Why Are High Schools The Way They Are?
In today's world the average student goes through 13 years of schooling, four of those at the high school level. By the time the student reaches high school they should already know all of the basic skills, reading, writing etc, but do they? The basic goal of secondary schools across America is to educate America's youth and prepare them for life after high school. Is this really happening though, are students prepared for life after high school? I feel that high school is the perfect medium between elementary schooling and the real world, you can get out as much as you want. Theodore R. Sizer who wrote "What High School Is" thinks that America's public education system is not good enough. Dr. Charles Eliot says, It is, students just need to try harder and set their standards for achievement at a higher level. First of all, who should decide the goals of America's education? The Commission of the Reorganization of Secondary Education has the ultimate say, but many feel that is not good enough. Many feel that society should be able to have some input in America's youth future, while others say that it should be up to the student to decide what they want to learn. If there is something wrong with high school educ
High schools have been the same for many years, and probably won't change for years to come. Even though many of us feel that high schools are not teaching enough. I think the main problem is that students are not trying hard enough. If students really push themselves then they will achieve far ahead if they would have done nothing, and let the learning process go on by itself. It is up to the student how much information he/she wants to take in because it is all out there. It's just waiting for the right person to grasp it, the person who wants to succeed and is willing to try hard to get it. In "What High School Is" by Theodore R. Sizer, it is said, "The adolescents are supervised, safely and constructively most of the time, during the morning and afternoon hours, and they are off the labor market. That is what high school is all about." Sizer believes that adolescents just go to high school because that is what their parents did and their grandparents did. This is a great statement because many students don't know that they are not required to go to high school. You can do what ever you want to do, whether it be getting a job or being a bum on the city streets of Seattle. Most kids just keep on going to school because their parents tell them to. Why should adolescents even go to school then, if they are not learning anything? You have all heard a student say "I am never going to use this later in life," this is true a lot of the material taught in the classroom will never be used in the real world but much of it is very useful, and the students don't pick up on that. They think that since one thing won't be useful then it all probably won't help them succeed in the real world. Students that think "I am never going to use this later in life" need to change their attitude. They don't know that they will probably use everything that they learned in their whole life once again in the real world. Even if you learn something in which will no way be useful later in life, who cares! You know more than the person sitting next to
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Approximate Word count = 1386
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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