American children continue to fall behind in education

[CodeZTM]

btw Code...have you thought about where you're going to school yet?

Yah. A local university (Arkansas Tech University) in my hometown. Getting some sort of degree there, then move out of state for either further education or to get a job. I'm wanting to move to either Atlanta, Georgia or to some other city similar to that. (hopefully)

And I will be quite honest. I have no idea what I am going to major in. That's why I'm such and avocate for choosing classes based on careers. This way, I would have been able to decide what kind of profession I believe I couldn't do. I've been bouncing back and forth from Education to Law to Pharmacy (after sorting through dozens of possible majors). But I've got a lot of people trying to pressure me here (in both school and home) to take the Law path. I just don't know what I want, and that bugs the crap out of me. X_X

I don't know, there is a reverse side to that - often being able to choose wrong in high school saves one headache in college.

I agree fully. I've learned that I will never be a doctor by my pitiful performance in Human Anatomy and Biology classes taken in 10th and 12th grade respectively. I was really going down that road for a while too. But then I realized how much I hated anatomy and biology, which helped me pinpoint closer to my direction.

That was the day I was sure government mandated education had failed.

Agreed. Similar expierence happened to me in my Junior year of high school. I was trying to take both the ACT and SAT, and I had my paperwork filled out. I brought it to my counselor to get him to give me our school's code. He basically flat out told me that I would fail the SAT, and that I should stick to the ACT (since the ACT is the only test our colleges require in Arkansas). Regardless to say, I was pissed.

In middle school I learned more of what I learned in Elementary, how to fake doing homework at the last minute...

Middle school, for me, was useless. We basically did the exact same thing every year for four years. We had one hour dedicated to doing some sort of volunteer work for the school. So I worked in the library. I still, to this day, find that I learned more from working/reading in that library than I did in any of those useless classes in MS.

[requiett]

I blame AMVs. Just look at how much time you dumbasses spent debating the issue. Not to mention the time you spend "editing."