~iblvinathgcldlv

Disclaimer: This isn't really organized or anything. Just felt like taking up some of my time to get some of my thoughts out.

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Looking back at my high school years, I see only one recurring element. It was not my friends, those changed from time to time, sometimes to the point where I met an entire new group of people that I came to love and cherish. It was not my own performance, as that waxed and waned depending on my motivation to do well in a class. It is the fact that our school focuses more on our test scores than anything. If we're not worried about the next quiz, it's the next test. If it's not the next test, it's the final. If it's not the final, then it's the SAT, the STAR, the ACT, the AP or the SAT II tests.

I do not want the message of our schools to be our test scores. I do not want my graduating class to be remembered for our grades, what colleges we got into or how many extracurriculars we had to eat up our free time throughout our "career" at MVHS. The demand for college acceptance letters seems to be taking over the minds of students throughout the school, surpassing the desire to learn.

The whole point of attending school is to learn, to receive an education. Over the course of learning, it's expected that some mistakes will be made - it's how growth occurs. The newer concept that has gripped our school is that in order to pass a class, a student has to receive an "A." This, in simple terms, could not be farther from the truth. In order to pass a class, a student needs only to receive a "C" or higher. Ever since the concept of "getting an A" was introduced, the idea of learning was lost - it was replaced with the desire to get an "A," thus defeating the purpose of an education. The core of the letter grading system is that the letter grades correspond to your understanding of material. This has been lost. Now, all most students see are the letters. Namely, one: "A."

The other social disease that's slowly taking down MVHS is the word "fail." I am no longer sure that anyone knows what "fail" means. To fail is to get an "F." If you get an "F," you have failed that assignment, quiz, or test. If you get a "B" and exclaim "I failed this [assignment/test/quiz]!' you apparently do not know the grading system used by schools at all. The excuse that it is "Asian Failure" does not excuse it. In fact, in only makes it worse.

Going with the statement made before, if a student exclaims "I failed this [assignment/test/quiz]" after getting a "C" or a "B," they tend to do so without thinking about the students around them. To some students, a class may be as easy as reciting the alphabet, and they tend not to consider the students to whom the class may be the largest challenge of their life up until that point. To them, hearing "I failed this [assingment/test/quiz]" and seeing a "B" or a "C" on the student's paper makes them feel terrible. They may have spent hours in the week studying instead of spending time with their friends or family in order to get a "C" or a "B," and they hear a student complaining because they ONLY got a "B" or a "C." This gets even worse for the kids who sometimes literally fail an assignment, test or quiz.

Before you jump to conclusions that I am merely jumping to conclusions, keep in mind that our academic courses are a bit above and beyond the standards for our state and our nation. Our "special needs" Algebra and Geometry classes are at the standard level of Algebra and Geometry classes for the "normal" students across the state and nation. Our advanced mathematics programs that are taken for granted and seen as the "easy classes" of the school are up near the Honors and Advanced Placement (AP) levels of other schools in the USA. Some "regular classes" at our school are dealing with out-of-date text books because funds are being allocated for more AP classes.

To focus this much on the grades and "caliber" of classes at Monta Vista is unreasonable. Teenagers have enough on their plate to deal with just by being teenagers. Their hormones are raging, causing all kinds of unpleasant things to happen. Be this present in infatuation, anger, depression, or other extreme emotions, it takes a great toll on their ability to remain on task or even in the correct state(s) of mind to perform their best.

These emotions are not helped in the slightest by the academic and assuredly home-based pressures that exist in our lives as students. The school pushes us to "do their best," which we have all come to accept as the school saying "GO GET AN A IN ALL OF YOUR CLASSES!!!" At home, many of us are told to "do our best" as well, with the exact same accepted meaning: "GO GET AN A IN ALL OF YOUR CLASSES!!!" Whether we disappoint the school, our teachers or our parents/guardians, it takes a huge toll on our self-esteem. To know that you are expected to "do well" or to "do our best" is not defined by our ability but by an objective grading system is not the kind of thing we need to have on our minds.

We are expected to make a decision about what we want to do in our life in these four years we have at MVHS. I realize that some students know early on what they want to do in college and in their future career. I commend these students. They plan their courses and what they need to accomplish in them to get where they want to go. However, I also realize that some students simply take the classes that everyone is taking to make their college applications look good. These are the students who need to sample things just to get an understanding of what they want to do. Our school needs to do more to help those kids out, for they are the ones who need to get an education, not just a mad dash for an "A."

In closing, I would like to make five final points:

(1) To do your best does not mean to get an "A."
(2) You do not fail if you receive a "B." Or a "C." If you do not fail at some point, then you are not really learning - mistakes are supposed to happen in life.
(3) Tests do not determine your future. You do that on your own. You choices make all the difference.
(4) We have enough crap to deal with in our lives. Do not add to our already confusing lives with your misplaced academic ideals.
(5/Final) In the end, these four years will be some of the most important of our lives. We had all the chances we could ask for to try different subjects and find out what we liked and disliked. We had variety in our lives. I do not want my fellow students to look back on their high school years chanting "shoulda-woulda-coulda." I want our school's legacy, my graduating class's legacy, MY LEGACY to be one of variety. One of fun. One of experience. Do not take that away from me, or any who come after me.