Living out the final days of high school is rather fun. I'm gearing up for college, and hey, I'm even blogging to possibly get scholarship money. Lfe is good. But when I leave, what happens to those I leave behind? My high school will be recieving accredation next year, and already things are being restructured to make the school system look better.
My point being. When I was a freshmen, the Senior class had access to classes such as a 1/2 year elective on Shakespeare. You were able to read several of his lesser famous plays. Another class was Psychology in English. There were extra courses in the Social Sciences on geography and foriegn relations. Since then, all of these classes are gone. Electives in general are few and far between. Instead of being a class filled with students eager to learn about a subject like American Legal Studies, you have 30 plus students in a class so they can simply have enough credit to graduate.
Problems abound not only in my school district but others. Being on the Student Advisory Council, I hear of some of the choices and ideas being made about education in my school district. After school activities were going to be cut. The late bus program was to be slashed. The number of sports teams is to be cut by a 1/3 even though a plethora of students play in them. In fact, to many play in them. The girls volleyball team had 60 people and 1 coach who at the same time had to go watch the boys team.
What is up with this diservice? To the people that take interest in learning, their enviornment has been destroyed. Classes are cut, and avenues to new subjects are gone. Instead of having the intro course to Economics, or International Relations, they take a study because there aren't any classes for them to explore. To those trying to be apart of after school activities or sports, they face budget cuts.
How is this helping to fulfill the ideas of future leaders and good citizenship when organizations such as the National Honors Society are cut? What are schools doing to students when they make cuts like this but making school miserable? What pleasure is there in learning the medicore to pass a state exam when the funds gained from it don't go to activities to expand their horizons? To those people who might argue, that everyone is made equal when things are boiled down to the basics under no child left behind, how does this allow for students to go beyond a state college. Will an Amherst or Tufts want to accept someone who took only 4 years of basic math, english, science, and history? On the local news it said most state colleges in MA feel incoming students seem to know even less about proper essay or writing technique. While MCAS scores might be higher, actual progress in school is dropping?
Somethings wrong here. What are we to do?
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I see a similar problem in my school, but with the Advanced Placement courses. The funding is being cut, so certain books cannot be bought and students will not be able to write in their books (which can be very helpful in those classes). I don't understand who could benefit from this. It's certainly not the students who reap the benefits.
There is a similar problem here. Which AP classes are you in? I'm currently in AP Gov and AP English Lit. With all these budget cuts it only makes it harder for students at the top to get the kinds of things they need, be them new books or being able to write in them. I fail to see why schools are doing this to their top students, it only hurts them in the long run.
I feel bad for the incoming classes that will only get it worse and worse. I totally forgot to talk about how Ancient History, which covers everything from the Greeks to about the Enlightenment has been cut. This is to make room for a divided US system for the new MCAS here. So you get one year of modern history to about Reagen and 2 years of US History. It leaves alot to be desired.
I brought up this issue at Student Government Day when I was a Senator for my hometown in Boston the other day. We were voting on a bill, that will be put before the real MA Senate, that wants to give money to schools for more parental teacher cooperation. I argued that the money for this program could go to fund the things already needed by schools, though its an alright idea. There's just so much that needs to be worked on why add on more programs that you can't fund? If you can't even make way for classes and such.
By the way, if someone makes the arguement about equality in school, and about equal oppritunity, do not use in your arguement honors or AP courses. Classifying students by ability = not equality. To make class rooms equal someone proposed, we need to increase AP courses to remove the bad eggs from classrooms with good kids. It was a bad arguement that I was just shocked that many agreed with. If a student is disruptive or doesn't like school, yet can't pass a basic class like Algebra 1, who are they suppose to then go about getting into a class they would like that requires a passing grade in Alegbra was another idea I wanted to scream out at people. They were missing the fact that if someone can't pass a grade, thats why they might drop out, because they can't get past the classes. It doesn't help to make more classes they can't take. And I consider myself more liberal and I felt like a Conservative Republican there. Topsee turvey world.
Everything is oposite in my school. The fitire seniors are getting more and more advantages over wha we had. new programs are constantly being developed.
I have written a similar blog. I feel the people making the decisions don't have any idea how they are corrupting the system. Like you I'm involved in my school. I have partipated in every type of extra-curricular activites and have seen them get cut year by year. I actually had the opportunity to meet in a closed seeting with the school board with a couple of other students and we addresses and stress to them the important things we were losing. It really it them. . .I suggest you do something in this manner if at all possible.