Poll: Does the current school system actually work?

[Hookman]

I also have to take a bunch of useless classes. Take for example PSHE or PHSE(I can never remember which one). Everyone already knows everything they are trying to teach us so they just force us to draw friggin posters for an hour. And that,ladies and gentleman is one of many reasons The Escapist should have its own school!

 

[zen5887]

Your 16.. Of course you hate school.

I'm not too happy with the OP system here in QLD (thats in australia) mainly because its very very broken. Basicly, all your grades in grade 11 and 12 as well as the mark on the big bad test are added up. Then you get a number between 1 and 25, 1 being the best. When you send away you uni applications they look at your OP, and if its low enough you get in. This is a simple way of explaning it but you get the idea.

The bad things are stuff like. Your OP can be changed by other people in your school. So say for example, Jeff gets an OP 1 but everyone else gets an OP 20, Jeffs OP will be taken down. Sounds fair.. What??

Now I can't say if this is true but what what I have heard from teachers, students and myself, diffrent subjects weigh diffrently on the OP scale. If one person got all B's in subjects like advance maths, physics ect, he would (I think at least) get a higher OP then someone who got all B's in 'arty' subjects like Drama, Dance and music. In grade 12 I dropped doing math (yay loophole) in order to do music via distance ed. I think this is the reason I got such a bad OP.

Last of all. The OP you need to get into uni is very, very stuffed up. There was an art course at a private collage a few years ago that only 4 people applied for. These four people all got an OP of 1, becuase of this the OP requirement for the next year was 1, that year no one got in so the OP went back to 25. What a mess.

 

[dcheppy]

It's higher education in the U.S that's broken. The cost for a student to receive an undergraduate degree is ridiculously high given the limited skills you acquire and the fact that degrees are so common now, you have to have them and the jobs they get you are entry level and not that well paying. College degrees, today give you the same earning power as a High school degree of yesteryear but at a high cost to student. Academically they're weak as well, teaching skills and imparting knowledge that is only useful in Academia and not much elsewhere. We're not all going to be college professors.

History is an important subject to be familiar with, especially history of the 20th century. It gives you perspective on the world you occupy.

 

[neoman10]

yeah, NoVa means Northern Virginia, i forget not everyone knows this.

my brotha!

hahah, the traffic is so terrible here

yes, and if I were you leave for the 20th

 

[TheJavaPirate]

yeah, in America we have something similar which is a basic scale. Classes are worth certain amounts of points, like if you get an A in a regular class, its worth a 4.0, B is 3.0 and so on. AP (advanced placement) and honors courses are worth more. you add up your scores and take the Average, giving you your GPA (grade point average).
the problem with this is if you get one bad grade in a subject you dont particularly care about, it can seriously dent your GPA, and colleges seem to omit this.
This breaks the system, but unfortunately cant be changed.

 

[TheJavaPirate]

thank god we get out of school for that day. we didn't have it off originally.... which was stupid.

 

[leugim789]

but yeah i could do without having to mandatorily take french, now theres a useless class.

Do what? Dude, French is excellent. Foreign languages in general are excellent. And think of the girls you could pick up if you were an adept French-speaker, as properly spoken French is beautiful. It's a shame that I had four years of education in French and I remember so little of it now.

my good fellow escapist, while i do agree that french is a beautiful language, its usefulness in todays world is about as important as knowing how to cook dirt, which is why i am taking mandarin chinese online so at least i know that i can speak directly to our invaders and plead for mercy when they take over the world.

Good point, but say that you come across an attractive Chinese woman... French would come in handy, methinks.

"Bonjour. Voudrais-tu un... petit morir... s'il vous plait?"
Congrats. Your last duty is to guide Chun Li to the sack.

My friend you would be quite correct should i only know english, but i also speak fluent spanish in 4 dialects including Espana spanish.

 

[Datalord]

The schools are based around athletics, they hype them, and pour all of their funds into them. The Schools need to stfu about sports and parents need to start pressuring their children into academics. In my school when you walked in, there were two hallways LINED with trophys for football, wrestling, golf, basketball, etc. There were exactly TWO academics awards given to the school, my siemens award, and a plaque that i got for being a USAMO qualifier. Rather than place them where anyone can see them, the siemens award was hung in the office behind a F*CKING BOX. I don't know what they did to the plaque, maybe they destroyed it, lest the balance of power shift away from the jocks, to where it rightfully belongs WITH THE NERDS

 

[hypothetical fact]

Your 16.. Of course you hate school.

