dissertation on formal education

another blessed felder assignment. again i wrote a bunch of words and therefore it is worth posting... yeah i know im not worth much else these days.

i am in a very bad mood. i have a headache and am tired so i refuse to use grammar. this isnt english class. thank you in advance for not minding. grammar slows me down, thoughts arent complete when i am constantly formatting myself and correcting every spelling error... i hate it.

now, as for school. it is very interesting that you would give us the handout you did. i would think it a bit dangerous with the liberal minded students we have but it is apparent to me that you know what you are dealing with so im not worried. boiled down, i can certainly see the point bill is making but some of his shit is a bit off base. ah – not the time for opinions though. according to bill here, schools are a terrible place for kids. we dont learn any real-life application and are forced to waste our time, our precious youth, stuck in classes memorizing the past and taking standardized tests. teachers dont care enough to make classes better and kids are weighed down with all kinds of stuff they dont need. subjected to judgments and tests and basically told how intelligent they are. none of which actually aids us in figuring out what we want to do with our lives. he makes the case for unschooling, telling us that kids that dont go to school do well themselves and enjoy life more while doing it. teenage suicide is higher here than anywhere else in the world. the kids have no say in what goes on in their day-prisons and are expected to follow society’s standardized course for success: grade schools – college – work our way up through jobs – retirement – death etc. and theres nothing we can do about it. well thats enough summary for me.

as for some opinions, ive been known to have some. first off, i will be the first to admit that our school is better than most and i find it much more enjoyable than a normal public high-school would be to me. under normal circumstances i would be attending Garner Senior High School... and as far as i can tell they have nothing more to offer me than a mediocre football team and immediate locality. a football team would be nice... as would homecoming etc. but i can understand this organization’s limitations. i love it for what it is. i love it because the teachers here – for the most part – give a damn. not to really blame anyone, but i believe that most of what is brought up in the bill papers is because teachers and administration at most schools just dont give a shit. i take my sat’s at broughton high. two out of the three teachers i have had there didnt care one bit. it was clear they were bored as hell and didnt want to be there at all. i cant imagine how their classes must be. that is the hellish environment bill describes. a school i would hate to be forced to go to. at charter its just... always brighter. ive gotten so used to the teachers and the small environment (though there are too many people now, i want it capped at 400 students, grant money or not). it clearly works. i love hour our goofball students seem to score higher on all the tests and enjoy school more than all the other kids in the state. its wonderful, but enough about charter, there are bigger fish to fry.

i have an issue with tests. tests are nothing more than the standard way to judge students. all kids dread them. i have always believed the point of school, if there ever was one, was to acquire knowledge, not to be told how intelligent you are. this is an excerpt of something i posted on the blog over a year ago:

it seems to me that the most logical reason for education is to make the populous more intelligent. we accomplish this by lessons and tests. tests, why tests? tests label children who arent capable of retaining the information required to "pass." you would think we wouldnt want to label kids, just teach them. however, we test them, separate them, teach them again, pass them, fail them etc. tests not only try a child's knowledge but stick with them as a permanent reminder of how well or badly they were performing that day. lets say lil timmy blue has a bad day, gets to sleep late, gets up late, eats no breakfast and does badly on a geography test. well, that grade will stick with lil timmy blue until the grades restart. it will haunt him, bring his grades down, cause him to be ridiculed because he had a bad day. lets say lil timmy blue just happens to be a smart kid and learns the material. now lil timmy blue is just as smart as the other children. he could take the test again and do very well, bring his grade up to an average that in reality represents his intellect. but the tragic part is, lil timmy blue doesnt get second chances. teachers view their job as what it is, teach the children, test the children, give the children grades and see if they pass or fail. in reality these tests dont mean much because it shouldnt be a matter of what lil timmy blue's memory held that day but what he accomplishes in learning.

basically, the fundamental purpose of tests should be to determine how far a kid is along and what he needs to learn. if the kid learns the material, he should pass for it. when he learns it or if he does is up to him. tests shouldnt determine grades or sink a swimming child. all tests should be allowed to be retaken ad infinitum until it is shown that the kid has learned. when he has learned he should be credited for it. this policy of a test counting for so much then possibly a retake averaged in with the original grade is bullshit. it allows for far too many variables in the game. with so much riding on the outcome of someones gpa, a bad day, a late night, or just plain bad luck or bad timing shouldnt come into play. i understand there are limitations to this, teachers cant just administer the same test over and over and over again because kids will just learn it. it is far to difficult to make new tests over and over... and checking them is a bitch. well maybe some teachers resource provided by the state could handle that. how many standardized tests are created each year? if anything, grades should be eliminated. it is a good way to judge how well you are doing if you are the student and are requesting it, but otherwise it just rates kids based on all these crazy tests and variables and definitely not just the material learned. some kids are just bad at tests. cant deny that.

