The School Divide

It’s the same in nearly every high school, there’s three groups of people; the athletes, the drama kids, and the leftovers. As you travel through the years in high school you can force yourself into one of these cliques, and once you’re in, you cannot switch your allegiance. There’s cases where you can be apart of multiple cliques, but trust me, it’s a painful experience. I’m definitely a part of both the drama and athlete cliques, and that’s because I initially was a part of the athlete clique, after playing football and soccer sophomore year, but as junior year rolled around, I became a member of one of my school’s show choir groups, and also became a chorus member in our Spring Musical. Because of this, I found myself on a tightrope in the middle of the Grand Canyon, where I have each clique on either side of the canyon, and it is up to me to fully commit to one of these groups, or else I face the risk of being abandoned by both groups and I won’t seem to fit in to either.

This whole divide is kind of dumb, because it limits the whole spirit of the school, of course athletics gets more recognition overall, because more scholarships are handed out to athletes than theatrical students, because athletics draw in more money to colleges and universities, because athletics are simply more entertaining to the general public. Anyways, these drama kids obviously do not want to support athletics because they know they won’t get damn near the same response whenever it’s their time to get some public light. Athletics do not want to support these events because they think it’s lame or gay and if the other kids won’t support them, why should they support the other kids. To fill this gap, I believe it is mainly up to the administration’s job. At my school, it looks like the administration does a pretty good job, but in reality, the admins are extremely lopsided towards sports. Sometimes our administration will completely forget that the show choir groups even have a performance AT the school, I honestly believe the only way they do remember is because one of the admins have a son in show choir. To bridge this gap though, the administration needs to really push making the show choir performances and musicals something just as important as basketball games or Friday night football games, in the end it’ll largely benefit the school and student body.

Motivation? 0.

It’s gotten to that point in the year again, where, well, I have absolutely no motivation. Motivation for what? Everything, actually, not everything, just everything school related. I have no motivation to shoot for a 4.0 gpa, hell I don’t think that’s an option at the moment. I don’t even have motivation to wake up to my alarm and either one: wake up at 4:15 to go to football workouts when in the end I probably won’t end up being a starter, or two: Wake up early enough and get ready quick enough to make it to my zero hour without being tardy. I’m just trying to survive the week to make it to the weekend where I once again start my homework too late to finish and I just get further and further behind in school. It’s an endless cycle but soon enough that three month break called Summer will come.

Anyways, about that “4.0” is it bad that I am aiming to go to college at Iowa? All I hear at school is that people are pissed off because their GPA is a 3.8 and their grade is a B+ instead of an A, for what? To be accepted into college? Maybe they’re ambitious to go to an out-of-state school where their tuition will double, but I believe i’m quite content with going to the University of Iowa, my mom went there, and she turned out to be very successful in her life and it’d be a pleasure to have half the success she had. maybe I’m not good at school. I used to be, I mean I used to be involved in PACT and those advanced math classes and everything, I’ve gotten fours on the previous AP exams I’ve taken. But this year hit me like a rock, it’s funny because despite the stresses of my grades and everything, I’ve never had so much fun in my entire life, I’m surrounded by some of the best friends I could have, I’ve found my passion in show choir (and I’ve become quite obsessed with it as well), I took part in the greatest football season in Kennedy history, and I’m currently in the musical. But maybe taking three AP classes has overloaded me, and the extra curricular activities certainly aren’t helping. But i’m happy, and I believe that’s what high school should be about, the focus shouldn’t be about insanely high GPAs and 34s on the ACT, it should be about learning about yourself and enjoying the ride.

Is The American Education System Outdated?

Yes.

Currently, the US is ranked 14th in the globe in education, and is continuing a downward spiral on the list. Why is this? Why can’t we fix this? Throughout the nation, the basic high school schedule is like this; Classes start at 8 in the morning, and classes end at 3 in the afternoon. The school year begins in late August, and finishes early June. Why is there a three month gap you ask? Summer break of course, so the students and teachers can finally take a break of the constant pressures of homework, extra-curricular activities, exams, social pressures, and finally just sit back and relax in the warmth of summer. Was this always the reason? No. Originally, this “Summer break” was so that students could help their family work full-time on their farms. Makes sense, right? Well what if I told you that only 2% of Americans are farmers today. Our education system allows us for a three month break in the system so that one in every fifty students can work on their family’s farm, those families are definitely going to need their children with all of these highly advanced combine systems which practically allows the farmer to sit in the vehicle and watch TV the entire time. So that’s one thing wrong that requires some tweaking if we are trying to improve our status in world education.

Another thing, is what goes on during the school day. In school, we learn new ideas, new equations, and then we are required to perform small repetitive tasks in succession, without fail. Nearly a hundred years ago, in the early 1900’s, a large amount of the workforce in America worked in factories, where they did exactly what we’re doing in school today, perform small repetitive tasks in succession, without fail.

Today, we see the industry economy shifting to countries with extremely large populations, whose workforce will work for extremely cheap, China, for example. Today, the United State’s economy is no longer based upon the Agricultural or Manufacturing sectors, and more and more careers are created for those who can be creative and work collaboratively with one another on large projects where in the end it will all come together to create something that can benefit society. We see replications of this in the education system today with Project Based Learning initiatives like Iowa BIG. But these attempts of changing the education system are not happening fast enough, and they are the only way to get America back on track towards leading the world in education.