Can a public high school education really prepare you for college?

Generally speaking, not by itself, no. No high school should be expected to prepare a student 100%; the gaps can and should be filled in by museum visits, home art-time with good supplies, private music lessons, clubs, volunteering activities, reading, travel, and so forth.

I don’t know about high schools in the US, but I guess if you want to be well prepared all you need to do is listen up in class and take notes! Also I don’t think the kind of school matters, the focus is on you! How you do better, you get better results.
So if you work really hard you will be pretty well prepared for college.

@GeorgeGee So then what about kids who’s parents aren’t rich? Most parents can’t afford music lessons, travel, museums, and good art supplies. Most parents can’t afford even one out of all four. And many kids can’t afford to volunteer when they could be working and earning a paycheck.

Of course schools can’t make them well-rounded people without parental help. But what about things like how to write, the rules of grammar, math, etc?

Of course it can. I went to public high school and went to a 4-year technology-oriented university, have a BS in computer science, and have a great job for a multinational banking corporation.

@GeorgeGee museums, art-time, music lessons, etc are not required for college, unless you’re planning on majoring in the arts. They might be required to make you a well-rounded person, sure. But not for preparation to succeed in your college courses.

It used to. And it should now. Unfortunately we are still using a school model developed in the 40’s and before, we just keep pumping money into a broken system instead.

American public high schools are severely lacking in college-readiness preparation.

Dropout rates are ridiculous.

Fees for specialised classes and extracurriculars leave out too many students. (I thought my stepfather was going to die when he saw a $25 per semester fee to take Anatomy class. Of course there was no warning.) I heard on the news recently that the average student in Florida spends $300 – $500 on school supplies per year. In. Sane.

Textbooks are chock-full of misinformation and outright lies (High School American History Honours still teaches about the First Thanksgiving. I’m not kidding. I won’t even get into the issues with religion infecting our Science classes with their nonsense.)

Second-language courses are a joke. Three years of Spanish – getting straight As, and I can basically say “I have a pencil sharpener in my pants”. I don’t understand a thing when speaking to someone.

Classes consistently force the entire class to work at the pace of the dumbest and most disinterested student, which forces the brighter, attentive students into a state of stagnation and boredom.

Every few years yet another mandated standardised test shows up, forcing teachers to “teach the test” in order to receive funding. This cuts into any actual learning that might be taking place. That’s also a rant for another day.

There are little if any resources for learning-impaired children unless the parents provide them. I will use myself and my sister as examples. She is dyslexic, I am dyscalculic. When it takes an otherwise high-achieving 5th grader ten minutes to complete a multiplication table – no matter how many times it’s done, there’s a problem. When a student manages to graduate high school with a 2nd grade reading level, there’s a problem. Yes, we had shit for parents, but you’d think someone would notice and write a letter.

Of course it can. My sons went succesfully to Brown and NYU from a public high school, The problem is not that all public schools are bad but that there are such disparities between them in quality.

@Seek_Kolinahr Oh, well, sure, the pencil sharpener in your pants – for when your vagina dentata fails.

GA. I feel the same way.

Mine did and I attended a high school with some of the worst test scores in our district, which is absolutely not one of the better districts in our state, let alone the country.

This takes a ton of inquiry, however. The guidance counselors at our school were terrible (they push you to take advanced courses to make the school look better without considering whether it may be too much for individual students to handle), but I did have an amazing College Career counselor when I was a senior. They helped me with admission and scholarship applications and I had never even heard of FAFSA until they gave us a mini-lesson during our AP Government and Politics class.

However, what my school had that other schools lacked was the best teacher in the world – and he happened to teach college-level courses (Art History and Ceramics) for students in their senior year. That class alone prepared me for the classroom experience I would face in college (lectures, papers, reading material, syllabi, professor-student interactions – everything.)

Having said that… I don’t think the typical public high school will hold any student’s hand and tell them what they need to do and how they need to do it. They never gave us a reading list of books that we should read to be prepared for college literature courses – in my high school English courses, you were lucky if the reading assignments meant anything at all (Beowulf, some Shakespeare, a vague grasp of mythos – both Biblical and Roman, at least a couple American texts and British texts, and know at least a handful of poetry and be able to use scansion.)

