Should school be voluntary?

  • Thread starter etrian_warrior
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etrian_warrior

etrian_warrior

Now named "Popcorn" *gives popcorn*
Towns Folk
This may just be me, however, I feel that school should be voluntary, on the sole reason that school isn't always easy for everyone, especially people with anxiety and the like. It makes me think what if you could choose whether or not to attend certain subjects. For example, only taking Philosophy for a week and doing Math the entire next week and to graduate all together one would have to take an overall test in order to pass said grade. This could make school much more enjoyable for me personally but does anyone else agree.
 
School shouldn't be voluntary but it should be adjusted to those in need.
 
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Interesting, but I like to imagine that it shouldn't be frowned upon if you need a day away from everyone and that it should be fine as if attendance was never taken or there is no record of it. If you ask me school being mandatory in the sense that the world becomes much harder without attending adds a crud ton of anxiety on me and I see my friends see it the same way. I think school being voluntary could be more accommodating that way.
 
I agree with Livada.

If people decided to attend on the basis you said, showing up and only doing a specific class for one week, a different one the next, etc, the curriculum for the teachers would likely be a mess to plan. If they can't guarantee they'll have students, when do they put out tests and big projects? How would they enforce those if students can just opt out of attending? I think there's a good reason kids aren't given this much freedom to choose. Plus, there is truth to the whole, "teaching good attendance in school is important for work". If school was on this voluntary basis where kids could opt out of attending, that would make work all the more polarizing for them.

I understand what you're getting at, but it would be very easy for people to abuse the system and simply not show up consistently just to play games or do whatever else. That would then build bad habits for work. Plus I just imagine it would be a headache for teachers!
 
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That's fair. I like to imagine that trust like that could work however, that is a valid point. Even to contradict my original argument, I see that it could work but it would be a lot more expensive on top of the trust issue as more teachers would be needed. Alas, one cannot have everything, so, I guess that it is fair to say that although a nice idea. It isn't realistic for the society we live in, unfortuantely. Oh well, nothing is perfect. Accommodation can only go so far, I guess. Well, new perspective attained. Success!
 
I think it should be voluntary because not everyone is the same and most people hate math while others don't. There are a lot of people who have anxiety problems and also bullying occurs too many people get bullied in schools just for a subject. For example say one nerd is taking math then some other kid who isn't smart and always cheating his way to pass the class bothers the kid and then it could lead to a serious problem. Thats why I think it should be voluntary like summer school which is 2 weeks then it's done ,but also you will have to review for a test in order for the state to know that you're worthy of passing the class.
 
Well, not just that but then not only the anxiety from the course itself but then the anxious worry of dealing with the bullying makes everything worse there (been there), and that's what I assumed would happen to pass a grade. Everyone has needs even though some are addressed, not all are. On the idea of summer school also, if school was voluntary students could use the summer to get extra help or they could stay home and enjoy their summer. Failing rate could potentially decrease with extra face to face time with a teacher over the summer break. I can see this scenario now both working and not working, an interesting development.
 
I don't think primary or secondary school should be voluntary, but I think it should also be tailored to the needs of the student. I can understand teaching a student the basic core subjects -- science, math, history, PE/health, language arts -- through the middle/junior high school level, or even through the sophomore year of high school, but after that, I feel like it should be tailored more towards a student's interests. I can say that after my junior year of high school, I only needed two courses to graduate: English and government; everything else was optional because I had already met the credit requirements, so I was able to take other courses that sounded interesting and enjoy my senior year.

Unfortunately, I was also recommended and more or less forced to take other courses I wasn't really interested in. At the time, I was interested in going into graphic design, so I was recommended to take a class in desktop publishing, so I took that and keyboarding, which was the prerequisite to desktop publishing. I was okay with that because it at least put me down the right path (and I now have some sort of experience with it now). I went into AP Psychology because the teacher was pretty cool (ended up being an awful class though because the teacher ended up hating my class) and Spanish 5 also because I enjoyed the teacher and I had also been playing with the idea of going into foreign relations. (Ironically, now I'm a journalism major. xD) The one course I wish I didn't have to take but was more or less forced into taking was a "math" course in computer programming. (I put math in quotes because it wasn't really a math course at all; it was basically a class in Alice and a little bit of Java at the end, super simple course, easy A. My school counted it as a math class though.) I had finished my math requirements in my junior year and was happy to be done with math because I loathed the subject and started to do poorly in it after 5th grade. My counselor strongly recommended and more or less made me reluctantly agree to take the computer programming class as an extra "math" course so that I would look better to colleges. Of course, I ended up getting rejected from my first and only choice university, went to community college, and now I'm at the same school that rejected me as a senior in high school.

