School, Mostly a waste of time? Give your opinion!

[Gwunty]

The mall, or the movies or anyplace else teens are let in?

[Kornman00]

The mall, or the movies or anyplace else teens are let in?

umm, during the school day? (also, people your age)

[Sargent_Hawk]

I hate being home schooled, and having an overprotective mom doesin't help, I'm nto allowed to go ANYWHERE without a parent, even if it means going across the street to grab a ball my little sister threw over the fence...

So basicly, the internet is the only place I meet people. It sucks big time.

[MetKiller Joe]

I think that school is a huge waste of time. During the majority of school, I just sit there with the teacher teaching other student's things that I have learned more than two years ago, and everything I learned last year in social studies, and the year before, has already been forgotten, due to me not needing to know it.

Can you take any electives at this school of yours?

@ Tweek: I completely agree. I am from Europe as well. I have relatives that go to school there and they all laugh at my puny list of 6 subjects.

I love school. I am taking Economics AP, Computer Programming, and Calculus BC AP (I am one of those weird people that enjoys doing math). I find that in order to enjoy school, you take electives which encompass subjects that you enjoy and will build a nice college resume.

[flibitijibibo]

For me, school was/is a humongous waste of time. That's why I now take classes that let me leave the building and go learn instead. My biggest problem is that you're required to take certain classes to a certain level. Example: I had to take 3 years of history. I now have that slot replaced with my internship, and I've already forgotten everything I learned (using that term lightly) in those 3 years.

I feel like those busy-work classes could have been better spent on courses worth taking. It was only by testing out that I was able to max out my music course levels. And even then, I didn't come close to taking everything I wanted to. Because I pissed away my time in my science and history courses (the two I dropped for my internship this year), I will never be able to take comp sci 4, unless I take it in college, which costs a fuckton more money.

If you think about it, it wouldn't be so bad to drop such requirements. If a student wants to learn history, there you go. If it weren't a requirement to have foreign language, I definitely would have done it anyway. To waste the time of both the students and the teacher is just plain stupid.

Now, aside from the whole forcing kids to "learn" shit they didn't ask to learn about, I only have one other complaint. I don't know about your schools, but for some reason, my school district has an awful lot of trouble with the idea that literature isn't what an English class should be. That should be, guess what, literature. English class is where the fuckheads who still can't speak their primary language correctly should go to not sound like morons. Some of you from out of the US may be thinking, "wait, but isn't that something they should already know?" Well, not here, evidently. Instead of learning how to compile sentences properly, we learn how to read books that all say the same message/have the same plot: One/a group of black people have some menial problem, and they fight with each other for about 200 pages while noting that white people are the root of it somehow. There really is nothing to be learned from any of it. You know what may have some educational value? A book not written with dialect that contradicts the language being studied. Look, I know American literature sucks (Excluding the Alphabet of Manliness), but surely there's something, SOMETHING other than this stupid plot that someone wrote?

I've hit a mental wall about here. If I think of a way to complete this thought, I will.

[DOMINATOR]

I think that school is a huge waste of time. During the majority of school, I just sit there with the teacher teaching other student's things that I have learned more than two years ago, and everything I learned last year in social studies, and the year before, has already been forgotten, due to me not needing to know it. Also, considering the massive amount of time I spend on a computer on a forum or such, I don't really need english class to teach me how to read complex sentences and words, along with how to write or type with proper spelling and grammar, due to me having learned it on my own in my spare time. Having learned what would take about 5 or so years in school, which i learned in about 2-3 months during summer, in spare time on the internet, leads me to think that it is even more of a waste of time.

Aswell stupidly, where I live, we have this 990hrs rule, meaning we have to be in school for atleast 990hrs throughout the whole year, when most of it is spent in study hall chatting with friends, or eating lunch. Because you could be done with all of your classes by 12 o'clock, but you would still have to stay in school due to the stupid rule. Also, now on to homework, I find it mostly pointless, all they want is to make sure you know the material, and well, isn't that what tests are for? If you spend twice the amount of checking on something, it may stay in the students head for a bit longer, but when they graduate and get a job, or go to colledge, odds are that the student will forget it due to them not needing to learn it.

