I am sitting on my bed, looking over my summer homework. I have a ridiculous amount of it. A book and 800 words for English, a Chinese soap opera and synopsis, a formal academic paper for Math, a book and two day test for 20th century history, a book and summary for Biology, a book for ITGS, and a book and 300 pages for Theory of Knowledge. We should also be polishing our 4000 word formal essays – mine is about the historical accuracy of 300 in comparison to the actual Battle of Thermopylae.
I believe we can all agree that this is a ridiculous amount of work (and the art students have even more!). But I ask those in the education administration…
Why?
Why are we wasting our time with these lessons and subjects that are not to our benefit in the real world? There are so many students in our world that are so absolutely clueless as to what the real world is about, and what are we doing instead? Close text analyzing passages by Shakespeare. Then we get into the real world and we fall into the Madoff trap, because the education system does not teach us what we need to know.
Before you get judgmental, please understand, I am not a lazy slacker teenager, who would rather go out and get some pussy and weed than do homework. I am a hard working student. I am generally regarded as such. I would just rather be learning about things that are of importance to my life, rather than the Weather Underground’s history. Granted, it is good to know, and I enjoy learning, but it is no more than a waste of my time.
And of course, there is rebuttal to my points. Let us begin with my personal favorite.
You have to be well rounded!
What the hell for? I can understand being well rounded if I have no idea as to what I am doing with college. That makes sense – it provides us options that we can work with. But what about me? I have known I have wanted to go into computer programming for the last decade now. Why then, am I required to take Biology classes, when I could be learning C++?
You could change your mind!
Yes, let us propose that during my sophomore year of college, I decide to switch fields and major in microbiology. Some argue that the knowledge I acquired from my high school class will prove useful then. This of course, is incorrect, and for a few reasons. First, the only unchanging fields are History and English, and maybe a language. You can even argue that Math remains the same. All other subjects are constantly shifting, evolving, and changing. My Biology book is only a few years old, and is still terribly outdated. So then, does that not suggest that the knowledge I possess now will be incorrect and irrelevant in a few years? So then I could just save my time and take Biology 101 when it is required, no?
*On a side note, that doesn’t work anyways. All of 4.0 GPA friends don’t care about the subjects. They just want good grades. They aren’t learning anything ANYWAY.
What about subjects that don’t change over time?
One sentence rebuttal: does anybody remember their English class in high school enough to confidently switch into that major?
So whats the solution to the problem?
Start with colleges. Pay more attention to the kids who specialize and won’t waste tax money skipping class. Stop assuming that if I was not in four years of English, three years of Math, and three of science, then I am a slacker who was not in a rigorous program of study. Then we move down to the state level, and we tell them to stop making waste of time classes part of the graduation requirement. Then, schools will stop enforcing the crap. And here’s something interesting. When education becomes relevant, and the drug dealers can take Accounting over English, and I can drop Biology for Networking, you might actually get kids who see the value of school, and here is the kicker – they actually might be interesting in going to school. Going to classes! What a novel concept.
A country where administration didn’t waste my time.
Filed under: Rant, Whining | Tagged: education, relevant, waste of time
