Blog Intro (School Systems)

Everything I do, usually, has a purpose. The purpose of this blog is for me to get out all my thoughts, ideas, and questions out there. As of spring 2015, I have been a college graduate. I do intend on continuing my education by going to grad school, of some sort, in the future, but I also try to continue my education everyday on my own. "Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it."-Albert Einstein. You would think 18+ years of schooling would prepare you for the "real world", but there are many things that school doesn't teach you. Schools claim to prepare you for the next chapter in your life. Elementary school for middle school, middle school for high school, high school for real world or college, college for real world or more school, etc. The government and schools find it important we are tested on things they think are important like... sine, cosine, and tangent of triangles, the percentage two organism's will pass on a specific trait to their offspring, or what the color green symbolizes in The Great Gatsby. A question every student has asked at one point then is, "When will I ever need to know this in my life?" The answer for most people is never. Looking back at my education, the most important and beneficial things I learned are the things the teachers actually did not teach me: Time management, methods to learn (not just memorize), the ability to think critically, and communication skills. However, none of these are things we are tested on. Now, I am by no means bashing teachers or saying they are useless. I appreciate every teacher I have had, many of whom, I respect greatly and learned a lot from. Teaching is one of the few professions I hold in high regards. So, with all due respect to teachers, unfortunately the only valuable information I was taught, besides basic math, and how to read and write, was during my last two years of my college education in my core major classes. Which isn't too surprising, being as college is to prepare you for your future career. I think most will agree the first year or two of college is the BS required general electives, or other meaningless classes to waste your money, while not getting into your major or core classes until junior year. So, overall I can say I only spent 3-4 years out of the 18 years of school, learning things I would actually need for my future. A significant number of people even get careers that have nothing to do with their college studies, which is not a problem, just another interesting point. If it were up to me I would set up my ideal school system as such: elementary and middle schools for teaching reading, writing, science, math, and physical education. similar to how it is now, but more accelerated. High schools would be different, I would make the core required classes: cooking, wood shop, auto-mechanics, government/ law, nutrition, finance, real sexual education, and physical education. Then the electives would be the math, science, reading, and writing. If students wish to grasp the more advanced concepts of those, it would be their choice. So, when young adults, around 18, are graduating high school they would then be able to cook for themselves, build a table to eat on, fix their car, understand the government and form their own political opinions to base their votes, manage their income, and make healthy choices about eating, exercising and sexual activity. These are just random thoughts that came to me. Obviously my ideas have many flaws, like how that would last four years, how testing would work, etc. Anyways, my colleges would be set up similar to technical schools now. They would only be two years schools. The coursework focused specifically on your major/career. I have a few major concerns with our education system: are students actually learning? and are students actually learning things that are useful? And should it be such a financial burden to want to continue your education to ultimately better impact society? Getting back on track though, this was basically just an introduction to getting my thoughts out when I get bored and the reason behind the creation of this blog. It makes no difference to me if no one reads this or thousands somehow end up reading it. I have much I look forward to sharing. So, as I have challenged myself, I challenge everyone else to try and learn something new each day. What can it hurt?

Lastly, and most importantly I am not an English major. I am not concerned with all my spelling and grammatical errors, there will be many.