Public schools are what's failing

“The failure of public schools is not ruining society. The failure of society has ruined the public schools.”

I think the statement can go both ways. I don't think it's fair to blame society for all the problems of public schools. In fact I think it's mostly the other way around. I can see maybe a few points that would support society's failure, but I think the main problem is in that of public schools. Public schools for the most part in this country, especially in Memphis, are failing. Literally, they have failing rates on standardized tests. But more than that I think they are failing students all around. I hated high school. I will admit I'm a slacker and I'm not trying to blame anyone else for my lack of determination, but I think if scools had challenged us more from the beginning, I might have a better work ethic. It was so easy to pass high school it's not even funny. There were people that missed school more than they came that passed. That doesn't seem fair to those of us who went every single day. The teachers, for the most part, seemed to care less that they were supposed to be teaching us and let us get away with everything short of murder. We used to persuade our French teacher that we didn't feel like taking the test so she would just shrug and say ok, she'd give it to us next week. Schools are too focused on our dress code, whether or not our shirt is tucked in and if we have a belt on, and things like that that seem to have no affect on our education; rather than focusing on the actual thing at hand: teaching. Because we learned how to "just get by" in high school, a lot of people leave with that attitude and think they can "just get by" in college. I admit, sometimes I'm one of those people. But I watch our school's athletes in my classes. They think since they're athletes, they are automatically going to be drafted in a few years, therefore they don't need to take notes, they don't need to pay attention, hell, they don't even need to be in class. It really pisses me off. But where did they get that attitude? I saw it at my high school. The athletes got away with everything. They were never penalized for bad grades or missing school because they were needed to give our school a good name at the game on Friday. If you compare our school system to those in other countries, it's really sad. It's easy why most of the world thinks we're just "dumb Americans." Compared to them, we are. Many of them speak 3 or 4 languages by the time they get out of high school. We can't even speak English properly. It's really sad. And I think that is what has failed our economy. If people were expected to do more in public schools, we would have a more educated society. I see my friends that went to private school and they have a much less hard time than I do with this whole college thing. We took the same classes in high school, so why do I (who made straight A's in public school) need help from my friends who made c's all the way through private school? It's really just sad.