As a high school student I do a good amount of homework on a daily basis, and sometimes when I am doing this homework I sometimes wonder why in the world I would need to learn some of the material we are required to learn. Like in my case, I want to be in the sports medicine field after high school and when I do math homework I wonder when, (if ever) I’ll need to know how to graph a parabola or know how to analyze a Shakespearean play. Chances are as soon as this semester ends I won’t see a parabola ever again. So why do we bother forcing students through these classes? I’m sure you could bring up the argument that we aren’t forcing students to take the courses, but most post-secondary schools require such courses. Another argument is that these courses force students to problem solve and that’s what they are used for, but my defence to that is how come we aren’t marked based on our problem solving? Now I am not saying take out all the hard courses and make school easy, my message is making education slightly more personalized. If I wasn’t required to take math, socials and English, and there were more courses that involved things that I was interested in and cared about, I would be better prepared for my life after high school.
Eric Wieking
