Year-Round Schooling.

Zid wrote on 2010-11-02 15:34

There are advantages in year-round schooling for some people, but yeah, not for everybody.

I don't mind it since it means my memory of information won't degrade after a big fizz, but at the same time, I want to enjoy those breaks.

Hiccup wrote on 2010-11-02 16:36

Quote from Iyasenu;201003:

It'd change my perception of summer, at least. :p

There'd be no summer

Chockeh wrote on 2010-11-02 19:37

Will year round schooling take me off summer class :D?

Quote from pkMaster;200613:
Before I can consider choosing between tradition and year-round schooling, I think they should first fix the education system. I mean, look at how much extra useless crap I have to learn IN COLLEGE just to get my undergrad degree. It's complete BS. I mean half the stuff I learned in high school was 10 times more difficult than the stuff I'm learning now in college. And a lot of this classes don't even have any effect on my major (Comp. Science). I mean look at all these classes that are compulsory to completing my undergrad:

English 1&2 (more of this?)

World History

Political Science (ok, I kinda like this class, but it's still a useless class)

Science (one of the following): Physics/Chemistry/Biology (Thank good I did my Physics AP exam in high school)

College Algebra (which is apparently harder than Calculus BC AP, Differentials and Stocastics since I still have to do this >_>)

General ED Cluster Class (Why is this even a requirement!?)

How to see a Play (LOLWUT?)

Leisure (how is this even a class?)

Rock Appreciation (I don't even...)

And if I absolutely don't want to waste my time sitting in the class learning this garbage, then I have to take some kind of test (if one is available) which is usually harder than the finals given by most teachers and it counts it toward the maximum number of classes allowed to be taken for that quarter (Ya my college runs on a quarter system). So that means I have to waist most of my time either doing nothing if I take all those tests (which is what I end up doing most of the time) or just take the stupid class and bear with it.

But the thing that makes me angry is that I SHOULD have gotten my computer science degree by now, but instead I'm being forced to take these extra courses that have absolutely nothing to do with my major. And from what I've heard, this is a major problem with a lot of colleges, not just mine.

BLOODY MURDER!
:mad:

Goddamn, I hope its different in Canada, since I'm taking computer science ( Or Computerized Systems Technology, hell, I probably like this one more) next year D:!

Hiccup wrote on 2010-11-02 21:22

Quote from pkMaster;200613:

English 1&2 (more of this?)

World History

Political Science (ok, I kinda like this class, but it's still a useless class)

Science (one of the following): Physics/Chemistry/Biology (Thank good I did my Physics AP exam in high school)

College Algebra (which is apparently harder than Calculus BC AP, Differentials and Stocastics since I still have to do this >_>)

General ED Cluster Class (Why is this even a requirement!?)

How to see a Play (LOLWUT?)

Leisure (how is this even a class?)

Rock Appreciation (I don't even...)

Quote from Etoile;201120:
[FONT="Century Gothic"][SIZE="2"]Ehhh I see the advantages of year-round schooling, but I personally prefer long breaks :)

And I think college has all these extra classes so that people can take them for fun and find out what they like to do D: Lots of people still don't know what to major in and stuff.[/SIZE][/FONT]

That doesn't mean they should force it down your throat and EXPECT you to participate. It's really stupid considering I'm wasting 2 years of my life learning absolutely NOTHING! They should at least let you graduate if you've finished all your upper-division courses (currently in that boat). To me, it's just a way for colleges to keep you there longer so that you end up paying them more money while you're still in college.

Quote from BobYoMeowMeow;201006:
Rock appreciation is probably a class set for geologists, paleontologists or archeologists.
or a worthless class

The cat thinks it's worthless since mostly everything has been discovered already and nothing really new came up in the last 20-50 years

Yeah, it's a completely useless class where you watch rock concerts and critique them. I want to know why a comp. science major needs to take this stupid class. Where the hell do they get permission to pull of crap like this?

