Everyone who goes or went to the school to study surely have complaints! Like, the school management or cleanliness, teachers or their teaching ways or some other things...? Mention your thoughts about the things you think could be made better in schools. Anyone? ^-^
Administration not being completely full of themselves. At my school, all they cared about were AP students and football (I'm pretty sure that that's the same everywhere) but if you weren't either of the two, then you were nothing to them. They kept touting how many AP students they had straight to the kids that didn't take AP. They made promises they couldn't keep and scolded the students for not coming to a fundraiser.
Last time I checked my mom had a load of problems with how schools work. But I dunno. How should I? I'm Mr. Homeschooled.
My main gripe with schools is how they teach certain subjects. I have a rather unique perspective on why I think this, so I'll explain. When I was going through university, part of my education was to learn business statistics. I had an instructor who broke down the subject material pretty well, and kept things pretty basic yet sufficient. I learned from him, and I did very well in the class. In fact I did so well that my campus wanted to hire me as a tutor for students taking that class. I accepted! That was my (paid) job for the next 3 years. Because of my position as a tutor, I essentially got to re-learn the subject, because I would view it from other students' perspectives. I see how they learned and found the way to explain it best. It was pretty rewarding because it also deepened my knowledge of the subject. Simple, right? About a year later, the university changed the curriculum for that course. It still had the same basic stuff, but it was given more layers of work, which made it unnecessarily more complicated. My old professor was still teaching for the course, and it gave us both headaches to try and teach for this. It slowly got better, but that was not a pleasant time, seeing the curriculum just made more complicated for no good reason. I've met students through that who want nothing to do with statistics again - even some people who do like math. So where I'm going with this is that I don't always like how things are taught. How I think about such things doesn't match how other people may think about it, but teaching a subject is something I take pretty seriously - especially if it's math-based, because I know I'm good at that. Tutoring people and sharing my knowledge is something I enjoy, and it does bother me if I have to get people to 'un-learn' things just to understand it better (because I shouldn't have to do that, if the subject material was conveyed well enough).
Substitutes for certain subjects should have at least least some knowledge on them, like Calculus or Chemistry. Otherwise it's a wasted day of them just giving you a worksheet and expecting you to understand the material without a true lecture prior.
At my high school, sexual harassment was never dealt with and if it was a guy then it was considered boys will be boys. They never served real food, we had a full kitchen and culinary, and they served microwavable foods and things that were rotten.
Bullying should be dealt with more severely, no more punishing the victim. If someone bullies other people they should be suspended.
In my school, teachers give lots of homeworks! We have to prepare notes by ourselves for 3 subjects and also keep our notebooks complete. Also, science teacher says that whatever she explains from the text book, we have to write it all in our notebooks as our homework. Only 2/10 times she gives us some less work to write. But other times, we have to write everything and also draw diagrams! Maths teacher says that whatever he makes us write in our notebooks during the lecture, we have to write it all in one seperate book as our homework! Come on teachers, we are humans! Not robots or machines!!
~ Cafeteria care. One thing that drives me bananas. I'm not a germophobe necessarily, but I do not like getting dirty, and the cafeteria in my school is filthy all. the. time. You see, sixth, seventh, and eighth graders have lunch one after the other. As an eighth grader, I now have to deal with the messes that both the sixth and seventh graders leave behind. If people do clean the lunch tables at all - which they usually don't - they literally just swipe a wet rag across it, making it filthy and dripping wet. Nobody even sweeps until all three grades are done eating, meaning that sometimes I have to navigate the lunchroom on my tippy-toes and rest my backpack on the bench beside me or even on my lap if I'm desperate. If they could just have a more thorough cleaning after each period I'd be happy. ~ On the lunchroom note, our lunch monitor simply loves to say "The sixth and seventh graders did a great job with this cafeteria today, hope you can keep it that way!" when the cafeteria is overflowing with trash and filth. In seventh grade, they scolded us for food and trash left by sixth graders before we even arrived. Again, cleanliness. And please, use your eyes, heighten your expectations, because that place is gross. ~ Avoiding a long explanation as best I can, my school admits students by "talents." People can try out to the school with up to two talents, either through audition or a test. Anyway, one of these talents is Dance. One of our vice principals has a daughter in dance talent. Consequently, they are heavily favored. You can see this through any teacher, actually. For example, my brother's science teacher (who used to be mine) is completely prejudiced against athletics talents. Athletics students have submitted homework to her that followed her requirements perfectly, that she then returned and told them to redo. You see both negative and positive prejudice with almost every teacher and almost every talent. It's horrible.
Your school is Danganronpa!? Though, you did give an exact reason as to why trying to recruit people on skills is a terrible idea, because it's an environment that breeds bias and favouritism (and then some). I feel sympathy towards you that you end up in such an environment, and all those around you as well - it's just so strange; who would believe that's a good idea? Admitting people to a university based on a desired major program is one thing, but that's just expressing interest and they teach you the skills internally. This is quite another, where there are already expectations of you from the get-go, and you'll see factions start to rise up. Any way you think they could possibly change the admissions requirements? Or do you feel like they're too dead-set?
