For The Sake Of "Knowledge"

It's been almost a year since my last post... Which means it's almost summer break again, woo! Actually, I'm very close to closing this school year, exactly one week away from finishing. And boy, a lot of shit happened in the past year didn't it? Our economy went belly up, we have our first black president, and I suddenly prefer Facebook over Myspace, and yet I still can't figure out Twitter all too much yet. >_>' But this rant isn't on any of those things, not yet at least. [Maybe when I have more time and actually remember I have a Blogger I'll do something else.] Instead, I'm dedicating this bit of cyberspace to grades.

I pretty much began to despise school just a little more every passing week until I was finally left with just too much shit to bear. =_= As my analogy of school goes: 8th grade was like your first time, a little painful and scary. Freshman year was all the in-between sex that rocked on hard, even if it was a bit awkward and you slept with a few sketchy people. And now this year was like the condom breaking... and you forgot to take the pill. Congratulations, you now have several painstaking "weeks" of peeing on a little strip and waiting to see if you have to prepare for bending over a toilet bowl every morning or if you have can drink all night until you're bending over, and I don't mean over a toilet. Well, that's pretty much the summary of my last three years at my school. Fucked, fun, and then fucked again. But this gave me some time to think, and I finally was able to pinpoint the root of evil [besides faulty condoms, money, and the your significant other]: Grades.

Now, some people are going to argue for and against this, and it's all up to you. Some people also think it's a necessity to go to church Sunday and pray in order to be closer to God and go to heaven or that beating dogs in the streets in front of their families is a necessity, and in the same sense some people will think that grades are a necessity. But I'm the rebel who'd rather play video games about killing zombies than go anywhere on Sundays, the one who would rather beat people in the streets in front of their dogs, and in the same sense I'm the one who'd rather go to school for the sake of learning. [/nerdrage] But I digress (kind of).

The point to the last paragraph was that I actually do want to learn something from school while others just mindlessly trot off to the place their parents pay so much money for to smoke pot and get kicked out. But honestly, it's been getting harder and harder for me to stick to my original purpose of attending this institute. Suddenly my teachers become extremely bad; their teaching strategies are more of a whimsical stone throw toward their subjects in the dark and my knowledge intake to daydream ratio is suddenly 1:25. Grades are suddenly where it's at. Before I could sit there, listen, learn, and my A's would just come naturally. But since all my teachers talk about are their dead husbands, their dogs, their daughters, and horses I'm subject to over 50 pages of reading a night on books that are meant to take up space and money rather than actually be read. :'> And honestly, I hate most textbook reading, why lie. And when it comes down to it, I still need the grade whether I like to read or not.

But isn't it strange that as the will to learn goes down, the drive for grades go up, and we're suddenly striving for letters rather than knowledge? My god, they're LETTERS. D: They're a series of lines in which we use to create words and learn to read and suddenly they're the only thing that will make us float or sink when it comes to college. Shouldn't we be tested on what we've learned throughout the whole year or semester or quarter so that schools know that we have retained our net knowledge rather than give us brownie points on if we did work, or if we spoke in class, or if we were able to cram 5 minutes on a chapter before a "test"? Personally, I think Asia's where it's at. They depend mostly on entrance exams rather than grades in order to get into college. In this sense, Asian students study so that they can get into college with their knowledge rather than to study in order to get a letter and then forget the material later. The American's education grading system is bullshit in my opinion.

Plus, subjective grading is almost as idiotic as teachers who hold their students to the standards of their Harvard-bound daughters. So if a teacher just doesn't like you because of how you look, how you talk, or what you say, they suddenly can bring your grade down a whole letter? Just because a student and teacher have an incident, the teacher can suddenly ruin the student's chances of a higher education? Is that what America is resorting to? To letting personal preferences get in the way of good work and a smart student's future? Thanks America, I salute you.

And if I sound grouchy and disjointed in this rant, it's because I'm just disjointed and grouchy right now. e.e' Finals are coming up and the American education system will once again take a shot in the dark and I have a feeling it's going to nail me in the temple. =_=' Anyway, all you smarties and... not-so-smarties go have fun in your little cocoon called school. Go smoke your doobies, slit your wrists, and study your asses off for a letter that your teacher may or may not have given you due to how your hair is arranged. <3