5/13/2013
Editors of USA Today:
My name is Erika and I am a student a Commonwealth connections academy. I have recently read the article that was published in USA Today titled, “School is too easy, students report” and I must say that I disagree with this article. Students worldwide would disagree with this article as well. I think that adults being adults think that we as students are not as educated as they once were, and the children of these adults strive for the same thing that these parents are.
Although I disagree with this article, there are some points made in this article that I find reasonable. The quote “’probably bored, and when they’re bored, they think the classes are easy’” stood out to me when I first read this article. It is true that when the students are not challenged enough, they begin to get bored and are no longer interested in the class. When the students are challenged, they begin to ask, to want to know how to solve this or how to do that and when students understand how to solve something they feel a sense of accomplishment. It is also true that some students do not read as much as they should be. “Only one in five eighth-graders read more than 20 pages a day, either in school or for homework.” I believe that students of every level should be reading longer than what they spend sitting in front of the TV or the computer. At the end of the article it says “…students’ conception of school have been heavily influenced by testing. ‘That’s what they think school is, and that’s really a shame…’” Many students think they need to get good grades on tests so they can have a good overall grade so they can pass, graduate and get into a good college or university. That’s basically the only thing they think about school, and it is a shame because they do not think about how it is going to help them in the future, about how it is going to help them in the “real world.”
There are students that like having challenges, students that are