My French Class

...has 5 students in it. This is because we are the only five people in the grade eligible to take French as a second language, which is a severely disappointing statistic.

Sometimes I find myself wondering, why do we actually do second languages? As far as my life is going, I will either go study physics and/or operations research in America or Britain, or worst-case scenario I'll become a games developer at Games Workshop. Neither of these careers require me to know anything other than English. Really. Why am I doing this? Needless to say, I am blogging instead of doing what I'm supposed to be doing, ie an oral about my exchange school.

I'm not complaining, I certainly think it's good. If you have the opportunity to learn something, why not? It can only potentially benefit you. But then I think about everyone else, and it becomes a burning question: how much of the stuff we learn at high school actually going to end up helping us later in life? I think you'll find that the majority of people will chuck out all their liberal arts education and become actuaries, doctors, or lawyers, or at the very least attempt it. So why waste the first 13 years of someone's life on learning things they are never going to use, teaching them wasted skills such as geography?

I think it's actually just a question of potential. If you have all your options available in front of you, you can better choose what you're suited for, which is certainly an improvement on the 18th-century schooling system. Like I said, I personally enjoy knowing things, but that's just me. I know for a fact that the majority of people at my school couldn't care less about what they learn about. Hence, they don't pay attention, play computer games, blog, etc. etc. It's frankly quite blatant, and some of the teachers.... Argh! You just want to tear your hair out at the kind of stuff people get away with in class. The teachers must be missing something!! It's reached a stage where you can just click away, oblivious to the outside environment. Seriously, last year, the guy sitting next to me in economics asked me what we had done that term, because he had no idea and obviously wasn't to chuffed about his prospective failing of the exam. Dude, if you want the marks, pay attention in class.

The other thing I don't understand is why, if you had a tough ol' bat as your teacher when you were young, do you replicate his or her bad teaching methods on your students? Surely you understand with a certain retrospective insight that these methods and attitudes don't work! Why perpetuate the cycle? I mean, I've heard about "being tough and building character", but seriously, some of our teachers are just plain boring! And if I'm struggling to stay awake in class, what about everyone else? Who will pass!? We're falling to pieces, I tell you!! I am the only sane one in a house full of madmen!! GET ME OUT OF HERE!!

I am such a prophet of doom. Or maybe this has something to do with me being cranky after last night's late-night general ruckus on the internet... Facebook Chat at 1 am is not cool... Either way, internal monologue gets scary when you ask big questions...