The idea that school is a place of LEARNING where you gain useful KNOWLEDGE is one of the biggest lies we (and our parents) have been told as kids. It's not just some angsty teen thing to say either: I, as a student writing this during a useless class right now, have nothing better to do. The truth is that:
- We are told that we are always learning things we will "use in the real world"
- We do not experience any actual work experience, only eperience doing work that seems so utterly pointless and toilsome
- You don't have a real choice on what you want to learn, and it absorbs your time so you can't learn on your own.
Firstly, I barely remember anything important from school.
English
You learn how to read when you're in first grade. Then in the next few grades you are taught to answer open ended questions that only have one right answer, pretty open ended right? After that you read books with fake stories about either racism, homosexuality, or whatnot. I think that last time I read a book for school that I would EVER read on my own was probably in the second grade. Oh, and don't forget all the writing projects you have to do on "problems" in the world.
Math
This is probably the only useful one, but it is not useful for everyone. If you want to be an engineer you will need to know calculus, but what if I want to be a farmer? Do I need to know more than addition? This one is debatable but I'm not upset with it because I've always liked math and solving problems.
History
This ones only useful to the government when they are telling you their side of history. Students shouldn't be forces to take classes on anything more than their own countries history. After that, it just becomes a political brainwash by whoever against whatever. I don't want to learn about the "rich culture" of the aztecs when school cuts out that little teensy tiny detail that they cut hearts out of living poeple and make stew out of infants for their gods. Sounds great!
The Sciences
Starting with biology, I honestly don't remember the things they taught us. Some of the stuff was so trivial, like the "food chain," which is basically big animal eats the smaller one. Who would've guessed. The only important thing that biology could teach is human biology, which they don't. Instead they REQUIRE you to take some sort of health class where you have to learn about puberty, abuse, drugs, and nothing about being healthy or how the body actually works. You're being taught by people who dont think you're smart enough, and don't trust you with the facts.
Chemistry and physics arent useful unless you're going into one of those fields, and the classes arent robust enough to tech you much if you really wanted to learn. Just useless formulas to waste your time
Electives
With electives you get a fake sense of freedom, like a dog who just got thrown a bone. First off, its all up to your school for what electives are offered. Second, most of the electives are art, music or theatre. Finally, you have the somewhat useful electives like programming, etc. I've taken a few programming classes and they are alright, but they lack a lot and thats another topic for another day. So anyway, these classes are still only useful if youre going into some sort of computer science field. Now, here's the kicker: to graduate, you need to meet certain credit requirements in different categories, including art, tech, and that health class I mentioned in the science paragraph. It is absurd. If theres a required course for students to take it should be a free open source software class. Its nice they gave it a name that implies freedom like ELECTive. Also, notice how you don't have any requirement to take a class on any blue collar skill? No shop class, no woodworking, no welding. My school actually used to have welding classes about 10 years ago as well apparently. I guess learning something that can make you money is too dangerous for your health. We'll Timmy you have to go to college now for that desk job! Wheres a billion dollars to cover that tuition?
Time
School keeps kids from doing something productive. The argument most people give against this is "oh kids wouldn't do anything on their own so lets just ship them off to school!" There could be nothing farther from the truth. There are plenty of things I want to learn on my own, which I tend to learn. In fact I spend most of the time in school learning about something else or reading thanks to the internet. I honestly dont think I would get through school without it. The unfortunate truth is that I have found myself doing lots over the summer, starting projects and such, but when school starts the will to really do anything just gets sucked out of you. If I didn't go to high school and was able to make my own decision then, I quite literally would've owned property by now. 6 hours a day. 5 days a week. And 1-2 hours of homework. So about 7-8 hours of a kids day is being taken up by somthing he or she does not want to be in whatsoever. Pretty demoralizing, its no wonder that kids (myself included most of the time) go home and just play video games or sit around for an hour, or even the rest of the day. Our brains are quite literally fried.
Now, this isn't some sort of queer PSA about reforming the school or including some backwards learning curriculums, I'm outright against school. I will never send my kids to a public school. Ever. If my kid want to be a welder I'll send him to welding school, or whaever school he needs, but this general education push is just a way to mold kids into cogs and it is quite literally evil.