What changes should be made to school?

[delop]

I've been lurking in this forum for a while now, and I want to know what the problems with the current education system are and if/how they should be changed.

[liq3]

Oh? Oh this is going to be fun.

Now, what's wrong with school.

1. Bullying.
2. Ineffective to learn.
3. Hinders free will.
4. Is against free thought.
5. Is compulsory.
5a. Due to 5, it also becomes a form of theft. Parents are forced to pay for their kids to go to school, even if they don't want to send them.
6. Teaches the kids that living an unfulfilling life is the socially acceptable way.
7. Has negative psychological effects on kids.
7a. Due to 7, many kids suicide. Thus, school causes suicides.
8. Many unnecessary and silly rules.
9. Due to 7 and 8, many kids have declined physical health due to school.

Easiest way to solve almost all of these, is by making school optional. This also includes changing the way people get certifications and degrees.

There is an ideal school structure, but I don't feel like explaining.

[delop]

But if school was optional then teenagers would have nowhere to go and would resort to gang violence. How can that be stopped?

[i-am-the-liquor]

thats the thing, it cannot be stopped, to try to stop it is ignorning reality.
you fucking putz

[liq3]

delop Wrote:But if school was optional then teenagers would have nowhere to go and would resort to gang violence. How can that be stopped?

Appeal to Fear.

[delop]

liq3 Wrote:

delop Wrote:But if school was optional then teenagers would have nowhere to go and would resort to gang violence. How can that be stopped?

Appeal to Fear.

No, I don't find you appealing

[Puchiko]

delop Wrote:But if school was optional then teenagers would have nowhere to go and would resort to gang violence. How can that be stopped?

Question: What do you think happens in school?

(answer is reverse)
Answer: Gang violence

First and foremost, teens wouldn't resort to gang violence because "they have nowhere to go". Most of us would be likely to use the liberty in a far more constructive way (Newsflash: there's other places to go than school-libraries, parks, hanging out with friends, and so on). The causes are far more complex. The most important one is frustration with their lives, with how everything is. Teen frustrations has two primary causes: school and troubled home life (not much you can do about that by abolishing mandatory attendance, but you parent-child relationships are likely to improve, and the generation raised in a non-authorative enviroment will be better parents).

Also, homeschooled/unschooled teens don't go to school, yet have lower crime rates than their institutionalised counterparts.

I'll write about what I want changed about school later, my free period has ended and I must endure a boring and monotonous Czech class.

[Fire Elf]

delop Wrote:But if school was optional then teenagers would have nowhere to go and would resort to gang violence. How can that be stopped?

Wrong. We would have everywhere to go, since we would be no longer locked up in the school building for 7 hours of a day. Besides, there's lot's of gang violence inside the schools, so it would be stupid to say the current system does anything to stop it.

[liq3]

Puchiko and 26, just ignore it. It's an obvious troll. You could use the best logic ever and it'd still ignore you and come up with some fallacy.

[delop]

26 Wrote:Wrong. We would have everywhere to go, since we would be no longer locked up in the school building for 7 hours of a day. Besides, there's lot's of gang violence inside the schools, so it would be stupid to say the current system does anything to stop it.

Having everywhere to go would mean that the gangsters in the schools would have nothing constructive to do, therefore would be more susceptible to gang violence.

Quote:Most of us would be likely to use the liberty in a far more constructive way (Newsflash: there's other places to go than school-libraries, parks, hanging out with friends, and so on).

I think that's highly unlikely. What kid would prefer studying to hanging out on youtube all day?

Quote:Puchiko and 26, just ignore it. It's an obvious troll. You could use the best logic ever and it'd still ignore you and come up with some fallacy.

Why would I be a troll?

