>>...He said, "I am not going to college." I ask "Why?" He said "I am not good enough to get in." I was stunned. He was head and shoulders above American students boasting ACTs of 33. He said he was going to what would be considered here a vocational-technical (votech) school.
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>I had to read this aloud to my family, and you got straight thumbs-up and a hearty laugh from my middle daughter (a high school senior). The main difference between the honor and advanced courses she attends (all but one) and the regular ones is the sheer amount of homework. They don't seem to be learning anything deeper, or broader, they just have more writing to do. I really expected some brainteasers there, not to say brainsweaters.
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Let me preface what I am about to say with some history: I am certified to teach in 5 areas. My Princton Teachers Apptitude and Knowledge ranking was 99+ percentile. I loved to teach and had a blast doing it. I have been voted runner up 'Teach of the Year' several times where I taught at college. (Always a brides maid, never a bride! :) ) I was a 'favorite teacher' nearly every year I taught at high school. My college calculus team scored 40 out of 244 teams in the entire country, receving honorable mention in a national contest and beating the Air Forace Academy, Yale, and some other notable schools. After renewing my teaching certificate I spent a year substitute teaching at all of the high schools and junior high schools in the county.

>Basically, from my understanding, American high schools are geared toward >producing hard workers, not great thinkers.

I wish that were true. Few, if any, of today's high school graduates could pass a standard 8th grade final exam, given a century ago. Today's graduates have no adequate knowledge of our own culture, history, constitution and, in fact, are taught pro Socialist, anti-American, and sometimes racist (anti-waspm) attitudes under the guise of 'diversity' training. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't had to take that training to renew my Standard Teaching Certificate. All that current HS graduates have grown up on huge doses of 'self esteem' nurished by 'group-think', which produces the attitude that they are smarter than students from any other country. (Group-think is interesting: if the group says that 2+2=5 then it is) Little, if any, of this self-esteem is based on actual, meaningful or significant achievement. In recent international math tests American high school students came in last out of 44 countries, yet when asked how they thought they did (before the results were known) all said they would be within the top 10%, if not higher. American students do not even recieve adequate health education any more. Health classes are 'taught' by coaches who were hired because they had a teaching certificate, but are usually fired because they could not produce a winning football team. Most HS coaches I've met in HS are semi-literate packages of testosterone, who can't even teach the students to wash their hands after they use the restroom.

As far as being trained to work hard: that is an individual thing, not a cultural expectation. We hire lots of temps here, and many of them are recent HS grads, or at least under 30 yrs old. Few can do the simple clerical work required (data entry at computer terminals, filing papers by various sort schemes, etc...). They are late to work, if they come in on Mondays at all (ask them why and "I partied too much over the weekend"), they call in sick alot, their work is substandard and requires a lot of editing and repair, they complain alot, they cannot read and understand ordinary written instructions, and some cannot understand when the instructions are read to them, they have short memory and attention spans, and they frequently become 'sick' and have to leave. And these are corn fed Nebraskans, the heartland of America, the ones who, on the average, score higher on most academic tests than students from the big cities. I can only imagine what the students from large urban areas are like. Most of our best workers are 50 years old, and older. One lady, nearly 70, entered as many homested records as the other three temps combined.

There are exceptions coming out of public schools, but these students achieve in spite of the school system, not because of it. Also, there is an increasing number of students who attend private grade and high schools, at great expense to their parents because public school taxes are still being assesed to them. These students are outstanding, but they are in the minority.

I fear for America. Not because of Ben Laden and his thugs, but because of what Political Correctness has done to our educational system in the name of diversity. Even the college level has been badly damaged. The only segments of our educational system that produce top notch graduates are the graduate schools, in most areas except the social sciences.

I noticed that the winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, Sir V.S. Naipual made this comment about radical Islamic fundamentalism,, "To be converted, you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it, you have to say, 'My ancestral culture does not exist, it doesn't matter.'"

That is true not only for cultures which are destroyed by radical Islamic fundamentalism, it is true for our culture, which is being destroy by Political Correctenss and 'diversity' training.

(no, I didn't spell check this so ignore spelling and typos :)