A small rant on the public education system. (Captain Obvious/Wall o' Text warning!)

[flibitijibibo]

Reasons I picked music #Eleventy: No matter how hard you memorize something, if you haven't learned anything, you will still fail (in my class, anyway), because the piece you play will always suck due to its horrifying blandness and generic expressions (if any). It's what ranks L4D with Portal on my top 5 games evar; no two runs can be the same. The mechanical nature of the American education system cannot apply in a superior music program, and that's what makes me love doing what I do now.

As for the regular discussions with students, that's something all teachers really ought to do. It's helped with your students, it's helped with mine, the pattern seems to be consistent. This could improve the system in multiple ways. Not only will it improve attitudes/achievements within the student body, but it will also improve the staff as well.

There are multiple things like the above that could really narrow down and improve the teacher population. See, the drooling morons who are reading out of the textbook will have no ability to work well with kids because they simply don't know anything, and can be weeded out. You all know who I'm talking about, the bitch who knows their subject as well as you do, and sits blankly at their desk to show the world that they ended up where they are rather than choosing to be there. Without them, there's more room to employ those who truly deserve it. So, not only will teacher quality improve, but this also assists in employment; rather than hiring some dick who only has their degree to qualify himself, the person with legitimate experience/personality can get the job they deserve. In fact, having those essential abilities should be required to even be certified.

In closing, getting a job in education should have higher requirements than having a body temperature between 90 and 100. If students begin asking a high school student with no formal training in education to teach their band class instead of the appointed director (who, instead of a degree in music ed, has a doctorate in African drumming), something has gone horribly wrong.

To those wondering: This is in Maryland.

Edit- My brain eventually processed the "excess amount of unnecessary subjects" paragraph you wrote. I had a wee rant on that a few months back, here's the snippet on the subjects:

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 ||heh, I even made the memorize point too|| 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.