The required subjects for public schools need to be reworked.

1) The four main fields"however the things addressed in the courses aren’t always useful in real life situations"This is entirely just a perspective because what one may see as useful another may see as pointless. " but instead of having a week long lesson on how to calculate the nth term of a sequence, we could learn – as I mentioned previously – how to do taxes and balance check books"Calculating the nth term of an equation is helpful to people in certain professions. If we start cutting material that the Pro thinks is useless and replace it with material he thinks should be there then this becomes a balancing act according to the Pro's idea of what schools should teach. However schools are meant to teach the things that parents cant teach, and parents are way better off taking 15 minutes out of their day to show kids how to write a check then trying to teach how to calculate the nth term. Its easier for schools to teach the nth term and parents to show how to write a check than if it was the other way around. "learning rhetorical strategies isn’t really something one would exercise in the real world."Its something YOU might not use but the same cant be said for EVERYONE else. "Yes, you’d be able to see what “tricks” were being used by the media to try to coerce, but it’s very unlikely that you’re going to have to explain the literary devices used in your performance review"Learning to use rhetoric though helps people become better speakers, helps people give speeches to advocate for a cause, turn on a political debate and someone is using rhetoric somewhere. All these things have very broad applications. "Of course bakers need math, but even my pre-calculus teacher admitted that there is no real application of logarithms in any math or science field"Well I hate to say it but your math teacher is a liar.... Logarithms are used all the time when calculating probability statistics, the entropy of chemical reactions, its used in engineering to measure curves too. Anybody who has observed a population growth chart of the world has observed a logarithmic function... and you also need to know how logs work for other fields of more complex math...."But the school year is short, & perhaps instead of making kids – that, mind you, aren’t interested in politics – take government as a separate class, it could be addressed in history courses."The School year in the US is one of the longest ones in the world, its number 15 out of close to 200 countries.http://www.northjersey.com...Also you cant just mash government and history into one category because they are two very extensive subjects. US history goes back much further than US government to begin with and mashing them together would cause students to lose information about both. Then later in life if they do decide to take an interest in politics they are now falling back on unreliable information.....Its still making kids decide what they are interested in. There is a time to cater to those interests and a time to teach them what they, and everyone else, should know about. History and government though are not one of those things that should be an option, it is something that all Americans should know about since it is our history and our government. 2) Schools teaching or Parents teaching"Schools can only teach children so much because... they kill so much time on unnecessary stuff"According to your opinion. " I love my parents, but having a professional to tell me how to do something is much more reliable."Parents arent brain dead though, they know how to write checks and do taxes and they would be equally reliable to teach these concepts"Knowing where the bone is isn’t as helpful as being able to mend it until help arrives."Unless your a doctor, nurse, surgeon, pediatrician, or anything actually in the medical field.... Also just because it isnt as helpful doesnt necessarily make it completely useless either. " because there are a lot more areas that can be covered."There will always be more areas that can be covered but schools have to choose what can be taught and then prioritize what should get the most attention. We cant live in a Socratic-like system where all is taught for everyone there are time limits and requirements and limits. School years limit what can be taught so schools have to choose which material can serve more value later in life. Some people may not agree with its taught and would prioritize information differently, but we are all different and all of our opinions are merely that.... Opinions 3) Electives"Also, running a mile in 8 minutes was a grade in my class. So I don’t even vaguely understand how one would take an online physical education course."http://www.caronefitness.com...^ Its online now. No idea how it works but you can say bye-bye to 8 minute miles because i never had to deal with it, and others didnt have to either. " but when you get put in a situation where you have to translate you’d have a slightly better understanding that a child that watches Dora the Explorer"Wait a minute now, schools teach languages well but just because the two of us came out without learning much that doesnt mean we should blame the system, the blame should go on us!The same courses that teaches Spanish allow some to become fluent in Spanish, and then there are others like me and the Pro who didnt learn much. But thats not the system's fault, its the students because there are still students who learned fluent Spanish as a result of these classes which shows that they do work. Electives can be effective, but just because they arent effective for everyone doesnt mean that its the course's fault, that lies with the students who didnt learn anything while others did. "If you can get an A just for effort, what’s the point in taking the class?"It helps you find your interests in different subjects without putting too much stress on you and your abilities to determine what grade you get. "cosine, sine, & tangent and laws of motion – are too specific while some – logarithms and rhetorical analyses – are essentially unhelpful."Cos, Sin, and Tan apply to many other mathematical concepts, logarithms do to, and rhetorical analysis does serve a purpose. In your OPINION it may not but your opinion doesnt reflect how EVERYBODY feels about this nor does it reflect how important all of these things are. "If you can’t use it in real life or it isn’t something you like to do, then why should you need it take it? "Because we cant predict what will serve us in the future nor can we predict what we will become interested in in the future, and schools know this. The point of school is to give us a basic understanding of many things, and then allow us to build on those basics with material that we find appealing. "School would be much more enjoyable and constructive if the subjects students are required to take to graduate were reworked."School isnt meant to be daycare, its meant to teach us things we need to function in a basic society, and the only way they can do that is if they give us the basic understanding of different things in the world. However schools dont have unlimited material to work into curriculum's, time is a factor. Since time is a factor, so is the material that is taught, and they choose what should be taught. We may not agree with it, but we are human, everyone has their own conflicting opinions and those opinions shouldnt determine how schools are run because as far as any of us are concerned we would turn school into a giant Laser Tag arena....Schools teach material great despite the budget and time limits. If students dont always succeed, then some of the blame lies with the students, its not all the schools fault that all of us didnt turn out perfect because where we struggled, others flourished. The system works, sometimes WE are the ones who dont....