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In my high school French class we were supposed to read Hugo's Les Miserables. I don't think any of us knew French well enough to make our way through this enormous book. Like the rest of the class, I just skimmed the Cliff's Notes. When we were given a test on the book, I noticed that the questions sounded odd. They were full of long words that our teacher wouldn't have used. Where had these questions come from? From the Cliff's Notes, it turned out. The teacher was using them too. We were all just pretending.
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This was the part that struck me. It matches my experience with a lot of teachers who didn't even pretend the stuff we were learning was in any way useful.
My cousin was telling me about a project in a school district near his (
not the one he would ever send his own kids to, of course.) They took the worst-performing high school, and split it up into 4 specialized vocational schools: I forget exactly what they were, but it was along the lines of Performing Arts, Mechanical/Engineering, Business, and something else. They made every kid choose which "school" they wanted to attend, and tailored the coursework significantly. No more foreign language requirements for anyone, no more math requirements for the performing arts kids. They were initially laughed at for even creating a "business" school for these kids who by all expectations would never go to college, let alone get an MBA... but within 2 years, they had
completely turned around the performance of the whole school. Turns out, if you give them things that matter, and that they care about, teenagers can rise to the challenge.