Comment Re:How about... (Score 1) 617
I disagree. I graduated with a 3.98 GPA in high school, which means I had an 'A' with one or two exceptions during my entire high school "career." What I learned is that there is a point of diminishing returns as far as effort vs. reward went. I quickly figured out what that magical point was, and the only "game" I played was to put in the least amount of effort possible to maintain that A grade in class. Why put 3 hours into a well thought out essay on my homework assignment when I can get just as good of an A for an essay I threw together in 30 minutes and spend the next 2.5 hours honing my programming skills? Why spend the whole hour in class working on this map when I can half-ass it well enough to get an A and spend the rest of the time doing "homework" for my other classes? That way I could spend my home time working on electronics projects and learning how they work. I guess you could say the biggest lesson high school taught me was resource management. Contrary to your statement, I used "the game" to make sure I had time for learning side-trips and experimenting with subjects I actually wanted to learn more about.
One of my favorite XKCD comics describes the way I feel perfectly: http://www.xkcd.com/519/
The problem with our school systems today is that we don't encourage excellence, we enforce mediocrity. And when a few students miss the mediocre mark, we just lower that bar a little to make sure they aren't left behind and don't get their feelings hurt. What happened to the days when Little Johnny would get made fun of because he failed 2nd grade and had to take it over again with the "little kids?" Not only did that give Johnny a slap in the face to show him that there are consequences for his lack of study, but it set a heck of an example to the other kids who would make damn sure they didn't end up like Johnny. Did he get his feelings hurt? Sure, but you can bet he was able to read and do basic math by the time he graduated, unlike many students with a diploma today. If not, he dropped out and found work doing an unskilled job, leaving the better jobs for those who actually cared to learn. It also meant the diploma actually stood for something other than spending 13 years setting in a desk eating paste and throwing spit wads.
Makes me consider pulling my kids into home schooling more and more every day...