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I am all for alternatives to high school if you know you don't want to go. Once you can pass a basic test that says you know how to read, multiply, and tie your shoes, the remaining years can be spent learning something relevant to your future career--technical or trade school or whatever.
The problem is that I don't know what percentage 14 year olds really know what they want to do with the rest of their life. I hate to see people shutting doors before they're sure. That basic test to get out of traditional high school early ought to cover enough stuff to make going to college one day possible if the student changes their mind.
I totally agree about the tech school or trade school. Get the basics. Math, reading, writing and even home ec. Also learning how to handle money. After that somewhere around 10th grade choose a field of interest. Internship with plumbers, electricians, beautician, medical or dental.......there is so much out there, and the important thing is to like what you do.
And this is one of my friends who need to do a bit more learning, eh? No politics for him...
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Originally Posted by Jude1948
I totally agree about the tech school or trade school. Get the basics. Math, reading, writing and even home ec. Also learning how to handle money. After that somewhere around 10th grade choose a field of interest. Internship with plumbers, electricians, beautician, medical or dental.......there is so much out there, and the important thing is to like what you do.
I'd apprentice with soldiers if it was an option, but my parents said they dont care what I do as long as I go to college...
Read this book kids! And Kings Ranger, are you on the debate team? Get thee to one and soon if you're not. And please don't tell your classmates about our little conspiracy, ok?
The way things are these days, I agree with Kings. There is so much riff-raff in school that the basics are lost. Most of it is useless.
High school is necessary, as are elementary and middle school. What needs to happen is for education to go back to it's roots with basics being taught and understood. With raw math (not anything like Every Day Math and the like), basic reading/language skills, world geography and social studies and foreign language, anybody can go anywhere and be a success in college and in life.
What exactly is the point of school? I'm talking Elementary, Junior High, and Senior High.
Honestly, our teachers know we don't understand, except a select few, as kids, we treat school as a place to hang out with friends, with some guidelines... we have homework, which they tend to pile on, if we do extracurriculars we fall behind and don't have time for a life.
Food is HORRIBLE, some classes are useless, and the teachers tell us...
So I'm beginning to think the government uses them as a "day-care" a place for kids to stay away from parents, out of trouble, and give them a small education for life to come, although I don't feel I'll be prepared at all to go into the work-force when I'm done with High School, although college is my next goal..
Kings
It depends on who your parents are and what kind of school you attend.
Chango had it right here:
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They are trying to teach you how to stand in line, follow directions, stomach hours of mindless repetitive tasks and to not speak out of turn.
You know... important life skills we adults need to be able to do everyday until we die.
I teach in a high school on the "schoolhouse to jailhouse" pathway. Our job appears to be containment of the adolescents so that they don't break into people's houses during the day, keep them out of the workforce and off the streets, and make sure they don't learn enough to be able to compete effectively with the children of the powerbrokers.
Schools in small towns and rural areas provide a social center for the community through sports and other school activities. They primarily train kids for jobs in the community.
Suburban public schools set their students' sights on state colleges and traditional vo-tech classes. Sports and activities are also important.
Private schools specialize in serving certain populations--the academically advanced or impaired, the devoutly religious, people seeking single-race schools, athletes who want to participate but who are not competitive enough to make the team in a larger school, and those whose very wealthy parents are ensuring that they associate with the right people and get into Ivy League schools.
This is all vastly over-exaggerated, but these generalizations can be useful to understand the big picture.
It sounds like your assessment of your school may fit into one of these categories, and it's not one I would gladly choose.
In addition to the book that Stepka recommended, I would like to suggest that Amazon.com: The Day I Became an Autodidact (9780440550136): Kendall Hailey: Books can be a life-changing book. Kendall Hailey got tired of being told what to read and asked her parents if she could quit school and teach herself. When they let her begin after tenth grade, she began with the Greeks and read her way through history. She kept a diary which she published with the help of her parents' agents. (They are both writers themselves.) It seemed to work out fine for her.
I tell my students that the most important thing that I teach them may be this: The best-taught people are always self-taught people, and if you depend on school to educate you, you will be badly educated at best.
That said---
You cannot predict the future. You don't know where you will go or what you will do. You can't know how the knowledge of chemistry will affect your ability to handle chemical warfare situations, if your dream comes true. Better to know it and not need it, than to need it and not know it.
You have a choice about what you learn. Why would you willingly NOT learn something that lots of people much more experienced than you have deemed important to learn? That seems just a bit short-sighted.
Think about it.
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