There is a Fine, underlined, italicized, bold, and GIGANTIC Line between school work/busy/pointless information and learning/education/applicable information.
School work is the mindless worksheets thrust upon you everyday during AlgebraII. The pointless projects assigned that, by no means, enhance your knowledge of whatever subject it is, that you are carving a pagan idle to out of pop sickle sticks or wire loops with the fluffy balls that are supposed to represent an atom or the globe theater. Poor arctecture rarely has anything to do with literature chemistry. I could achieve the same amount of "Learning" by making a coloring book, or reading a math book and copying down the problems that the book works out or even sketching the period table down on a loose lief sheet of paper and then sketching the atom diagram down next to it from another poster 2 feet away.
AlgebraII has nothing to do with actually solving problems. They don't even give a shit if your answer is right. AlgebraII is about showing your work. Every step of the problem down to the solution. Usually either you understand how to work out the problems or you don't. No amount of work sheets or quizzes are going to teach you anything. Hell if you fall behind the teacher wont even be able to teach you anything. But you do not learn from work sheets, you learn from what you hear your teacher say to you. What they write down visually, and how everything clicks in your brain.
Now in most social studies courses I have taken in highschool, I already knew over 80% of the material before they even started "teaching" it to me. I see no reason in whoring myself out to boring discussion and the biased generic information that is fed in a slightly higher detail every year since the 5th grade. I can learn any of the objecttive material in that class such as dates of events or details of battles or agreements but the actual reasoning behind most of this information is a load of garbage. It's history we are talking about and if I really want to be informed and have a good education I have to have more credible sources than one history text book that is so politically correct that I find myself offended. Education is supposed to expand your mind. Not narrow it down.
I sit in class everyday wasting my life away to classroom procedure, Bias opinion, reinforcement of things I am told every year, and stuff I already know. And I get to waste the better part of my 7 hour school day to it everyday. I get to listen to the most stupid shit like:
"Think outside the box, but when you writing for an exam write inside the box" or
"what matters is that you have the right information and answers to the question" then I hear
"Your answer may be correct but I am going to take half off because I just dont see how you can possibly have figured that out." O and heres a great one
"it doesnt matter if you know why it works as long as you know how to do it correctly"
This is some of the most stupid shit I have ever heard.
The first 15 minutes of every 55 minute class is getting situated into class. another good 10 minutes of it is spent shutting people up that are distractions, taking care of bathroom passes and other things that come along. On a good day there is about 30 minutes of "instruction", which sometimes comes out about as valuable as knowing that Jason sitting two seats up and a row over needs to use the restroom. Most of the time I spend on a subject would be much better spent in self study. In persuit of my own knowldge, wisdom, and education. I'll bet that seven hours of reading Xanga blogs everyday for a few weeks can net me more academic knowledge than the time spent doing pointless "work" at school.
The whole point of AP (advanced placement) courses are to help accelerate students education and give more depth and detail to their studies. Some of the classes are great and I would dare say you could gather a good education from but some of them tather than learning more or going farther into depth, these AP classes Throw four times the amount of worksheets and quizzes at you over the same material you would have learned in a normal class, but rather than adding depth it does the complete opposite. It tests over superficial and pointless facts that have little or no relation to any other part of history. Depending on who your teacher is and their political beliefs a whole class could be pointless to take. My AP U.S. History teacher was an extremely bias left wing liberal democrat. He spent the first three weeks saying how everyone has their own opinion about history and as long as you back up your view point it is right. If your point of view was not in line with his he would fail you. His multiple choice was even subjective. He would give five anwers that were all correct and ask which was the best answer. That kind of class is not even worth taking.
On the other end of the spectrum My Junior AP English class was the exact opposite. I had a teacher that stressed above all else that students persue their own education. His goal for his class by the very end of the year was that the students would be able to teach themselves his own class. He didn't smother his students with generic handouts. He gave us "critical thinking" assignments. Not something you just drool on as you scibble away on it, but something to engage our thoughts. He gave out articles for us to read that were entertaining, thought provoking, dare I say inspiring.
I am already sick to my stomach thinking about public education.
Go read a book =D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlKL_EpnSp8
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