Should all students have the opportunity to be exempt from finals?
Students should not have to take finals if they have a 90% average in the course
by Taylor Pattison
News Editor
The Brown and White
November 22, 2019
“What’s the point of this? I’m not going to use it.” It is a statement uttered by students of all ages in multiple classes. Before we scrutinize these students for being lazy, let’s actually think about this for a second. There are rules at the state and district level that require students to take certain classes to graduate. While this may be meant to give students a good foundation and improve their study skills, the very real problem it causes is students that know what they want to do after high school lose heart in classes they know they don’t need.
Whether the class is a requirement, no matter what, or the student needs credits so they were thrown into a class, it is a struggle to stay motivated. According to Forbes, up to 40 percent of high school students will lose motivation at some point in their schooling. The culprit for this is lack of arousing content. Students do not see the need for what they are being taught so they stop trying.
How do we fix this problem? For starters, high schools should end the general education courses for the most part at the end of sophomore year. Heading into junior year, students could start to take courses that align more with what they want to pursue. For example, if a student wants to head into the medical field, he or she would start to prepare in high school with a heavy course load in the sciences. Anatomy and physiology as well as biology would be required, and more introductory medical courses would progressively be available to take in the later semesters of high school.
A student wanting to head into the engineering field would have the opportunity to fill most of their schedule with math and mechanical sciences, including advanced math classes as well as physics.
Offering more specific courses would give students not only introductions to their career path but the ability to affirm it is what they want to pursue before spending money at college for it.We need to stop pigeonholing students into areas that may not be environments that they thrive in and offer them the ability to find their niche.
Students should have to take finals no matter what to prepare them for college/careers
by Sarah Yanderasitz
Features Editor
The Brown and White
November 22, 2019
How many 15-year-olds have a sense of what they want to do right now? Most high schoolers have no idea what they want to do for a career choice. Many go into college, considered an adult, and end up changing their major several times. It would seem like a good idea to give people career-oriented classes, however it will most likely only stick them with classes that are vaguely related to what they will potentially pursue as a career.
It is impossible to have enough career-oriented classes in addition to the state required curriculum to be truly beneficial. Students would be left to pick a career path they want to start exploring before they’re even old enough to drive. High school needs to broadly cover as many topics as possible to give a student a strong foundation.
Classes that teach life skills in various subject areas are more beneficial to everyone. The career path should be left to colleges or trade schools after students are given the tools to function in the real world.
Having career-oriented classes would require a lot of resources many schools cannot get. Teachers would need to be able to teach classes with a much more specific skill set, and multiple courses at that. Small schools like Catty struggle to provide diverse course offerings due to scheduling
conflicts and lower numbers. Adding more classes would require more resources and teachers, which some already struggle to have in high schools.
If schools did provide career-oriented classes, students would be pressured to have their life planned out and career solidified while in high school and might be even more susceptible to failure. The likelihood of gaps in a student’s education if they do pick a certain career path and decide to change it later on could be likely and very detrimental when starting college.
Having general education classes and electives are the basics to a high school education. Most electives have some career-oriented background that can show a student what areas they excel at. It is much more beneficial for students to keep high school courses the same.