Posts by rowdypanther12

I’m not sure if I’ve gone too far by advocating for universal education up to age 18. I haven't fully researched all the nuances, but it honestly feels wrong that a kid could potentially derail their entire future just during middle school.

Susan James said:Do people like that even exist? 😕🤣
That’s just a few grade points difference, which puts you right at a 4.5. 😬

They usually head toward various vocational or trade schools,
maybe a good local high school,
or even private academies...

🤣🤣

I don't know, this all feels a little strange to me. It's fine to strive for excellence and all that, but looking back at my middle school, we maybe had 4 or 5 students in our entire grade who actually maintained straight A's from 6th through 8th grade. That really was something special.
Sure, we were a tough school that loved to brag about that reputation 🙄, but most kids got by with B's. Only the truly exceptional ones were pulling 4.5s or higher; there might have been maybe ten of them per class at most. And everyone with B's could pretty much enroll in the high schools they wanted, provided they had an A in the specific subjects required.
It feels like things aren't like that anymore—like it's just assumed kids will get A's and the standards for what counts as an A have just shot way up.
Maybe I'm wrong. 🤷

I’ve been lurking here for a bit just thinking... where do kids with a 4.0 GPA actually end up applying?
Like, I don't mean someone with a 3.6, but more like a 4.2 or something?

brisktiger56 said:so, did you actually feel like he was being fair with the grading?

I think 🤷
nobody really mentioned that his payout was too low
it just felt like a lot of work for what we got, especially since I had to catch up on all those extra readings😁😁

brisktiger56 said:That sounds like a solid, structured approach, but how on earth would you handle the grading side of things?

It’s based on participating in discussions, making arguments, and answering questions... nowadays, what you write is graded just like what you say.
My high school teacher used to grade us easily even when we didn't write anything down.😍

Peter Doyle2 said:The truth of the matter depends heavily on the professor.
Even back in high school, we didn't really sit down to read the assigned books. Instead, we'd just tackle them during dedicated seminar days—which, I guess, didn't exactly stop the frustration. Then there was all the scrambling to find study guides, or having those classmates who actually finished the book summarize everything so the rest of us could prepare... you know how it goes.

Okay, so what's your actual solution? Throw out every book ever written? Which ones? Or just scrap required reading entirely?
The debate is really about the process itself. You thought it was terrible, but I thought it was perfect. For instance, *Anna Karenina* is a character I felt should have been thrown under a train right at the start just to save me from having to read her, yet some people absolutely adore her. 😁
Some classics from certain eras just need to be read; it's simply part of getting an education.
What I will say is that students should have more freedom to choose, most books could be used for extra credit, and we definitely need to include more modern literature.
That assumes, of course, that professors actually change their teaching styles.
But even then, I bet 40% of kids would still complain that it's too hard and claim they've grown to hate reading because of it. 🤷

Signed on my rhino.
The issue isn't really the books themselves; they’re only a small part of why these classes struggle. It’s more about how the sessions are actually run.
I think reading assignments should function more like a book club. I haven't personally been part of one, but that's the idea—you read a specific selection and then everyone gets together to talk about it. 😁
It’s actually great when people have different opinions; that’s when the best discussions happen.
As for the teacher, their role should be to prep the kids for the story, maybe explain a few tricky concepts just to get them settled in, and then act as a moderator for the discussion once they've finished reading. 😁
Anyway, that’s just how I picture the perfect reading program. 😁

Quincy:

brightpuma Asks: What kind of math is actually useless to most people, unlike something like The Cursed Courtyard or John Seagull's Spring? 🤷

Calculus integrals? I'm still trying to wrap my head around them myself. 😁

brighteagle86 said:mmm-mmm-mmm 🙂😉

I have a mental backlog of books I skipped as a kid, which I now plan to tackle alongside my son. 😁
Naturally, Harry Potter is on that list.

Hopefully, he’ll be just as enthusiastic about this little project as I am.😬

Come on, don't pretend you're still a kid—Harry Potter didn't even exist back then! 🤣

Peter Doyle2 said:Even Harry Potter couldn't save me😢
Right after high school, during my freshman year of college—just as the whole Harry Potter craze was actually kicking off—a friend gave me the first book. I read it, I guess, but barely. It just wasn't interesting to me at all; I felt zero urge to keep going. 😢That required reading list absolutely killed me—well, it killed any interest I had in reading, anyway.

