The other day, I was sitting in my computers class and overheard a conversation between one of my peers and my teacher. My instructor was asking her about current events and little bits of trivia. My mind was blown when I saw that she could not answer one question. She could not name the Vice President of the United States. This girl is a senior in high school. She is elligable to graduate. This cannot be legal! This school seems to have prepared her to go out into the world with no knowledge. It is inconcievable.
My freshman year, I took no honors classes and only participated in minimal extra-curriculars. I did not believe that I had the intelligence or work ethic to succeed in upper level courses. This was until I actually attended these classes. Talk about a waste of life. People did not speak proper english. And I do not mean they mixed up well and good, I mean their vocabulary was at a third grade level. I had to get out of there.
Now I am taking all AP and Honors classes because I know that I would rather have a B in an upper level course than an A in a core curriculum where I risk loss of intelligence due to exposure. What a lot of AP students seem to forget is that not many other students care about the news or current events or take the time to study and improve themselves. Their minds do not seem to move much further than teen magazines and hair care.
I believe that something needs to be done to improve the minds of these students. The school system is preparing kids for a non-progressive future. A future filled with McDonalds employees and hobos. I do not want to see this future.
And, I understand that a teacher cannot force her kids to learn, but I know that they want to. They show up for some reason. Just make it interesting and treat them like they deserve to be treated. If they can see that we have no faith they will not put forth any effort. It is a waste.
I know how you feel. In my school, they didn't really pass people that didn't know anything though. The only honors class I took was English, until my senior year that I pretty much blew off.
I remember taking a Sociology class my freshman (or sophomore?) year. The teacher would have a current events game every Friday to get the students more interested in staying in touch with the outside-the-teenage-mind world. It worked. Everyone in that class would talk about news and events before the teacher started came in.
I also remember in junior high, a presidential election was going on. My history teacher got us interested in politics by having us debate about who we wanted to win and why. I really got into it. We even had our own election.
There are ways teachers can get students interested, but maybe ignorance IS bliss....
-Sonja :)
I can't decide if I should side with the students who have uninvolved and boring teachers, or if disinterest and apathetic students are the problem.
Either way, they're probably both at fault - teaching means effectively explaining information, and if teachers aren't doing that, there's a serious problem. But teenagers need to get off their butts and invest in their own education. I think sometimes we don't take enough responsibility.
Heh, not that I would know. Being homeschooled, I am largely self-taught, so I'm afraid I can't relate.