PAA incredibly rough draft

How can education be more beneficial?

As a kid going to school always felt like such a waste of time. Every time you learn something the question would always come as “why do I need to know this and how will it help me in everyday life?” . It seemed like you only would learn things so that you could do them again when ever a test came. Why did we do test? How many times does an employer sit you down and ask you to write an essay on why Huckleberry Finn took his raft down the river and what are the themes of the book? I see no probable cause for why grown adults would do something like this. As a child though school is one of those necessary evils and the real question is why do need it and why is it the way it is?

I never went to a public high school, I went first to an experiential, outdoor based school and later a traveling high school. My graduating class was me and three other kids. I never had 'the public school experience'. I was never in the school the size of a small town. My class sizes were never more than 15 people. Is this better? I can't say that I am an expert on how to school a child. I did go to public school in middle and primary but these times do not seem as important. Important how? Important as they did not teach me how to be an adult, how to learn, and how to just been a general functioning member of society. To me that is what high school is all about. Why do I say this? I say it because it seems true. As much as we want to see it not all kids go to college. They don't all become doctors or lawyers or business executives. For a large majority kids do go to college and further their education but there are still many where education ends after high school. There are technical or trade schools where we can go and learn skills like how to be a mechanic but how many people go there? To me it seems as if high school serves no other purpose. You learn all of this generalized information and then you go somewhere else to learn one thing. Does a musician need to know who won the war of 1812? Does a poet need to know integral calculus? No they learn how to write or master their instrument. And what about the way schools just are? Kids sitting in a room, all the same age. To me school seems more like an assembly line, where as what it should be. School is a service industry, it needs to be tailored to the consumer. I went to a school that was. Why can't all be that way?

Matt Hill