High School and Real life/College

#1weavile

I'm still alive =)
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Do you think that high school prepares you for the rigors of college or the the knowledge to go straight from high school to a basic job?

I would say no because most of the things that you do in high school, will not ever be used.

I want to know what you think :)
 
I highly disagree. Highschool teaches you social skills, and many other essentials.These skills will be needed throughout your life. Many colleges will only accept you if you had taken certain class. The only class I agree with you with is National history. I do not care, and never will care about when the Whiskey Act was passed (Example). I think history should be moved to an elective rather than a core subject once you are in highschool. Maybe just highlight the importants, instead of going over all the stupid details that we will just forget and never use while in elementary and middle school.

*Edit* Despite you children's arguments, science and english are very useful.
 
I think High School teaches you useful stuff. But honeslty school 1-8 is useless.
For example in Science I am learning about clouds. Uhhh guess what. I'm not gonna need
that in my life! Sheesh! Oh and Social Studies (History) is 100% useless. IMO the only
usefull subject is Math (some of it).
 
High school is a waste of time. It in no way gears you up for the real world, except maybe it helps you with social skills, as Juliacoolo says. When you get out into the real world, if it's straight from high school (and I will not speak for college as I have not attended it yet), the real world will hit you like a brick. You are taught nothing about how to make it financially; instead, you are taught things that will never apply to you 99% of the time, unless, of course, you are majoring in that area in college. High school does teach you something, though... It teaches you to rely on hand-outs on how to do everything, where in the real world, no one's going to give you anything. You must be independent.
 
^ Is high school that bad? In my country you attend secondary school (11-16). Is this the equivalent of Highschool? Im not too sure. However IMO secondary school does provide a lot of opportunity and education for the real world. We have a class named 'Preperation for working Life'. There is the opportunity for business studies (very helpful). Then your core subjects and language.

I will admit they do sugar coat how life will end up. They try and teach us that there are some who failed an education yet turned to millionaires. This for many will not be the case. Which is completely wrong to tell impressionable teenagers.
 
If you believe that you can flunk and still be a millionare you deserve to work at burger king
 
#1weavile said:
Do you think that high school prepares you for the rigors of college or the the knowledge to go straight from high school to a basic job?

I would say no because most of the things that you do in high school, will not ever be used.

I think that high school trains us too broadly for college. If some students are confident in what they will be majoring in for college, why should they have to take subjects non-related to it? As an example, why should they take Chemistry if they are majoring in business? Now, with GPA, colleges look at it, and you're now graded based on all of the subjects, even the ones that don't matter to that field. Therefore, I feel that students, once they hit high school, should be allowed to pick whatever subjects they want. And, of course, the counselors should help the students by telling them which subjects would benefit them the most, and what classes colleges are looking for you to take.

The reason why most of the stuff in high school you will never use is because everything is too broad, as I previously said earlier. If we can narrow it down to what you actually will use, then I think that will help the process.

Lastly, a basic high school degree really won't help you much if you want to get to a dominant place in the society. Additional information will have to be learned, whether by college or by another person/society. You don't have to go to college to be successful, but you have to get the information from somewhere to exceed in that area. You can't just expect to be amazing at something, in most cases.

Juliacoolo said:
I highly disagree. Highschool teaches you social skills, and many other essentials.These skills will be needed throughout your life. Many colleges will only accept you if you had taken certain class. The only class I agree with you with is National history. I do not care, and never will care about when the Whiskey Act was passed (Example). I think history should be moved to an elective rather than a core subject once you are in highschool. Maybe just highlight the importants, instead of going over all the stupid details that we will just forget and never use while in elementary and middle school.

History repeats itself, and only by learning it can we correct our mistakes, or rather, keep on proceeding with our triumphs. Once again, however, I believe this can be situational depending on your career choice.

dragonpokemonpwn said:
I think High School teaches you useful stuff. But honeslty school 1-8 is useless.
For example in Science I am learning about clouds. Uhhh guess what. I'm not gonna need
that in my life! Sheesh! Oh and Social Studies (History) is 100% useless. IMO the only
usefull subject is Math (some of it).

Grades 1-8 is designed to teach you the basics of everything. From there, you should be able to see what your likes and dislikes are. Hopefully, then, you'll be able to plan your high school to better tailor what you actually like learning about and what you decide to do in the future.

CCloud said:
High school is a waste of time. It in no way gears you up for the real world, except maybe it helps you with social skills, as Juliacoolo says. When you get out into the real world, if it's straight from high school (and I will not speak for college as I have not attended it yet), the real world will hit you like a brick. You are taught nothing about how to make it financially; instead, you are taught things that will never apply to you 99% of the time, unless, of course, you are majoring in that area in college. High school does teach you something, though... It teaches you to rely on hand-outs on how to do everything, where in the real world, no one's going to give you anything. You must be independent.

High school is designed to prep you for college, so I don't really see how it's useless, unless you completely disregard what your requirements are for the college you plan to go to.

There are a couple classes, at least in my school, that shed a little light on the financial aspect of things. The three classes off the top of my head are economics, consumer math, and sociology. Obviously they aren't going into heavy duty saving tactics, but if you really wanted to get more in-depth with it, I'd recommend the book "The Millionaire Next Door." Basically the book talks about how most "rich" people don't really spend that much money. It's about compounding their money and spending the minimum possible. However, if one had more money, they were able to splurge a little more, as it's all based on percentages. However, I believe the concepts gone in this book are too advanced for one class to take on, which is probably why they haven't made it into one.

kashmaster said:
I will admit they do sugar coat how life will end up. They try and teach us that there are some who failed an education yet turned to millionaires. This for many will not be the case. Which is completely wrong to tell impressionable teenagers.

