Me: First reactions to school.
Brooklyn Tech Student: Boring and a lot of work.
Me: What you learn in school?
BTS: Whatever they teach?
Me: How are the information helpful?
BTS: Brings me to college.
Me: What are you going to learn in college?
BTS: Whatever I am majoring in.
Me: That's gonna help you get a job?
BTS: Yes yes.
Me: First reactions to school.
Baruch Student: Um... it's okay. Boring.
Me: What would you do if you did not have to go to school?
BS: I would have more time to hang out with my friends, sleep in.
Me: So what did you do during the break?
BS: Went to cousin's, went shopping, went to movies, did homework.
Me: You didn't hang out with friends?
BS: Yeah, I did.
Me: Now that vacation is coming to an end, how well did you spend your vacation?
BS: I don't know o_o
I started to ask her more about her vacation. She stayed home, on the computer, played video games, and watched drama. I wanted to know how well she spent her vacation so I asked if she wanted to respend a day during her vacation. She said after being finished with the dramas, "there wasn't much to do" for her. After drama, she started to do homework. She had wished that she went outside but since there was snow, she couldn't really go outside. In a circumstance in which there was no homework but it was snowing that day, she said she doesn't know what to do. She said that she would use her PC to check updates on dramas, chat on AIM, and check her email. If her neighbors had been home, she would have played board games with them. She also mentioned that she would catch up on her sleep. Homework sometimes take up her sleeping time, especially if there are projects. She starts homework at 6 or 7 and gets home at 6 and sometimes 4:30.
In my third interview, the person's (gender unknown but we will call him a he) first reaction to school is "sleeping time!" It is "pretty much" what he does at school because "school is boring." School is "kind of" a waste of time because his "teachers don't really teach [him] anything." He claims to have "bad teachers" who "get really off the subject and don't teach [them] anything. They can't teach for [$#!t]." The teachers talk about their life stories but the students do not learn anything from their stories.
Me: First reaction to school.
SOF Graduate: What school first?
Me: High School and College.
SOFG: For high school, it was quite an experience for me. Earlier on in my educational life, I didn 't go to such a diverse school. So for SOF, I wasn't use to the diversity there. It was pretty uncomfortable for me, but eventually I got use to it. It gave me an opportunity to learn about other cultures.
For college, I didn't really look forward to it. I was yet in another city-environment location, which I didn't really like. It wasn't a pleasant sight for me as I walk around the area of my college. I was worry about college when I first got in. I wasn't sure the difficulty of the things being taught and the pace that they were being taught. After taking courses for a while, I started being comfortable with it. I liked the small community that were formed because of the mandatory group project that needed to be done for the semester. It was a fun project to research on and my groupmates made it even more enjoyable in the process.
Me: What do you think is the point of school?
SOFG: To prepare you for the real world, educationally as well as maturity-wise.
Me: Both High School and College?
SOFG: I guess you can say that. But I feel like HS just prepares you for college. Not too much of what college is "all about."
Me: So what is the point of High School?
SOFG: Hmm...for our high school, I felt like it was just to prepare us for presentations and writing papers. It was also to prepare us for the lower level courses in college.
Me: First reactions to school.
High School Student: I like to learn but I feel like I don't learn enough in school.
Me: What is preventing you from learning?
HSS: Homework, and having to be forced to do so many things. I rather learn for fun.
Me: What is homework doing to us?
HSS: Sometimes, I think some homeworks are useless 'cause it doesn't help me and like I said before, I feel like it's forcing us to learn.
Me: What would you like to learn?
HSS: I like all the subjects but I just don't like the way teachers are teaching it. All they do is power-points and it's soo boring.
Me: How do you want the information presented to you?
HSS: I want to have more experience; like for science, more labs.
Me: What is wrong with the education system?
HSS: There's too much emphasis on testings and grades and students are getting so stressed out from stuff like that. I mean, it's important to test but sometimes, that's what it becomes all about. It's not even about learning anymore, it's about getting like a 5 on an AP exam or something. It's the wrong motivation for kids to learn.
Me: What can we do to eliminate this stress?
HSS: We could get teachers to talk more about learning instead of tests 'cause I know some teachers will be like, "if you don't do this or something, you will fail the test" or "if you guys don't pay attention, you won't be able to pass." They should stop saying stuff like that and they should have fun 'cause then the students have fun.
Part B:
The first snow-day of the year and the day we got back taught us that school is taking up so much of our time that we don't even know what to do without school. I decided to investigate that further and asked my friend about her vacation. When I asked her how she spent her vacation, she did not take the time to think and answered with an "I don't know." It seems that we do not reflect on our vacation, on the things we do in life including what we learn in school. We go to school, go home, and go back to school thinking that we only listen to garbage coming out of teacher's mouths. There is no room to rethink what we have been taught. She didn't know what to do without homework until I suggested board games and computer. What she said about her neighbor may be because I suggested board games or it may not; we won't know. She tries to use little things like checking for updates, email, and chatting on AIM to fill up her day but she does not realize the long day ahead of her.
The SOF Graduate caught me off guard with her first response. People have said boring and all these negative words that are short and simple but she gave me a full response of her experience in High School and her current College experience. I didn't really investigate her experience at school but I wanted her point of view on the purpose of school. She gave an almost-typical answer when she said that school prepares one for the real world but she added that school mature us. I think it is true that schools are meant to mature us but how well are American schools doing so? Colleges may be doing a fine job maturing us and High Schools are meant to prepare us for college. Is this step needed? Do we need to go to toddler school to be prepared for elementary school to be prepared for middle school to be prepared for high school? I believe that we have not learned anything in our past years and that schooling should be cut short and concise, teaching everything that is needed in less than 18 years.
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