Problems with School Systems

B2 – Upper Intermediate

Schools are supposed to teach our children about important lessons, and they do. However, there a lot of problems with school systems that completely contradict this goal.

On the internet, many people say that schools are bad for us, even though these claims are partly justified, it feels like an extreme way of interpreting the problems with most school systems.

Watch the video to find out more about some problems with our school system.

Vocabulary Questions:

  1. What does the phrase “churn out” mean, “In fact, thought leaders from around the world agree that the current system of education was designed in the Industrial Age, mainly to churn out factory workers.” Use the phrase in your own sentence.
  2. What does the expression “run deep” mean, “And this Industrial Age mentality of mass production and mass control still runs deep in school.”? Use the phrase in your own sentence.
  3. What does “rote” mean? “Most of the learning that happens in school today is not authentic, because it relies on memorization and rote learning.

Discussion Questions:

  1. Do you agree or disagree with the problems mentioned and discussed in the video? Talk about your thoughts.
  2. Besides the problems mentioned in this video, what are other issues with school systems?
  3. What are some issues with the educational system in your country?
  4. In your own opinion, do these problems outweigh the positives of school? Explain your stance.
  5. If you had the power to do so, how would you try and fix these problems?
  6. What problems did you have at school as a student?
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4 replies on “Problems with School Systems”

Good morning,

1. I agree with the issues mentioned and discussed in the video. In my opinion all the school system has to develop a new methodology that helps students to work in groups and develop their dialogic interactions and creativity.
2. The lack of resources in education, the fact that in our society, there are some people who are not interested that students develop their creativity because it is easier to control them in the future as workers.
3. The other issues with the school system in Spain and especially in Catalonia, is that in the last years government didn’t invest enough money in education. And in school and high school, teachers has too many students in class and don’t have enough resources to monitor all of them.
4. In spite of the issues that can have the school system, I think that school has positives things that outweigh all the problems that I mentioned before. And also, I can say that in the last few years there are many schools that are changing their methodology and are working with an innovation methodolgy that helps student to develop their autonomy and creativity.
5. If I would have the power, I would invest a lot of money to provide resources to all the school system and to help teachers with their jobs. For example, in schools and high schools I would low the ratios in five students for each class.
6. As a student I had problems to understand and memorize all the things that we worked in the different subjects. In some situations, I memorized paragraphs without understand the main topic.

Welcome to the Phoneenglish blog! Hope you’ll be able to maximize your writing practice through this exercise.

Here is a sentence you can improve the structure of:

If I would have the power, I would invest a lot of money to provide resources to all the school system and to help teachers with their jobs.

If I had the power, I would invest a lot of money in providing resources to all the whole school system and so hopefully, we can to help make the teachers with their job a little easier, too.

Revised version:

If I had the power, I would invest a lot of money in providing resources to the whole school system and so hopefully, we can help make the teachers job a little easier, too.

Here’s to more entries from you!

1. I agree, I always thought that school is just like a fabric, with their job turns and tight schedule. It is primary based on memorizing and right now I cannot remember most of the thing I learn in those days.
2. Kids doesn’t learn to think by themselves, they always expect that the answer is on the lecturing books or by asking the teacher, but this is not helpful on the adult world.
3. I think that most of the facts explained in the video are happening in Spain, also I would add that doesn’t matter if you are the best of your promotion, maybe you will not find a job.
4. Maybe is not a perfect system, but it is better than nothing. This way at least, the culture of general people is not so low.
5. I would start by leaving the kids to interact more, by doing a more dynamic sessions.
6. I had to memorize a lot of things I didn’t care, and therefore I just forget about them the week after the exam, but the effort I had to do for nothing was still there.

It’s great that you keep striving to enhance your writing skills. Good going!

Take a look at a sentence you can revise further:

I agree, I always thought that school is just like a fabric, with their job turns and tight schedule. It is primary based on memorizing and right now I cannot remember most of the thing I learn in those days.

I agree because I’ve always thought that school is just like a factory with their work shifts and tight schedules. It is based primarily on memorizing and right now, I cannot remember most of the things I learned during those days.

Keep up the consistency!

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