homework shouldnt be allowed. i know it is difficult to cover all that in class that needs to be learned but after being in class for almost six hours a day (and im aware that is generous, thanks), working away the remaining daylight hours at home is ridiculous. church and state are legally separated, why not formal education and the rest of your life? how can we allow it to penetrate every aspect of our lives? i am sick and tired of always having something to do. it has made me envy soldiers in a terrible conflict (think world war one or two) just because they have nothing to look forward to. for them, living for the moment is the only way. no assignments to do, papers to write, projects to look forward to, exams to study for etc. homework should by all accounts be optional and solely for studying. it shouldnt have a set effect on the schoolwork of the day and especially of your grade. i have better things to do. and i dont mean just watching television. i play guitar, i write, i play soccer in the afternoons. all that was wonderful until i was up till past eleven every night doing work that i had been doing all day. there should be a separation. and please, if there for some reason has to be homework... and i regret it... why is it assigned over national breaks like christmas, thanksgiving, and spring break? when students are expected to leave town and travel and visit family and who in the fucking hell wants to read a hundred pages of joseph andrews? not i said the boy. homework over breaks is one of the most despicable things a teacher can do. im sorry, i just cannot see the other side of this argument. so stop... now

oh, harking back to bills points... school walkouts are ridiculous. we are blessed to have the opportunities for education we have in this nation. millions of children would die for this freedom. we are damned blessed. there are flaws in the system but i would rather go to school here than die in a civil war in rwanda. we need to fix what we have, not abandon it altogether.

im sure there is a lot i am forgetting to say but at least you are getting the point, i hope i am coming through loud and clear and making sense, it is late and i have a knot on my head. ow

as for society. sometimes i hate the way society arranges everything and we all perpetuate the restrictions of the ‘freedoms’ we have to liberty and the pursuit of happiness we were promised. parents can go to jail for not making their kids attend public schools. wow. thanks for forcing education down my throat. and then on to college and grad school and a job and retirement etc. its basically what you have to do. if i was tired of school teaching me nothing i needed to know to, say, be an anesthesiologist... well i have no choice but to attend anyway. after twelve years of this i will be paying out of the mouth to a private college next year just to get into grad school just to get a job where i dont have to work five days a week and get paid something pretty. truth is, theres no way out. kids without college educations dont make it. stuck in low paying service jobs just because they dont have the formal education someone like me has. not that they arent qualified but... thats just the way things are. everyone knows you can ‘work your way up the corporate ladder’ in america but do you really have the same opportunities unschooled? hell no. as much as bill would like to say that you will be fine and enjoy life more, truth is no unschooled kid is going to get a job over someone with a degree from a prestigious university, qualified or not. it pays to be formally educated. this makes sense in a way but it is terrible that there isnt much of a way around it. from birth i was destined to start attending school before i knew what it was and to continue it until i am twenty and change. then worry about getting a job (because you cant get by without a job of some kind... to pay those taxes and social security and all that shit) and eventually stop paying my debt to society (being born) and retire... and relax... and enjoy the last couple years of my life before death. i would enjoy a lot more of those years if not for work. but you need money to do everything and you need a job to have money and you need a college education to get a job good enough to fund it. unless you are god-blessed and damned lucky anyway.

no question in my mind though, if there were more schools out there like raleigh charter, more administrations headed by humbles and more dedicated teachers like (most) of you, schooling would deserve a much better reputation. thing is, according to law, every kid must be educated and that requires a helluva lot of personnel. and not everyone gives a shit as much as yall. people fill the holes and sit through classes while students suffer. its a job. i regret that there arent more of you out there.

so we are forced to be educated things we wont need in order to be labeled good or bad students our futures determined by acceptance into higher education opportunities depending on how well we play the system working for society until we die and most of us never really experience life anyway.

if i die in a couple years in a car crash... hmm let me do the math. if i die on graduation day from college... assuming some numbers... i will have spend %13 of my life (awake and asleep) behind a desk in class. are you saying wow? cause i am. does that sound worth it to you? doesnt to me... its nothing i want to accomplish. no wonder teens suicide themselves so often.

<>i guess what im trying to say is that later on, when i look back at high school, i might have some memories of charter as a school better than a damn lot of them but what i will look back on with the most longing and fervor will be that this years soccer team was awesome and finished with a ten game undefeated streak tying cary academy. i will think of dave matthews band concerts with close friends. i will remember indoor soccer and the fact that i am an eagle scout and all those guys out there in garner. ill remember playing guitar by the fire and writing all my thoughts down on the internet and standing on my back porch looking up at the stars in amazement because that never ever ever gets old. ill remember poetry and trips to the beach and all the wonderful people i have met. school only fits in so much with that. i will not long to be back here because of exams or homework or tests or teachers that didnt really care as much as they should have. if anything, ill look back at mr mitchell reading books to us freshman year, flex days that didnt suck, testing our brains in psychology, felder’s ex-day assignments, events at halifax... etc.

these are the best years of our lives...