east coast girl, west coast world

laughcentre:

beachw-ave:

seriously.  what has our educational system become.  i’ve tried to think of whether our generation is just too lazy, too dramatic, etc but i honestly think we are being over worked and have too high of expectations for our age and for how we are treated.  we are told to eat 3 meals a day, get 8 hours of sleep, get to school on time, be in clubs, do sports, finish all of our homework etc. not to mention house work, jobs to pay for college (which is a complete other rant in itself) and still have time to spend unwinding.  what many adults fail to understand is that when they were in school they didn’t have advanced placement classes (AP/college courses in high school), they didn’t have honors classes.  these more advanced classes are undeniably required if you plan on getting into a good college.  it all adds to the stress level of teenagers today.  they always say that we have it easier because they didn’t have nearly as advanced technology as we do but it goes both ways.  the more technology advances the more we are required to learn.  and to be quite honest, the teenagers (with everything else that is going on in their lives) can only handle so much.  they wonder why crime rates are going up, they wonder why more and more teenagers are depressed, committing suicide, etc. the problem is right under their nose.

for example: an athlete cannot be overworked by a coach, otherwise they crack under pressure and injuries are more and more common.  the same goes for school.  another thing i would like to point out is (where i live at least) many elementary schools have cut cursive writing out of the school curriculum.  many people think this is outrageous since it has been something children were required to know and “would use for the rest of their lives” for SO long now but it just comes to prove how many things kids in just the 2nd grade must learn!  you have youngsters learning long division 2 years earlier than i did when i was in elementary school.  it’s crazy!  now there’s nothing wrong with improvement, but there comes a time when it gets to be too much for people to handle.

i suppose what i am trying to say is that the human mind is a delicate thing, and people need to be reminded that memorizing all of this information can become unnecessary.  there is a fine line between exposing students to certain material, and forcing them to memorize something they have no interest in majoring in.  maybe there needs to be a few changes in our school systems today.

okay that’s my rant.  sorry it’s soo long and sorry if it doesn’t make sense. it’s 12:30 am and i’m stressed out and i needed to get that off my mind so that i could continue to study for final exams tomorrow.

worth the read

I wish I could agree with this, but I simply can’t. I feel like teenagers expect things to come easier to them (and it wasn’t that long ago when I was one). School is about work. Yes, once you get to college, you’ll choose a major, but you’ll still have general education courses. Are you ever going to use the pythagorean theorem again? Probably not provided you don’t plan to study math, but the more you learn (including subjects that you’re not interested in) gives you a wide breadth of knowledge, which is important, and furthermore you’re really learning to think critically about things which applies to every other subject you will ever learn.

As for it being more difficult, sure, in some ways. In the same sense, I think you’re underestimating exactly how much easier school is because you can get on Google and because you can even type your essays. Plenty of people I know have never actually needed to step foot in a library to do their research. Imagine for a moment every research paper you’ve ever had to (or will have to) write - now picture finding every bit of information you used from books exclusively. Oh, and you can’t Google what’s in these books, you’re reading everything in the library.

(I know this will sound patronizing, but seriously…) Get off Facebook. Get off Tumblr. Put down your iPad. Learn to manage your time — the AP tests are a lot less scary if you don’t wait until two days before to study for them. Prioritize. Pick classes you can keep up with. (An A in an honors course is going to look better than a C in AP.) Realize that if you’re aiming for an Ivy, you will likely have no life, but that plenty of good schools accept students who weren’t in 20 extracurriculars. (Also, which college you go to doesn’t generally make or break your future. The important part is deciding to go.)

Now, I will say the American education system has its problems. How we go about teaching needs to be evaluated and there should be more incentive for talented individuals to teach, but I don’t think we need to be lowering requirements.

This is all coming from a college senior with a 4.0 cumulative GPA. I’m in two honor societies and have had a job since I was sixteen. (And even managed two for awhile in high school.)

[Also, when I type “I hate my life because of…” and “I want to kill myself because of…” school is not one of the listed choices. I believe your own search history has biased your results a tad.]

(via tetrispieceofpimps)