Why I Dislike the New Curriculum

Here's something else to keep you occupied over this fabulous Spring break. This is about the new curriculum, which will be implemented after I graduate high school. It's an article I wrote for the school newspaper. If you want to read more from our school newspaper, take a look here: https://uhillhawkseyeblog.wordpress.com/

My school journey has been special. It has been a jumbled pile of programs, schools, teachers and curricula. Based on this, and the following accounts, I intend to demonstrate that I am quite qualified to speak on the effectiveness of the new curriculum; at least, more so than some ministry bureaucrats that last attended school 30 years ago.

After finding class overly easy in grade 4, I was volunteered, by my school, to take an IQ test. I scored highly enough that the compilation of enigmatic determiners of my future decided to deport me from traditional learning at my comfortable downtown school, to the contemporary and whimsical learning at the MACC program, located on the other side of the city. Oh, the MACC program – what a fantastical flop of education that was. The MACC theory: you get 30 kids, in grades 4 through 7, who score over 130 on their IQ tests, or are deemed to have incredible artistic abilities, and you put them in a room together – you see magic happen.

Assuming that you’re a logical reader, the question you’re presently asking yourself is the ever-important “how?” I’ll give you the laughable answer that the idealistic organizers thought of – “let their minds run free!” This is where MACC, an idea with potential, becomes a farce. To take 10-13-year-olds, no matter how big their brains, and expect them to have a distinguishable passion and enough insatiable desire and motive to innovate upon that passion is absurd – and I say that nicely.

So, when I hear that the new curriculum is meant to provide more free-reign to students, my post traumatic stresses from MACC become resurrected, and I shudder. After 3 years of MACC, and after a year of “Hamber Academy”, a program similarly developed off the principle of Google’s “20% Time”, I can assuredly say that the proposed programs are not in the students’ best interests.

Am I advocating for something so ultra-traditional that it mimics the educational system that my parents were trudged through in Socialist Yugoslavia? Not at all, I’m merely encouraging school to provide its most essential service to its -and society’s- most valuable consumers – children. I mean, looking at the children who have come here from traditional-style schools in, say, China, what we see is kids who are staggeringly better at both exams and at innovation. Why? Because innovation is impossible without a solid base of traditional-learning.

School’s purpose is to expose children to as many activities as possible, so as to allow for children to discover a talent or passion, which they would then continue on later in life. Generally, children cannot find a passion themselves, not only because humans are innately lazy creatures, but because they don’t have a breadth of resources and activities on their doorstep. If this dangerous transition in school’s role, and in students’ lives, takes place, it poses a threat to a plethora of sectors: pro-traditional-learning parents, namely immigrants, like mine, will be enraged with the lack of concrete work. This has already happened at Norma Rose. The importance of teachers will diminish, as they will begin to be seen as supervisors instead of educators. After all, my MACC teacher was easily replaceable. And, most critically, we will see an increase in unprepared students graduating; students who may have viewed their “inspiring” learning-hub as an excellent excuse for wasting-away. And no one would notice, because, obviously, the marking system would have to be changed as well, and would likely move to one more akin to the MACC one, where each student grades themselves. Kids need direction and they need adults. Let’s ease-up on them gradually, but equip them with a traditional-learning-base first – they can’t be creative without one.

I turned out an ambition-less, depressed and lazy child. I had potential, but it disintegrated without guidance. Transitioning to U Hill was difficult, and I cannot accustom myself to it still, but I definitely have learned something in this system. No number -no IQ- will ever change that. I was not an aberration. Out of my MACC class, I know of two kids who had already discerned their passions at 12, worked on them, and flourished in a way that would not have been possible in a regular school environment. That’s 2 out of 30 – I may be failing math, but even I know that those aren’t very good odds, especially when applied to all children, not just the “gifted” ones. MACC was a failure – a lot of us emerged less smart; a lot of us exploited the freedom, but who could blame us? We were just being kids. The same will happen with the new curriculum.

Why You Should Elect Me Valedictorian Speech

I'm running for valedictorian at my school, so a lot of my writing time has become devoted to that. Since I've left this blog fairly bare in the last little bit, I've decided to post this speech here for why I think I should be the valedictorian. Enjoy!

