The required subjects for public schools need to be reworked.

1) In response to: "however the things addressed in the courses aren’t always useful in real life situations"“what one may see as useful another may see as pointless.” That’s a very valid point, however much of what the system decides to teach is subjective to the members of the Board of Education. The ones to decide what 2500+ (reference to my school) highschoolers need to learn are very disconnected from the actual classes, meaning the courses and subjects they pick could extremely out of touch. If the class can’t be more individualized to specific groups of students, the subjects taught to the entire generation need to be looked at more closely.“then this becomes a balancing act according to the Pro's idea of what schools should teach.” I’m not indicating that I know exactly what the schools should be teaching, however –as someone in school– having my success based on things that I can’t actually use is extremely frustrating. Con is right in saying (multiple times) that the subjects in high school should broad, but that doesn’t explain why they toss random bits of very career specific subjects for a grade.“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.”I was merely making a suggestion to reiterate my point that there are important things that could be taught in schools instead of wasting time on things the majority of the populous won’t use. So not calculating to the nth term then, factoring binomials with variables to the umpteenth degree using Pascal’s triangle. I’m sure Con has an answer for that one, but still, how specific is it? In response to: "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. Learning to use rhetoric though helps people become better speakers… and someone is using rhetoric somewhere.” Actually, I plan to be an English major so I would be using them, but still can’t see why most people would. The point I’m trying to make is that learning what they are is different than learning how to properly use them. Just because someone can name off and define anastrophe, ethos, and parallelism, doesn’t mean they’ll can (or will need) to use them. Also, just for reference, we never learned rhetorical strategies in Communications Applications (Speech).“you also need to know how logs work for other fields of more complex math....” If that is true, in order for you to truly understand how to use them you’d have to take them in a college level (engineering) class. You’d basically have to learn them all over so that you don’t end up endangering yourself or others. “The School year in the US is one of the longest ones in the world”But middle school for our city was 8 periods and now high school is 7, plus whatever extra activities you have after school. Con’s link doesn’t address how many periods are in each schooling system, however it did mention that the US has one of the shortest school days, so how exactly does that balance out to 7 or more periods?“US history goes back much further than US government to begin with and mashing them together would cause students to lose information about both. “ As opposed to losing an entire semester to address something that could be explained more clearly in the context of a history class. “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.” American patriotic bias. We also have to take world (and state) history as well, so according to Con learning an extensive amount of history should be a requirement of living on planet earth… Quick, why was Nixon’s dog named Checkers?2) Schools teaching or Parents teachingIn response to: "Schools can only teach children so much because... they kill so much time on unnecessary stuff"“According to your opinion.”Logic says if you spend too much time watching TV, you won’t have as much time to do homework… And you’ll possibly fail. “Parents arent brain dead though, they know how to write checks and do taxes and they would be equally reliable to teach these concepts” Tax Masters exist for a reason, though.In response to: "Knowing where the bone is isn’t as helpful as being able to mend it"“Unless your [sic]… anything actually in the medical field.... Also just because it isnt as helpful doesnt necessarily make it completely useless either.” People in the medical field could do to learn first responder things early and I didn’t say it was otherwise useless, I’m just saying it could be better.“School years limit what can be taught so schools have to choose which material can serve more value later in life.“ Serve more value for the general populous, not just the people who want to be engineers or doctors. We have a limited amount of time to learn for “free” and wasting it on career specific material is, well… wasteful. 3) Electives“http://www.caronefitness.com...... Its [sic] online now. No idea how it works but you can.”I’m sorry to be improper here but ohhhhhhh. I get it. If you actually go through the website, you’ll see that it’s just the curriculum and tracking processes. The web site just makes it more PERSONALIZED to each student. That is actually a very nice idea. By the way, Con, there’s a running section, too. “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.” It’s not always the courses fault, but it’s not always the student’s fault either. I passed the classes with the lowest grade as an 87 without cheating because I worked, and yet I can’t truly enjoy the language yet. The classes, as well as the methods, need to be reviewed regularly in order for them to be successful.“Cos, Sin, and Tan apply to many other mathematical concepts, logarithms do to, and rhetorical analysis does serve a purpose.” They apply to MUCH more than logs do, but it’s still very career specific. And elaborate on how rhetorical analysis severs a purpose past making one hypersensitive towards advertizing ploys? “Because we cant predict what will serve us in the future nor can we predict what we will become interested [in] the future, and schools know this.”If Con is saying the schools know what will serve us in the future, then his argument is invalid because that’s spooky. But if he’s say that the schools know that we don’t know, then… what does it matter? If I hate a course as a young person it’s going to be engrained in me and it’ll take more than a year of taking it again to change my mind. Maybe I will at some point, but not because of high school. It’d be very easy for me to villanize myself in this argument as a social anarchist or an overzealous flower child or something, but I’m not going as far out as I could. I don’t think we should just stop going to school or anything like that, (the world is ailing as it is), but changing what we learn could have greater effects than Con is willing to look at. The world is bigger than engineers and doctors, but we don’t have time to teach all that. So why do we have time to teach the specifics but not the other, potentially more useful subjects like taxes and first aid? I’m not saying drop everything and show us how to write checks and mend shirts, but there are a lot of things that could be reexamined and redone that would work out better for the generation of coming adults. Reworking what is taught in school could advance society in ways that letting everything stay the same, as Con believes it should, could not. So with that, I conclude and urge you to vote Pro. Thank you.