Korten12 said:
Here in America (specifically New York) I try my hardest in school and get high moderate to Good grades (amazing in Social Studies.
) but I noticed many, seem to not give a damn in the world and just hang about, getting drunk, getting low grades, talking when teachers talk, just overall just not seeming to care that High School will have effect on their lives.
Many skip classes, go about doing stupid things, and just never seem to get the memo that they aren?t going to be successful. I school has made these PSA things about staying in class, doing work, etc, and while they?re cheesy, there true.
No matter it seems how much they push that school is important, it seems like many kids just don?t care and then walk away with their pants slightly down and thinking they?re ?gangster.? It just sickens me and I almost fear for our generation.
I can?t speak from experience but I assume it?s not as bad in foreign countries.
I said "maybe"
One thing you have to understand is that kids today are a bit more aware of reality than generations before them. In the US, which is the most highly educated country in the world (even if there are politically generated stats that dispute this) education has increasingly less value. In a competitive society jobs go to the best people out there, when everyone is educated the decent jobs go only towards people that have come from genius programs, or won various kinds of grants and scholorships. With the testing we have, your future is pretty much decided before you enter High School, odds are if nobody has pulled you out of the flock by then, it's not going to happen. There are some oppertunities to break out at that point, but they are few and far between, not to mention being competed for to a crazy degree.
People just don't buy all the self-validation "you can do anything" crap. The rut 97% of the people are going to wind up in doesn't require any kind of higher education, leadership skills, or anything else. Society needs far more ditch diggers and food preparation workers than managers, doctors, or lawyers, and of course nobody WANTS to do those jobs, especially when pumped full of high expectations by liberal self-validation programs.
It's kind of telling when your average High School student is learning Algebra or Geometry and asks their parents for help, only to find they don't have a clue about it, largely because while they learned it and will parrot how important it is, the skill pretty much decayed from lack of use.
I'm one of those people who understand the dangers, but is getting to the point where I think we need to adapt the public school system to operate in a more realistic fashion, and to prepare kids for the lives that actually await them. We still need the testing and the genius programs and such, but for the kids who don't get pulled aside that way, I think they need to be prepared for their future careers as janitors, ditch diggers, food prep workers, machine press operators, and similar things. You keep telling people their special, and it leads to depression when reality hits. What's more it leads to a lack of respect for the educational system, when kids realize this, and figure "why bother, this is all useless" which they are probably right about. As odd and dystopian as it sounds, I think most teenagers would benefit from learning how to operate machinery, rather than studying alegebra and other advanced mathematics. In a practical sense 99% of them probably won't remember the math 5 years after graduation, on the other hand I know from experience that kids hired to work in warehouses and such oftentimes have absolutly no idea how to handle something as simple as a pallet jack, and almost universally the newbie worker who has never handled one bumps it into something (with mixed results). Take a look at the dents in the walls in your average warehouse, a few of those come from each new worker, the veterans rarely causing that. The point is, that's a skill a teenager is liable to actually USE in the real world. Even doing a job like Security like me, I occasionally found a need to handle things like that.
In short I think education is taken for granted because in the US too much attention is spent on self validation, and people preparing kids "for success", and not enough time is spent on developing practical skills that are actually needed by ordinary people in the work force.
The arguement I'm making IS very much "dark future" fodder, dealing with an educated elite and a dedicated worker class, with people having desicians about their future made early on. I get why this is not a nice thing on a lot of levels, but it's practical, and sadly becoming nessicary.
I'll also say that one of the problems with our education system is that it's designed to waste time. It's primary focus seems increasingly to be keeping the youth occupied. In a society where BOTH parents tend to wind up having to work (ie there aren't many stay at home mons, or home makers) nobody wants gangs of kids and teenagers wandering residential areas while all the adults are at work.
