High School Improvements

High school life is pretty much the same everyday. My school is semestered, and operates on a two day schedule. For most people, this system works and so there seems to be no need to change it. However, this stops people from looking for ways to improve on the way high school operates.

Teachers always seem to preach that without good grades, a college or university will never accept you and in the long run you won't be successful. Should a good grade be the most important outcome of a course? I think academics have become too much of a priority in the lives of students and teachers. Both the teacher and student may be losing sight of what school is supposed to do; teach students something new. If a student fails a course, but still learned something new to them and was genuinely interested, is that really failure? And along with failing, is it really a good idea to have such strict deadlines? Yes, it is necessary for assignments and tests to have set dates, because that way it forces a student to challenge themselves. But not in all circumstances. Sometimes even if a student tries as hard as they can, they just need more time. Just because a unit is over, it might not be the best idea to start a new unit leaving a student behind only to fall behind even more. I believe that if a student does end up learning all the material in a course, even if they didn't complete it in time, it should not be considered a failure. It could be valuable if a school offered more re-testing, and more one-on-one learning opportunities. This way, a student could push themselves to really learn a subject.

For ten months, kids go to school and then get a two month break for the summer. During that time, many students don't continue learning. By the next year, they'll forget most of what they learned. A few days are wasted trying to remember what was learned the year before, and it's even worse for second semester students. Sure, the summer break is used by some to re-take a credit, or start a summer job. For others it's a nice break and helps relieve stress. But instead of studying super hard for ten months, I think it would be better to be in school all year. After a few months, you could take a few weeks break to study or work or relax. That way, there would still be the same amount of class days versus vacation days. There would be no big learning gap and keep students more engaged in their classes.