The only people who fail at high school/college that become wealthy are those that receive extra information from another source. They are not just equipped from the get-go the information to succeed. Those who simply drop out of high school have a very low success rate in the real world, which is probably why your teachers are frightening you guys. Using operant conditioning, they are showing you guys that hard work in the class will translate to a successful career, which is the outcome in most cases.
 
Limitless said:
High school is designed to prep you for college, so I don't really see how it's useless, unless you completely disregard what your requirements are for the college you plan to go to.

I didn't mean it was useless. I meant it's a waste of time, as in, most of the things that you're forced to learn will never apply to you. As to what you said about high school prepping you for college, I agree to a certain extent, but in college, you won't have anything explained to you, you've got to figure it out by yourself - different from high school, for the most part.
 
Summing up every post made:

High school teaches several useful skills, but often there are issues for some people to obtain these useful skills due to the way it is set up. Honestly, I think we should go for teaching classes based on personal intelligence (Gardner!) and maybe people would appreciate high school more?

Sorry if I am not making sense I am tired and sick and will have to shovel snow tomorrow
 
I agree with Limitless 100%, I am going for a degree in computer science, why do I need to know history or english since apparently I can read. Basic history is really common sense.
 
Those who are ignorant to history are doomed to repeat it. History is mostly teaching a certain kind of learning. It's weird like that.

English is eh. On the one hand it doesn't teach you life skills, but on the other it does teach you be coherent.
 
I shall say no, for the fact that schools like to press hard on subjects just to increase test scores. I went straight from HS to work, and the only thing I had used was math. Common math at that. I can't name a single time where I had to use algebra, its all been addition/subtraction/multiplication and stuff like that. So I don't know what school really does to help. Most the things I know in life, I have taught myself because my school can't teach anything.
 
PheonyxXx said:
I shall say no, for the fact that schools like to press hard on subjects just to increase test scores. I went straight from HS to work, and the only thing I had used was math. Common math at that. I can't name a single time where I had to use algebra, its all been addition/subtraction/multiplication and stuff like that. So I don't know what school really does to help. Most the things I know in life, I have taught myself because my school can't teach anything.

Once again, that is completely situational. What line of work are you currently in?
 
kashmaster said:
So you guys don't get to choose what to study?

To a degree. We are able to choose our electives, but we are forced to take certain core classes. The worst part about it is that colleges take your grades from the classes that don't even pertain to the area you want to study in. So since we're forced to take chemistry, if we get a B, then that hurts our GPA, even if we're applying to a business college.
 
^ But that is the same here. I have chosen all my subjects. Besides from the core (Eng, Maths, Science) Luckily Im an A in my core subjects :). However my French is really bad lol. I'm gona get a C or scrape a B and my Physical education is a B. That will all be taken into account if say I choose Maths at A level. In all honesty that is the fairest way to chose since we all take the same subjects bands. So we all have a fair chance to get into the best college.

What flexibitly do you guys have? I had a choice to choose I.T and Business Studies. Did you get that choice or were you like forced to do history for example?

P.S: I'm from England, so I don't understand GPA and stuff like that :p. Im guessing it's grade point average but I don't understand how it works :p
 
kashmaster said:
^ But that is the same here. I have chosen all my subjects. Besides from the core (Eng, Maths, Science) Luckily Im an A in my core subjects :). However my French is really bad lol. I'm gona get a C or scrape a B and my Physical education is a B. That will all be taken into account if say I choose Maths at A level. In all honesty that is the fairest way to chose since we all take the same subjects bands. So we all have a fair chance to get into the best college.

Wouldn't you say though, that colleges should look at your strengths in the field you're going to be studying in? Why look at chemistry if you're never going to use it there.

What flexibitly do you guys have? I had a choice to choose I.T and Business Studies. Did you get that choice or were you like forced to do history for example?

Here's the way it works in my school:

Core English (e.g. American Literature)
Core Social Studies (e.g. Government, Economics)
Core Science (e.g. Chemistry)
Core Math (e.g. Calculus)

Those are the classes that are required, the core classes. You are forced to take up to Algebra 2 for math, Chemistry for science, Government and Economics for social studies, and American Literature for English. In addition to those requirements, you are also forced to have a certain number of credits in each core category. For example, let's say you need four credits for social studies to graduate. All the way to senior year, you should have accumulated credits from American History, World History, Government, and Economics, which totals to three credits. For the final credit, you'd need to take an additional class, like Psychology. To reach your overall number of credits for each core category we are allowed to take electives. Assuming each core class takes up around two to three classes a year, we are left with about six or seven additional classes to take (electives). While it does look like we have a decent amount of flexibility, I'm mainly concerned with the core subjects that may have absolutely nothing to do with what I plan on studying in college.

P.S: I'm from England, so I don't understand GPA and stuff like that :p. Im guessing it's grade point average but I don't understand how it works :p

Yes, it's grade point average. Basically, for every class you can get an A, B, C, D, or F (E in some schools, don't ask me why). Here's how the scale works:

A - 4.0
B - 3.0
C - 2.0
D - 1.0
F - 0.0

After your trimester/semester, you average all of your points together, which gives you your GPA. So if you had four A's and one B, your GPA would be 3.8.
 
^ Well competition is fierce in London. You just can't be good in the subjects you wish to take up at college. They want to see more from you. That means my grade in french/P.E/Business will count towards me getting a place for Maths. This is why many take early GCSE's (This is basically what makes or breaks you :/) to have an upper hand in the game.

I don't want to take extra GCSEs and classes, but I have to if I want to become a success.

Thanks for teaching me your education system :). Your lucky, you have A. Here we have A*. Stupid competition :(
 
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