Quote from Ailyene;203070:
I'm pretty sure it depends on the specific university/college, not the country. But if you really must know, I'm in Canada and taking computer science. I need to take classes like math/statistics/programming/hardware apart from the generals, so no, we don't have those weird things like "rock appreciation" (lolfunnyname...I thought rock music at first).

I'm not sure what it's like in Canada, but in all the US colleges/universities I tried applying to a couple years ago, I saw the same problem applied across the board. Even Standford, of all the universities, has the same type of curriculum. (And to thing I was planning on taking out a huge loan just to go there initially) WTH is this crap!

And just so you know, rock appreciation is a music class, not geology. Yeah, because this was one of those classes that didn't have an exemption test, I had to sit through this waste-of-time class. And you want to what's really crappy about this class? The professor expects you to go to 3 live concerts during the class and you all should know how expensive getting tickets for such events can be. I was lucky to get 3 cheap concerts that were all in my area, but man I pitty the guys in that class who had to empty out their pockets just to pass this stupid class. This is what some would call extortion-ism.

Quote from Athde;203239:
I wouldn't mind it. Summer is usually a bunch of cleaning and stuff and I play games most of the time (except when my friends and I go to play ball or movies, or vaca., etc.) but my only problem would be that it would all run together. Needless to say the classes would get MUCH harder each year considering you would be expected to know all of the previous material thus have no reviews at the beginning of the year(these save my grade XD) Anyways either or I could make it work.

I don't think the classes would get that much harder, because in a quarter system, you'd still have some review classes that the beginning of each quarter. The only difference is that the review would cover less material and would probably take fewer classes to cover. But considering that you're learning less at a time, it balances itself out so the difficulty of the classes doesn't really change all that much. The only thing you have to be worried about though is making sure you don't screw up since it tends to have a bigger impact on your grade than it would in a 9-month schooling system. I suppose a trimester system could be a decent fairground so both systems since the classes and vacation periods last longer and mistakes aren't as damning as they would be in a quarterly system.

But in the end, most college's and universities in the US pretty much force you to relearn all the things you did in high school for the first couple of years (if you do your lower division undergrad studies first) so you might as well enjoy your life in high school while you can. Cuz those first 2 years of college end up being one long, tedious review session. I wouldn't be so upset if it wasn't a requirement, but it's the sad truth and no amount of complaining is ever going to change this. And you better hope that your college at least takes a decent amount of credit for AP courses. Otherwise you're probably going to spend more than 4 years completing your undergrad studies.

The problem I have with the current education system is that it seems to be catering to people who come from a less than sound educational background. While I don't have a problem with letting those kind of people join college (especially since most of them tend to have the drive and motivation needed to make up for their lack of knowledge), I don't agree with the lumping everyone into the same group and treating all undergrads like idiots. Part of the reason why I oppose the current educational system is that it presents a huge road block for the smarter students that want to just get on with their education and quickly get a degree by adding this extra curriculum that doesn't really supplement their education and often times just hampers it instead. And then there are these extra classes like rock(the music not the actual thing) appreciation that are of no use to anyone that are being shoved down our throats, somehow expecting that learning it will some how make us broad-minded individuals.

And it's not like your learning all of this stuff for free. You, or someone in your family, has to pay for this type of education which is very expensive, sometimes putting you (or your family) in debt. So if I'm paying an exorbitant amount of cash to become smarter, why do I have to waste my time learning how plays are set up or how different instruments have different sound qualities when it doesn't even apply to my major. Unless they cut out all this extra fluff, your pretty much going to be spending a fortune on learning nothing. This has to change before decisions like this are made.

Well, that's all I got to say. I apologize if my long winded rant angered some people, and I apologies if my wall-of-text turned off a few people but I just had to let these feeling out. I just feel really bad that I'm wasting my family's income doing nothing but taking these ridiculous courses. Even my dad things this is utter nonsense, but than again it is just and opinion, and an opinion doesn't really carry as much weight as cold hard facts do. I just had to state my opinion and hope someone agrees with me. Though if you guys don't that's ok too. I'm open to discussion.