| A weekend in the country...
High school is stupid. Not the concept of high school; the concept of high school is a good concept. But the power system and the politics and the horrible decisions of public high school administration in a particular place are extremely idiotic. In other parts of the country, in private schools and magnet schools, too, the situation is different. But I'm glad I don't have to deal with shit like this.
A friend of mine, who is still in high school, wanted to take AP Physics last year. The class was not offered, however, and the school prohibits independent study, so he had to learn the material in his own time -- and he got a 5 on the test.
I said that correctly -- the school prohibits independent study. Indeed. Anyway.
So he signed up for AP Physics again in order to take the second half (the test, as you may recall, is divided into Mechanics and Electricty/Magnetism; he'd only taken the first half), in hopes that the teacher would just give him work and tests for E+M. No such luck -- the school prohibits independent study, so he's taking all the tests and doing all the work for a class he essentially has already taken. In other words, the school is explicitly ensuring that his time is unproductive.
Now, I understand the reasoning for disallowing independent study: people don't do it. I managed to do it when I was in high school, and I remember doing nothing, always, and rushing to learn stuff before tests. But what kind of restriction does this place on learning at school? It violates academic integrity almost as much as teaching creationism and abstinence. It's a kind of lying similar to corporations, always trying to put a positive public face and in reality screwing people over. OK, wow, I'm not a communist, but that sentence still applies. (:
So, I asked my friend, why not congratulate the superintendent of the county school board on this wonderful example of irony, of an educational institution denying education? Because, he said, that would go over the head of the guidance counselor, who likes him and who has power over recommendation letters and therefore college acceptance. In order to pull strings, it's important to be on the right side, and given the school's stance on basic education issues like independent study (there were other things that pissed me off about them in high school, but I don't remember them anymore), it's important to pull strings. Of course, there's something inherently unfair about a system where one has to pull strings to get it to work properly.
My last complaint about high school is that what they teach in high school changes later. Especially in math and physics. I got a GRE physics book, and they still use theta for polar angle in spherical coordinates. Sure, it makes more sense that way, but what's standard high school notation is not standard notation in general. The same applies for writing down vectors -- the best way to write vectors is as a column vector, since that makes sense, or as a sum of intuitively-labeled components like x^, y^, and z^. Instead, they put vectors in angle brackets and components in ijk notation. Why ijk? Historical curiosity? I'm all for that, but it's a somewhat obsolete system. Also, the GRE book is badly edited and has useless derivable formulas.
That's it for now. |
