LOL after someone linked to this rant I remembered about it.....
Education is a pretty interesting topic (in fact its my favourite topic to discuss with others about lol) so lets keep going hahaha
Well anyway I'm actually really surprised that some schools just 'abolished failing'. I didn't know teachers could do such things. I've actually never heard of this before.
Anyway continuing on the previous discussion, what curriculum do you guys do? I take IB (International Baccalureate) in New Zealand and everything is pretty rigorous over here. If you don't pass this research project (>50%) they don't let you go on to do year 12 (about age 16-17, 2 years before uni (year 13 is the last year in NZ)). Also you have to get an average of at least 60% as well. But I mean, my school is mostly full of nerds (well not really) who are trying for american unis like Harvard and MIT and the like, so I guess the behaviour would be expected.

topkilla wrote:The biggest problem with the current state of the schooling system, is that none of it is practical. (With the only exception being a non-required personal finance class). Otherwise, you have a bunch of 'core' subjects being taught with the idea that you are going to specialize in each of them. When chances are, you'll specialize in none of them. - Which is useless, because everything is highly specialized in today's world.

Yeah lol I actually agree with none of it being all that practical. In my opinion, schools should let people go to uni and specialise in something 1 or 2 years quicker, because by the time you get to your last 2 years at school the stuff you learn is pretty much useless to you. Some curricula have rules that mean you have to take a second language....I mean, seriously? You'll probably never actually use your French or Spanish, etc. And even if you do, you'll probably have forgotten what you had learnt and will have to learn most of it again.

I have Spanish as my mother tongue, English as my secondary language (which arguably I know better than Spanish itself), and French as my tertiary language, which I've started to learn about a year ago.

My gripe about education, especially college/university, is that for the pre-medical, pre-law, and engineering routes, you'll have to have known that is the career you want to pursue in your life, only at the age of 18, when you still ahve about ~6 years of mental development and exploring to do. The courses are so long and set, that if you decided not to follow one of those tracks, it's very difficult to switch out and still have the same chance of getting a job in another field.

pandasecret wrote:My gripe about education, especially college/university, is that for the pre-medical, pre-law, and engineering routes, you'll have to have known that is the career you want to pursue in your life, only at the age of 18, when you still ahve about ~6 years of mental development and exploring to do. The courses are so long and set, that if you decided not to follow one of those tracks, it's very difficult to switch out and still have the same chance of getting a job in another field.

Well, there's no alternative really, is there?