To the President of the United States of America,

Education means a system of teaching and training, imparting knowledge, and to have an enlightening experience. With that definition everyone should be excited to be educated. In other words “live to learn by being excited about learning to live”. Yet as a nation our education system has fallen short and is failing to fulfill its purpose. Not everyone is the same nor are their interests, but credit requirements for graduation of high school are similar for everyone, causing stress and frustrations that lead to lack of caring by may many students, and this carries on through their adult life including even a lack of interest of voting or trying to get a job. So I believe that this issue is definitely worth taking an interest in if we want a strong respectable country. People blame: poverty, lazy students, overworked and underpaid teachers,heavy workloads, standardized tests,or even the credit system. All these can affect the student; treating everything at once can be difficult and maybe impossible. My request is to start by adjusting the credit requirements for graduation.

Education is important, people are important; but we aren’t the same and we can’t be all privately tutored to our individual learning styles but with our society we aren’t clones either. The school systems are setup to work with a cookie cutter or assembly line teaching method. This system and classroom setup hasn’t changed much since in last 150 years, yet our world has changed drastically. Although some schools try, and some teachers give it their best effort to “spice” things up or adapt to a whole new world; many fall short, and are restricted due to bureaucracy and red tape. Credit requirements lead many students “to say “what’s the point? I’m not going to be an engineer.” These classes are important, but we have trained our very young students differently and the high schools need to adapt to this change. Colleges have requirements for understandable reasons, but many schools due to funding, grants and many other reasons allow students to be pressured to compete at an Ivy League entrance level to graduate from high school even if that is not their goal in life. Students should be encouraged to complete the highest level of class available to them, but we are forcing many students down a path that doesn’t prepare them for their future. Just because a student is smart and enters High school in Algebra 2, why should they be forced to take 4 more years of math, when many others can graduate with Algebra 2. Yes they are smart and can move on, but if their interest is elsewhere, they begin to feel punished.

No system is perfect, but students should be excited about continuing learning, not having it crammed down their throats.Changes can be hard to implement but let’s start somewhere. When remodeling a building, things get a messy and stressful before it’s finished, but it’s worth the trouble.

Sincerely,

R.A.K