[The Wadekarl]

I would like to start by saying that I think that liq3 is right. Most of the problems that liq3 listed would more than likely be solved if school wasn't compulsory and wasn't backed by the government. If schools were also privatized and if we weren't bailing out the public education system, the better schools would keep running, while the bad ones died off due to inefficient teaching methods, treating the students (the consumers) like shit, bullying and etc. I know I've said this before, but I'll say it again, "let the market decide."

delop Wrote:

26 Wrote:Wrong. We would have everywhere to go, since we would be no longer locked up in the school building for 7 hours of a day. Besides, there's lot's of gang violence inside the schools, so it would be stupid to say the current system does anything to stop it.

Having everywhere to go would mean that the gangsters in the schools would have nothing constructive to do, therefore would be more susceptible to gang violence.

Okay, so are you suggesting that we keep the gangsters in school where it is "supposedly" supposed to be safe. This is another reason why mandatory schooling should be abolished. Gangsters aren't interested in learning. They're just going to make life (or at least school) hell for those who go there to ACTUALLY LEARN. Let them stay home, and if they dare fuck up in the real world, let them be arrested and isolated from our society.

Quote:Most of us would be likely to use the liberty in a far more constructive way (Newsflash: there's other places to go than school-libraries, parks, hanging out with friends, and so on).

Quote:I think that's highly unlikely. What kid would prefer studying to hanging out on youtube all day?

Those who are willing to make something of themselves. If they want to do non-productive activities, let them. Let them live the life that they want to live. If people want to do productive and constructive activities and learn, let them. Let them live the life that they want to live.

And another thing, not all youtube videos are retarded.

Quote:Puchiko and 26, just ignore it. It's an obvious troll. You could use the best logic ever and it'd still ignore you and come up with some fallacy.

Quote:Why would I be a troll?

Well, you are basing your argument on fear of gang violence and your assuming that people (or at least "kids," but I hate saying that word) are lazy and not interested in learning.

Notice that in my argument, I didn't assume that people are lazy or that they do want to learn. I said let them decide how they want to live and to each their own.

[Puchiko]

delop Wrote:

26 Wrote:Wrong. We would have everywhere to go, since we would be no longer locked up in the school building for 7 hours of a day. Besides, there's lot's of gang violence inside the schools, so it would be stupid to say the current system does anything to stop it.

Having everywhere to go would mean that the gangsters in the schools would have nothing constructive to do, therefore would be more susceptible to gang violence.

As I stated previously, gang violence is already rampant in schools. Not to mention the fact that mandatory school attendance doesn't keep the gangsters in schools, ever heard of truancy? That's just another symptom of the rottenness of the system.

And, though I'm repeating myself-abolishing mandatory school attendance would solve many problems with gang violence in the first place. Teens would be less frustrated and happier, and therefore wouldn't need to resort to desperate measures. Plus, the current education system enforces the current social classes. The quality of education varies greatly by the neighbourhood, thus keeping the poor poor. Poverty leads to crime.

Note: I'm not a socialist. I'm a liberal, and think kids from low-income families should get a shot at life. The inner-city public elementary school just doesn't do that.

Besides, by using the "school keeps gangsters locked up" argument, you're basically acknowledging that school is plainly a prison. Here's the most relevant passage from that article, but do read it in full to get a more exact picture.

Quote:Prison, as we have evolved it following British and Hindu models, seeks to impose the same discipline on its serious recruits, breaking them to an understanding of their own profound worthlessness. It should be no secret to anyone reading this that in America, the land of the free, more people are imprisoned, by far, than in any nation past or present, including Communist China or Stalin's Soviet Union. Prison in America is a booming business, incarcerating about five times the percentage of our population who were jailed in the middle of the Great Depression. Some fiendish spirit is loose in our land whose bleak heart can only be plumbed by seeing the correspondences among cults, prisons, and schools.
The most obvious relationship between government schooling and our penal system is that they both involve prisons of measured time: Movements, thoughts, associations in both are controlled by total strangers whose biographies remain a sealed book to inmates and their families. Any attempt to uncover those biographies in order to consider the fitness of employees would be met by howls of outrage and refusal, or punished severely if the research were pressed.