We weren’t taught how to write during public education. They push the Jane Schauffer crap and balls because it helps students develop a sense of paragraph structure – but any deviation from this is frowned upon. When this crutch was ripped away from my graduating class who went on to college (a seriously depressingly small number), they had no idea how to write papers. I’d be confident in saying, at least 60% of my peers wound up in remedial English courses in college no matter how well-read they were.

Other students suffer from Over-Prepare Syndrome. They freak the fuck out. I knew so many students who took every AP course imaginable, took college courses at the local community college, berated themselves if their GPA dipped anywhere below a 4.0 and were complete academic masochists. It was frightening. Many of these students dropped out of college or wound up in community college because it was too overwhelming for them. Likewise, many of them went on to succeed. It’s a mixed bag.

The best a student can do for academic survival, is find a mentor and really reflect on what it is they want to do in life. You don’t have to have the shiniest of tools at your fingertips for survival and success.

It depends on the public school, but many do. There is a tremendous disparity in the quality of public education in this country and that’s a shame. And whether public school prepares a student for college depends a lot on the student and the parents also.

I think it depends on the student and the school. I felt prepared for college, but I had all CP and AP classes. I may have felt differently if I were in general classes. My guidance counselor was also a great asset in my opinion. Our high school had 8 different guidance counselors, so I’m not sure how the others were. My guidance counselor helped me prepare for my SATs and helped with my college applications. He took the time to work with me on what I needed when I needed it. We were able to schedule appointments with our guidance counselor during class time (we just were responsible for whatever we missed).

There were not any extra fees associated with any of our classes (no lab fees or anything like that). The only way a student had to pay for a text book was if they lost or destroyed theirs. Our language programs also encouraged exchange student programs. My senior year, our German class hosted about a dozen exchange students from Germany (I was one of the hosts) for several weeks in the spring. We had one that stayed the whole school year.

@muppetish We were punished for deviating from the Schauffer paragraph. I HATE it because it makes my work horrible.

Ok, so I start college this week, and my history professor has requirements for papers like “don’t write in a passive voice” and “don’t dangle participles”. Which seems totally reasonable.

EXCEPT.

I don’t remember learning any of that in school. I’ve heard many of these terms tossed around on tv or on an English major’s blog enough that I’ve looked them up on Wikipedia, but not enough to really get a handle on them. I took notes in school, I payed attention, I never ever ever partied, and I have no idea how to write how she wants.

Passive voice = Yoda speak.

Active: “She went to the store”
Passive: “To the store she went”.

A “dangling participle” is a verb that can be attributed to more than one noun in the sentence, and is thus unclear.
After being whipped fiercely, the cook boiled the egg.” – Who’s being whipped, the cook or the egg?

@Seek_Kolinahr Ok, first, those were awesome definitions. Significantly clearer than the crap I’ve read. I am now writing them on a post-it and putting it in my notebook.

Second, do you know any good books for something of a crash-course in not flunking because of horrible writing?

Crash course = The Elements of Style

The original 1918 edition is free online.

@Seaofclouds Our campus had four counselors for a 2,000-something student body. That always sounded ridiculous to me. If they weren’t busy already talking to a student, they weren’t in their office. And they don’t check their e-mail. I was so peeved with my counselor. I was happy to be done with her.

There are also two things they never told us: 1. You can shoot for the CHSPE or GED and leave school early. I had friends who just weren’t high school students. They never functioned well in class, but were incredibly intelligent people. I know at least two or three students who received their GED and attended community college instead of finishing high school.

2. There is no shame in going to community college instead of a four-year college/university. They always made it seem as though choosing the former should be your last-ditch option. WTF? It’s economically beneficial to clear your General Education classes at a community college (especially if you don’t know what you want to major in) and many schools have programs specifically tailored to transition you to a four-year university after two or so years. The brightest young man I have ever met attended community college out of high school and then transferred to Berkley. He currently works for Microsoft and makes more money than I can imagine.

@papayalily They didn’t teach us the labels for most things in my English courses. I knew the rules, but not the names. I was so confused in some of my early writing and grammar courses. Everyone was generally very understanding about it. Don’t ever be afraid to ask your peers, professors or T.A.‘s questions – they might respond with slight surprise, but they won’t judge you.

