Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Jesse James (the outlaw, not the husband)

I have a paper to write on Jesse James for English class, though that's not what this post is about, not really.

The paper was originally about a person, their dream and how they achieved it. This was the most exciting thing to hit out little worlds in quite some time, seeing as this was an Honors English class and in my school, Honors is Serious Buisness filled with long words and extensive grammer reviews and ancient literature analysis and essays (lots. of. essays.) So we were all like "yay!"

And then as she explained to us the credentials--annotated bibliography, minimum eighteen sources, reasearch, little pieces of paper telling us just HOW MANY WAYS we can accidently plagiarize--our enthusiasm, much like our will to live, began to deterioriate.

Listen to me: this is why drop out rates are so high in America. Everything interesting we as a people have ever come up with as been chewed up and spit up by the US educational system.

Maybe it's just me; I've been haphazardly placed in an honors class, even though I have mediocre grades and virtually no work ethic, working around kids who have been conditioned to be doctors and scientists since the first grade. Ive always been the kid to do my homework on the bus ride to school, if at all. Assignment due Monday have been started on Sunday night. Essays are half-assed and handed in with hot sauce smeared on the edges. I am not a School Person. So maybe school isn't made for me, and I'm not the type the school itself aims to improve (now that I'm sixteen, I'm beginning to get the feeling my guidence counsler is pushing drop out forms in my direction....) But for reals, you guys. How many people can honestly say they enjoy going to school? How many go to learn? How many can HONESTLY SAY they have come out of high school with some working knowledge of the universe?

But that's the thing. I have not once been told I'm learning this because I need it to surivive. It's always "this will be on the test" or "you'll do this in college". Well, here's a secret fucking teacher:

I DO NOT WANT TO LEARN FOR COLLEGE.

Okay.

Jesse James.

Cool dude.

3 comments:

Bookish in a Box said...

College isn't for everyone, and I think America is doing its teens a disservice by pushing them all that way. There's nothing wrong with choosing another route. That said, if you have any interest in going to college, I want you to know that it's a MILLION times better than grade school!! I was definitely one of the AP kids, but I hated school until I got to college and finally got a choice in what I wanted to learn. Hang in there!! These may not be the best years of your life, but they're the steps to get you there.

D Swizzle said...

Thanks man. I don't think it's so much them pushing us towards college as society as a whole making it impossible to get a job without at least a BA.

K. A. Schloegel said...

Great blog post. The best I've read in months. Don't buy into the myth you have to be an AP'er or mind-controlled over-achiever to belong in honors. College > high school.

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