The structures in which students are confined along with their certified handlers long ago exceeded any human scale, they are megalithic constructions designed to emphasize the insignificance of the indwelling population, and the stark power of their invisible masters. Yet both the anonymity of the operatives and the inhumanity of the architecture have a subtler side, too, a side which can only be appreciated when you realize that its purpose is to make us childish.
Almost all Americans have had an intense school experience which occupied their entire youth, an experience during which they were drilled thoroughly in the culture and economy of the well-schooled greater society, in which individuals have been rendered helpless to do much of anything except watch television or punch buttons on a keypad.

Before you begin to blame the childish for being that way and join the chorus of those defending the general imprisonment of adults and the schooling by force of children because there isn't any other way to handle the mob, you want to at least consider the possibility that we've been trained in childishness and helplessness for a reason. And that reason is that helpless people are easy to manage. Helpless people can be counted upon to act as their own jailers because they are so inadequate to complex reality they are afraid of new experience. They're like animals whose spirits have been broken. Helpless people take orders well, they don't have minds of their own, they are predictable, they won't surprise corporations or governments with resistance to the newest product craze, the newest genetic patent -- or by armed revolution. Helpless people can be counted on to despise independent citizens and hence they act as a fifth column in opposition to social change in the direction of personal sovereignty.
From a managerial standpoint, people addicted to defining their lives by the stuff they buy, or by pats on the head, comprise a managerial utopia. In prison, or school, the way to this condition, this safe condition, is prepared by a drill in the extension of small privileges and honors, or the withholding of same, by punishments and rewards externally imposed until the inner ability of the human spirit to punish or reward itself --and hence by free of tutelage -- is destroyed or suppressed. The animal trainers in service to the rich and powerful through history-not B.F. Skinner or the behaviorists-created this form of training.

Some kids become too wordlessly angry at this deal to conform to the patterns laid down in 12 years of forced training; for these a graduate school or schools are created; for most it is the school of poverty and marginalization; for some, the school called jail. Jail is a place where the bare bones of forced schooling become exposed and highlighted:
In prison you stay in your classroom 24 hours a day.
In prison the teachers wear guns and carry clubs.
In prison all associations are strictly controlled.

Both school and prison are high security institutions, cut off from the general society. The possibilities of learning in either place are so strictly limited that only a few survive this training intact. Both make us helpless to direct our own lives. Prison is only a more stringent refresher course for angry and confused souls who retain some notion of personal independence, however warped or grotesque the natural impulse has become.
About 6.3 million Americans have the experience of prison added to the experience of forced schooling, but such a number is only the tip of an iceberg. Thanks to lurid newspaper stories, endless television, movies, books, songs, and other public utterances under the control of corporate managers, all of us are steeped in a vision where prison seems the only protection of physical safety in a dangerous world. We are taught our fellow beings are violently untrustworthy; that only through the protection of authorities can we be safe. Both school and prison destroy trust, the glue of real community. It's a divide-and-conquer strategy, and it works.

Corporate culture has become a resonator of low-level fearfulness to such an extent that we gladly throw huge numbers of our fellow human beings in jail, just as we abandon our children to penal institutionalization in schools; the constant presentation of prison as our salvation, or school as the essential trainer of children, makes us all prisoners. It corrupts our inner life, it divides us from one another so that relationships lifelong are thin and shallow. School teaches us to divorce one another, to put aside loyalty for advantage, to quell our inner voices, subordinating them to management.
School and prison do the work that Rome's first emperor, Julius Cesear, said was necessary to manage a conquered population. In order to keep the conquered conquered, you have to keep them divided. School classrooms do that job more gently than prison cells, but they do it more effectively.

delop Wrote:

Puchiko Wrote:Most of us would be likely to use the liberty in a far more constructive way (Newsflash: there's other places to go than school-libraries, parks, hanging out with friends, and so on).

