Thread: The Education System

Which particular ideology are you being pushed into by your biology and geography classes?

It's not much the information from each class subject, but the worthless method of teaching that is being used to convey information to the student. For example, today my biology teacher spent the class period talking about harry potter in hopes of teaching us about genetics and traits being passed down from parent to offspring. Maybe I'm just not the kind of person who likes to mix fantasy stories and facts, but that's just me.

In my World History class, we are required to pick a movie about WWII from her list and watch it for homework. This may not seem like such a horrible thing as to complain about it, but what do you think the historical accuracy of Hollywood blockbuster films are going to be? The movies on her list are not documentaries, but films made for entertainment purposes only. Ask yourself... Are these the things you expect to see from somebody in their second year of high school? I thought things were going to get a little more serious than a 45 discussion about Harry Potter and watching movies for homework.

I suggest pursuing your own education. Perhaps you can find an alternative high school for this. I certainly don't recommend dropping out of high school, you'd be shooting yourself in the foot. But you'd probably learn a lot more without school to impede you. A GED is one possibility, most importantly you should try and free yourself from the workload as quickly as possible so it doesn't waste any more of the time you could spend educating yourself. Also, you probably don't have the right mind for a standard college either so I'd look into alternative higher education systems as well.

you could always look into homeschooling options if it's that bad.

Originally Posted by Radioshift

Are these the things you expect to see from somebody in their second year of high school?

Yeah. That "homework" was likely assigned because it would serve as a stepping stone. Not very many people would have watched a documentary, but they'd be more than willing to watch a Hollywood movie. They watch it, it captures their imaginations/interests, then they're more gung-ho about watching historical documentaries and reading reports. Diving straight into the "boring" stuff doesn't work for the majority, not at that age.

Do your own, more in depth, research at home. For any clear thinking individual, that would have been their go-to solution instead of thinking about dropping out or switching schools... You're a sophomore ffs - the first two years of high school are supposed to be easy, you stinky little goof. It picks up in 10th grade, which is why a lot of kids fail classes and drop out more often in this school year than any other, and then continues to climb through 11th and 12 grade. And then in college, you pick a curriculum that's tailored to suit your needs.


liek omg, kidz these days r so stoopid like wooooww!!11!!eleven~! *insert string of emotes*

I don't really see how it's 'indoctrination'; more like lousy teaching. And yeah, the teachers have their reasons; most of your classmates probably have the attention span of a gnat and require a Hollywood movie as a stepping stone to try to get them engaged with a new subject. Have some sympathy.

Of course, that's no good for people who actually have a decent capacity to learn. I suggest you just muscle it out and teach yourself from textbooks. You could even try reading them during the lessons, and I guess you could raise your hand and ask the teacher to explain when you encounter something you don't understand. As long as it's in the same ballpark as what they're supposed to be teaching at that moment, they're not exactly going to be able to refuse.

Thanks for the advice, everyone. I'll do what I can to deal with this without doing anything drastic.

It is always like that, a teacher has to teach everyone in the class. At least they are trying to make things interesting. I don't think the watching movie thing is that bad since there are a lot of movies that are pretty accurate. I assume and I hope that the ones that made her list are ones that are very accurate, otherwise they wouldn't be on the list. As for the Harry Potter thing, if you are going to talk about "Generic person A" and "generic person B" and how genes are passed down, there is no harm at all in using examples from a book if most of the students are aware of it. In fact people are probably more likely to remember the subject if it is related to something else.

When it comes to learning you do what works the best. Being overly serious for the sake of being serious doesn't make sense. People will even use silly mnemonics in collage, because mnemonics devices work. Doesn't matter if it is silly, it works so people use it.