I’m not saying everything should be based on some easy, trendy bestseller. But the sheer volume of books assigned for high school reading lists is just too much—they're often incomprehensible or just plain boring. Consequently, 99% of kids just grind through them to get the grade. It seems pretty pointless to me.
Maybe it would help if professors—like someone else mentioned earlier—provided more guidance or context before students even dive in. Instead of forcing them to tackle an entire book, they could focus on the most compelling, essential chapters.
General literacy levels would stay intact😉 and kids wouldn't feel so frustrated. If a student actually enjoys one specific excerpt, they might actually decide to finish the whole thing. As it stands now, they give up right at the start and just rely on SparkNotes or online summaries.

edit: And why on earth is HP so hated by certain church groups? 😲 I mean, it's fantasy! Wait, does that mean George R.R. Martin or Tolkien are on their blacklist too?

If they actually knew about Martin, he'd be on there for sure.🤣
Probably Tolkien too, despite how much they might dislike that whole good vs. evil imagery they both use.😁
The thing is, Harry Potter gets blacklisted simply because people claim it "leads kids toward magic and bad influences."
Just do a quick Google search; it's kind of ridiculous.😁

I can't quite agree with that; I honestly think everyone should pick up at least one or two books from every literary era, especially the major ones.
then, if you really want to boost your grade—say, if your GPA isn't exactly where you want it—you could dive into something like *The Scarlet Letter*.
Personally, I used to get so frustrated with Goethe and his cryptic way of writing. It drove me crazy. I felt like I had to force my way through *The Sorrows of Young Werther* just to get past every other page.
So, I powered through it, hated every second of it while reading 😁 and still managed to pull an A.
It’s the same deal with *Anna Karenina*. If you have a decent professor and some books that just rub you the wrong way, you'll end up reading them anyway, just so you can spend class time arguing about why the characters were so annoying or why the book is overrated.

Are you aware that Harry Potter is actually pretty hated in certain religious circles? 😬

I don't know, personally I feel like by age 15, kids are mature enough to just grit their teeth and get through a book. If they aren't given something engaging, they might end up hating reading altogether.
That’s why I think middle school reading lists should lean more toward pop lit; the goal there should be to hook them on reading. High school can then shift toward more formal education and general culture. 🤷

Linda Price5 said:A smart woman I know once put it this way—and I’m certainly not trying to steal her thunder—that there is absolutely no point in reading any of this until you have some serious business to settle with the American bureaucracy. 😁

Quincy:

I find myself wondering if anyone else feels this particular brand of restlessness as the heat settles over the city. It’s that specific, heavy stillness you only get during a mid-August night in Chicago—where the air feels less like atmosphere and more like a physical weight pressing against your skin. You try to find a breeze, but even the fans just seem to be recirculating the same exhausted warmth. It makes one contemplate the sheer inefficiency of our modern climate control systems, doesn't it? We spend millions trying to engineer comfort, yet we remain entirely at the mercy of a single humid front moving in from the Gulf. kaže: Good grief. You’re telling me we should be organizing books like Judith or Shakespeare—authors who are practically unreadable to most people because of their dense, archaic language—but then you throw Kafka into that mix? That's a bold move. I mean, I’ve been diving into thick, dense literature since my elementary school days.

I haven't actually laid eyes on anything by Shakespeare since elementary school, aside from a handful of sonnets. At this point, my brain might have officially atrophied from lack of use; honestly, I wouldn't be surprised. 😳Honestly, I have to admit, watching him play with his words back then was pretty damn entertaining. 🤷 I read him strictly for the pleasure of it, not because some professor assigned it as required reading.

He wasn't a problem for me either, even if he wasn't my favorite. But objectively speaking, he’s pretty tough to quote and follow, especially for kids who aren't big readers and haven't even really explored poetry yet.
I think the list should be updated and expanded to allow more flexibility—maybe something like Marulic could be used for extra credit.
But I really don't think we should be swapping out Kafka or Camus for someone like Stein or Meyer.

Man, I’ll organize books like Judith or Shakespeare—works that are basically unreadable because of the archaic language—but Kafka? That feels different.
Well, I’ve been an avid reader since elementary school!
The list definitely needs some tweaking, but we shouldn't just toss out everything that isn't a massive bestseller.

