Author: Darien Vazquez (Page 5 of 9)

Topic: Why can’t schools let students choose what they want to learn before they reach college?

K- Know: 

• It may be best for them to learn unfamiliar things in case they’re unsure what to do in college.
• Most students find school boring because they don’t want to learn things they feel they don’t need in their future.
• Those courses that are useless are the main requirements needed to graduate.
• Some students in college have no background knowledge on what they are majoring in before reaching higher education.

W- Want: 

• Why are the extravagant, hard to learn, and useless classes required in some school’s education systems?
• Why can’t we just learn about what we want followed by what we need in life?
• Why wait until college when we have all these years of learning in school to take advantage of beginning our desired professions?
• How come we can’t vote for what we want to learn like we do as a country politically?

L- Learned: 

• Students would have more motivation to learn and come to school if they were given the opportunity to choose their own classes instead of being required to take certain classes in order to graduate.
• Students have different minds and different interests, so learning the same curriculum won’t be for everyone.
• Too many students are failing classes that they should never had to take in the first place.
• When students can apply their knowledge learned in high school classes to their real life, that is a successful outcome.

+ – Still want to know:

•  What does the education system has to say about why we learn so much things that are useless to some of us?
• How do the teachers feel about this? Because it shouldn’t only students dwelling on this topic.
• How much longer will the system bore our minds out with some of the useless things they are teaching us?

Don’t really recall something I was interested in that died out, I played baseball pretty much all my life up until last year. But that is still with my heart that’s never going to change, I just don’t play it no more because I chose to work senior year of high school instead of playing it on my last year. Although, something that I was interested in when I was a kid was math. It was and still kinda is in some aspects my favorite subject, in terms in geometry and trigonometry not so much. I prefer the more known math which is the all four operations, algebra, and real-life situations where we would use math daily like counting money. The biggest reason math is my favorite subject, is because I find myself using it in comparing nature’s beauty around us. Since elementary I had developed more knowledge into it and it became something I knew I can be good at as time goes on. What satisfies my mind the most is that everything is common sense, so it can never be more than one answer making it more difficult to handle. However, it was up until my sophomore year of high school when I started to see a whole new world of mathematics. Once geometry and trig the following year came my way I knew I was up for a challenge I have yet not faced, yeah it still is math regardless, it’s just how much in-depth it is that made it less interesting and definitely something I viewed different in the subject. My curiosity has changed since then in regards to why it was so much more to something simple, it went counting from numbers 1-100 and adding, subtracting, etc. to solving formulas and coming up with functions. And if you ask me, I would for sure say that the education system played both good and bad roles, I honestly can’t choose good or bad. I say this because what if I wanted to become an architect or an engineer, then that type of math would obviously be helpful. If I wanted to be something else not pertaining to a required math skill, then it would literally be pointless for me to come across and learn.

When James Baldwin said “the world is larger”  I think he means in reference to the student, that there is more to the world than what he is living in. How he and his race has yet to know other parts of the world where he is more accepted and not limited to opportunities or being discriminated. Baldwin believes that anyone should have access to whatever they want and racism is not everywhere in the world. He also being up that America is to really “The land of the free, home of the brave” if not everyone doesn’t have equal freedom, whether if it’s human rights, education rights, etc. The government is the main reason society is the way it is and to be honest is the most crooked system of superiors.  Baldwin states “The government is the creation of the people. It is responsible to the people. And the people are responsible for it. No American has the right to allow the present government to say, when Negro children are being bombed and hosed and shot and beaten all over the Deep South, that there is nothing we can do about it”. As for myself, I believe I have the necessity to examine the untold truths of our government, this is a very risky topic being that we are limited already with our government. Not just the system, also just everything hidden on America’s name, I get that learning these some things may be impossible however certain things that occur question the United States’ definition of freedom. Just imagine what we can find out from this and how many eyes can be woke to what we are living in. Would we be able to prevent certain scenarios? Like why not learn about why the system is the way it is with all of the discrimination and limited freedoms to us citizens? It would be interesting to find out and also very helpful to be taught in the classroom.