hw 39

Please write 3 each of the most interesting, fascinating, powerful questions, ideas, and experiences you've encountered about school. So please make three lists of three items each.

questions

Is the grading system of awarding and naming an individual with a letter or number a causation of decreased incentive?

how is school utilized as a place for us to enact our cool actions and social interactions?

what is the education system so systematized? in other words why is school treated like such an epical journey, where everything is categorized into grades and abilities?

ideas

school is treated like a necessary part of our society from pre-school to graduate school because it is deprived to so many. since it is hard to come by in the third world we like to make calculus look like the most important thing in the world.

I also think we hold school at such a high value because those who are at high political jobs in both the private and public sector nearly all went to higher education and did well in school. but how many congressmen need trigonometry.

School helps us social skills. so not only does school teach us how to read or write, it also develops our ability to function in society civilized and rationally.

experiences

I have had mostly the same average experience in school that most people have. its obviously not the funniest time but i do believe the certain aspects of education are necessary. However when i was in pre-school i did suffer from anxiety. I simply didn't like going to school. It to me as a still young child school was extremely scary and simply bad. although i was really just playing with blocks and now would love to go back in time to enjoy it i was scared to death of school.

another experience in school that arises often and is pretty common, is the worries that stem from tests. even just two weeks ago when we had midterms i was extremely nervous about how i would do. I treated the midterms like they dictated the rest of my life. i was controlled by the systematic epic journey school caused, if I don't do well on the midterm, then i will get a worse grade and so on.

a similar experience/idea about school that i have realized is that our education isn't really our choice. I don't mean that we don't get to chose our curriculum, i mean that we really just give the administrators or the department of education our preferences but have no real say. Our grades do most of our talking and even that isn't saying much. An example of this in my life is my entrance into high school. Not to say that SOF is a bad school, comparatively its a great school. but it wasn't my first choice. even though i felt like i deserved to go to my first choice and worked hard to improve my chances, i didn't get in. Four years of my life weren't chosen my me nor my parents. Just an interesting part of how the education system works.

PART B

One aspect of the education system that i find interesting about school is the grading policy. Everything is graded and those grades are put together to make another grades, then all of those grades are put together to give you another grade. Its strange that everything from your communication to "contributions to the community" are given a number. and your number encompasses you, you become that number.

I have also noticed that the older you get the less sincere, and personal education becomes. For me in elementary school i was given a letter grade but along with that i had a detailed report on what i was good at, and what i struggled in along with about a paragraph from my teacher but the further up i go the less personalized grading i receive. The policy has put more emphasis on my number than on my actual ability.

For instance last semester I took a college now class at Hunter College and once it was over i tried to get my grade, when i figured out how and got a copy of the grade it just had my name and the letter "B" under it. It honestly seemed like it wasn't real. I find it really interesting that four months can be summed up with one letter. And that this is accepted.

I don't really have any good ideas on what evaluation should like. They all follow the same basic principle. Some schools do it more than others, for instance SOF doesn't rank but other schools do. the grading policy is basically a hierarchy, your grade is your group/class, it defines you.