Another problem I have is with the incredibly huge amounts of repetition and learning things you have learned atleast 5 times by now. How many times must we learn about how columbus went to america just for gold? Another thing, when it comes to some classes, all the teacher wants to know is if you tried and made an effort, and in the real world, that wont really do anything if you only put in effort, but do not do it correctly. Well, thats my two cents, and whatever you do, DON'T SAY TL;DR.

please go to school and pay attention.

[Phopojijo]

I think that school is a huge waste of time. During the majority of school, I just sit there with the teacher teaching other student's things that I have learned more than two years ago, and everything I learned last year in social studies, and the year before, has already been forgotten, due to me not needing to know it. Also, considering the massive amount of time I spend on a computer on a forum or such, I don't really need english class to teach me how to read complex sentences and words, along with how to write or type with proper spelling and grammar, due to me having learned it on my own in my spare time. Having learned what would take about 5 or so years in school, which i learned in about 2-3 months during summer, in spare time on the internet, leads me to think that it is even more of a waste of time.

Aswell stupidly, where I live, we have this 990hrs rule, meaning we have to be in school for atleast 990hrs throughout the whole year, when most of it is spent in study hall chatting with friends, or eating lunch. Because you could be done with all of your classes by 12 o'clock, but you would still have to stay in school due to the stupid rule. Also, now on to homework, I find it mostly pointless, all they want is to make sure you know the material, and well, isn't that what tests are for? If you spend twice the amount of checking on something, it may stay in the students head for a bit longer, but when they graduate and get a job, or go to colledge, odds are that the student will forget it due to them not needing to learn it.

Another problem I have is with the incredibly huge amounts of repetition and learning things you have learned atleast 5 times by now. How many times must we learn about how columbus went to america just for gold? Another thing, when it comes to some classes, all the teacher wants to know is if you tried and made an effort, and in the real world, that wont really do anything if you only put in effort, but do not do it correctly. Well, thats my two cents, and whatever you do, DON'T SAY TL;DR.

Yeah... you're missing the point of school.

It's not to directly learn everything... it's to teach you how to learn and solve problems.

It's one of those things you look back on... seriously... even as early as 2nd year university.

Also -- learning something then forgetting it doesn't mean you didn't need to learn it. I forgot a lot of highschool math, and I'm a 4th year Physics major/Math minor... however I needed to know the things which were dependant on the things that I learned and forgot. (etc.)

Not *directly* using something and forgetting it doesn't mean it wasn't required to know at one point to learn something else you needed.

[PlasbianX]

I believe it honestly is based on three key factors.

1) Who the teacher is
2) What the class is
3) How much the student actually takes in


I have some classes where the teachers just don't teach. I find the classes to be a total waste of time. Hell, my sociology class we don't do anything on sociology. We're just taught to break the rules. Like our school, you have to have cellphones off and in your locker during school hours. In my class, the teacher doesn't care if you text in class as long as you make sure you don't get caught if a principal comes in. Another rule we have is that you can't have food outside of the cafeteria. He doesn't care as long as we put all trash in the trashcan, then cover the can with a bunch of scrap paper so you can't see the wrappers or anything.

Then my creative writing class the teacher doesn't teach anything that I haven't already learned from my Expository / College Writing classes last year. I see that class as 1 major waste of time.

Now for the classes I do care about, I find class to be very beneficial because I'm learning a lot that I will be able to hopefully take with me into college and then a career after. Like i love to draw and show my artistic sides, so my photoshop and drawing classes are really entertaining for me and I love being in them. Im also a big physics guy so my physics class rocks and its cool cause outta 25 students in our class im one of the 5 kids with A's while the rest are C's and below.

[Sel]

Me and teh lag had a long interesting chat about this a while ago.

Pretty much about how the school system is broken thanks to the constant fear that a full interesting curriculum will offend a minority and then get all the schools bombed.

[ExAm]

Depends on the school. Up until high school my parents put me in a series of hippie schools that pretty much left me to my own devices. Everything I know now I know because of high school, and because I'm pretty much self sufficient when it comes to learning things. If I need to learn something, I google it and teach myself, maybe get some help from a couple people along the way.

Now I'm in college and I'm learning the same shit I learned in high school all over again in my general ed classes...