So yeah, I really think the high school courses should be more tailored to the student. If a student's interested in computer programming, let them take courses in that. If they want to go into foreign relations, let them take those courses. I don't like the idea of a student being forced to take meaningless math courses that they're going to do nothing with after a certain point in their lives. The student isn't remotely interested in it, and the teacher is forced to deal with an uninterested student and the student has to force themselves to be interested to pass the class.
 
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Yeah, I can see your point and that's a general conception we all seem to be having that regardless of what action could be taken not enough is being taken. I think that's critical, not that I am going to stage a sit-in/protest (yet), but as far as school goes, we are forced into choices we don't necessarily want and/or need to and when we reach out it seems as they shove us into some other closer alternative, seeing feigned contentment that for some reason we put with on the assumption that the outcome could be better. To what extent is it fair to put one through that though? How far is it that we have to reach, literally and metaphorically? I can never see how anyone is to make those choices for us when we have enough trouble making those types of decisions for ourselves. Hence why I thought what if school could be voluntary because then you the could make the choice rather than amble on the what if or pretending to be who you aren't. On that same note what's the breaking point? When is it finally enough that the student can't handle it? This to me seems more of minor assimilation in being moved and placed and someone else's will, without any consideration of what future we have planned. However, obviously the have a good intention don't get me wrong, but, like you said you took courses suggested to you on the logic of a goal you weren't necessarily aiming at even though it worked out for you. Either way something should be done about the way our school system be it become voluntary or more student empowered, at least in some sense.
 
  • #10
I think that it should remain mandatory, but maybe some more lenience on missing some school and things like that depending on where you live and how high your grades are and social situtation. Making school voluntary would be a really bad move because in the darker school districts, kids would be peer pressured to not go to school because none of their friends would go and it would not be fun for them. They would not see the future consequences because no enforcation of going to school, and their life would turn out badly. This is opposed to people in those district not wanting to go, but having to go anyway because of the law and eventually realizing they need to study and work hard.
 
  • #11
Kids who cause problems and obviously don't care in school nor want to be there, should not be forced to go, at the high school level. All they end up doing is disrupting other kids learning processes and environment, also putting administrators focuses on unimportant and tiresome paper-work just for one individual, not caring! If school was voluntary unintelligent kids would not go to school and would be illiterate for their whole lives and have horrible jobs with no intelligence. School should not be voluntary, because then you end up with a ton of dummies who are potentially dangerous for their lack of knowledge.
 
  • #12
School is also preparing people for the work force. You wear a uniform to school because there is a good chance you will be wearing one every day to work and you must attend school daily because in most jobs you will have to be there daily regardless of anxiety or bullying occuring. Beside that having voluntary schooling will make it harder on parents and teachers as said above and leave a less educated population overall.
 
  • #13
Also if you are interested in taking up a trade in aus you can go part time to school to keep up some form of education while doing work exp/trade training in year 11/12.
 
  • #14
School, and college really, should be mandatory and for must people essentially is mandatory. It is very difficult for most people to get jobs or contribute in society without a college education, and competition is ever-increasing. College education remains the greatest distinguishing between people at the entry-level of most jobs.
Leniency is not really a solution here. There are far too many negatives.
  • You don't push the students, something I believe is necessary for all students to actually contribute and excel. Admittedly there is probably too much pressure in the current system, but I don't really see many alternatives. You have to provide accolades and the likes to students who do well, and that naturally creates greater competition and is effectively punishment for those who don't succeed.
  • Providing students with only courses they think they like makes it so that they won't have an experience of the wide variety of subjects, which makes finding out which subject you enjoy or which fields you excel at very difficult, especially if this is done at the lower levels. College, and even high school to a good degree in the US, allow for this specialisation.
  • Further, the basic subjects - Physics, Chemistry, Math, Biology, History, Geography, English (or whatever your primary language is) - these subject must be taught not only because this basic information must be known by everyone but also because it is the best way to develop your core skills of logic, reasoning, creativity and the likes.
  • The scope for abuse of a voluntary system is enormous, kids would drop out like flies, leaving an uneducated population - which has historically and obviously been seen as a bad thing - with these kids having nothing to do and thus eventually causing disturbances in normal life. In fact, in my country it's hard enough to convince parents to send the children to school, and there are some areas with so low literacy rates that the area is essentially backwards. Making it voluntary makes the area that much worse.
  • Now I know this isn't much of a justification, but bullying and the social anxieties of school are things that will only get worse as you get older, and it's the school's job to teach children how to deal with these situations. People need to be able to deal with social situations in every job they work at. Being sheltered away from these things helps no one. As harsh as it sounds, students need to learn to cope with difficulties in life because they will keep coming.
This isn't to say that the school systems are perfect or anywhere close. The competition to get into colleges and the selection criteria are ridiculous. The amount of pressure placed on such young students is tremendous. Many many students burn out from the anxiety or worse. It's just that making school voluntary, or even more lenient isn't the answer in isolation. A restructuring of the entire system is needs, but how and where to start is the difficult question
 
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