[Comrade]

Any of you know the IB Program?

International Baccalaureate, its a program that's getting a lot of recognition and is implemented in the school I attend here in Texas. Its a new approach, anyways, though I am not so sure of how much more effective it is.
It seems to me that it is supposed to be about taking a few subjects and going into them deeply rather than skimming over a lot of material, but I think its closer to a regular AP class with a few extra caveats.

Look into it and I'll let the wiser talk about it.

Anyways, my thoughts on schooling. There's no motivation. "Getting a bad grade" which might lead to "not getting into college" is a distant concept, it doesn't really register with me. I work just hard enough so that I don't fail.

Now, I'm conceited enough to consider myself a genius, and I'm mostly a fan of history, and it amazes (and appalls) me how school can take something as fun to learn as history and make it stupid and boring. The only part of the day in which I resist learning about history is in my history class!

There's too much paper shuffling, too many essays, too many fill-in-the-bubble tests. Whoever created MLA should be murdered, it is stifling and completely prevents me from ever wanting to write anything literary at all. It's self-defeating.

School doesn't teach complexity of thought. It teaches a gruel of information, as if students were computer matrixes that just require input without interpretation to function. I know from 8th Grade several years ago that John Deere was the inventer of the first lightweight steel plow. Anyone care to point out how this is important in any way shape or form to myself. What I'm trying to say, is that school doesn't make people any smarter, which sounds like what an educational system should be trying to do, no?

There are few classes that actually teach me how to do things. Mostly multimedia courses, of which I am taking all. If not for these classes I wouldn't even be interested in computer animation or design, nor would I be any good with them (though I'm mostly self-taught, like most "computer people").

My version of an ideal educational system would work on two principals. This is disregarding any other factors, a "sterile" environment maybe.
1) To expose students to different ways of thinking and to encourage depth of thought.
2) To expose students to things that they can do in life, and teach them how to do it. This is inspired by the multimedia classes that I am taking, but I mean more than that. Things like shop class, which have real world application, electronics, just an introduction into the things you might encounter at a college level.

Just a side note, English class should be renamed Literature class. The only class in which I learn English grammar and vocabulary, is, ironically, in French.

Just FYI, I'm a Junior in the WFISD, in North Texas.

(P.S. School food doesn't suck)