I think that's highly unlikely. What kid would prefer studying to hanging out on youtube all day?

First things first, hanging out on Youtube is not gang violence.

And secondly, a lot. Children have a natural interest in learning what they like, it's only school that ruins it. Most of us are naturally inquisitive, and will find out about things we want to know, until school gives learning a terribly negative connotation.
Quote: "What's the difference between a bright, inquisitive five-year-old, and a dull, stupid nineteen-year-old? Fourteen years of the British educational system." – Bertrand Russell

And YouTube gets boring after an hour, let alone a day.

I suggest you visit our FAQ.

[cooltoonist]

Woah, so your saying school helps prevent gang violence? o_o
Do you have any actual proof that the absence of school in a teenager's life resorts them to gang culture?
Because all your arguments are based from assumptions, no real facts to back it up.

I'm not a fan of gang violence but this forum is more focused on the school and society side of the teenager's life. Gang violence is what society and the law should be dealing with.

[Fire Elf]

delop Wrote:Having everywhere to go would mean that the gangsters in the schools would have nothing constructive to do, therefore would be more susceptible to gang violence.

Gangsters have nothing constructive to do in the school. Schools prevent us from doing anything constructive, and we are instead locked in a school building for 7 hours to do nothing... thus the gangsters in the school fill this time up with their gang violence and other stuff. And forcing other teenagers to go to a place where there is so much of it... that's a crime against humanity.

Quote:I think that's highly unlikely. What kid would prefer studying to hanging out on youtube all day?

Bad example. Youtube blows.

Quote:Why would I be a troll?

Because you fit the definition of an internet troll so well...

[Alway]

Obvious troll is obvious.

[monkey]

26 Wrote:

delop Wrote:But if school was optional then teenagers would have nowhere to go and would resort to gang violence. How can that be stopped?

Wrong. We would have everywhere to go, since we would be no longer locked up in the school building for 7 hours of a day. Besides, there's lot's of gang violence inside the schools, so it would be stupid to say the current system does anything to stop it.

yea just gives gangs a place to meet, I mean everyones there in one place. pretty convenient

[Faby]

Let's see what I had in mind...

-The possibility to pick up subjects that you want to learn, and not be forced to take all 16 subjects with only one or two different subjects per profile. This is my main concern, if we actually could take the subjects we wanted, no matter how stupid the teachers or shitty the subject, I'd go to school with glee in my heart.
-Stop the system from taking such a hard stance on absences (you yankees call this truancy, do you not?). If, for example, you have to choose minimally 4 out of 16 subjects, you must go to at least 5 lessons of each subject per semester. You can go to ALL of the classes, but only if you want to.
-Remove the grading system: school is much more interested in grading than actually teaching, so remove grading for everything except final exams.
-More learning material. A side-rant: in the school library we have a SHITLOAD of php/mysql/c++/c books, but when I wanted to take one home and read it the librarian said "Sorry, those are only for the teachers."
-The way subjects are taught, but this is only optional: each class should have lots of learning material, and the teacher's purpose should be to help students when they meet some difficulty or are confused about something.

In short: the finnish system.

[Dragon4Anarchy]

liq3 Wrote:5. Is compulsory.
5a. Due to 5, it also becomes a form of theft. Parents are forced to pay for their kids to go to school, even if they don't want to send them.

If I may add, it's also imprisonment and slavery.

[returnal]

delop Wrote:But if school was optional then teenagers would have nowhere to go and would resort to gang violence. How can that be stopped?

Gang violence still happens even though school is forced on us.
Second of all, violence isn't the only thing youth are interested in. You are stereotyping, ever heard of it?
And third of all, schools stop violence? Ahem.

[Chaotic_Punk]

It's proven that only 8% of what you learn in school is needed to have a job. Basic maths and english. Not hard folks. You learn it in junior school at the latest.