Purpose. Purpose is a word that, in high school, practically loses it's meaning. We hear it repeated so many times that it becomes diluted and foggy in our minds. High school is viewed as time in which, unless you want to endure a mid-life crisis at 50, you should discover your ever-important purpose. Frankly, it goes in through one ear, and straight out the other. But let's get back to it from a different context. What is the purpose of valedictorian? I believe that it lies, quite simply, in harnessing the scattered thoughts of the graduating class and vocalizing them. In a good valedictorian speech, you should hear my diction, my voice, but underneath it, all you should hear is a reflection of your message, and your tone. Now, it is a difficult task to harness 100 voices, but it is one that I am very ready to take part in, and frankly, one that I have already been taking part in for 4 years now. Furthermore, it is a task that I, as per my resume, am most qualified to take on as well. Let's delve into that.

Perhaps it's because I am white, but it seems to me that I am well-known throughout the school. In fact, in some way, I am recognized as the loud, talkative and perhaps occasionally irritating student. If you've ever sat in an English or Socials or anything else for that matter class, you likely witnessed my oration of a rant. You've probably been annoyed by my unwillingness to stop talking. So, since most of us can attest to that, is it not fair then to assume that the giving of a speech will come most naturally to me? But wait, there's more:

Unlike my opponents, I have been debating for 7 years now. Last year, I introduced debate to Norma Rose and sent two of their debaters to provincials, this year, I became president of our school club. I have won countless competitions in debate, which in and of itself should demonstrate that I can talk about anything pretty well. Right? I know what you're thinking though: debate is political, valedictorian is a completely different subject matter altogether. But here's the kicker: I have already wrote a winning valedictorian speech. A year ago, the VSB contacted me to help two teachers teach a gifted workshop to students on public speaking. After doing so, I was contacted by certain parents and asked to tutor their children in speech-writing and debate. I took on the job. Most notably, I tutored one girl from York House, a private school. Anyways, she had a speech competition at her school where she needed to write and recite a valedictorian speech for the chance to advance to the Provincial speech competition. I wrote it for her, and I spent hours painstakingly helping her recital seem natural. I didn't know anything at all about the girls at York House, but I managed to write such a speech that that girl won her school competition and advanced to Provincials. This year, her younger sister had the same task. This year, I again wrote a brand new valedictorian speech for her sister to recite to the girls at York House. This year, her younger sister had the same outcome.

The fact is this: I have dedicated a large portion of my existence to writing and giving speeches, and there is nothing more that I would like to than give a speech to everyone here at grad. I'm pretty good at it. In grade 10 planning, after my vitamin presentation, Ms. Silvers herself actually stopped and told the class to take note of my presentation skills. I have for the past 4 years had a blog dedicated completely to speeches and essays. One of those was published alongside Maclean's Magazine.

But hey, maybe all those qualifications just can't trump the importance of voting for your friend who is standing up here. My 7 years of debating, my 4 years of blogging, may be meaningless to you. And I'm here to tell you today that they shouldn't. Why? Because valedictorian is no popularity contest. No, that's prom king and queen. Valedictorian should be the position for the best and most qualified speaker, and I'll leave that decision up to you. Just don't let the purpose of valedictorian become skewed. I promise you this: I will not run for prom queen (if that is a thing you run for), this is all I want. And thus, you, you can elect your friends for other things and hear your friends talk whenever you want and you can elect them prom kings and queens, and elect them to prom queens and kings.

U Hill has always been a fair school. I remember coming here from Hamber in grade 9. In Hamber, when you peer-marked anything, everyone in the class got 100%. Not because they deserved it, or because it was fair, but just because. At U Hill, people are much more fair. When we peer-mark, you get the mark you deserve. Make the same apply to valeditorian.

There is one more thing that I'd like to bring up: most of you likely know me as the blabbering girl, but some of you may know me as a social chameleon, one that is able to adapt to any social situation. That's me! Do you know that then, I will be most adequate in taking in each and every person's input into creating my speech? You want humor, you got it! You want somberness? You got it. You want turtles? You got it. After all, it isn't MY speech, it is yours, I'm just the one that needs to say it out loud and in front of 100 people.

