After a Long Day of School...

With my little sister entering into high school next year, I am confronted again with the idea that the public schools of America might be under-rigorous.  I realized that it is possible that a person could go to school and only take three years of math; basic math, algebra, and geometry.  In science, a kid could take FOS (a comprehensive and extremely basic overview of earth, energy, and matter sciences), biology, and only one other class of science.  Even though math and science may not be the forte of every single person, every student should have to take four years of every subject (even a foreign language).

Seniors get senioritis and take two classes their senior year.  Freshmen in my high school fail out of FOS.  Most people are heading off to a community college with extremely vague goals in mind for their future.  This is not a pretty picture of part of the American educational system.

However, Americans do excel in creativity and individual thinking, a product of our less militaristic curriculum.  But if kids were exposed to math and science in more depth, it is possible that there would be more interest in the subject, especially if they didn't seem so forbidden.  The person who takes an enormous number of science and math classes that are advanced or at the college level is immediately given a prestigious place of brilliance in the smart-hierarchy of the collective teenage brain.  However, the person who excels at language arts is less noticed and possibly thought of as weird or artsy.  By keeping the langauge arts and social studies curriculum the same and widening the science and math curriculum, the schools of America could have a better chance at inspiring their students to do something better with their lives.

Another area of this system that desperately needs to be changed is the area of foreign language.  At least at my school, foreign language isn't even required, allowing people who may have undiscovered talents to slip through the cracks.  In addition, the language curriculum is enormously easy.  In a third year French class, you would be hard-pressed to find a student who could understand the language as it is spoken.

America needs to change this system.  It's inescapable and true, but when the shift does occur, no other system should be taken as a model.  When the Founding Fathers built the Constitution of our nation, they took ideas from other sources but subsequently combined them into something more brilliant than anyone had ever imagined.