high school pov

1.       Write an essay explaining whether you agree with Leon Botstein’s critique of American high school.

The fact of the matter is that high schools are slipping in Source 5 you see that in the table you see how math percentage of math students who are in learning in our school system aren’t learning at all. I agree with Leon Botstein, in that our school system is out dated, and needs to be rethought.

                In source3, the author talks about how our society today has become that of an age where information is so easy to get a hold of, it has lost real value in what it means. Teachers are not helping this with the way they have commercialized the class room. In source 3 the author makes a point of how we need to change how we offer the learning material “here is Jane Austen on psychological complication, Balzac on the pecuniary, Douglass with slavery.”  This is offering a book and having it teach something, not just the media shoving down your glut.

                Source 4 talks about how they hope to improve high schools, not exactly the way that Leon offers in his essay but, it is a reform that is getting students to act more like adults and take responsibility for their actions. In a testimony form the essay Chris Marks says “you either make the most of this opportunity or you don’t. It’s up to you”. Now to change the way that schools are run would a huge task but if it were to bring up our percentages like the one from source 5 it might be worth it.

                Source 2 is Leon Botstein’s essay and he points out that with our culture today, students are growing up faster, but schools are handicapping them by keeping them in an environment that isn’t close to the real world. So he suggests that we should reform our high school system, letting students try being adults, with real responsibility. He suggests that getting rid of middle school, and junior high, and having people graduate at 16.

                They would then go either into the work force or college, making it easier to get the kids who really like learning, so teachers can teach not just to a crowd of students but to have the hope  that those students are going to institutions of learning that will keep them from dropping out.   

to be a reader of novels

I was reading part of an essay, well more like skimming it because I was bored, but as I skim read this essay I realized its argument was very true. So I stopped and then I reread the essay word for word. The essay was called “I know why the cage bird can’t read” by Francine Prose points out that in the English classes of today we spend more time teaching values of books then the beauty of the word a book says or how the authors word choice communicates feelings and emotions.  

In the classroom you should find students in English classes learning about how novels and essays use word choice and grammar, to communicate the story they want to tell. On refection of my own education in the school over the years I feel I have been cheated that, at least from my school education.  The books I have read in the pass for school I can remember looking at how the author of to kill a mocking bird was for civil rights buts I can’t prove from the writing of the book how. This is because in class I spent my time discussing views of equal rights and acceptance. That did not lead me to enjoy a novel that may have been very good had I been able to read it for the books face value and not the political stuff that most teachers feel the need to bring into my learning environment.

To say that having a values discussion in class is bad, it’s just how we discuss it for the class. That is where the language class has been misled.  What we discuss is something that philosophy classes may discuss after reading the book, like how would you react in the main characters place? What should be asked are vocabulary questions and how the styles of writing create emotion in these great novels. Today now when we are left to our own discussions we often get stuck on the subject of values, not how great a novel has written a metaphor or how the tone threw out the book changes.

The older I get I feel that in my language class I’m losing my grip on how to be a good student. I have been taught a style of learning to read a book for its values and not for the writing it presents. Now going off to college I must find the way to learn look at books in the style of college level reading and that is for the books words not its values. I hope that in the future teachers find a way to balance out this problem by maybe taking out the philosophy, and putting in more of the writing part.

My perfect Ap class

With education you find that the media and country talks about change, but is change really in our future? With the way that our school system is going, this education system will lead to the loss of great students not by the fact that we are beating them down but by the way we spoil them with praise.

Ralph Emerson once wrote that “by simple living, by an illimitable soul, you inspire, you correct, you instruct, you raise, you embellish all.by your own act you teach the beholder how to do the practicable.” This idea that, to teach is to inspire students to become greater is a thing that makes a great teacher different from just a teacher.

In a perfect world this would be one of the things I would change is I would make teaching different from it is now. With the standardizing of the schools, you lose the ability to make your class a place to learn because you have it teach things that everywhere is being taught.  To change this I would try and lessen the amount of standard there is in a class room. One way to do that is to take away advance placement classes.

Instead I would substitute it with an advance class that would teach college material, but you take the placement course in college instead of the ap exam because you can gain knowledge and it can better you learning career but it takes away the stress of teaching for the ap exam.  Teachers can now teach the college stuff at their own pace because you just take the placement class and be put in higher college.

This taking away of Ap classes would mean that weighted grades would go also. I would do this because taking the advance class would be your chose. You would take the class because you love the subject and you can see yourself being able to take a placement test in college and getting out of classes that otherwise would waste your time.

These ideas may not sit well with everyone, but the ability to learn stuff that is more advance is a good idea. When Ap classes were start they were to help with college and now they are pushed back into almost advance classes.  This leaves students with less to learn and less prepared to take an exam.  Just in a perfect world this learning would be inspired by teachers and a student’s own drive to learn.