Turtles are actually a good analogy for what we're going through in the graduation of high school. I used to spend lots of time in Hawaii surfing. One time, on the Big Island, on one of those gorgeous black sand beaches, I saw something that, to my 5 year old eyes, was spectacular. I saw a little cluster of white specs. I, being stupid like any five year old is, asked my dad if they were those fabled pearls. He told me that pearl came from the goofy mouths of oysters and that those instead had little baby turtles living inside them. I was in complete awe. I asked him, with eyes wide, when they would begin looking like real turtles, and he agreed to indulge my youthful curiosity by camping on the beach. We stayed there for two nights, while my mom and sister stayed in their hotel confused, and on the second night, my dad woke me up to tell me that the white specs were turning into green turtles.

I rubbed my eyes and immediately I was mesmerized. These little white specs had surely undergone a tremendous transformation, and they were now, racing with all their tiny might into the great big ocean instinctively. They didn't know why they were racing, they just were. My dad and I tried to clear the way for them to protect them from the nasty seagulls. My dad told me that the seagulls might try to eat them, and I passionately expressed my hatred for seagulls by saying that I would eat the seagulls first if they tried that. The seagulls did attack, one pooped on my head. I threw sand at him. But in the end, I did see one little straggler being picked up. I furiously yelled at my dad to save him, and my dad, with his impeccable aim, threw a rock at the flying gull, which knocked it down, and saved the turtle. Please don't call PETA on us.

That night, all the turtles made it. Just like we will. We're not all the same, most of us will follow the guarded path into the wide ocean. Some of us will get caught behind, but we'll all make it into the ocean eventually. And that's the green light. Personally, I'm no good at the sciences – humanities is all I do. Right now, in my running for valediction, I am like that turtle in the gull's ugly beak. My fate is uncertain – nothing is to say that I will surely be valedictorian. But your vote is like that rock that my dad so raggedly launched at that nasty vermin. You have the power to free me. I just need you to throw that rock, and by rock, I mean ballot in my favor, at that gull, and by gull I mean ballot box.

I've never ran for anything before. Not for school president, not for SoCo, nothing. Do you know what means? That I really want this. I desperately do. I have failed math because I have been too busy blogging to study logarithms. Please don't let that failure be in vain. Please don't let the gull take me away.

Despite my passion for writing, I persevered through an abhorrent struggle to write this short, but extremely meaningful piece. Excluding my blog, this is one of the few things that I am going to look back on in 50 years, so naturally I want it to be good. But what will make it good? I contemplated what to write for this highly significant work, knowing that the diction, tone and message would be immortalized. Should it be philosophical? Profound? Charming? Funny? What about the wording? Elaborate and complex, or plain and simple? That will be for you to decide if you elect me. But I think that now, what's in order is to get a taste of your potential valedictorian speech, if I win.

Want something deep, yet hopeful? Here's a flavor:

We're 18, but we are still green. Yet, somehow, society expects us to move on with our lives and willingly take our first steps into the gaping unknown. They expect us to make the abrupt transition from dependance to self-sufficiency. Absurd. Not only are a few of us likely incapable of such a move, we're also highly unwilling to take part in one. The conclusion? Life will continue regardless of how we feel. Time knows not of our fears, mounting responsibilities, or stresses - it's cruel that way. My elaborate and wordy point is that we've managed 18 years, and we'll manage 88 more. Our lives will not end spiritually due to some numbers called age. If anything, they'll enlighten and thrive. We, regardless of how we do financially, familially or _____, will be fine -and potentially even good- as long as we perceive it that way. As whimsical and hippie as it sounds, its true.

Want something humorous, yet still profoundly meaningful?

Don't worry, there are plenty more stories like the turtle one.

I'd just like to end this by, once again, begging you to vote for me – I want this more than anything right now, and I really hope that I have managed to prove that.

The point is this: I don't always run, but when I do, I prefer valedictorian.