The American School System is a Piece of Shit.

    Let me start this off by pointing out that America last year scored 46th in the world in the International Baccalaureate rankings. Last year the average SAT score was a 1509. That's a 63% on the test the school system is giving itself to make sure things are working. So the school system here gives itself a D, by its own standards. This is me trying to explain why that might be.

    Lets start of with a mistake that I just made. The A, B, C, D, F grading system. The idea behind this scale is C is 'average', above this indicates that the student is excelling and needs no further help, but a below 'average' indicates that the student should receive additional help, because clearly they are not understanding the subject matter. This translates into a GPA, which in itself is utter nonsense, but I'll get to that later. Now all students strive to achieve A's, and teachers give most of their points on 'participation'. Which in many cases is 'you show up to class you get 100% on participation'. Teachers are giving students the grade that should be used to indicate exemplary understanding for simply showing up to class on a regular basis. Of course, this does mean that students fail if they do not show up, but are teachers really trying to award students for an exemplary understanding of showing up to class on time?

    Well no. Because the other thing teachers have resorted to now is using a similar approach for homework. If you have attempted each question on some homework, you will receive full credit. The score supposedly reserved for exemplary understanding is being given out for simply giving it 'a jolly good shot'. Students could guess and achieve this A. Students who do actually possess this exemplary understanding of the subject score the same as the ones who have no idea what they are doing, and just scribbled some dates in the boxes before class. Eventually, it reaches the point where it is conceivable that all students who do know the material   cease to bother, because it is not worth their time to put the work in when they can achieve the exact same score by writing random dates.

    All this eventually just means that all students are doing no work, and all scoring the 'exemplary understanding' points, for doing diddly-shit. So, what happens when it comes time to take a test? Well. No one has any idea what they are meant to be doing, because they were all writing random numbers and achieving an exemplary understanding of showing up to class. This is most likely the cause of America's abysmal academic performance when compared to the rest of the world.

   Now at this point, I assume there will be much protest along the lines of "Ahha! But schools offer more challenging classes! So we're not all stupid!". In response to this, I would like to raise the epitome of this horrifically flawed system, the Grade Point Average. GPA. The bane of high school existence. If students take these higher level classes, then they are no longer graded on being able to show up and guess the answers. Their grade will suffer. They might only score a 'B' <gasp>, or worse, be 'Average' for their higher level class. This may sound like it means nothing, because it shouldn't, right?

Wrong.

    Consider a student took harder math and science classes throughout high school. They scored a C in all of them, due to the harder level. If they took 6 classes per year and 2 out of these were math or sciences, assuming they scored the A for showing up in the other 4, their GPA is a 3.333. Compare that to that of a student who simply took the easy A. One has a 4.0, the other has a 3.333. Just from that, most Collages would automatically assume that the 4.0 student is a better student, because they should possess an exemplary understanding in all subject areas that they took the classes in.

     I know of high school students with a 3.9 GPA, taking all higher level classes. And when it comes to it, those are the ones who will do better in life. So why does the school system punish this by giving it a lower 'score' that the students who took all easy classes and aced them, simply by showing up?

Yeah. I don't understand either.