School

Recently I was forced by my mum (and more importantly the school) to attend two pointless events. And while sitting there waiting for pointless events to finish (for the record they were a year 10 graduation and a awards day) I started to finalise and perfect the following arguments. So read on and enjoy.

During the Graduation thing our beloved dicta-I mean principle Mr.Whelan made several comments about how the school community helps to form young innocent students identity. And how this was the reason we should continue to make efforts to bind us yet tighter together. Let me tell you some stuff about the school community 70 percent of it you will never talk to. Of the 30 percent you do talk to (this is student body only by the way) 20 percent you will have nothing in common with and will dislike in varying degrees. Of the 10 percent whom are left, you will be freinds with a varying amount relating directly to how social you are. So if 90 percent of the school community will either have no impact on you or will have a negative impact on you, what does that say about how the school communtiy affects you? (true this is discounting teachers but the rate of good to bad teachers is probably about 50/50 meaning they contribute nothing.)

And in reality which comunities affect a student? Family, freinds (Hey look thats the percentage of the school community you actually care about already) then most people would have a sporting club or a church group or a socialist group (Hi Hannah) or something that they would rate higher than the school community. So shool is already coming fourth right off the bat.

Also he said something about how we should hold onto tradition...even if that tradition is burning children at the full moon (So what Mr. Whelan does in his spare time)

Now awards day...Don't get me wrong I am all for rewarding students who have done well in schoolwork (I think less of rewarding students who can run faster than others but we will get to that later) but what worries me is how little difference there is in effort vs. skill.

Picture this; A year 8, not particularly academic in the traditional sense, decides that he is enjoying his english class. Right he thinks I'm going to actually do all the work and try as hard as I can just to see what I can do. Following this up he gets B's across the board. Not a shabby result by anyones standards. Now a more naturaly skilled english student does what he normaly does and gets (out of 4 marks) a A+, two B's and a C+. He put no effort in whatsoever. Of course the natural english student gets an award at awards day and the kid who actually put the effort in gets nothing. Right he thinks I'm never doing that again.

Do you see how unbalanced it is? By having a awards day it forces the organisers to have only a small number of awards actually presented. If instead you sent out the awards (along with the reports) in the mail, what changes? The awards would still mean the same thing to those who it means something to, Likewise it would still mean nothing to those it means nothing to. All that would change is the number of people you could give awards too. And the variety of awards presented. There was a literacy and numeracy award for years 7, 8, 9 but not 10. Their was an award for doing well in year 11 english but no other subjects.

Finally and this complaint is a bit out of date but the school regularly forces us to compete in various sporting activities. What results is a person who doesn't care competing against other people who don't care exept for the one person who is actually good at sport who sweeps the awards for everything. You know what the whole thing is pointless. The people who don't care could very easily not go. and as for the people who are genuinly good at sport they could be elsewhere competing against other people eho care and are good at sport instead of producing meaningless victories over fat or overly skinny unfit youths who arn't trying anyway.

Thats my grain of salt. I might post my warhammer army list here later for the extremely small group that are interested in the extremely small group who actually read this.