{"id":16482,"date":"2018-10-10T09:00:04","date_gmt":"2018-10-10T16:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=16482"},"modified":"2018-10-16T10:08:25","modified_gmt":"2018-10-16T17:08:25","slug":"open-space-schools-should-be-failing-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2018\/10\/10\/open-space-schools-should-be-failing-students\/","title":{"rendered":"<em>Open Space<\/em>: Schools should be failing students"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Schools should fail students earlier than high school.<\/p>\n<p>School is a place where people are supposed to learn how to do things and succeed. But I\u2019ve found that the school system itself is a bit of a wreck. Not many people are prepared for life after school.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve known people who only just made it through to high school because they weren\u2019t allowed to stay behind. They either didn\u2019t understand the material that was taught to them or they just wouldn\u2019t do the work.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, if you don\u2019t do well, you don\u2019t stay in a grade until you know what you need to know. A good example of this is math\u2014many people have a hard time with it. I\u2019ve always had a hard time with math. But they push us through anyway.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_16479\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-16479\" style=\"width: 194px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/NEXUS-29-4-COVER.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-16479\" src=\"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/NEXUS-29-4-COVER-194x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"194\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/NEXUS-29-4-COVER-194x300.png 194w, https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/NEXUS-29-4-COVER.png 452w, https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/NEXUS-29-4-COVER-300x465.png 300w, https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/NEXUS-29-4-COVER-180x279.png 180w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 194px) 100vw, 194px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-16479\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">This story originally appeared in our October 10, 2018 issue.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>To be honest, I should not have passed Grade 6. The only reason I did was because I passed some of the courses. My Grade 6 teacher got me help in that year and was the reason I made it to high school.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Most people don\u2019t know what it\u2019s like to fail classes until they reach high school, and by that point the impact is larger than it would have been when we were younger.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Now, I don\u2019t always agree with holding young students back. I do agree that it\u2019s not easy being in a class with people of a different age. And while there are different circumstances for different people, that doesn\u2019t mean that a school should teach a student until they are able to understand, no matter how long it takes.<\/p>\n<p>There are a lot of people in the past five or so generations that have graduated who have benefited more from a specialized curriculum. Or, to be more accurate, they\u2019ve worked at a different pace.<\/p>\n<p>My high school only required me to fill out a physical activity log, complete a course on planning, and not get under 50 percent on my grades. So, basically, just pass. They didn\u2019t make me work hard to graduate, nor did they get me ready for real life.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>I know seven people who either didn\u2019t finish high school or had to graduate \u201clate.\u201d I do believe that if at least half of them were held back a grade and told that it wasn\u2019t the end of the world, well, it wouldn\u2019t have been the end of the world, because they could have learned what the teachers were wanting to teach.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>That course about planning was a requirement in my high school, and it was also one of the most failed classes. This class was basically several different classes merged into one. Overall, it was not a bad idea to have it set up this way, but why did people fail it? Because there was so much crammed into a one-semester class. I don\u2019t remember much, if anything, from that course. This is one reason why schools should be able to fail students earlier in their school career: to make sure they actually learn what they need to.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Schools should fail students earlier than high school. School is a place where people are supposed to learn how to do things and succeed. But I\u2019ve found that the school system itself is a bit of a wreck. Not many people are prepared for life after school.\u00a0 I\u2019ve known people who only just made it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16479,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,220],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-views","category-october-10-2018"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16482"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16483,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16482\/revisions\/16483"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}