In my humble opinion, I really do find the education system in our country to be rather corrupted. Not in the pay-off-the-officials kind of way, but rather what we're aiming for. It all seems for naught.
The whole point is to get good grades and pass some stupid test at the end of the year that isn't even remotely difficult for someone with half a brain, and the entire curriculum revolves around that.
I've always though of education as something that you're supposed to learn by, not get good grades and hope you pass.
This also brings me to my next point: While a lot of people do get some kind of accelerated class, a lot don't. They don't learn anything and they're smarter than nearly everyone in the class. The sweep through every paper, every test, but don't learn anything new because they know it all. Nothing is remotely hard.
Which goes against what education is supposed to mean.
I'm pretty sure that is not true. You keep telling me you're this student who is bored with class because you keep passing everything with ease.
Besides basic gov, all of my classes are reasonably difficult. I have very little problems with any of them. And no, I was not exagerating when I said I prefer boring/hard over fun/easy. I am currently taking Advanced Biology and Calculus for elective credit. There are plently of fun/easy classes my school offers (like sci-fi literature), but I haven't take any of them since sophmore year.
I look at it this way: you go to school to learn. But really, you are learning all the time, whether you are in school or not. Therefore, school should try to teach you things you won't learn on your own. I read plenty of sci-fi books in my free time, so taking a sci-fi class would be pointless. I do not, however, learn how to differentiate an arcsin on my own. So I need to take calculus at school.
It turns out that most of the things I do on my own are fun/easy, not hard/boring. Therefore, it is no suprise that I take hard/boring classes. I have plenty of time after school to have fun.
I doubt you would complain if it was enjoyable though
Only if I felt I wasn't learning enough. This is especially true for AP classes, because I have to do well on the AP tests.
no way do I think they would rather take a difficult class that has no appeal to them.
Very true. Most (all?) of the classes I take are in a field that I am interested in. However, that doesn't mean the actual class is interesting, because there are other factors such as teachers, textbooks, classmates, etc. Many times, the class will not become interesting until you leave it, and can apply what you know to the real world.