I feel like we should draw a clearer line between elementary and high school when it comes to required reading. In elementary school, kids should be engaging with modern books that actually grab their attention; that’s where they can build all those essential literacy skills. Then, once they hit high school, they can move on to the classic "must-read" literature 😁
Personally, I'd even let them skip parts of a book if they could give me a solid, reasoned explanation for why it wasn't clicking or why they found it boring 😁

wanderinggardener12 said:Good grief. Looking back through some of these threads, I’m struck by just how much heavy lifting is actually required here—and I don't mean the writing itself, but the fundamental cultivation of a reading habit.

But we aren't talking about the way things are currently handled in our schools.

Every one of us is a unique individual from the moment we're born, yet isn't it true that there exists a core collection of perhaps a hundred books that almost anyone would find captivating if they had the chance during their formative years? If those books were actually selected specifically for the person being recommended, wouldn't it be nearly impossible not to catch the reading bug? And if you pair that right choice with an environment that actually encourages exploration, aren't we all just a few steps closer to meaningful communication on every possible level?

It honestly pains me to think that some of you missed out on the sheer joy and intellectual nourishment that comes from a good book. You can look directly at your parents or your teachers for that; go ahead, hold them accountable for the deprivation they caused. It’s fundamentally the same as someone trying to strip the pleasure out of intimacy or the satisfaction of a great meal by forcing you into a hollow encounter with someone you find repulsive, or making you choke down something you consider absolute garbage, all while demanding that you sit there and provide a detailed, clinical description of the experience...

Oh, I don't think it's quite that simple. It isn't strictly the fault of teachers or parents, though there is certainly a group of people who grew to hate books because of school assignments—even if they usually end up finding a book they love later on.
I've always been a total bookworm. I'd say I owe it to my mom, who read to me constantly growing up. But my sister hasn't read three books in her entire life, despite my mom trying just as hard with her. She just wasn't interested. My partner is the same way; he just doesn't care for books or reading.
Since I think he's a smart guy 😍 and, as a lifelong lover of the written word, I struggle to understand how someone can dislike books, I tried to "convert" him. It didn't work. 😁
To him, books are just ink on paper. He reads the words, but he doesn't truly see them.
Even when a story is interesting, it's just letters on a page rather than a magical new world waiting behind the cover.
That isn't something you can force; maybe you can spark it in childhood, but not if you're just handing out random books instead of ones tailored to the person. 😁
I suppose it's just one of those things you either have or you don't.

I'm well over 30, so I honestly felt like screaming when I read that post about rubbing your hair with a towel. 🤣
As for that 9 PM cutoff... I don't know. In my neighborhood here in the States, kids who are 6 or 7 are usually out playing until 10 during the summer.
I think you might be exaggerating a little.

I'm not so sure; I've always been a huge reader, but that didn't really help me with those things 😁. Even with my English—even though I read books in English all the time, I still have to pause and think quite hard about how to spell certain words.

I was definitely one of those students my elementary school teachers absolutely adored. That said, I wasn't exactly a star pupil once I hit the later grades; I was actually pretty far from the typical "teacher's pet" archetype.
For some reason, though, they just found me likable and were willing to let things slide for me—something they certainly didn't do for everyone else.
Oh, and back in high school, I had this one chemistry teacher who actually helped me wrap up a problem on my final exam. She just really liked my spirit—she thought it was endearing that someone with zero natural talent worked as hard as I did.
I'm still not quite sure why my elementary teachers took such a shine to me, but I know I got away with much more than my classmates did.

nimblelynx7 said:The biggest issue is the curriculum itself—the way subjects are structured and how bloated they are. We’re drowning in an endless sea of useless information. They cram everything into the syllabus, much of which nobody actually needs, just to produce graduates who might technically "know" everything but can't apply a single thing in the real world.

Look, obviously preventing bullying is important, but that's the easiest part to fix. Once you actually fix the rest of the broken links in this chain, addressing violence becomes a minor side issue rather than a systemic crisis.

But how exactly?
If a school doesn't have the authority to suspend or expel a violent student, how are the other kids supposed to stay safe? How do we protect the victims?
I think we tend to overreact to minor playground scuffles or small disagreements that have always been part of growing up.
But how do you protect children from a bully who is repeatedly causing serious harm and physical injury to others?