But what high schools should be doing is using the time that kids don't want to learn, given them several weeks of work experience in jobs they want to partake in. I mean if it's being a joiner, give the kids six weeks of constant woodwork to be creative and then a temporary apprenticeship with a company.
If a kid wants to take music as a career, give them a chanc eto prove themselve sin that feilds.

[Squittle]

delop Wrote:But if school was optional then teenagers would have nowhere to go and would resort to gang violence. How can that be stopped?

Nowhere to go? They'd go to school. Just not always, and they wouldn't be forced to. And sure, a few dumbasses might get wasted one day and decided to beat up the Reds down the block, but what connection does not going to school aesthetically have to gang violence? If I were to skip school one day, it would be to do things I wanted, since they've had me do things they wanted all my life, but it wouldn't be to join a gang. No school does NOT equal gang violence.

[youvebeenthunderstruck]

Also I think it's extremely ridiculous and ignorant to assume that kids have nothing better to do. Kids ARE STILL PEOPLE.

[Aviator]

I hate dragging old topics to the surface as much as the next person, but...

I didn't get my say.

Thus, the dragging.


Alright, here are a few things I really dislike about school right now.

- I can't go to the bathroom without someone else saying OK. I'm assuming that in the real world, you do not need to ask your boss permission to use the restroom? Why should it be any different in school. Most students, I think, would refrain from walking out of the classroom to pee in the middle of the lesson, but even then, a simple, "Excuse me" and exit of the classroom wouldn't be anymore disruptive than raising your hand, voicing your request to the teacher, and then getting a pass signed. Honestly, using the bathroom is a god given right, and it's not anybody elses buisness. At the very least, teachers shouldn't be able to say No to a bathroom request. Have you ever tried to learn while your bladder is about to explode? It doesn't go over great.

- I hate that I'm forced to take subjects that I'm really not interested in. I can see how in elementary school it's important to learn how to add and subtract, but by high school, I should be able to say "You know what? I know that PI = 3.14, and that's all I think I need to know for my career." If I need to come in a day before school officially starts and take a test to prove that I know it, so be it. It's better than spending 180 hours sitting in a classroom learning about things that have no pertinance to my life. I can also be using those 180 hours to learn something more important, like, say, how to care for baby's and stuff.

- School right now does absolutely nothing to help me explore and choose a career. Isn't the point of school to prepare us for a career? Yet, it does us no good when we have a very small idea of what that career entails. I could say I want to be a doctor, and yes, I know it involves blood and guts and stuff, but honestly, I don't know what it's like on a daily basis to be a doctor. A class called "exploration" that introduces us to various careers and how to do them would be very beneficial, I think, even for kids who know what they want to be.

- Tests. Tests teach us nothing, and are not used correctly. They are used to make sure we know the material, I guess. But, even if a student fails a test, what difference does it make? The class moves on to the next unit anyway. Besides, it's reviewing material that isn't going to be important to us in 5 years anyway.

- Limited cell phone use. Social interaction is important, and cell phones do not disrupt class when they're on silent mode. Students may miss out on 30 seconds of class to send a text, but so what?

- Failiure to expose us to the real world. We are trapped in a concrete building with little human rights. School is not the real world. Yet, arn't we supposed to be being trained to deal with the real world? Mmmhmm. More field trips, weekly excursions to the real world, part time jobs through the school, for local corporations - all of that would help us connect to the real world.

- PARENT INVOLVEMENT. It is none of my parents buisness if I fail a math test. It's my life, not theirs, I'm the one learning here, not them, and calling them is just going to create a fight, which will end up distracting me from learning anyway. Unless I do something illegal at school, or something that legally requires my parents signiture, they should not be contacted about anything. Their involvement changes nothing. I need to learn how to manage my grades on my own. They won't be there to punish me when I'm late to work, now, will they?

- Worksheets. Pointless, mind numbing, boring, waste of trees... the list goes on and on. And who learns anything from them anyway?

- Standardized testing... what do they accomplish? The state looks at my scores on their rediculous test and does what?


