Inefficiency in high school classes

<p>Lately I've been feeling as if the only point of going to class at all is to pick up homework and reading assignments. I know that I could learn the same material in a quarter of the time if I were working by myself, but because there are no 'gifted' or 'honors' classes at my high school we're left with a jumbled mix of quick, average, and slow kids in each class. The result? The majority of classes are taught at a painfully slow speed. We do full IB in 11th and 12th grade, but everyone takes three HLs and three SLs which means there's still the same distribution of kids between the classes.</p>

<p>Now, I understand that people learn at different rates--but at a well-regarded private school like mine, shouldn't there be some sort of tracking? The only classes where I feel I consistently learn something new each class are chemistry and math. Incidentally, math is the only class that has (unofficial but evidently deliberate) 'standard' and 'advanced' levels.</p>

<p>The reason this frustrates me so much is that by the time school is over, I'm exhausted. Not because I'm overworked, but because half an hour of actual information has been dragged out over six hours of class time. I get home tired and apathetic--but I still have hours of homework in front of me. Is it surprising, then, that I procrastinate until the night before the due date for all my assignments and then do a half-assed job and still get a decent grade, of course, because I don't let myself get away with anything less, but still come out ultimately unsatisfied?</p>

<p>Intellectual diversity be damned--dividing classes by ability benefits everyone. I'd get things done, for one, and you wouldn't have to listen to me whining.</p>

<p>(Sorry about the rant; I'm a little bit frustrated. Because some of the things we're learning could be interesting, you know, if we didn't waste such an insufferable amount of time just covering the basics.)</p>

<p>Does anyone else feel the same?</p>

<p>I'm in all honors/AP classes and it's the exact same thing for me. The only class I actually need to go to in order to learn the material is math. When we have subs in math, sometimes I just don't go to school (I say I'm sick or something).</p>

<p>Edit: I realize I also had to go to AP Chem before the AP to learn the material. But AP US History, French, and English are completely worthless.</p>

<p>Oh, my English class is taught at the level of fifth grade composition. (The second day of class the teacher told us that the only reason he even got into college was his dad's "connections".) Hamlet is reduced to pop culture references and, of all things, sports metaphors. We've written one meager essay this year. I think it's condescending.</p>

<p>same here. I'm in all honors/AP but the pace is slow, the work is boring and simple, and I could not show up to class for two weeks ( I kinda did in May) and still learn the material. except for physics which is somewhat of a challenge. and most people complain bout it being so hard....... sigh. In history class we kinda learn stuff through my teacher's lectures. not very difficult and not very much.usually I just listen or ask random questions bout history that I have. </p>

<p>I'm kinda worried bout college. cuz I mgiht actually be challenged there.</p>

<p>My suggestion: Bring some educational material to school and self-educate yourself during class. For assignments, just contact friends who should give you all of the information. That way you waste much less time and still get an education while maintaining your grades. :)</p>

<p>Unfortunately, some teachers take issue with that. But still try it for all of your classes and remember to sit in the back row or something like that. ;)</p>

<p>simfish: Very good suggestion--though when your largest class has 15 kids (my smallest has 9) it's difficult to go unnoticed. ;)</p>

<p>You guys need better teachers.</p>

<p>thisyeargirl, is IB the only option for juniors and seniors?</p>

<p>Yes, it is.</p>

<p>simfish, I really can't learn anytihng of difficulty if there is a lot of noise. I've used certain classes to study and memorize useless information, but that's about it.</p>

<p>it's the last week of school...
I've been doing NOTHING in 6 of my 7 classes and I have NO complaints whatsoever. :D</p>

<p>if I weren't dying to get out though, I'd be upset. It's worse if you're on a rotating schedule (like my high school) because classes don't meet as often, so if everyone slacks off one day, they can't catch up very quickly.</p>

<p>We have an eight-day rotating schedule (A to H). How about you?</p>

<p>Try earplugs? And then wear an hood so that teachers won't notice it. ;) Maybe it'll look weird but it won't be too bad (I used to wear an hood ALL THE TIME and no one seemed to hate me just for that).</p>

<p>And then maybe you could try studying something of lesser difficulty. Definitely not challenge problems from say ur calc textbook but SAT vocab would be easier. Or another suggestion: write in a diary or do some creative writing.</p>

<p>One thing I like to do during class is write something during class so it looks like I'm taking notes when i'm really not.</p>

<p>If your teachers do mind, then if they see a calculus textbok on top of your desk, it's an obvious giveaway. But you can try printing out some text material of something you want to learn and then it's much harder for the teacher to notice.</p>

