High School: In The Mind Of A Typical Teenager - Comments

I'm graduating in a couple of days from the school with the lowest budget in my city, because it's the "alternative" school. My school doesn't offer foreign language classes, art classes, or music/other performance stuff. I have to go to a community college 10 miles from my house instead of the university just a few blocks away from where I live, just because the uni will only take students who have taken at least 2 years of a foreign language. Whenever people complain about how terrible their school is, I always tell them, "At least you have those options."

Schools require more science and math classes than art classes because jobs requiring science are more important than jobs involving art. Nothing personal, I'm much better at art than math or science, but that's the way it is. Preparing future doctors takes precedence over preparing future film directors. And schools require you to take a variety of classes to better prepare you for whatever job you may have in the future. The majority of high school students don't know what they're going to do for the rest of their lives (even if they think they do). Most people in college change their major at least once, but in high school? Too many kids would have taken a bunch of art classes and then wanted to pursue a career in science (or vice versa) and would have nothing to go on. Plus, a lot of kids would just take art or shop classes to avoid academic work. Having very specific classes throughout high school just isn't practical.

I sometimes think that schools try to break us. At least, that is what my AP euro teacher does. But seriously. I'm at the end of my sophmore year and right about now is the first time all year that I'm not completely freaking out about everything. And what is worse is that this paast year, my school has become an IB school. IB as in International Baccalaureate. That program is hell, and is way too general for me. It has very intensive tests and curriculum and I have a few friends in there that hate it. The ones that got out are much happier, including me. If high school weren't bad enough, let's throw some extra stuff on top of there as well, why don't we?

I forgot to add that.
You are required to take four years of english and a social science (history and goverment stuff) but only three years of math and science.
My school, if you have 24 credits in your junior or senior year you can get early release or late arrival.

We also offer several types of arts, sports, band, drama, drafting, game design and we even have magnet programs too. Not everything is purely academic.

I guess it also depends on your student body. My school had 3200 kids so it h ad to offer a variety.

Some people are able to cope with stress better than others, but the majority of teens don't know how yet. I graduated last year. Ugh I was such a mess, it was so stressful!

I understand where you're coming from but if we did as you suggest
"required courses should be chosen by what the student is good in, so every student can shine, and not just the ones who happen to be good in that area"
We'd get students who would half ass everything.
I went into high school with Algebra 1A, the slow math and I ended up graduating with Pre-calc after taking several maths because I was pushed to it. If I took the classes that "were up to my standards" I would have graduated with Geometry. But I wanted more than that and took summer school and online courses.
Don't assume I'm one of the 4.0 graduates. I had a 2.5 (bad freshman year -_- )

Sometimes we have to learn what the majority is learning even if it is proofing triangles or the history of Russia.

While in summer school this sophomore was talking about an interview he'd had for a cashier job he didn't get. He was required to do simple math like "how many quarters is in 4.50?" and what is the square root of 81?

If I were an employer of some big company I would rather higher the applicant who spent more time focusing on academics than electives. A person can be good at drawing all they want, but if they want to design games or websites, they better be good at math all. Being good in certain subjects isn't enough.

You have to understand that the more complex our world gets and the more we invent and discover, the more we have to learn how to run a world we created. I don't think the president or the scientists in NASA got anywhere b

Again, don't think I'm harrassing you. I SO understand, again, I graduated last year. High school sucks. It's stressful. There is so much going on and so much to worry about. But it's four years. If you graduate at 18 and you live until 70, four years is nothing.

Once it's over, it's over. It's just one of those times where you have to bite the bullet.

I totally hear where you're coming from on course selection. I want to be a Screenwriter, or maybe a Psycologist, and yet, if I want to get into a good college, I need to take four years of Spanish?? Why? No offense, but Spanish is consistently my worse class (B- to A) and there's not even any reason for me to be taking it. Maybe it's good to be 'well rounded' but, call me an ignorant American if you like, I am NEVER going to use that language.
I'm sure there's a class like that for everyone, you have to take it, but it's just eating up credits that /could/ be used to help you learn something you're actually going to use someday...

I have to disagree on the 3.3 vs. 4.0 thing though. Regardless of if GPA is an accurate judge of intelligence, there's not really anything else for colleges to go by and a 4.0+ /does/ prove work ethic (If nothing else.).

I agree with you (almost) completely on this. But some school systems are better about not requiring certain classes to be taken too far in. At my school, after the core classes in about sophomore year (forgetting those who fell behind), we can do pretty much whatever we want. We don't have to take a science, math, history, or english course. Now, we know it's a good decision to do it anyway, but we are offered a vast variety of electives, including many art and music related courses, along with Psych, Sociology, Philosophy, etc.
Due to that, my school actually tends to inspire less class-related stress.
On the flipside, however, they've managed to inflate the GPAs in such a weird way that a student could have a 4.0 GPA and still not be in the top fifteen percentile. Which makes it a lot harder for a non-overachiever to get into colleges who look for higher GPA percentiles.

umh, it needs many considered from parents?

