<p>Agreed with the above, I couldn’t care less about Huck Finn. With what I plan on doing, understanding the satire in Huck Finn won’t help me in the slightest.</p>
<p>^except with, I dunno, being a free-thinking citizen. **** English hate.</p>
<p>If you spent more time on homework, even when it’s repetitive, you would have both, therefore eliminating the conundrum.</p>
<p>Hobbithill, what does reading Huck Finn have to do with being a free thinking citizen? If you are saying that I won’t become/am not well versed in literature, I don’t care. I would rather read books that interest me on my own time.</p>
<p>Knowing material -> good grades</p>
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<p>Not necessarily. People who memorize material in rote fashion may get good grades, but right after say, a test, he or she may just empty the material out of his or her working memory only to be forever clueless later on any of it.</p>
<p>grades right now are always more important than learning the material.
however, I do care about knowing the material in math and science; in history I couldn’t care less if I forget it all tomorrow.</p>
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<p>I understand the value of good literature. I just feel like it’s something to be digested by the fireside in an act of one’s own free will. Actually, a smackling of Dante sounds delightful right now, but instead I’m forced to read A Raisin in the Sun which does absolutely nothing for me.</p>
<p>All in all, fiction (unless it has a point–like Rand or Orwell) bores me. I learn more and feel more enlightened when I read its opposite. </p>
<p>For the record, Huck Finn was the second best work of literature I’ve been forced to read. Beowulf and the Odyssey are tied for first, but that’s not saying much.</p>
<p>It really depends on the subject.</p>
<p>I had a B in Honors Bio, but I loved the evolution unit. Kids who got way better grades than me, even after we covered it, were still like “If we evolved from monkeys, why do we still have monkeys?”</p>
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haha, just get over it. don’t care about them 
they just wasted their life.</p>
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agreed… people if you think english is pointless then you’re not getting it, as in REALLLLLLY understanding it.</p>
<p>I’m absolutely SICK of everyone (myself included) focusing on getting a good grade without really understanding the material. That’s why I’m looking at colleges with alternative education styles (bard, Sarah Lawrence, etc.) that are based mostly on class discussion. In these schools, you actually LEARN, rather than sit in the back of a lecture hall, memorizing whatever the professor writes on the board. My primary goal in going to school is to enrich my knowledge & my understanding, not to look good on paper to future employers.</p>
<p>Isn’t it possible to care about learning the material AND getting an A ?</p>
<p>Ideally, both grades and learning the material matter. If I HAD to pick one, it’d be grades but for my classes an A isn’t attainable unless one knows the material well.</p>
<p>I find it a lot easier to make an A by understanding especially in AP courses. The amount of information is overwhelming and if you can’t make connections, memorizing plain facts and formulas will be a nightmare.</p>
<p>@flower161: ironic how you say that because once you go to higher level sciences it’s about 50% math, calculus included. @denzil: exactly and because our teachers are incompetent and lack of emphasis on education in the general American culture.</p>
<p>I’m not sure. Right now, I’m pretty much only working on my grades and not necessarily understanding the material, but I feel somewhat burned out and kind of just want to play video games and sleep all day, despite having college apps and a lot of college-level/AP classes to work on. Maybe my motivations would be different in a less stressful situation.</p>
<p>The grade, definitely.</p>
<p>The grade is most important, considering most of my classes are taught at a below par level, so I return the favor by putting that much respect into it. The exceptions would be classes such as Trig, Bio, and Psych that truly interest me.</p>
<p>Kind of both, it depends. With foreign language, math, science, and English, I care about the material first, then the grade, but I make sure I end up with As anyways. With history…I feel like we go too fast to appreciate the topic and end up memorizing material for the tests and projects and don’t actually process it all. We don’t get into the material, my teacher stands there and flips through a PowerPoint. However, I go plenty out of my way to watch a program on the history channel, and can hardly tear myself away from it. It depends on whether you are motivated by others, or by yourself. If by yourself, you typically love learning and thus the material study-ers. Talk about awkward sentences.</p>