My hot take on Literary Symbolism Discourse

[another_normal_anomaly]

 Schools should have more small "try it and see if you like it" classes. Instead of having everybody take four semesters of literature, let people take half a semester each of literary analysis, psychology, programming, and statistics, and then another two semesters of just the ones of those they liked. Or four more little trial classes, if they didn't like any of them. High school should be when you dabble in lots of shit before settling down in college and specializing hard in a major, or going into the work world with a solid knowledge of your interests and hobbies. My high school went a bit farther in this direction than most and I really enjoyed it. You could take this pretty far, IMO. Maybe there should be requirements like "at least two things under the general heading of math, two under the general heading of science, and two under the general heading of humanities", plus mandatory civics and health, and then no further restrictions.

Comments

[oligopsony]

This is probably hard to do except at scale, which is feasible in larger districts but maybe not in smaller ones?

(Independently of feasibility, though, I like it.)

Fair point.

[another_normal_anomaly]

My high school was only 800 students, but it was a private school with tuition and therefore could afford smaller class sizes. I admit that a lot of schools are probably just too small to do this.

[crnahg_yhor]

My (second) high school pulled this off for science; there was a requirement for four semesters of science, two of which had to be the same general field, and the options included bio, chem, physics, engineering classes, ... It was pretty large, I think 3k students and rising. My first, much smaller (40/year), school might've also done similar, for sciences.

In retrospect, it's really weird that so many of the AP classes were grade-restricted. Why can only 10th grade students take World History? Why can only 11th grade take US History?

[another_normal_anomaly]

That is weird. My high school had (almost?) only 9th graders doing world history, (almost?) only 10th graders doing US history, and almost only 11th graders doing European history. I suspect that having it segregated by grade helps with the scheduling somehow.