<p>I hate gym requirements. It’s not that I don’t like excerxose or sports- I do! It’s just that it takes away a free period or even a class from my schedule. :/</p>
<p>Indeed! Glad/lucky I managed to integrate my gym class in with another elective.</p>
<p>But hey, every cloud has a silver lining. For the first time in 13 years of schooling, I had basically complete autonomy over 100% of my schedule. There were classes I was expected to take, yes, but I had already chosen those long before (like JROTC). It was such a sweet feeling to log in and select them. I already saw my schedule in May, but when they officially came out I just kind of stared at it for a few minutes and was like, “Aww yeah, this is where the fun really begins.” I mean, i’ve liked almost all of my HS classes, but i’m just so pleased with the masterpiece of a schedule I got to create for myself.</p>
<p>…um yeah my senior year schedule is awesome.</p>
<p>I don’t think school is a <em>complete</em> waste of time, but then again, I go to a private school and take 4/5 Honors. But the non-Honors/AP classes at my school are home to a bunch of kids who talk out of line, never study for tests, and just don’t really care about their education/future. For example, in Spanish last year (my school doesn’t offer honors for this), there were a lot of kids making fun of the teacher and laughing while she was talking. Okay, so maybe that’s not that extreme compared to your school, but here, it’s a huge annoyance and major waste of time in class. Luckily for me, our school doesn’t have gym requirements (we have the normal 4 year English, 3 years math, 3 years science, 3.5 years history, 2 years foreign language, 1 year visual/performing arts), but we DO have to take 4 years of theology, which, unless you’re Catholic, you don’t really care about it. Plus there’s no honors theo until senior year, so again, I’m stuck in theo with a bunch of kids like those in my Spanish class. </p>
<p>TL;DR School is only a waste of time in non-Honors/AP classes.</p>
<p>Actually, we don’t even need school. Back then in the times of Homo Habilus, Homo Erectus, Neanderthals, and Homo Sapiens, humans never went to school. Humans were just wild animals just like every other animal. The only difference school has made on humans is protection from wild animals by means of shelter and mass killing. </p>
<p>But still, I enjoy school, I have to live with it :)</p>
<p>School? Hmm…I learned a few things here and there. Yep, that’s about it. Boring.</p>
<p>Elementary school was a drag as well. More often than not, I had loads of free time on my hands. Enough for me to start on the work for the rest of the week. I’m sure there’s other people like that but one thing that I’m a little annoyed at is that no one knew - heck, they still don’t but I do - about any scholarship opportunities at boarding schools, where I could start taking more advanced courses and home schooling wasn’t something my parents considered. Shame schools here don’t have counselors at all and when they do, they’re too apathetic or lazy to do their jobs properly. (in my experience, anyway) When I did learn of such opportunities, it was already too late.</p>
<p>The bottom line is yes, school did get in the way of my learning. It was annoying. That is not to say, however, that a school where I could cross-register at a local college or one with rigorous academics (I don’t know how rigorous they are but the US prep schools like Andover and Exeter seem cool)…or even one with a student body that was more to my taste (now that could be stretching it, haha), would have still been a hindrance. Perhaps one such school may have been an environment that would allow me to further my learning.</p>
<p>I don’t feel that it is a waste of time, but I do believe that school is much longer than it needs to be.</p>
<p>Doesn’t your school allow you to waive that requirement? I was able to get out due to playing a varsity sport but other viable alternatives my school offered were marching band or a full schedule filled with academic classes (no study halls).</p>
<p>pton; they introduced a waiver my sophomore year, but the rule was you had to play 2 sports/year all 4 years AND you had to take a ridiculous test on your ‘physical knowledge’ (someone mentioned questions on the rules of handball)</p>
<p>and miraculously, some people got the waiver.</p>
<p>I guess I’m lucky because my school offers things like that. My school is a career technical school (so are most schools in my district) , do we have classes like engineering, computer sciences , auto tech (you work on cars and stuff) , culinary arts , fashion stuff , sports medicine etc. </p>
<p>Honestly school in my opinion is not a waste of time, it helps yeah a broad spectrum of things to ready students for whatever they want to be (you need some significant math to be a programmer, biology for medicine, history/social studies helps with political and public services.) . I can admit there are a ton of things wrong with the system, but it’s pretty good for the 100million kids it’s teaching currently.</p>
<p>I guess we’d like to believe that school is holding us back, that there’s so much more out there in the world than what is being taught in school. Personally, I value school for its intangibles like creating structure in one’s life and developing work ethic, as well as build foundations to build on. Fulfilling all the graduation requirements can be a pain, but you get a little bit of everything. I mean, what’s the rush? When you go to college, you decide your major, get internships, and do whatever to build towards your career. I’m all for getting ahead and scrapping the unnecessary, but you’d miss out on the high school experience. It would be nice if schools had release periods where we can do independent study or research.</p>
<p>Well yeah, I think the high school experience is really valuable. I know that there are some classes I really hated that I had to take, and later on ended up loving them. So i’m thankful that I was forced into it, because otherwise I wouldnt’ve known what I was missing.</p>
<p>On the other hand…I knew there were things I would never do, that I really didn’t want to do. I had to do it anyways, and it was miserable for everyone involved.</p>
<p>I feel like students who really know what they want, should be able to pursue it. But the way our district schedules makes it so there’s almost no room to take classes besides what’s required, and it really sucks for kids who want to explore more. You just can’t do it.</p>
