Is high school helpful or wasteful?
Photo Credit: freerangestock.com
By Dean De Lucia, Contributing Writer
Do you have a brother, sister or close friend attending high school? Well maybe you should ask them what they want to pursue in a few years and if high school feels like a waste of time.
Although attending school is a requirement, many people have asked why certain things are taught in school. The curriculum that is included for the twelve years we attend school may not always help us in the profession we wish to pursue later on in life.
Why should we learn things that we will not be tested on later in life and why should we go through the struggles of getting the highest grade in each class when we will forget most of it later in life. We learn about our history, how to write properly, how to use the quadratic formula and how to mix chemicals. Is it going to help prepare us for our future jobs?
There are some subjects that will help certain professions. It is not fair to someone who wants to be a clothing designer, artist, or work with computers to learn things that will not effect there lives down the road. Students attending school are being tested on how well they can memorize information that was taught to them three days before. We learn, get tested on it, and then forget about it the next day.
Almost all of the things we are learning are going to be useless information by the time we need a job. An artist would agree with this statement. A person who is planning on pursuing a career in becoming an artist is wasting 12 years of their life learning things such as how America was in a war with Spain. Being tested on that will never be used again and they will forget it because that knowledge is not required to be an artist.
This problem occurs with many other future professions because many of them don’t need you to remember what you learned in high school.
They should be educated on things they will on need to know, things that everyone is required to know, things that will stay with them their whole life. They should learn proper skills, manners, how to make a good first impression. Maybe they should be taught how to pay bills, taxes, and how to write checks. All of these things are going to be necessary to understand when they are older because it is information we MUST know.
The amount of work given to a high school student in addition to seven-hour day at school is almost useless. They learn all day in school and then receive homework from each teacher that requires 30 minutes of our time. On top of all of that many teachers tend to grade home works, but the grade is a number that judges how well we can memorize what they learned that day in class. They have to memorize information in five subjects, maybe even more and then they have to be able to get tested on it and know all of it.
I’m just not sure what is worse: the stress of a normal high school student is worse than an adult who has a job, or the fact that they are not being taught on anything that they will remember in the future. Maybe high school education is a waste of time for kids who already know what they want to pursue in life?
