by Jordan Miller

Created on: June 17, 2008   Last Updated: February 06, 2009

The clock ticks down the seconds before the final bell rings, signaling the end of another school day. Many kids will leave the building in a stampede rivaled only by the crowd rushes in professional wrestling matches. Some, however, will stay behind for after school activities, groups, and shady dealings. This is school: the place where six hours a day for five weeks many children are subjected to educational torture. This would be for their benefit if it wasn't for the fact that schools today are not at their best.

The class requirements are rather odd in nature. The fun classes, like Theatre, Choir, and Band, are treated as trivial. Yet the most anyone learns in the important classes like Biology and Algebra is the tactics and strategy behind a game of 'Dots'. Not to mention the curriculum changes every other year. Math is the focus for one class, English the next, and inexplicably the Freshmen need to start taking photography classes to graduate. The applications of basic sciences in the real world depends on where one ends up. The laboratories: absolutely useful to know Coulomb's Law. Study it well. Desk job: Go ahead and play 'Dots' until something smells weird in the Chem Lab. Then run for it.

The peer pressures of the many groups at schools is also another subject that makes school "interesting". The many stereotypes about school children, while exaggerated, mainly ring true. There is the Popular Crowd, the Anti-Popular Crowd, the Geeks, Jocks, Nerds, Dorks, Goths, Emos, and that one table of kids in the lunchroom that everyone learns to avoid one way or the other. Deciding who to hang out with isn't the problem, that comes naturally. The real problem is that, in fifteen years, the petty differences between the groups are still unsettled. One single incident with IcyHot and swimwear leaves grudges to last for decades. The choices one makes in school sets their destiny far grander than anyone could imagine. Perhaps Foresight 101 should be a class required for graduation.

And the bane of all existence: college placement exams. The SATs and ACTs of the nation should be delivered in plastic slips. Protects them from the tears of students weeping from intensive cramming sessions (after all, this habit is only unlearned *in* college, and sometimes not even then). The tests themselves are moderately difficult to start with, but the moderator over the exams has to read everything right on the packet by law. If the state can't expect the students to understand what is right in front of their faces, perhaps a different test needs to be made. Suggestions include Tiddlywinks, Chess, and Modern Combat Shooter 12.

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