Forced Education

Yeah. What I'm talking about here is forced education. You may know it as "school". Call it what you want, there's something wrong with it.

You know why some people get bad marks in school? It's because they just don't care what marks they get. And why would they do that? Because those subjects in particular that they do bad in don't interest them!

Every day, millions of kids are forced to go to school. That doesn't sound too bad, does it? Well, let's pretend you never heard of school, and somebody described it to you like this:

"School is a place where millions of kids are forced to go every day to learn about things that do not interest them, some of which are completely useless and will only be used in about 0.3% of the children's future careers. They work for most of the day on pointless worksheets and notebooks while they sit and rot and their brains fill with mostly useless information. Then they go home, and the next day, they go through it all over again. But, the good thing is they might pick up a few useful things that they are going to use in their real lives."

That would probably encourage you to not go to school. And the part where I mentioned 0.3%, I was being generous, because some of the things I'm "learning" are used in about 0.0% of children's future careers. The description above is absolutely true. I have not exaggerated. From what I can see, this is actually going on. But, just being mad about it isn't going to change anything, is it? What we need is a solution.

The solution is this. The kids should be taught general things that everyone will need in their lives, like language and most math, until they are old enough to responsibly have an idea of what they want to be when they grow up (or until they have finished learning the necessities). Then the children should be able to choose what they want to learn, like in high school and college or university. There would be "courses" for almost every career. If you wanted to program, take the programming course. If you want to be a doctor, take the doctor course. Of course, some courses would be much longer than others, and some careers need little to no training at all, so some people would get out of school first.

If things were this way, more people would have good jobs, and they would probably get out in the work force quicker. There would be less poverty, because people wouldn't have to waste precious years of their lives learning completely useless information. The world would be a better place.

Of course, this kind of thing probably won't happen anytime in my lifetime. But, there are still some changes that could be applied to the current system to improve it. Like some sort of choice in what things you want to learn, and definitely learn some more useful things.

One of the changes I desperately think needs to be made is to involve more computer-type lessons in school (I'm talking about grade school here). I know a lot of classes in grade school hardly ever go to their school's computer lab. I also am aware that there are little to no lessons on how to use computers. Kids aren't even learning how to type properly! What I learned in grade school about computers is: most of the functions of Microsoft PowerPoint, and very few of the functions of Microsoft Excel. Yes, that's all. Everything else I learned by myself.

The things I believe they should be teaching in grade school are things like some basic HTML, an introduction to programming, and lessons on how to use some major computer programs such as Photoshop, all of Microsoft Office, Flash, and Windows Movie Maker. I think these things need to be taught in grade school, because they aren't very complicated and some may be considered vital skills in the near future. Computers are more and more becoming a part of our daily lives, and we need to know how to control them.

Well, that's all for this rant. I let off some steam, presented some ideas, overall I think I did pretty well.

By: Alway