HW 39

The most interesting question I had about school is that why can't students make up some of the curriculum that we are learning? My opinion is that students would probably be doing so much better if we chose the topic to study because it would be something we are interested in and of course it would be an educational topic but it would be one that we care about learning. If we liked what we were learning about, we would want to do more homework on it and have more fun classes where everyone participated. Also, we are the ones who are here 5 days a week and about 6 hours a day so shouldn't we get some sort of say in what we are doing? For example, I personally would like to have more of this class because it is like philosophy and makes you think and it is not like a regular class with textbooks-there's more conversation and I think a lot of people like that. Some other things we should study in other classes is maybe astronomy for science and have more projects like the casino projects. My other idea about school is that a good part of school is that we have a majority of our friends because of school. The one thing all of us have in common generally speaking is that we both have to be in school whether we like it or not and we are usually always bored so we talk to each other to quell our boredom but then we get to know each other well and have great friends. No matter what, though, I believe that school is very important. It is very boring at times and going to school doesn't always guarentee a very successful future but it does help somewhat and it is also true that we usually don't remember a lot of what we learned from our previous years in school, especially "specialized" subjects such as math and science but for people who get a crareer involving those subjects it helps. I think that learning about english and history helps us more later in life because almost every career involves those two things like writing essays.
One aspect or moment in school is when we get grades. Grades are the only concrete way to show how the student has done so there is unfortunately no other method to measure how a student has done. I think that it is true that it does show what we have learned in school but I also believe that grades are unfair because it only shows how much we have flat-out learned and mastered the subject but I wonder why grades or how teachers grade us usually don't include something about the amount of effort a student shows. For instance, if a student tries very hard to complete a difficult project but fails at it, the teacher most likely won't count the amount of effort the student put in for grades. I think legit effort is a huge part because it is better than just giving up and not trying at all.
In life we all have to try our best effort at work and even if you try do something on the job and can't, the boss will sometimes recognize your efforts. This obviously doesn't always work always in the "real life" but in school, I definetly believe that grades should be counted for. And isn't the teachers message try your best?