So, if I could imrpove school, in anyway, here's how I would do it:

The class called Exploration would take up most of the day, for freshman and sophomores. There would be various rooms set up, around the school that mimic a doctors office, crime lab, lawyers office, contruction site, accounting office, restaurant, NYSE floor, so on and so forth. Each class would be on a 3 weekly rotation, where they would spend one week learning about the career, another week being semi trained in how to do the career, and another week actually playing out working the career.

So, for example, let's say students are in the doctor rotation. They would spend a week looking at the various areas of healthcare, the wages, schooling, the kinds of math they'd need to know, and stuff. The next week, they'd spend a day learning about simple things that a doctor needs to know, the tools a doctor uses, and so on (just basic stuff) and the thrid week, they do a program where they actually administer care to dummies, by inserting IV's, and so on. These dummies, in the classroom would have a variety of cases for the teams of students to work on, and at the end of the week, the dummies would print out a score for the teacher to grade the students on, and the score would vary on how good of care it recived.

With some work, these programs could provide fairly realistic experiances for the students, and help them decide if this is the career for them. Exploration, like I said, would take up most of the day, like 3 - 4 hours, and would hopefully be interesting enough to keep the students occupied.

Juniors and seniors would start to pick a career to focus on. If a career that they are interested in was not covered during freshman and sophomore years, they are given a period to do furthur reasearch into that career. If they have found a career that the school teaches, they can focus more on that career and learn more about it - perhaps even bypassing a few years in college. They would also be taught how to pay taxes, examine different insurance companies so that they have an idea of what's good when they get out on their own, and learn other important life skills.

Basic classes, like English, history/geogrophey, and PE should still be given. English is important because we now live in the information age. The internet requires that everyone be able to communicate effectively through the written word, and English teaches that. Also, English teaches people how to think in an organized way, and how to get stuff done. I think it's important. History is important because, well, important things have happened in the past, and to prevent those things from happening again, we need to learn about it. Geogrophey because we all live on this world and should know where China is. And PE - because it helps build teamwork skills, on top of being healthy for us.

Any two of those clases should be able to be switched out for another class of the students choice, as long as that student is able to pass a test proving that they are profficient in those areas. If you fail the test, you have to take the class.

Advanced students (or the "smarter" ones) will be grouped together, because, speaking as an advanced student, it is SO GODDAMN frustrating when I have to wait for others to catch up. In advanced classes, the advanced students would be able to work faster and get in more experiance than the regular students.



So, for four days of the week, students do that. ^

And, for the fifth day, they get on a bus and either -

- Go out to the nearest city where they are expected to survive for an entire day (food, entertainment, and so on) without a supervisor.
- Spend the day working for a buisness, like a major corporation or something, where they will learn buisness skills, as well as earn money for city day.
- Spend the day doing community service of some kind.
- Free on school grounds to just interact with each other and build social skills.

Anyone who breaks the law will be arrested, just like in real life. Students will be expected to follow common society politeness rules, or they will end up being placed in in school detention on their real world day (the fifth day) - missing out on a valuable and fun experiance.

[liq3]

tl;dr.

Btw, the OP was/is a troll.

[Squittle]

Aviator Wrote:Basic classes, like English, history/geogrophey, and PE should still be given. English is important because we now live in the information age. The internet requires that everyone be able to communicate effectively through the written word, and English teaches that. Also, English teaches people how to think in an organized way, and how to get stuff done. I think it's important. History is important because, well, important things have happened in the past, and to prevent those things from happening again, we need to learn about it. Geogrophey because we all live on this world and should know where China is. And PE - because it helps build teamwork skills, on top of being healthy for us.

Any two of those clases should be able to be switched out for another class of the students choice, as long as that student is able to pass a test proving that they are profficient in those areas. If you fail the test, you have to take the class.

Advanced students (or the "smarter" ones) will be grouped together, because, speaking as an advanced student, it is SO GODDAMN frustrating when I have to wait for others to catch up. In advanced classes, the advanced students would be able to work faster and get in more experiance than the regular students.

