“If you have 20 acres of strawberry fields, and 30 acres of tomato fields and you continue to plant more rows of each, at what point will you have the same amount of strawberries and tomatoes?”

Have you ever encountered a problem like this, a problem that you know you’ll never need to know after the test and wondered “When am I ever going to use this in life?”

This truly is an important question and it is often ignored because teachers just want to get through the curriculum and students just want to pass. However learning subjects that will never benefit students in the long run only wastes time, money and energy.

Students have difficulty paying attention and being successful  in certain subjects that they don’t necessarily enjoy and teachers have a hard time teaching to un-willing students. For every test students study to pass and then forget the material, it remains useless to them in any time after the subject is taught.

If the subject is not something the student would like to pursue and it will never help them in life then why do we make them learn it? In the old days it was to keep children out of work, but what’s the excuse now? For example college algebra and geometry are important classes, but not for people who do not want to go into a career in math.

Instead of teaching college algebra or geometry, students should only be required to take classes that can help them with real life math, while others can choose to take those courses if they want to pursue a career in that direction.

In the process of learning and forgetting we are losing time that could be spent studying more important things that will help them in life, or on certain interests that students would like to pursue later in life.

If a student wants to pursue english they should be spending time taking more courses that can strengthen their reading or writing, instead of being required to take intricate math that they will never use. Not only is time lost in these classes money is too.

Why do we pour so much money into courses that are required but yet will never benefit the student? In this situation every one loses. With the extra time when students are not sitting in class learning unhelpful material they could be excelling in their passions. Instead of paving a way to student success the school system only dooms students to a life of confusion and frustration.

The main courses such as math, english, science and history, are all very important up to a certain point but after learning the basics it becomes tedious. We should be able to take courses that allow students to learn how math or science is used in the real world in a common activity such as paying taxes. This will help students be less intimidated once they enter the real world.

Students should be able to use their extra time to study their interests not wasting around learning complex material that will get them nowhere in the long run and can only provide them a score on one test.

We focus too much on a single grade and not enough on what is actually being taught. If high school offered more courses where students can gain experience with common activities and let them have a chance to study what they love, students will want to come to school.

School should be a place where you go to study what you enjoy and what will assist you in the long run, not somewhere where students only learn the material for the grade and immediately dismiss it.