I agree, though it's a good opportunity for a lot of people, because it really is a good program as far as the education of each talent goes (as a Creative Writing Talent student I've definitely grown a lot in my writing ability - more than I would have in a more "normal" school, in any case). And programs like Athletics and Creative Writing definitely offer opportunities that people wouldn't find elsewhere (or, not at that grade level, anyway). And that's why the school was founded; the idea of a well-rounded environment with extensive study on a topic that appeals to you really is a good idea. But it did lead to complications. They're certainly too dead-set to change by now, the school was basically founded on the idea of talents and I doubt they'll ever change that. Overall, the idea does really well, though, at least academically. Socially, though, there are definitely complications.
Cleanliness, especially in my high school, was the biggest issue ever. They had trailers shut down for mold, and it was over run with cockroaches. I swear the cockroaches were students too. Also the thinking that if you aren't in a AP class you aren't considered smart. Teachers would treat you like you were a little kid if you weren't in an AP class because apparently that means you're too incompetent to use higher level thinking.
Oh, good, everyone's schools serve awful food. That's... comforting to know. Children all across the country/world are being fueled with empty calories and a lack of nutrition. My other complaint besides that was forcing students to take certain categories of classes. I understand and appreciate that the State wants to encourage diverse skillsets: learn languages and technical skills and music and art and all that, but some people just can't do some things and their time is better devoted elsewhere. I wasted (yes, wasted) two semesters of high school in basic art classes being forced to do, well basic art for fine art credit. I have absolutely no capacity for making visual art, particularly by hand, and do not want that capacity. It enriched my life not at all, though I'm sure it added so much enjoyment to the lives of other students. Same with foreign languages: I took 2-3 semesters of four non-English languages in high school and loved it and learned much, but had friends whose brains simply are not wired for bilinguality and who just want to repair HVAC units and don't need to talk to anybody in my very mono-linguistic part of the country. Their two semesters of foreign language classes were wasted time that could have been spent taking another shop class or something for small business management, i.e. something useful to them. What I'm saying is it's great that the schools encourage these things, but forcing them as requirements to graduate leads to a lot of wasted potential spending classtime in individually useless skills compared to focusing on inborn strengths.
Another thing I want to add in my school is that the school arrange more one-day picnics every year. There's only one picnic each year in my school and I want more picnics. And the most important thing, the picnic fees per person HAS to be less!! Please!
I nearly got suspended once for fighting. To clarify, I was BREAKING UP a fight. My teacher stood up for me though and thanked me for being the only one to do something aside from the people who were just standing in a circle shouting "fight! fight! fight!" The other kids tried to pull me away to keep me from breaking it up too and for some reason they didn't get in trouble. My school had this rule that if you get involved in a fight, you get suspended. Even if you're not defending yourself, if you get involved in any way it's your fault somehow. My school didn't care very much about the art department either. It really withered down in the time I was there and I had 3 teachers in the time I took my introduction, advanced portfolio, and two years of AP. We had 3 teachers for ceramics in that time too and we could almost never afford materials. The last art teacher I had in the final year of AP was the best. She brought in supplies from home all the time. Oh one thing that just didn't seem right to me was that the wrestling team would use chewing tobacco and leave it in the locker rooms afterwards. It was disgusting, the teachers were fully aware of it, and they called the school "tobacco free" and had signs up claiming as much all over the place. I don't really have any complaints about college, except that faculty administrators should keeps a closer eye on and have more power over the student government. They ended up swindling the roleplaying club I was in out of like $7,000, I think it was actually more than that, and then used it and money they took from other organizations to pay themselves. That and for at least a year they had a president who was studying abroad which actually isn't allowed. If an organization president leaves for any reason they're supposed to have someone else take their place.
Ah, yes. More complaints. ~ Kindergarteners are not graduates. Fifth graders are not graduates or seniors. Eighth graders are not graduates or seniors. The fifth grade dance is not a "prom." The eighth grade dance is not a "prom." I will not be a senior until I am seventeen and in twelfth grade. Quit pretending I am. ~ Because my school decides to label eighth graders as seniors, apparently we deserve all sorts of perks. We get special event days - senior dress-up day, twin day, whatever else we get - and none of the other grades do. We go to a dude ranch and Six Flags, and we get a dance at a famous pizza parlor that's apparently a highlight of the year. Sixth graders get one grade-wide trip a year - my class actually got two, but that was because we somehow got our hands on Matilda: The Musical tickets. Seventh graders don't even get a trip. We got a barbecue at the end of the year - which, admittedly, wasn't as bad as I expected - and that was it. I'm not complaining that we got too little, as, as much as I love trips and events, they take away from the point of school, I'm complaining that eighth graders get too much. It's really not fair; they're making up a reason, heaping privileges on us, and letting the other grades cry in the dust. I wouldn't mind so much if we were actually seniors, and not thirteen-year-olds that they trussed up with a pretty pink ribbon. The kids in my school already think they're in high school, why encourage that?
It's been a long time since I've been in school so I don't know if these things are taught now but it always irked me that there weren't more practical courses offered (especially in high school where I could choose my own classes as long as I also had my required courses - 3 credits of math, 3 credits of English/literature, 3 credits of science, 3 credits of history, etc.) Nothing bothered me more after high school than not feeling confident writing resumes for both college and work. It was also a pain not to know how to file simple taxes or knowing who I should talk to in order to learn. I wish we were taught basic car lessons (other than driving) like what a car emergency kit should look like or how to change a flat tire. My favorite class was a self defense class that a gym teacher took it upon herself to prepare but when she left the school the course went with her.
I also would like to add more P.E. periods in the class schedule, please. I want P.E. periods atleast thrice a week.