I agreed with all of the post, and of what I've quoted, except for which classes should be mandatory (yes, I realize in this theory you could switch 'em out, but still). I think Geography, History, and PE should never have to be taken, under any circumstance.

Geography is a rather unimportant field in most occupations; I mean, so WHAT if you don't know where China is? You'll make yourself look like a retard, but it's still irrelevant in day - to - day life and to most jobs. History is a bit more important, but I think that that class is based more on personal ideas of why we should which classes, and which should be mandatory; it could be useful to some, but it's not necessary to most occupations nor in living on one's own. PE... well, that's just a chance for athletic jocks to make weaker people (Lankies represent!) feel like shit for being so nonathletic.

IMO, if any classes should be mandatory, they should be:

English, for the reasons you stated.

Computer Sciences, because, as we move into the information age, we're gonna have to rely more and more on computers within most jobs and day - by - day; shopping, studying, stocks, typing; we should all know how to attach a file in an email, and how to navigate to School - Survival.net (Do I get paid now?)

A class called Creative Sciences (Not to be confused with the Christian bullshit) where we express ourselves creatively, be it through writing, drawing, running, or playing an instrument, because of how important creative outlets are in an ever - more - stressful world. (You could get credit for your "Occupation" class from what you do in this class).

And, last, a class called Life, where you, quite frankly, learn how to live on your own; how to be a good spouse, how to get a good deal on your car, what not to snort of a hooker's ass; everyday things that I sure as hell have never been taught in any classroom. I think you said something about this already.

Come to think of it, I also disagree with your piece about limited cell phone use; you could miss some important (were the schools to transfer to this way of teaching) information because you couldn't wait to get out of the class to tell Betty that Jake told Risa who told Bobby that Lily and Daniel went to the movies Friday and it was like Oh, my god! But maybe that's just because I have an inherent predilection of contempt for texting.

[psychopath]

The fundamental flaw of school is that people are forced to go there.

By the way if any subject was to be abolished, I think it should be English. Well, at least where I live, because what is taught is english LITERATURE, not english skills.

Seriously, learning shakespeare's texts will not help me in anyway. If people want to study it, let them, don't force the rest.

The least they could do is make english optional in high school...

Quote:Also, English teaches people how to think in an organized way, and how to get stuff done. I think it's important.

Not everyone thinks in an organised way. There are different types of thinkers and it is bad to force them all to think the same way.

[SoulRiser]

Quote:Also, English teaches people how to think in an organized way, and how to get stuff done.

It does? Really? How does it do that? And for that matter, how does anyone think in an organized way? Thoughts just don't work like that. Trying to make thoughts organized is like trying to swim up a waterfall... you might be able to do it, but you'd be better off spending your time on something else... like learning how to work with your disorganized thoughts instead of trying to force them to be organized.... [/rambling]

[Squittle]

Personally, I'd support the reform of English as more of a communication class, after it's covered as how to write a resume', psycholinguistics... I'm starting to think English is just a personal preference class like Social Studies.

[Jackass McAwesome]

School needs to be more like the community development center I go to for GED classes. A mixture of adults and youth that are either good or bad at certain subjects. Everybody is either teaching or learning from eachother, rarely from an instructor. Sometimes we recieve projects that don't get graded. We present, whether we're doing a purely shit fact-firing session or an innovative video done by innovative people.

The instructor only gives out the assignments that are actually quite optional. Furthermore, sometimes, the instructor will get everyone's attention to do a class assignment that is *key here!* purely optional. Those of us that care nothing about the class assignment can slip into the back and do our work and glance up to see what goes on when we care too.

I've only ever seen one conflict at this place. The reason is that is a COMMUNITY. No one is vying for more attention than the next guy. Everyone recieves equal attention, or as much as they need from the instructor.

Basically, it beats the current system out by miles.