@Jake Raymond
I am glad that your school offers classes like robotics and AP classes. I think the most far out there class we have is multigenre writing and yearbook. I come from a smallish school (About 600 all together, 111 in my graduating class) so there is very little possibiblity for me to take an “interesting” class. For example, by my junior year, I had taken EVERY art class offered at my school. If I hadn’t gotten lucky with my art teacher restructuring every class, I would been taking them over again. I had taken all the extra classes I could possibly take, art and other.

To the people who are taking about senior year: come on. It is a blow off year. I have a 3.58 and I am taking all easy classes and online classes. That is all my school could offer me. How am I supposed to take it seriously when I am in art and online for more than half my day? Seems pointless to me. I could be working instead of sitting on the computer, writing things like this.

@Jake Raymond again.
I agree that schools are setting kids up to fail based on Social Promotion. I recently wrote a paper about this. I live south of detroit, in, like I said, a small school. We are taught how to recite facts and perform comands, with a little bit of thinking. In Detroit, kids are taught how to perform comands and that is it. But in Birmingham (north of Detroit, a rich area), kids are taught how to think critically and succeed in life. Seems a bit unfair don’t you think?

@ the people who were talking about teachers.
I can completely agree that some people suck as teachers, but it isn’t always the teachers who are failing the kids. For example, my mom has a couple of teacher friends who work on the same team. I went in one day to help out and realized some pretty crazy things. The first teacher was hands on, taught an entire lesson, and quizzed them on what they had learned. They pretty much knew all the answers and were involved. The second teacher was quite different. He had the kids open their book to the lesson but instead of teaching it, sat there and talked to the entire class about meaningless things. When class was about to be over and nothing had been taught, he assigned 10 homework problems on the lesson he was suppossed to teach.

Sorry, I meant the last paragraph is a contradiction to the rest of the article, and that the last paragraph is just proving the rest.

I’m sorry but, this makes no sense. There are plenty of people who can’t get to college because of their situations. This is basically like saying “School is totally pointless… unless you plan on going to college.”

And yes, the first two paragraphs are contradictions.
“Students feel the educational system is failing them, because it isn’t preparing them for real life.” and then
“Students fail to realise that school is preparing them for college.”

So the second paragraph (supposedly an argument) is really just proving the first.

“The results reveal students fail to understand that mastering an academically rigorous high school curriculum, especially during senior year, will not only help them excel in college, it also will help them graduate from college on time and make them a more attractive candidate in today’s increasingly competitive job market.”

Or it shows that students are smarter than you give them credit for because they can smell bullshit from farther away than you thought. High school teaches you nothing but the ability to take orders and follow directions. If you want citizens of any real mental caliber (with perhaps, say, some lateral thinking skills as opposed to the painfully linear ones taught in high school), you might try a different approach.

This article really sickens me.

I wish that I had taken more initiative in high school to learn about future careers, to start a book club, or an AV club, or any sort of club relating to my interests. As high schoolers we get treated like kids sometimes and it makes us angry, but, let’s be honest, we all act like kids sometimes too. For the most part, if you act like a responsible, focused, driven adult, that’s how people will treat you. And if your teachers aren’t teaching you things that you want to be learning – write a well thought out letter to the school board and try to work with the teachers and the administration to take a more active role in your own education. Some things are just too specialized for a whole class in high school. If they’re not – be proactive. Think how it will look to future employers. Maybe even lazy teachers can present you with an great opportunity.

i want to be a concept artist for a video game company. i’ve been dedicated to this decision for years now, but in the last 2 years of my academic life i have learned exactly nothing that would help me become that. and it’s precisely because of that i’ll end up working in a McDonalds for the next 30 years. thanks high school.

seriously, i’ve had to do my own research and teach myself about the gaming industry, and to me that’s all i should be doing right now. but apparently, doing menial projects week after week about a book that relates in no way to the present day is more important. once again, high school, i can’t thank you enough.