Yes school can be difficult and stressful, but we have to go through it. Why? because after we leave highschool its gets even more difficult. Depending on your job, paying bills, raising kids, it's all very very stressful, and often the stress from highschool doesn't even come close to the stress of the 'real world' as people call it. Highschool is supposed to be difficult, and sure sopme people can't do it. But the truth is if people can;t handle highschool, how do they expect to succed later in life?

In my school, we need at least two art credits for a diploma, regular or advanced. These past three years, for example, I've taken band, so I have six fine arts credits (each semester is a credit). But we also need four science, four math, four English, and three of one foreign language (e.g., French 1, 2, & 3)or two each of two different foreign languages (e.g., Latin 1&2 and Spanish 1&2).

I know what you're saying about the stress, though-I'm dual-enrolling four courses and taking an AP at my base school. Essentially, I'll have about 20 credits by the end of my junior year (since they don't allow AP for ninth and tenth graders). The homework load is ridiculous; this is the first time since Christmas break I've been done with my homework by six o'clock, when we get out of school at 3:30. Even over spring break, I had an insane workload that required me staying up until after midnight, falling into bed, waking up at seven in the morning, and working until after midnight again. High school doesn't prepare us for the real world; my brother's in college, and he has about as much homework in all of his classes in a week as I do in any one of my classes. But is it worth it?

For me, the answer is yes. For you, who knows? My dual-enroll program is math- and science-based, so I'm really not a good person to ask if math and science should be required, because I'll say yes-who knows when knowing the symbol for Arganine will come in handy, or when using an integral to find the area between two curves will save a lot of trouble?

Thanks so much guys for all the comments :) I get what your saying about to real world and how they want us to be prepared, sorry I wrote this kind of late, I was hoping to emphasize more that yes they should require us to take math and sicence even if we aren't good at it, but they shouldn't rely SO MUCH on it. Maybe to make it fair make art classes a requirement and eye for an eye right?

But even if I don't like it I do agree with the previous posters that I think it's better to be well rounded and prepared for the unexpected curves in life. Even if you sit through math calsses you'll never use.

Plus they mostley focus on those area of studies because those things are what is most promiseing to man kinds future. I mean yes for art and pictures there are a thousand words and it can change man kind. But I talk about like cancer curing finding equations that break through all knowlege as we know it type things. They probably figure the more emphasis on that the more of a chance that we will find people that have this break throughs sooner.

BUT I do agree that perhaps not so much emphasis should be placed on it in terms of college referring to selective study. I think maybe they should level it out differently.

ANYWAYS
I totally understand that stress at one point the stress started getting to me so bad I went through a short "screw it all" phase. Mostly pressure from parents who just assumed I farted and straight As came out my bum hole. lol

"While it would be nice for school to be fun, that's not the purpose. it prepares you for college and real life."

I wish that was true about highschool. Yes, that's what its supposed to do, but it seems like highschool has never done that, at least not while I went. I wanted it to be fun of course, and I was glad they offered electives for my liking, but with all the stress of passing and doing certain things so that you can get into college and not being able to pass some classes because you're just not good at the subject, that doesn't seem to make people want to learn at all. If people don't want to learn, they won't. Not only that, but some of the things that schools force on us don't have much relevence sometimes. In my senior year, they wanted us do a senior project, which all seniors usually have to do. The only difference that year was that they said that if we didn't pass the research paper we would fail two of the core classes that we needed to graduate, does that seem fair? Why was one paper equal to an entire year's grade for two different classes? If you weren't good in english perhaps, then so looong diploma and you'd be back for another year. That didn't seem in any way fair, so we faught it and ended up not having to do it that year.

Sometimes I feel like the school system is too general. It's like, if you're not good at everything you won't get into a good college. That doesn't seem so fair to me.

I'm an intelligent person. However, I'm not good at Science/Math type things, and because I've had emotional issues that effect my schoolwork, I'm going into a both lower level math and science class next year. To the average eye, one would just assume I'm stupid. However, I'm very good at English, Language, and Social Studies. Not only that, but I want to go into acting, which I also consider myself relatively good at, and I have quite a bit of experience and lots of training.

But is it fair for me to not be able to get into a good college because I suck at math and science?

"In my opinion required courses should be chosen by what the student is good in, so every student can shine"

Let's say art is my best subject, and I only take art courses when I'm in school. When I go off into the real world, I will not have the math skills to function and manage finances because I wasn't required to take math classes. Sure, I was excited about going to school, but I learned nothing. If anything, students should be required to take classes in the areas they struggle so they improve. While it would be nice for school to be fun, that's not the purpose. it prepares you for college and real life.