Have You Ever Said to Yourself, High School is a Joke....

Recently I was sitting in class here at IUP (Indiana University of Pennsylvania) and I began to think, What did I actually learn in high school? Then as I thought about it more, it actually got a little scary. I can not recall one single thing that I solely learned in high school. I know throughout out the education process from the time your a kinder gardener taking a nap on a carpet square to the time your a graduate from college or high school, you will learn many important things. As I sat there in class I thought to myself "what the hell did you learn in high school". If you sit back and think about it what did you learn in high school that was not a repeat of something you learned in elementary school. I mean yea high school might build on certain concepts you learned and you probably did grow your math skills or maybe learned a couple life skills, but do you really feel that 4 years are required to learn that.

Now you might be thinking "wait this kid thinks that high school should be thrown out" and the answer is no this is just to get you thinking that maybe its time to change the way we learn. Did you ever stop and (I refer back to my first post) Ask Why are kids these days diagnosed with ADD and attention disorders and why did our parents not have these problems? Have we ever thought that maybe our race is evolving and getting smarter and maybe our generation and the generations after us are getting bored. This is why ADD is so common, we are bored people. We don't want to sit and school and learn about the Indians and the revolutionary war and biology theories from the 1900's year after year after year. Enough is enough already, yes learning about our past is important, but how do you expect us to be young visionaries and thinkers if all you do is pound into our heads shit that doesn't even matter anymore. One thing that really makes me mad is when in high school or college or elementary school for that matter, our teachers ask a question like "What year did the great depression take place?" and i know the answer but all i want to say is who cares if i know that or not.... why does this matter, why are you wasting my time by teaching me about something I learned ten times over already. Another one is when they ask you about the Magna Carta.... Why the hell should I care, in 2037 when we are the leaders of this country do you think I will give a damn or even remember what the Magna Carta was. So in the future, (for all you future teachers) lets start teaching the children about the stuff that is going on right now, like how our government is in shambles and how we are at WAR RIGHT NOW, not WWII, or Vietnam or the Revolutionary war, how bout we learn about the Iraq war and why we are there and maybe get kids thinking and asking questions. I just hope in the future we don't force our children to learn about Sept 11th and the Iraq war over and over and over again. Yes its important they know it happened and why it happened but we need to inform them whats going on in their world right now.

I just want to explain this because I feel the education system in this country is trash. Many other countries in the world have far superior educations which actually make us look terrible, and its quite embarrassing. I have a perfect example of embarrassing for you. Recently my old high school was in the process of getting plans together to build a new school, and we had the basic problems of the local people being angry that their taxes would go up and blah blah blah. The thing that really tipped me off was the elderly group that was against the new school said we didn't need it. (the old school was standing forever my grandparents graduated in it my parents graduated in it and I graduated in it) Our school was old it needed new technology new computers maybe some more equipment for the science department, it needed updated. Well the elderly people felt that this was unnecessary and i quote "we grew up without computers and we did just fine". This is the shit I'm talking about, We need to change the way we teach, we need to change what we teach. The only thing that the department of education has changed in the past 10 years is that they have instated the no child left behind law. Now I don't want to be ignorant but if you can't make it through a certain grade because your not mentally capable, guess what your not mentally capable and you should be held back and try again the next year. That's just how it works "if you can't do something you try, try again" that's what all of our parents have told us since we were six. It wasn't "if you can't do something we will pull some strings and make it easier for you so you don't have to worry".

I just say, hey my generation lets change some things lets make our children intelligent make them learn from the mistakes of others but also have the ability to be visionaries and thinkers and develop new ideas that could revolutionize the way we live our lives. If we can't teach them this at a young level how will we ever be able to improve and prosper this country.