Brilliant Dropouts


Articles Dante Alighieri Arthur Dent Jesus Jones Thomas Paine Other Authors Contact Us! Letter to the Editor Dante Alighieri Arthur Dent Jesus Jones Thomas Paine	Brilliant Dropouts Thomas Paine Every single day, I hear students in the classrooms and corridors of Terra Nova lament that "I'm never going to need to know this stuff outside of school. This is such a waste of time!" One might respond that these students are simply whining and should get over it. However, I'd like to set the record straight and join the dirge of the masses. While sitting in my government class, perhaps the most pointless hour of my day, I had an epiphany. Surrounded by bright students either mindlessly completing or inattentively copying irrelevant busywork, I realized that, were that class not necessary for graduation, there would be absolutely no reason for me to attend. I admit it: I actually like school when I'm being taught, but when, after a five-minute discursive sermon, a teacher hands out a ditto and abandons the class, I can't help but join in the hymn of the masses: "This is a waste of my fucking time." No wonder smart people drop out of high school! I know several brilliant, thoughtful people who have recently left the drudgery that is high school, opting instead to take the California High School Proficiency Exam (CHSPE), which allows students under the age of 18 to legally leave high school with the prospect of admittance into one of many private, four-year, or junior colleges. I used to wonder why they would abandon high school, but now I understand: Terra Nova has failed, and continues to fail, some of its smartest kids. So just how did our school lose some of the brightest students to walk its hallways? "I don't see what I'm working for," said one current TN junior who recently passed the CHSPE, "[The work] doesn't lead anywhere for me." Just one of the many people to leave TN because it provides students with little applicable knowledge, this pupil expressed his frustration that there is "nothing to show for [the work] except a diploma, which is replaceable by something faster and easier to obtain." And who can disagree with him? How many students out there, sitting in a class with an inept teacher, have felt the urge to run into the hallways, kick open the double doors, and yell "I'm out!" Were it not for the few intellectually stimulating classes I do have, I would have surely left, giving the school an uplifted middle finger on my way out the front door. It is a shame to see America's future crammed into small rooms with gratuitous worksheets before them and a teacher in the corner of the room reading email, talking football, or perusing the newspaper as his/her students cheat, play cards, and read Where's Waldo for lack of better options, for lack of stimulation. "I felt that I had gotten all really could out of high school," remarks another CHSPE conqueror. Currently enrolled in a college and doing well, this student saw no compelling reason to stay at TN, except perhaps his friends. Friends are an important, but it is sad when a smart teen can find no reason to stay except that of social interaction. His remedy, the obvious one: "Get teachers who care about and interact with the students, rather than passive ones who give us busywork, and then test us on some book." (Of course, it defeats the purpose of hiring teachers who care about students if such teachers can so easily be targeted by a few with a grudge and then harassed by Administration.) Another former TN student had similar remarks on the classroom situation and the emphasis on "regurgitating information," but saw the CHSPE more as a means to escape the social environment of high school. "I was self-conscious," he told me, "like I was always being judged. It seemed like appearance was magnified, and everything was superficial." This student is enrolled at City College of San Francisco and also doing well, but what a waste when he could be a senior at Terra Nova, sitting in Government right now, trying to find Waldo. Too bad he gets to spend his time in a real classroom, left to look for the beanie-clad wanderer on his own time. The CHSPE is designed to test a student's comprehension of the material learned in high school up to the second semester of his senior year. However, those students with whom I spoke passed the test in either their sophomore or junior years, and report that it was, to quote one of them, "extremely easy." Another remarked that he "knew a guy who was drunk when he took it, but he passed anyway." The fact that the young and the inebriated can pass the test so easily only shows how low the State's expectations are of the latter-years of high school. Why am I forced to remain here, twiddling my thumbs and listening to my Walkman, when I can be in a better learning environment? Because the California Ed. Code says so, and TN is offering no way to circumvent the drudgery of mandatory education. An obvious solution would be to abandon the flawed rotating schedule. Yes, it breaks up our monotony, but it has several drawbacks. Revamping the schedule would make it possible for a student to take mandatory Government, Econ, and Math classes in the morning and spend the rest of the day somewhere like Skyline, taking more upper-level courses and starting one's college education rather than traipsing around a dismal high-school and working as a T.A. or Office Aid for three hours a day, a perfect portrait of time being wasted here at TN. If I have to be here to complete a few required classes, at least let me leave mid-day so I can go do something worthwhile. Another possibility is to make it easier to graduate in three years instead of four. Imagine being able to take government and econ, currently the only truly required Senior-year classes, one year early. Allow students to do what's necessary and then move on with the next phase of their lives. If all of the general education could be completed within three years, people like the above interviewees wouldn't have had to take a ridiculous test (one that a drunk can pass, I might add) and would not have to contend with being dubbed "dropouts." Instead, the students could get the education they deserve and are often unable to find here at Terra Nova. Lately, in my government class, the only thing I have been able to find has been Waldo. Nothing against the little guy, but I'd much prefer an education. Questions or comments on this article: write to TPaineTN@yahoo.com	Archive Back Issues Why? Cartoons Poetry Random Rants Disclaimers Losers and Kudos of the Week Letters to the Editor Editor's Notes Picture of the Week
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Thomas Paine