<p>School is a game that’s fun to win. Learning is incidental to it and, often, more fun. Just keep it in mind when scheduling.</p>
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<p>Indeed. Honestly, I think learning (and social interaction) is the best part of school. That’s why I love my schedule, lots of variety and topics that seem interesting to learn about.</p>
<p>I think high school is a big waste of time for a lot of people. Many people don’t end up in college and work fastfood jobs, which is fine if that’s what they want to do. If they’re not cut out to go to college, they’ll have to go to some vocational school to learn a skill or trade. That is all perfectly fine. I don’t think you need a high school education to do any of that. More like an 8th grade education. </p>
<p>High school is important for people who want to go to the college of their choice. It’s not like you’re recruited some place and must go, you make your choice to apply there and to attend (not saying your parents might not have some influence). Community college is for the majority of unmotivated people who don’t know what they want to do with their lives to sort it out and decide if college is right for them. An overwhelming majority does not transfer out and will go on to do whatever with their lives. The people who do make it are the people who seriously wanted to transfer and get a college education but may have realized this later than most people. </p>
<p>I do think that a lot of general education classes ARE a waste of time. I don’t need to learn about the history of the world. I don’t need to know any french during my lifetime. I don’t need to know anything about the way music works either. Chances are I’ll never use those skills or knowledge again. Taking classes like Astronomy, Biology, Physics, Computer Science, Neuroscience, etc., classes that you find interesting rather than required I feel like should be what should fulfill “general eds”. Let’s face it…they’re not going to care that you know about art when you’re doing engineering work on a plane. They’re going to care that you know about engineering.</p>
<p>Oh no.
I love school. I love learning, I love the interactions, and I love the challenge.
I feel like a little kid in a candy shop when I’m picking my schedule for next year. I don’t think school is a waste of time and I’m glad that I was able to go to school!</p>
<p>^^First, community college is not necessarily “for the majority of unmotivated people who don’t know what they want to do with their lives…” This is a prevailing stereotype. There is nothing wrong with going to a community college and there is nothing wrong with the people who go to a community college. Heck, I went to community college for two years concurrent with my junior and senior years in high school. From the people I met there, most of them WERE motivated. Many of them chose community college to save money for later years of college and graduate school. In fact, my friend who is going to be a nurse practitioner is attending community college and will transfer to nursing school. Again, there is nothing wrong with going to a community college. </p>
<p>Second, general education classes across the spectrum are a foundation of a solid education. While you may not need to know a foreign language, it is helpful to know. Classes you take don’t need to be useful. In the early days of education, higher education was a status - a symbol of high culture. It was characteristic of the educated to have a broad knowledge of the liberal arts and rhetoric. Today with the Mcdonaldization of society, people groan and moan about taking classes they don’t “need”. Higher education is no longer about learning for the sake of it, but rather learning for the sake of getting a good job. A true scholar is always well-rounded. Didn’t you know Da Vinci was both an artist and a scientist?</p>
<p>The general consensus is that a roundly-educated populace benefits the democratic process and enables social cohesion and maneuverability. </p>
<p>Whether or not the current system accomplishes these ends is clearly another issue — it doesn’t — but I don’t see why anyone, as a matter or principle, would prefer to live in a world full of people who didn’t know where they came from nor where they’re going, who had no appreciation for art or heritage, and whose critical faculties had been stunted by neglect. Much less can I imagine the mindset of a person who, once they had developed these appreciations and skills, desired their degradation!</p>
<p>But this is a different issue than the broader one. </p>
<p>School, as is, disenfranchises those at the extremities of the intelligence scale and further enables those whose attributes would already land them in cozy social positions. </p>
<p>It wastes the time of reasonably smart people who do not enjoy competition as much as some of us do. It risks crippling the initiative of the self-motivated. It leads those who love learning to associate the concept with the mundane regurgitation requisite for success on AP tests, and on the SAT, and on make-work homework assignments, etc. </p>
<p>And attendance is mandatory — often for the same reasons provided for the mandatory nature of penitentiary attendance. </p>
<p>The whole thing is sickening. </p>
<p>I am lucky that I enjoy competition as much as I do. I am lucky that my parents were not the kind to stress the importance of hoop-jumping above friendship-forming and book-reading and every other thing in life that mattered and that still matters infinitely more than the rote knowledge I acquired in the pursuit of my interests and in my successful competition in the government’s game of “academics”.</p>
<p>@Philosophe; you sound just like me! c:</p>
<p>For me, elementary school was a waste because my mom was pretty proactive about teaching me things in 1st grade. Also the curriculum for elementary school was disorganized and random where I went.</p>
<p>I don’t think high school is a waste of time as much as I think it should me more like college. Too bad public high schools can’t afford the course variety of a university.</p>
<p>For some people, yes. If a person doesn’t want to go far in their life, or can find a way to do so without being educated, then they probably are wasting their time.</p>