High School

Being back in my home town for a while. It's my first summer home from college and I feel pulled in a million directions at once. I've been hitting the books with old friends and family and a large topic of conversation has been education. I feel a little like one of the poor people probed by Clarence on the most recent Wonder Showzen *Season 2 Episode 8* when it comes to the issue. I could complain a whole lot about the quality of the current public schooling system but if asked to be the be all and end all on how things should be running I think i come up a little empty. Textbooks always seemed like a problem. To be critical though, I think that our public school system impresses an antiquated state of reality on impressionable minds in a theater that feels more like a concentration camp than a blessing and bloats its own importance to in the eyes of those minds so that failure there is viewed as failure at life. This situation is appalling, In a world where this can happen, we should realize that youth are more capable mentally at a younger age than they ever have been before and that the exhaustive and somewhat pointless action of test-taking, pomp, and circumstance weighed so heavily in high school has very little quantitative benefit in the modern world. All the information you studied in every social studies or science class can be easily attained with a google search. All that math can be done with a calculator. Students are driven in high school by a will to power and not much else. Benefits of good grades? Good college of course. Benefits of good college? Good job of course. Benefits of good job? Money of course.

A problem arises, because the skills necessary to make enough money to survive in this world are taught to kids in video games before they're even in school. Money is not the be all and end all to life. Survival depends on some money, but not only money. Enough money to survive seems to be a pretty easy thing to make if you're willing to put in the effort. School shouldn't need to be the factor that motivates kids to exist in society. That's the only function I believe it could possibly see itself accomplishing and it does so poorly. Students should be offered more selection with less numerical evaluation. The subjects that interest you will be those you're willing to apply effort to, and theres no reason that schools haven't brought curriculums up to date to represent the interests of the modern world. Even more despicable is the absolute lack of valuable information granted in high school courses. My memory of them in retrospect was something akin to a complicated and unfulfilling series of brain teasers and memorization tests. Students interested in science and technology should be encouraged to know that there are fields and careers that match their interests. Artists should know their skills are invaluable to a corporate culture constantly reshaping its glossy chic public image. Those skilled in prose and language could be shown the plethora of possible outlets for their talents in a world shaped by it's words. Instead they are bogged down in rigid tests about names and dates that are all archived in the freakin wikipedia.

Creativity is the greatest tool at our disposal and the factor least present in this system. Students are rarely asked to present anything of their own other than reconstitutions of pre-researched information into charts and power point presentations. Kids could already be discussing issues of social, economic, and political weight, exploring the worlds of electricity and applied sciences, producing works of video, print, and music, and generally creating culture rather than having it hidden within them as dark and dirty secrets not be be revealed. Your opinion and your input into your education shall one of raw effort alone so that we can brand you with a number. This number will be your value to society. Get too low a number and you might just dissapear, you know like JFK.