Every single day, I hear students in the classrooms and corridors of Terra Nova lament that "I'm never going to need to know this stuff outside of school. This is such a waste of time!" One might respond that these students are simply whining and should get over it. However, I'd like to set the record straight and join the dirge of the masses. While sitting in my government class, perhaps the most pointless hour of my day, I had an epiphany. Surrounded by bright students either mindlessly completing or inattentively copying irrelevant busywork, I realized that, were that class not necessary for graduation, there would be absolutely no reason for me to attend. I admit it: I actually like school when I'm being taught, but when, after a five-minute discursive sermon, a teacher hands out a ditto and abandons the class, I can't help but join in the hymn of the masses: "This is a waste of my fucking time." No wonder smart people drop out of high school!

I know several brilliant, thoughtful people who have recently left the drudgery that is high school, opting instead to take the California High School Proficiency Exam (CHSPE), which allows students under the age of 18 to legally leave high school with the prospect of admittance into one of many private, four-year, or junior colleges. I used to wonder why they would abandon high school, but now I understand: Terra Nova has failed, and continues to fail, some of its smartest kids.

So just how did our school lose some of the brightest students to walk its hallways? "I don't see what I'm working for," said one current TN junior who recently passed the CHSPE, "[The work] doesn't lead anywhere for me." Just one of the many people to leave TN because it provides students with little applicable knowledge, this pupil expressed his frustration that there is "nothing to show for [the work] except a diploma, which is replaceable by something faster and easier to obtain." And who can disagree with him? How many students out there, sitting in a class with an inept teacher, have felt the urge to run into the hallways, kick open the double doors, and yell "I'm out!" Were it not for the few intellectually stimulating classes I do have, I would have surely left, giving the school an uplifted middle finger on my way out the front door. It is a shame to see America's future crammed into small rooms with gratuitous worksheets before them and a teacher in the corner of the room reading email, talking football, or perusing the newspaper as his/her students cheat, play cards, and read Where's Waldo for lack of better options, for lack of stimulation.

"I felt that I had gotten all really could out of high school," remarks another CHSPE conqueror. Currently enrolled in a college and doing well, this student saw no compelling reason to stay at TN, except perhaps his friends. Friends are an important, but it is sad when a smart teen can find no reason to stay except that of social interaction. His remedy, the obvious one: "Get teachers who care about and interact with the students, rather than passive ones who give us busywork, and then test us on some book." (Of course, it defeats the purpose of hiring teachers who care about students if such teachers can so easily be targeted by a few with a grudge and then harassed by Administration.)

Another former TN student had similar remarks on the classroom situation and the emphasis on "regurgitating information," but saw the CHSPE more as a means to escape the social environment of high school. "I was self-conscious," he told me, "like I was always being judged. It seemed like appearance was magnified, and everything was superficial." This student is enrolled at City College of San Francisco and also doing well, but what a waste when he could be a senior at Terra Nova, sitting in Government right now, trying to find Waldo. Too bad he gets to spend his time in a real classroom, left to look for the beanie-clad wanderer on his own time.

The CHSPE is designed to test a student's comprehension of the material learned in high school up to the second semester of his senior year. However, those students with whom I spoke passed the test in either their sophomore or junior years, and report that it was, to quote one of them, "extremely easy." Another remarked that he "knew a guy who was drunk when he took it, but he passed anyway." The fact that the young and the inebriated can pass the test so easily only shows how low the State's expectations are of the latter-years of high school. Why am I forced to remain here, twiddling my thumbs and listening to my Walkman, when I can be in a better learning environment? Because the California Ed. Code says so, and TN is offering no way to circumvent the drudgery of mandatory education.

An obvious solution would be to abandon the flawed rotating schedule. Yes, it breaks up our monotony, but it has several drawbacks. Revamping the schedule would make it possible for a student to take mandatory Government, Econ, and Math classes in the morning and spend the rest of the day somewhere like Skyline, taking more upper-level courses and starting one's college education rather than traipsing around a dismal high-school and working as a T.A. or Office Aid for three hours a day, a perfect portrait of time being wasted here at TN. If I have to be here to complete a few required classes, at least let me leave mid-day so I can go do something worthwhile.

Another possibility is to make it easier to graduate in three years instead of four. Imagine being able to take government and econ, currently the only truly required Senior-year classes, one year early. Allow students to do what's necessary and then move on with the next phase of their lives. If all of the general education could be completed within three years, people like the above interviewees wouldn't have had to take a ridiculous test (one that a drunk can pass, I might add) and would not have to contend with being dubbed "dropouts." Instead, the students could get the education they deserve and are often unable to find here at Terra Nova. Lately, in my government class, the only thing I have been able to find has been Waldo. Nothing against the little guy, but I'd much prefer an education.

Questions or comments on this article: write to TPaineTN@yahoo.com