A Direction-less Rant regarding High School
So that's the holidays over. My last school holidays. What did I do? I got a new phone. I wrote and published an Android app. I had several ideas for hardware that I have no way to act upon. Studied a bit. Went out for dinner with friends.
And tomorrow, school. Two weeks, then exams. Eight more weeks, then more exams. Then, university applications, freelance work, real life. My eighteenth birthday. University. Then what?
It's all happening so fast. The final year of school is designed to stress you out, I think. It's all laid back, then suddenly "Oh yeah, by the way, if you don't get above 90% in the finals this year you won't get into university".
That probably read as very self-righteous of me. Perhaps it is. But I think the schooling system could be done much better.
Here's the problem - in the NSW system, at least, literally nothing counts until the last year of school. Year 7 and 8 is an introduction, that's fine, I understand that. 9 and 10 is worthless. They end in pointless, easy exams that don't count. Year 11 is a practice for Year 12, and doesn't count for anything. Only Year 12 counts. I know that 7-11 give you necessary skills, but they could make it impact your mark in some way. Spreading everything out over all of high school has several advantages:
- It would get kids thinking about their future earlier.
- People like me would actually try because the decisions they make actually impact their future.
- It would reduce the stress of year 12.
I would support a change of this nature even though there's no way it could help my situation now. But it's OK. I'll be fine. I'll get into the course I want, and do the jobs I want. I'm an optimist, I just have this unshakable sense that somehow, everything's going to turn out alright.
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