I'm not too happy with the OP system here in QLD (thats in australia) mainly because its very very broken. Basicly, all your grades in grade 11 and 12 as well as the mark on the big bad test are added up. Then you get a number between 1 and 25, 1 being the best. When you send away you uni applications they look at your OP, and if its low enough you get in. This is a simple way of explaning it but you get the idea.

The bad things are stuff like. Your OP can be changed by other people in your school. So say for example, Jeff gets an OP 1 but everyone else gets an OP 20, Jeffs OP will be taken down. Sounds fair.. What??

Now I can't say if this is true but what what I have heard from teachers, students and myself, diffrent subjects weigh diffrently on the OP scale. If one person got all B's in subjects like advance maths, physics ect, he would (I think at least) get a higher OP then someone who got all B's in 'arty' subjects like Drama, Dance and music. In grade 12 I dropped doing math (yay loophole) in order to do music via distance ed. I think this is the reason I got such a bad OP.

Last of all. The OP you need to get into uni is very, very stuffed up. There was an art course at a private collage a few years ago that only 4 people applied for. These four people all got an OP of 1, becuase of this the OP requirement for the next year was 1, that year no one got in so the OP went back to 25. What a mess.

Actually it is the opposite; if you have a class full of D students and one straight A student, that student's grades will be more worthwhile. If everyone gets a B and you get an A, your A won't be worth much.
I recieved a B+ for economics and was very happy with the result only to find that everyone else got B's and my grade was average; meaning that I couldn't get anywhere near an OP in the top 5.

 

[TheJavaPirate]

The schools are based around athletics, they hype them, and pour all of their funds into them. The Schools need to stfu about sports and parents need to start pressuring their children into academics. In my school when you walked in, there were two hallways LINED with trophys for football, wrestling, golf, basketball, etc. There were exactly TWO academics awards given to the school, my siemens award, and a plaque that i got for being a USAMO qualifier. Rather than place them where anyone can see them, the siemens award was hung in the office behind a F*CKING BOX. I don't know what they did to the plaque, maybe they destroyed it, lest the balance of power shift away from the jocks, to where it rightfully belongs WITH THE NERDS

that sounds terrible, but that's not true for my school, we focus on everything

 

[Lord Beautiful]

but yeah i could do without having to mandatorily take french, now theres a useless class.

Do what? Dude, French is excellent. Foreign languages in general are excellent. And think of the girls you could pick up if you were an adept French-speaker, as properly spoken French is beautiful. It's a shame that I had four years of education in French and I remember so little of it now.

my good fellow escapist, while i do agree that french is a beautiful language, its usefulness in todays world is about as important as knowing how to cook dirt, which is why i am taking mandarin chinese online so at least i know that i can speak directly to our invaders and plead for mercy when they take over the world.

Good point, but say that you come across an attractive Chinese woman... French would come in handy, methinks.

"Bonjour. Voudrais-tu un... petit morir... s'il vous plait?"
Congrats. Your last duty is to guide Chun Li to the sack.

My friend you would be quite correct should i only know english, but i also speak fluent spanish in 4 dialects including Espana spanish.

Damn right, man!

 

[leugim789]

but yeah i could do without having to mandatorily take french, now theres a useless class.

Do what? Dude, French is excellent. Foreign languages in general are excellent. And think of the girls you could pick up if you were an adept French-speaker, as properly spoken French is beautiful. It's a shame that I had four years of education in French and I remember so little of it now.

my good fellow escapist, while i do agree that french is a beautiful language, its usefulness in todays world is about as important as knowing how to cook dirt, which is why i am taking mandarin chinese online so at least i know that i can speak directly to our invaders and plead for mercy when they take over the world.

Good point, but say that you come across an attractive Chinese woman... French would come in handy, methinks.

"Bonjour. Voudrais-tu un... petit morir... s'il vous plait?"
Congrats. Your last duty is to guide Chun Li to the sack.

My friend you would be quite correct should i only know english, but i also speak fluent spanish in 4 dialects including Espana spanish.

