Boredom in High Schools

I wonder why there aren’t more people concerned about the high school system in this country. BUT, that said, just being concerned will get us no where. I learned yesterday that the landmark report called A Nation at Risk was developed by the Nixon administration and has been used since then to drive the right wing ‘reform efforts’ in the school system – culminating in what we have now as No Child Left Behind. This kind of thinking will only continue to make matters worse as I’ve stated previously. Now, here’s some pretty hard evidence that the “product” being produced by the current education system is not engaging the teenagers of today, that they experience much of high school as irrelevant’ and that it seems that teachers don’t care about them.

What’s quite interesting to me is that most of the educators I speak with already know this – but they haven’t figured out how to create an experience that is engaging and desirable by the young people that come to their schools. What will it take for the kind of change that is needed to actually occur?

Survey: Many U.S. high school students bored in class
POSTED: 12:15 p.m. EST, February 28, 2007
CHICAGO, Illinois (Reuters) — A majority of U.S. high school students say they get bored in class every day, and more than one out of five has considered dropping out, according to a survey released Wednesday.

Motivation and Pay for Performance