<p>BTW: (something Eric Cornell tried)</p>

<p><a href="http://nobelprize.org/physics/laureates/2001/cornell-autobio.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://nobelprize.org/physics/laureates/2001/cornell-autobio.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Indeed in elementary school I often kept my desktop slightly open and affected an alert-looking pose that still allowed me to peek into the desk where I kept open my latest book, as interesting as it was irrelevant to the academic subject at hand. Every so often my hand slipped surreptitiously into the desk to turn the page. In the intervening three decades I have spent plenty of time lecturing in front of a classroom of my own, and in retrospect I realize I was seldom fooling anyone. Most of my teachers probably found I made less trouble if they let me read.</p>

<p>simfish: I got told off for reading in class all the time in elementary school. :D</p>

<p>It's not so much making time pass that concerns me; it's wasting the better part of my day on something so blatantly inefficient. Only 6 more exams before the year is over...</p>

<p>Thisyeargirl, the extent to which i agree with you is inutterable. The enriched classes at my school have virtually no selectivity, so I'm left with a bunch of simpletons slowing down my learning pace thus causing me to feel quite frustrated. I think I can safely say that at many public schools and some private ones, there are students who perhaps are smarter than the teachers.</p>

<p>I think most people would agree with you- without selectivity for classes, it's difficult to learn efficiently.
Most of the homework is busywork anyways, even some AP classes (AP English, US History, and Art History).</p>

<p>go read "The Teenage Liberation Handbook" by Grace Llewellyn.
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0962959170/qid=1118270595/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/002-0771460-0305669?v=glance&s=books&n=507846%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0962959170/qid=1118270595/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/002-0771460-0305669?v=glance&s=books&n=507846&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>I get told off for reading too, despite the fact that it occasionally pertains to the class and that its actually more sophisticated reading material than what we read at school. Sigh, I've been learning about communism, capitalism ect ect at school in history class, and as I was familiar with such political theories and some of their ideologists long before the material was taught to me by an incompetent teacher, I discovered that listening to his endless useless lectures actually deteriorated some of my interest in the subject matter. The fact that some of the kids in my class have uncanny difficulty with such simple concepts doesn't exactly help. I was actually asked by the teacher once to state my opinion on the drawbacks of communism esp how it correlates to the economic patterns of a state in front of my class, and this of course only meaning that I had a superior understanding of the subject. Unfortunately, it's little comfort to me knowing I would much rather be an average student in an advanced class with kids as intellectually passionate as me than in a class with uninspired inbeciles.(some of them being my friends)</p>

<p>Thanks for the book suggestion, texas - its ideas really coincide with my thoughts. While I do have to say that I have learned from school, I really could learn at a much faster pace - plus, school takes much self-motivation out for self-education and I find myself performing tasks only as much as school wants me to (now as my homework load has decreased, I'm sleeping far more than I need to, for example). But sadly, there is such a huge prejudice among many people that home-schooled kids are socially deformed.</p>

<p>If I could make a good estimate, I could cover at least one chapter of a college textbook per day in self-education (so let's say, that would give a month per course. Though I've only seen introductory textbooks that aren't difficult). This would mean in an entire month that I would finish an entire college course in whatever.</p>

<p>One of the huge problems with education is also complacency. Though it's easy for me to realize my complacency, it's also more difficult for me to get over it. Sometimes I don't self-educate myself in something because I expect a teacher to cover it later and then I convince myself that I would only be wasting time. </p>

<p>I think there is a huge difference between internal motivation and external motivation. External motivation is what you get when you're learning at school; internal motivation when you're doing it on your own. When externally motivated, there is little motivation to do more than is asked.</p>

<p>Well, I guess I'm lucky compared to most of you as I am heading off to college next year (I wish early entrance programs did not have so much stigma attached to them). Well I have to learn from a syllabus in college, yeah, but at least I can skip classes. ;)</p>

<p>thisyearsgirl- your post reminded me completely of my school! The school likes to increase it's reputation by making <i>all</i> the classes in certain subjects at the "honors" level, but all that means in most of them is that it takes a 93% to get an A. It's still a class full of smart, average, and slacker kids taught by teachers who don't care at the slowest pace imaginable. we read TWO books in my lit class this year (though most of the class read the cliff notes instead), and wrote only one essay, as far as I can remember. It was terrible. </p>

<p>So, hmm, this doesn't help you much I guess, but I wanted you to know that I sympathize!</p>