John Yowan Hour
1
Ms. Keeley Type
3
Freshman English
10 December 2002
Choice
Theme I
I
think the school should focus more on academics than they do on sports. I
believe that getting good grades and going to college is much more important
than playing a sport. A sport in high school is such a small part of your life.
Most people that play sports in high school do not become a professional athlete.
Student's grades will affect the choices that they are able to make for the
rest of their lives. Without high academic classes and good grades, going on to
college will be very difficult.
One
way our school can focus on academics more than on sports is that there should
be pictures of students who get good grades on the wall in the cafeteria rather
than sports players. With the school having only pictures of sports players
they are sending the wrong message to the students. That message is sports are
what count at our school.
Another
way the school can focus more on student's classes and grades rather than
sports is that they can have a reward for people with good grades. One idea
that I have is to have the school throw a party for the students that get on
the honor roles. The school could provide food and music for these students.
This would be an incentive for students to get good grades.
The
local school system also shows that they care more about sports by providing
more transportation for sporting events than academic out of school activities.
Sometimes the school will use four or more vehicles to go to a sporting event.
The school from my point of view almost never uses transportation on any of the
academic classes like Speech, English, or History. One example that I have is
in our Speech class we wanted to go read books that we made to a local elementary
school but our school would not let us have any transportation. If we would
have went we would have had to walk.
One
more thing that the school could do is to spend more of their money on academics
rather thank focusing on sports. The school system could buy books for the
students to use without charging a rental fee. Right now the local school
system is focusing on build a new multimillion-dollar stadium for the athletes.
At the same time there are several budget cuts that are happing that affect
classes in our school system. This sets a bad example for the students going to
our schools. It shows that the community and the local schools care more about
sports than student's academic futures.
The
USD 413 school system needs to start thinking about what is important for the
children of Chanute. Right now when we are about to spend allot more money on
sports, school state assessments were released. These assessments showed that in
nearly every category of testing USD 413 was below state average.
I
think that the school system should start doing more for the students. These
things could be better and newer computers for the students and teachers, new
blackboards that are not all scratched up, and more classes offered. Instead of
spending money on sports we should spend money on more teachers. Right now at
our school there are only a few history classes offered. When I was in Maryland
the high school offered a lot more. We had choices like, Issues in American Society,
American Revolution, Civil War, and four years of World History and several
years of American History. We also had more choices in English, Math, and
Science and a lot of academic electives.
The
main thing that I am learning here is that, it's not what classes you are
taking it's what team you play for that counts.
In conclusion, I think that the schools here should think about the future. Do we want a lot of good athletes in our town or a lot of smart people?