An overwhelming majority of the students who entered college and the workforce during the past three years said in the survey that, knowing what they know now, they would have worked harder and applied themselves more in high school. More than three-quarters of all graduates not in college (77 percent) and nearly two-thirds of those in college (65 percent) would have applied themselves more in high school. Moreover, more than 8 in 10 (81 percent) recent graduates said they would have worked harder if their high school experience had demanded more of them. —2 in 5 High School Graduates Feel Unprepared
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Thanks for the explanation. I do feel that one of the most important things about any educational system is that you learn how to learn.
For example, I can’t say that I ever actually *used* the Latin I took in high school and college, but after learning Latin, English grammar was easy, and I didn’t find learning German hard at all.
A student who’s taking a lit class from another professor asked me yesterday for an example of a work of 20th century American literature that I feel every American should read. I didn’t give an answer, since I think of a lit class as a skills building exercise, rather than a place to get “content” that you have to spit back in a quiz. So the exact titles aren’t as important to me as my desire to expose students to what people do when they read with a passion (even if my students won’t all share that passion).
I was fortunate enough to go to a private school where I didn’t think discipline was a serious problem. I even appreciated the rules regarding uniforms, since they encouraged us to channel all our adolescent rebellion into breaking those rules, and we felt like we had gotten away with something big when we had done something that was relatively harmless.
You’re very right to note that most of us have no idea what we’re going to be doing when we get out of school.
Both, but somewhat moreso that the material IS irrelevant. For example, despite all the hoopla about it, I’ve never any math above basic algebra. Nor did any of those “college intro” courses where they told me to use a planner over and over again help me out. Let’s see. Can’t say any of those “read shakespeare and write a report” classes helped either.
On the other hand, although I never would have guessed it, I am glad I took piano and band. And *some* of those writing classes I took did improve my writing.
The biggest problem I have with school, and it’s getting worse, is the school systems insistence that it’s not that important if it can’t be taught in a class. Social skills anyone? Schools are becoming more and more like prisons – security guards, passes if you want to go anywhere. The high school I went to wasn’t the only one to try to ban being having conversations in the hall. Conversations, for god’s sake. “Well,” they said, “we need to do something about how crowded the halls get.”
I learned a great deal from playing magic (the card game). Oh yeah, so the school banned that to because “someone might be betting on any sort of cards games”. Evidentally, violence + betting was ok because it was a school sponsored activity. But the remote possibility of betting, without violence, – well, that’s just bad.
Ok, I guess I’ve gone off on a rant. ;-) Part of the reason why you have to take so many irrelevant classes is that no one really knows what’s important – what ARE you going to be when you grow up? What future world events are going to happen 10 years from now, and we should be covering similar historical events that have happened before? Are you really better off taking math or art?
But take any person who’s gone through school, and they’ve spent a LOT of time on classes that they never found any use for.
Will, is the problem that the students FEEL the material is irrelevant, or is the problem that it IS irrelevant? Just curious.
In other news, a majority of graduates also said that they would have worked harder had they felt their class material wasn’t so completely irrelevant to their lives.