting for Irish Cancer Society or packing bags in a supermarket to fund a local Hospice is pretty standard.
History is also largely a joke subject that's just interesting fun facts and dry US history repeated ad infinitum for most american grade schools.
I would say the only history class that was actually of any value for me in high school was AP modern european history.
Here's another one. I had a maths teacher who engaged his students about probability theory through learning about games of chance. We spent some lessons figuring out what advantage we could get in various card games. He also spent some lessons on just "cool" ideas like infinity, zeno's paradoxes and other mind blowing concepts. None of which were on the exam syllabus.
As an aside, history is very much not about facts. It's more about interpretation of incomplete data from many different sources, not all of which are reliable. My Dad said it's more like being a detective (he was a professor of history).