Damn right, man!

hell yeah dude, im going to sha ryu ken her all night long! all night all night long.. damn that song...

 

[MercenaryCanary]

To be honest, the school system over here in South Carolina is a bit mixed. Some of the teachers are extremely efficient and some its obvious they were hired out of being pitied. I do however get extremely tired of them asking the same questions. First day of this school year I was asked for the 5th time, "What are your plans for this year?" to which I responded by writing down... hold on let me find it... Okay here is what I wrote.

"Mam,
Why do you bother asking such a tiresome question? I can understand if its a state standard or if you try to compare this one with the other answers to see if I actually take this seriously, but this question is just so vague, mam. If I truly knew what my goals for this year where then I would truly know what I would have to learn eventually. So next time pick your words carefully and don't ask such a stupid question."

I got an office referral after that because I criticized her ability to teach. So far I've lost it and done it to about 2 other teachers but it just happens when I feel their should be a need to do so. I have however started handing the teachers tests though so I would like to see how that turns out.

 

[Lord Beautiful]

but yeah i could do without having to mandatorily take french, now theres a useless class.

Do what? Dude, French is excellent. Foreign languages in general are excellent. And think of the girls you could pick up if you were an adept French-speaker, as properly spoken French is beautiful. It's a shame that I had four years of education in French and I remember so little of it now.

my good fellow escapist, while i do agree that french is a beautiful language, its usefulness in todays world is about as important as knowing how to cook dirt, which is why i am taking mandarin chinese online so at least i know that i can speak directly to our invaders and plead for mercy when they take over the world.

Good point, but say that you come across an attractive Chinese woman... French would come in handy, methinks.

"Bonjour. Voudrais-tu un... petit morir... s'il vous plait?"
Congrats. Your last duty is to guide Chun Li to the sack.

My friend you would be quite correct should i only know english, but i also speak fluent spanish in 4 dialects including Espana spanish.

Damn right, man!

hell yeah dude, im going to sha ryu ken her all night long! all night all night long.. damn that song...

I hate to nitpick, but there's no a in shoryuken. But other than that, it's all good. I would have gone with a different song, like Yummy Down on This by Bloodhound Gang.

 

[Aura Guardian]

In my High School, when I was in 10th grade, we took the Math A regents. I was the only one in Ross High to pass with a 99 while EVERYONE failed.

 

[mooncalf]

As long as your school hours are spent getting you smarter and more skilled, there's alot you can get away with. My sister for example used to cut classes she didn't enjoy to go to the library and read. The school objected to her cutting classes without permission, but they couldn't object to her results, she was above and beyond what they were trying to teach her, so they let her get on with it.

 

[psijac]

Education is what you get when you forget everything you learn in school.

 

[TheJavaPirate]

In my High School, when I was in 10th grade, we took the Math A regents. I was the only one in Ross High to pass with a 99 while EVERYONE failed.

wow man

 

[leugim789]

but yeah i could do without having to mandatorily take french, now theres a useless class.

Do what? Dude, French is excellent. Foreign languages in general are excellent. And think of the girls you could pick up if you were an adept French-speaker, as properly spoken French is beautiful. It's a shame that I had four years of education in French and I remember so little of it now.

my good fellow escapist, while i do agree that french is a beautiful language, its usefulness in todays world is about as important as knowing how to cook dirt, which is why i am taking mandarin chinese online so at least i know that i can speak directly to our invaders and plead for mercy when they take over the world.

Good point, but say that you come across an attractive Chinese woman... French would come in handy, methinks.

"Bonjour. Voudrais-tu un... petit morir... s'il vous plait?"
Congrats. Your last duty is to guide Chun Li to the sack.

My friend you would be quite correct should i only know english, but i also speak fluent spanish in 4 dialects including Espana spanish.

Damn right, man!

hell yeah dude, im going to sha ryu ken her all night long! all night all night long.. damn that song...

I hate to nitpick, but there's no a in shoryuken. But other than that, it's all good. I would have gone with a different song, like Yummy Down on This by Bloodhound
Gang.

can do brother, wait what the hell was this thread about?

 

[Aura Guardian]

In my High School, when I was in 10th grade, we took the Math A regents. I was the only one in Ross High to pass with a 99 while EVERYONE failed.

wow man

I know. They dumb down the regents too. I saw my little's brother's copy.