Another article on college debts, the stagnant economy,

"The point of literature was to expose you to better reading and writing, at the same time as having you write essays and the like in response to them." - breadloaf

Who says it needs to be literature, then? Why can't the focus be on essays instead, and on comparing and contrasting different styles of essays? Also, essays would be easier to read than novels.

Sure, fine, I leave it up to the education board and those better versed in the matters of language. My point was that you don't focus on rote memorisation of straight forward rules, but to see complicated works in action and develop a sense of pattern recognition that leads you to make your own writing better. Basic grammar rules are meant for elementary level studies where children don't yet have the capacity to think in such abstract terms.

We did poetry, short stories, essays, and novels in all my English classes. I very much enjoyed all of it.

@Deboss: I hate math, I suck at math, and I am never going to need anything more than basic addition in my everyday life. Ergo, we should cut math classes, amirite?

edited 27th Jan '11 1:35:08 PM by DrunkGirlfriend

The point of literature was to expose you to better reading and writing

Then why do they assign such shitty boring books? If it was acceptable to provide my own books, this would not be nearly so onerous. I would still hate writing as it's something I have never enjoyed and practice will not improve my enjoyment.

It also strikes me as foolish to not provide a tangible goal or reward to literature courses. The goal, so far, is "attend twelve years of english class, pass them" which provides enough incentive to pay just enough attention to pass, but not any incentive to do more, as it provides no benefit. A basic requirement of "reach this level of literacy, and you're done with this subjects requirements. You can then continue more of the same, or use the opened up time slot for an elective" provides both a tangible goal and reward that encourages more rapid improvement as the sooner you reach the requirements level, the sooner you can take the fun courses.

Yes, I have an engineering degree. Yes there is a required two semesters of english on it. Also on it are two semesters of art, political science, history, speech/debate, humanities, multi cultural requirements.

Edit: you will need more than basic arithmatic, this is provable. Get yourself to algebra II and then it should be optional.

edited 27th Jan '11 1:36:13 PM by Deboss

I've never needed anything more than basic arithmetic ever. If I know how to balance a checkbook, figure prices, and do basic measurements, I can do everything I want.

Cuz your board of education sucks. And that is meant to be quite serious.

What you propose Deboss, is actually what I would prefer. Either the board selects a good variety of things to expose students to, in terms of teaching them better English, or that you get students to think for themselves and pull in novels/whatever so long as the teacher can get a good sense of its reading/writing level. At the same time, you can roll in technology. There's a limited amount (realistically speaking) of literature (or whatever) that a student can bring in, a board of education can maintain a database of all previous items and their rated literature level... making the process of students bringing in their own stuff faster.

In terms of math, the self-student selection doesn't work (obviously), but I still go the route of proofs and the like, shifting into that by grade 11 or 12, and out of straight forward questions of grade 9/10. You can remap the grades to whtever your local school system is like but you get the point.

As for engineering degree, the local university here requires arts credits of various types. I thikn that is perfectly fine and it goes along with my concept of idea building. Engineering ideas aren't solely math and science becuase of their real world applications. This doesn't prevent engineers from taking very empty arts courses to just get credits but as i said previously, especially at university level, "you get out of it what you put in", and so if you take arts courses for the purpose of learning something socially to improve expand the rather myopic view that is math/science, then that is better. That's how you get things like Engineers Without Borders, or ingenious LED solutions for poor people with low electricity and lighting and so on. That's not just an engineering problem, it's a social one as well, and if you had no concept of social issues, you wouldn't think of those solutions.

EDIT: I think it a far different issue of saying "i don't need it in life" when you're high school. The point is to enable you to do what you might want to do later in life, because the education system can't magically guess that (until we get god-like AI perhaps). If you don't need it later, oh well. If you did, now you're fucked.

edited 27th Jan '11 1:45:58 PM by breadloaf

I'm not in high school though. Even when I was, I would have been far happier doing more productive things with my time than trying to comprehend physics, which is something that nobody is ever going to need until college. Seriously, everything mathmatically related since the third grade has been a complete and utter waste of time. Nobody uses this crap to survive in everyday life.

edited 27th Jan '11 1:50:26 PM by DrunkGirlfriend

I got pegged for an engineering profession in the second grade. Apparently the skills and personality for that profession manifest very early.

The LED thing isn't surprising regardless of social concepts because when you get to your second year they surgically implant a microchip in your brain that gives you a boner every time you think of efficiency and cost reduction.