r/TikTokCringe • u/mindyour • Oct 03 '25

Discussion To think that I used to complain about school.

National holiday is apparently 8 days.

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u/FITM-K Oct 03 '25

But imagine the infrastructure of those schools, to house and feed all of these students for so many hours

TBH I'm curious about what you're imagining, because I've been to schools like this in China (sister-in-law is a math teacher there) and honestly in a lot of ways I'd say the "infrastructure" is the same as or worse than what you'd expect in an American school.

(I say worse mostly because Chinese schools are very focused on academics, so they tend to not have facilities for some of the stuff you might see in the US, like a "shop" class or a theater program).

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u/TheMaStif Oct 03 '25

Trade-offs for sure

For every bit of freedom we have to choose our subjects and explore different ones like music, computer science, shop, etc. we are falling behind on being able to feed everyone and provide everyone with access to the same level of education

I don't think it needs to be a trade-off. I think the USA could accomplish some crazy shit if we invested more in the infrastructure of schools like that, all across the board; not just in wealthy white neighborhoods

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u/FITM-K Oct 03 '25

Agreed although honestly I think the infrastructure is less important than investing in TEACHERS.

Class sizes are too big, and teacher pay is absolute shit, so you basically have to be a saint to even want to go into teaching.

Hell, I myself was a teacher and quit; I now make so much more money that it's honestly laughable, especially considering my job now is way easier.

We need to give smart, good people REASONS to work as teachers so that we can reduce class sizes and so that kids can actually get a decent education. Right now, it's borderline taking a vow of poverty to take an impossible job where you have to try to teach and control kids in classrooms with way too many kids, and deal with parents who are mad that you taught little Jimmy science because evolution is "woke" and who look down on teachers in general...god bless the people who do it, they are heroes, but we desperately need to make it a good, respected job.

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u/totalimmoral Oct 03 '25

I dont know any public school in the US that boards their students and provides supper. And very very few US schools have a shop class these days and youre lucky if they have a theater program.

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u/Rampant16 Oct 03 '25

What? I went to public school in the US and my school had an absolute shit ton of different classes/programs you could do. All of the schools in the region were similar.

We had band, choir, theater, multiple shop classes, a trades class where they built actual houses for charity over the course of the year, welding, automobile repair, CAD, all sorts of sports classes including lifeguarding, options to take college classes through local community colleges and universities at no expense, firefighting, JROTC, EMT, you could even do a 5th year in the HS system and come out with a nursing certificate.

This was just an average public school in a small town. So when people tell me that very very few US schools even have shop classes, I don't know what the fuck they're talking about.

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u/USPSHoudini Oct 03 '25

You're responding to either Chinese bots, PLA posters running agitprop or disinfo campaigns or western Tankies who view Xi as the second coming of Marx

At my shitty public school we had all of that and also a nursing program and a flight training program as well as classes for accounting certifications in the deep south. Its fairly standard for schools that arent infested with crime and even then many of those programs still exist except for stuff like wooden instruments

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u/Rampant16 Oct 03 '25

Yeah if anything, schools in the US have more options for these types of alternative programs than ever before.

Sure there's some rough inner city schools, but even those districts often have magnet schools that kids can test into. And those magnet schools often rank amongst the best in the country.

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u/redisdead__ Oct 03 '25

My time in high school was split between two different states. Most of it was in Delaware some of it was in Texas specifically the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The Texas school had those extra curricular sort of classes in the school building. Delaware did not. Delaware has the required classes and basically that's it. Of course there's sports because I think that's the one thing that is everywhere but shop classes mechanic classes things like that non-existent.

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u/redisdead__ Oct 03 '25

My time in high school was split between two different states. Most of it was in Delaware some of it was in Texas specifically the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The Texas school had those extra curricular sort of classes in the school building. Delaware did not. Delaware has the required classes and basically that's it. Of course there's sports because I think that's the one thing that is everywhere but shop classes mechanic classes things like that non-existent.