Today's Students Just DON'T CARE: High School Students (Part 1)

The first installment of my three part series deals with my fellow classmates that I have spent the past thirteen or so years going to school with. The past four years have really shown the true atttude of many of my classmates: lazy and indifferent.
After the first five weeks of classes in ninth grade, a good number of students were already failing two or more classes. The administration brings the WHOLE CLASS into the school auditorium to tell us this fact. even though many people were not failing. Why were people failing? Laziness. Students just weren't doing their work. The work wasn't really all that difficult. If you did your homework, and if you read your assignments, you would not be failing!!!!!
What also annoyed me about my fellow classmates is that some of them are not working to their full potential. I know some students in my class that are perfectly capable of taking advanced classes, but because they do not--and will not--do the work required, they cannot take advanced classes and be successful in those classes.
Many of the students in my grade only settle for medocrity. They do not care to try for the best they can do. The kids in my grade are not all that serious about all they do, and think, "I can go to community college for a few years then I'll transfer. It's cheaper, and I can still graduate in four years." Uhh...not always true. If your high school grades are not that strong, then you will get placed in remedial classes, which will delay your community college graduation date.
One of my friends, who I will call "Liz" is one of these students. There was a class she did not seemed interested in at all. She is always complaining how hard the class is, but never gets extra help from the teacher. She never did the work when she was supposed to, and would always try to get the answers for late assignments out of me. I refused, and told her that she would not learn anything if I feed her the answers. Her response? "If I haven't learned it by now, then I won't know it for the final exam." She is always complaining "Why do I need to know this stuff? I won't need to know it when I teach little kids." Think again, Liz. Your future students will want to know why some science phenomana is the way it is, and if you can't answer that, some child may not be too thrilled when his or question has not been answered. On top of that, her grades in her other classes are not really that impressive. I asked her about her college plans, and at first she was planning on going to the local four-year college. Later she changes her mind and decides she wants to go to the community college instead. By this time, senioritis has really set in, and she doesn't care how her grades are.
What has this world come to? If many students have this attitude in high school, what will their attitude be in the future? When my classmates and I get older, we will be the future of America. If my fellow classmates have this indifferent attitude thoroughout their life, what will society be like in the future? I don't even want to think about it. I am VERY scared for the future. What kind of world will our children live in?

Today's Students Just DON'T CARE: Introduction

After having graduated from high school a few days ago, I pause to look back on my high school years. The past four years have just flown by, but the past two years really stuck out at me. Long story short, I was taking some senior level classes as a junior and a junior level class as a senior, and because of this switch, I really saw that students don't really care about their schoolwork. Now you may say that this was because I wasn't with students my own age. Observations of my fellow classmates (in MY grade) throughout the years also proved my thoughts to be true.

Now, I never really realized that students didn't really care until junior year because I was around students that were like me - the students who DID care about their schoolwork and were in many advanced classes - for most of my classes my first two years of high school.

As a senior, I also had the opportunity to take college classes at a local college as a part of a dual enrollment program. I was expecting the college students to be more serious about their work than my high school counterparts. Except for one of my classes, I again saw that students don't really care about their work. I should not have been that surprised that this was going to happen. Many of my classes were full of freshmen - high school seniors last year, and the same type of people I was around being the odd one out in some of my classes. Several of these classes were general education requirement classes, so everybody has to take them whether those classes were relevant to their major or not, but either way, shouldn't these students be more serious about their work? They thought high school was easy, so they also think they can cruise through college? I think not! They'll be in for a big surprise in the future!

My next three posts will each be about my thoughts on the attitudes of high school and college students and why they need to get their acts together...all based on my observations from my high school years.