I doubt you’ll flunk out because of your writing because it seems fine on Fluther.

@papayalily

Thank you! And sorry, I don’t. But here is a source for MLA formatting – which most post-secondary schools require.

@MrItty, I don’t agree. Museum visits, creative thinking which the arts can foster, and an appreciation for culture and knowledge are every bit as essential in preparing students for college as reading and writing, and frankly US schools are doing a poor job on each of these. The bottom line is that parents and the kids themselves MUST supplement what they learn in school or they WILL be unprepared. There are many museums, libraries, clubs, and YMCA’s that have free programs of music, arts and culture, so don’t give a pat answer like “oh, it’s too expensive for them.”

@muppetish Thanks. I actually have a writing disability. On Fluther, I just write as I talk, but without all the fillers. But papers are just sooooo different. I actually know very few rules (and almost NO names, like you), it’s more just a gut feeling and mimicking what I’ve read.

@muppetish I’m sorry you had crappy counselors. Our counselors actually encouraged some people to go to the local community college because our community colleges and universities had 2+2 programs. You would start in a community college, take two years of courses and then transfer to the university and complete 2 more years of courses. They also encouraged students who wanted to drop out to consider either going to Groves night school (it was held at our school, but run separately) where they could take classes at night instead and obtain their diploma or to get their GED.

@GeorgeGee I agree. As my professor and inspiration in life says, “It’s all connected.” As I mentioned earlier, Art History is one of the few classes that successfully prepared me for university. Not only did I obtain knowledge about art application, but we also covered history (specifically in relation to propaganda – we covered politics, intercontinental relations, Church and State – I could go on) and culture (especially the depiction of values and current affairs). My knowledge of art work has helped me in English, Philosophy, French, History, and a Communications course in which we had to deliver speeches. Art History should be a General Education requirement. It’s such a good way to expose oneself to the world.

@papayalily I know fourth and fifth year English majors who still don’t fully grasp rules and names. It comes easier for some over others and it shouldn’t make you feel bad by any means. I’ll try poking around for Grammar Boot Camp material for you. I know I skimmed a good one in the bookstore once.

@papayalily Perhaps your college has a Writing Lab or other resource where you can take papers to review them with a tutor or teaching assistant? The community college I work at offers this service.

@janbb That’s a good idea, I’ll check.

Whatttt hell yes! So many public American high schools have advanced academics and adept teachers, in addition to electives and extracurricular activities that “fill in the gaps.” Unfortunately many of these programs are being cut due to finances because so much money is going to the troops in the Middle East so the education is suffering, but even so they can leave students more than prepared for college.

@sliceswiththings But what about the students that don’t qualify for the advanced classes?

I went to a public high school, with no special afterschool programs. I went on to good colleges, got a Bachelors degree, Masters degree. I am now, in fact, a rocket scientist.

@RocketGuy How long ago were you in high school?

Yes, but not usually. I was in “the academy,” which was public, but you had to test in. I found the gen ed stuff in college to be a little below my level at the time, actually.

@sliceswiththings The majority of the money for education comes from the states. On top of that the administration is upping it’s amount by about 4 billion dollars next year. This is a state issue, not a federal one.

It depends a lot on the schools and teachers, and on the students. Some high schools are geared towards sending kids to college, and some colleges are geared towards accepting the average high schooler. And some kids are geared towards going to college, and some aren’t.
I was appalled to learn that there were students at my U who couldn’t read. There are kids in high schools around here who don’t know what clouds are made of, and think that “scan” is spelled with a ‘k.’

@papayalily – I graduated HS almost 30 yr ago!

I went to a good public high school in a suburb. I was lucky. I then went on to do well in college and pursue a PhD. I teach at a somewhat selective university. I have some public school students who are great writers and some who went to very fancy private schools who can’t write worth a lick. It depends….

@papayalily, check to see if your college has a writing resource center in the library. This is generally staffed by grad students working on a master’s in English. All four universities my daughters attended offered the same sort of support, so I feel it must be fairly standard. They would review/edit their papers. You can’t wait until the last minute to write the paper, because they have to have a little time to review your work. My daughter said an added plus was that the printing in the writing resource center was always free.