School Reforms?

[Gwazi Magnum]

People here complaining about the workload in highschool, on top of all the homework they get, which apparently is worth several hours of extra work at home a day. I don't say I wanted to be a slave to the school back then, but I wish I either had a greater workload, or they compressed schooltime to only two days instead of five. What we did in five days could be easily compressed in little time. I finished all my work in class, and then couldn't do anything more. I wasn't allowed to play in my cellphone, read something else, bringing all my drawing supplies with me wasn't possible so I could only doodle in class... I feel like I lost too much time in highschool, and that's awful.

Different school environments I'm suspecting.
What a number of us normally experience is teacher's forgetting they're not our only teacher, so they assign enough homework to cover all four classes.
So then when another teacher may assign even the average amount of homework, students get swamped.

Then there's the issues of Teachers failing to teach properly, which then results in not only the homework being harder, but students bringing more class work home on top of that because it's unfinished.

I also wish there were more options to choose what you want to study, on top of a fixed program. There isn't even a single optional subject in high school. And in college it's the same. I'm studying civil engineering, I have to pass about 40-45 subjects in order to graduate (I don't remember the exact number). From those, only TWO subjects in the whole career are optional. For those two, you get to choose just from four different subjects, and sometimes they can't teach you the subject you asked for because there is no teacher. Being in a small university sucks sometimes. -_-

No Electives in High School? o_o
How in the world are students meant to explore without those?

As for college, most programs don't give you much choice with individual classes.
The choice with College is the program you're taking to begin with.
For example I'm currently in Early Childhood Education, I can hardly choose what my specific courses will be, but there will all be related to Early Childhood Education, which I signed up for.

Dress code was another big problem in my school. The first three years, one could use whatever they wanted as long as it was decent. Then they decided that, despite girls being minors and not being able to choose if their bodies developed curves or not, their bodies were distracting, and they enforced a school uniform on girls only. I saw boys breaking the older dress code and nobody gave a fuck, but a girl would be sent home to change if she showed up with regular clothes instead of uniforms. I went straight to the principal -a woman- and told her how sexist it was, and she didn't care.

I don't like Dress Codes at all... >.<
They take additional cash away from either the school or the parents for what purpose?
To invest extra man power to get kids crap for how they dress?
To take away one of the means a child has to express themselves?

It doesn't even counter bullying like some people have claimed it does, because students just find something new to tease about.

 

[Mu]

Ah, my school has a new phone policy now. Last year students were free to take them to class as long as they keep it on silent and don't take it out of their pockets unless the teacher allows them (eg. take pictures of pracs and board notes) but this year they banned it completely. Nobody understands why, even teachers think it's stupid. Seriously, just because you caught two students going into exam rooms with phones in their pockets which were against the rules, you put down a stupid ban after everyone is used to taking in phones to class. Two fucking students. You could have confiscated their phones or sent them back to their lockers to put it away and forget about it. But nope, let's ban phones completely the following year! And not just phones, MP3 and headphones are banned as well. You're kidding me right? We can't even bring in headphones?

And what on earth is with my school's blocked sites? You know some lessons require students to access YouTube, but nah, going to block it. Now whenever we need to use the goddamn site we need to ask for a complex, one-hour only use code to bypass the server. Again, YouTube was accessible during previous years, they just decided to ban it for no particular reason.

Also, why are the school bags compulsory? They're like, eighty bucks. No thanks m8, m9, m10.

 

[Gwazi Magnum]

Ah, my school has a new phone policy now. Last year students were free to take them to class as long as they keep it on silent and don't take it out of their pockets unless the teacher allows them (eg. take pictures of pracs and board notes) but this year they banned it completely. Nobody understands why, even teachers think its stupid. Seriously, just because you caught two students going into exam rooms with phones in their pockets which were against the rules, you put down a stupid ban after everyone is used to taking in phones to class. Two fucking students. You could have confiscated their phones or sent them back to their lockers to put it away and forget about it. But nope, let's ban phones completely the following year! And not just phones, MP3 and headphones are banned as well. You're kidding me right? We can't even bring in headphones?

And what on earth is with my school's blocked sites? You know some lessons require students to access YouTube, but nah, going to block it. Now whenever we need to use the goddamn site we need to ask for a complex, one-hour only use code to bypass the server. Again, YouTube was accessible during previous years, they just decided to ban it for no particular reason.

Also, why are the school bags compulsory? They're like, eighty bucks. No thanks m8, m9, m10.

Wait... really?

My School didn't like people ever pulling phones, mp3's etc out, but banning them completely? o_o
How do they even plan to enforce that?

Blocked sites doesn't surprise me, but it does show how schools vary.
Not even Facebook was blocked back at my schools. :/

And really? Mandatory bags?
As long as you're able to carry the stuff there shouldn't be an issue.

 

[Mu]

My School didn't like people ever pulling phones, mp3's etc out, but banning them completely? o_o
How do they even plan to enforce that?

Funny because they actually do a pretty shitty job. Some teachers don't mind it, one of them being my Biology teacher because she's chill, but she does confiscate them when she knows the principal is visiting class. I've heard rumours that the principal and the assistant principal does checks sometimes.

Blocked sites doesn't surprise me, but it does show how schools vary.
Not even Facebook was blocked back at my schools. :/

Iwaku wasn't blocked either. That is, until now. RIP. IT department also stalks student's history and gathers popular unblocked sites to see if they're appropriate. If not, blocked.

And really? Mandatory bags?
As long as you're able to carry the stuff there shouldn't be an issue.

EXACTLY. They're just making us buy $80 dollar bags and make us waste the munmuns. There's also a building fee and stuff that makes wallets cry.


Also forgot to mention the sexy laptop program they introduced, forcing us to pay $850 for the 11" Dell or $1200 for the 13" Dell. You can buy better laptops with that price. Comes with an i3 processor (really, i3?) and terrible, TERRIBLE protection. Holy cow, viruses running wild everywhere. Doesn't matter if you hand it to the IT guys, they do a pretty shitty job of fixing it. The firewall sucks, admin restrictions suck, can't even update the firewall. We also can't change the desktop background for some odd reason. Lyk y r u do dis.

 

[Gwazi Magnum]

Your school honestly sounds like it's just trying to profiteer off of students rather than give a quality education. :/
Combined with the common paranoia schools have of "If it's fun it must be banned".

 

[Rare]

I live in California and all, so I would know about how crappy schools are. Since most of the people in that state don't give a fuck about wasting water until it becomes a law.

My school is in federal land (well, nearby a navy base) so there are blocked sites (no Facebook or Youtube for students), phones aren't allowed, rules that appeal to being in federal land. And we have an female officer, who we all fear for. As she crashed into a school bench and drove off very fast, the school didn't call her out for it or report of it. Even known the green paint-my school's colors and for the bench-is still on the front of her car.

My high school has been 'reforming' as they got Chromebooks in my 10th grade year and used them in math and history. And they don't allow D's in math anymore (besides the honors and the other harder math; like Pre-calc, etc.). Which the school didn't told the parents until students found out about it and then spread it around my town. So, yay for change?

California's schools need to be reformed before any other state.​