I always do ♥♥♥♥ toward the beginning of the year, then pull my grades up toward the end. Last year my GPA was, like, 3.8x I think. My problem is that I never do homework at home; I did ALL my work during study hall, except for three posters that I had to do for a science class.

Well I hope to some extent that reading a book about a stupid whale is enriching to your reading skills, but still, at the grade level that you're required to read it, you should be a fairly accomplished reader. Although from my point of view reading is extremely easy, whereas others may not have the gift of fair literacy. I do have 20/20 vision, but I think that your intelligence taps into your literacy more over your vision. Who knows? (Probably you Azukki. Goddamn you're smart.)

If all you want to know is what you need to know for a career, you're intentionally making yourself ignorant. Seriously, think about the implications behind that. You'd essentially be a drone. That's a rather idiotic standpoint.

Now, I'm not saying the educational system necessarily creates thinkers; a lot of the time it depends on the students themselves. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink, yada-yada-yada. Of course, some horses might not know about the convenient watering hole, and only find out about it when someone leads them there.

Basically: Yeah, there are some natural geniuses who are curious enough to further their knowledge, learning for the sake of learning. Some people just don't want to learn. But some people are just powder kegs of raw potential, and it takes getting that one teacher or going through that one course to let them find their passion in learning. No two people will benefit in exactly the same way, either.

Educations is be important yo.

I was a gifted kid but I threw my grades out the window when my parents divorced. I also insulted and opposed the teachers at my school.

@Ragdoll
I see your point, yeah. MY point is that, yes, school teaches important subjects, but some of them (I.E. history) aren't as essential as other subjects where more people are likelier to apply for a job for. Learning about the holocaust is cool, but not as practical if you aren't going to be a historian. If you want to be a WWII historian, then you don't need to know too much about chemistry, and so on. I've always thought; hey, why don't we ask people what they want to be and put them in classes that would teach them what they need for their jobs? Of course, in our declining economy, that would cost lots of money, especially with all the budget cuts already in place.

Life would be a lot easier without money. That's a whole other argument though, so I won't dwell on that.

Shockingly enough, that's not really a novel concept. The educational systems of many European countries include early specialization, like at what would be the high school level. Especially common in socialist and ex-communist countries.

Honestly it's hearing things like that that make me glad I don't live in America, or any country that doesn't prioritise education - in both Australia and New Zealand you can direct your education through choosing electives, and the only mandatory ones to continue with are English to second last year and Maths to second last year in Australia, third last year in NZ (I think, specifics like that elude me because I did them all the way through).

-> Want to be an artist later and start working on your portfolio? Take art. Take visual design if you want to do that.
Want to be a scientist later? Take physics, chem or bio. Or all three.

If I'm mistaken in thinking you don't get flexibility in the US then please correct me.


I don't think so, it just needs to be more representative of work. Pure barter means you have to either be good at bargaining to get a good deal for anything you make or own, or a fixed numeric value has to be agreed upon - thus implementing "money" without having the convenience of legal tender. Money not existing in any form also means I wouldn't get paid - I get paid digitally for most of my work, and it's not like my clients can just paypal me food for the week.

Man I've ranted so much about school before. But in the end I think the best thing to do is bend over and take it in the bum. So much is useless and stupid and repetitive and wrong, but taking it in the bum is a good real life skill.

Well the way my school (and I'm sure most schools in the US) does things, is you need a certain number of credits from different subjects to graduate. So you need to take some PE classes, some Fine Arts classes, some Practical Arts classes, some Math classes, some Civics classes, and Bio, those are the required credits. But PE, there's Adventure Rec/Rock Climbing, basic PE, Weight Training, Nature Walking, etc., then for Fine Arts there's music, photography, drawing, digital art, music production. For Practical Arts we have a bunch of computer courses, shop courses, metalworking, etc., for Math we just have the math classes duh, Civics we have, like, religious studies or euoropean history or american history that sort of thing, and for Bio you can take, like, regular Bio or you can take a cooking course or you can take River Academy and stuff. So there's a pretty large degree of choice here at my highschool.

Geti, there is some flexibility among American high schools and classes, but only about a third or so of one's classes are electives, with the rest being requirements. Junior high schools have some amount of electives too. Or at least, that's how it is here.

I think the basic premise is that you can lean in the direction of learning what you want, but if it turns out you didn't really know what you wanted, you've still got a salvageable education that can be somewhat useful in any career path. I think that's fairly reasonable, since it is American adolescents they're dealing with.

Money:
Yes, you don't get paid. Buying a house with old bottles would be a problem. But think.
The reason our country is shitting itself is because of money. We're fighting a war, and a huge deal in that is money. Money is greed. You know why people are killed by the thousands daily, or having their possessions stolen? Money. You know why people starve to death, here in our own US? They can't afford food. You can't live without the green slips. So fundamentally retarded that the entire society of almost every country almost solely revolves around small pieces of cotton and zinc, or whatever you make it out of. Everything you own - everything - was paid for at one time or another. Even if you made it yourself, you made it out of something. Even if it came from a tree, it had to have been cut down by something, and that something had been bought at one time.
Money is EVERYTHING. It brings me back to my original point, you can't barter for a car with tree bark. The earth has grown into a highly advanced society of new inventions every day, but if we didn't have money, the 6 million dollar bit you need for your photon accelerator would be a lot harder to get.

Money is important, but you'll see it cuts both sides of the line.

I'll give you a healthy goat and two old chickens if you tell me what just prompted that.

Prompted what, my rant? If so;

Money isn't the problem you're trying to get at, you're trying to get at bad investing and bad money management. Money merely represents labor in a condensed and transferable form, where the reason most people can't get enough to eat or pay off their loan is because of the latter. Someone taught them bad investment strategies (most of this is due to advertising and peer pressure, at least in the US), or gave them a loan when they obviously could not even pay the interest (this is what caused the housing market crash iirc) or their skills were not needed in their region (in which case even in a barter-only society they would still not have work).

I will admit this is a gross simplification, but hopefully it's helpful in communicating the point stated in the first sentence.

I just skipped right over half a page, I guess.

Uhh, the chickens ate the goat, then died of old age, that's too bad.