The Public School System

The public school system is the worst mistake a country can make. There is nothing to justify the way school is taught or what's taught. Something needs to change and fast.
First off, there are far too many teachers who just can't teach. They don't know how to make the lessons interesting. Some lessons, which would otherwise be interesting, are boring because a teacher speaks monotonously. There is no better way to completely turn a student off to you and what you teach.
Most teachers attempt to demand that you respect them. Respect is earned and respect should be mutual. Why should we respect them if they refuse to respect that people learn differently, and that we have the right to know how we're going to use what they teach us later in life? If they don't care that we're bored in their classes, and that we have suggestions about how to make the class better, then we shouldn't care that they want respect.
The textbooks are outdated and no one is doing anything about it. Besides the information being old, the books themselves are in bad condition. The binding is coming off, pages are ripped and scribbled on, and the print is fading. The list just keeps on going. Since the 1960s, more photographs have replaced the reading material in textbooks, and it's been dumbed down. Test scores show that the reading levels of American children fell drastically from the 1960s to the 1980s, and stabilized for a few years. The latest statistics (at least in New York) shows that the scores on the English Language Arts test have declined over the past few years.
Standardized tests put unnecessary pressure on the schools. Many teachers teach the test because they would actually like to keep their jobs. If a student does do badly on a test, it totally screws up their life. Usually they're put in a special education or *AIS classes. Not everyone does well on multiple-choice tests. What about the students who do have some sort of learning disability? State tests aren't fair to them either. If all they have to do is eliminate two out of four answers, they have a 50% chance of getting the question right. Then, the learning problem isn't caught, and the student is put into a class that's above where he or she is.
Making millions of kids take the same test is just plain stupid. Some students don't test well. If you freak out before the test and you fail, you're put in an AIS class when you don't belong in it. To make matters worse, you're stuck in that class for at least a year.
Homework is pointless too. If we know how to do the work in school, why are we suddenly going to forget at home? Of course, we do need practice, but that doesn't mean carrying home a 4-pound textbook to do a 3- ½-page homework assignment. If the homework isn't a graded assignment, it makes it even harder for a student to get help if he or she needs it. The teacher just walks around and sees if you wrote anything down.
In class, you have to get through as many notes as possible. Staying after school for help is nice and all, but not everyone can stay after. Some of us have to work or baby-sit. The teacher doesn't have enough time to give in-depth explanations to the class.
Why do we even bother attending school if this is the case? It's pointless for us, because we aren't learning the way we need to learn.

** In the chapters following this one, I will give better descriptions of these issues and other ones. **

*AIS- Academic Intervention Services