School Electives: the Most Important Waste of Time.

Most people have attended school, and therefore most people have taken an elective class. This is especially true for high school and college students who have taken years of electives. Since high school and college students have taken many elective courses, they have a plethora of experience in those classes and what they see or don’t see, and things they need and don’t need. While they may not be experts in the subject, with years of experience one can form an opinion on it.

Now try and remember your previous years of school, your electives specifically. Name how many were engaging, or interesting, compared to the other electives. You can leave out Physical Education, as it’s a required elective by the state, and think more of Cooking, or Sculpture.

Not every school will have the same electives yet they all have the basic ones like Band and Art. There’s also the fact that if you’ve taken an introductory elective like Band I, they tend to give you the next Band class even if you don’t enjoy the class or excel in it.

Depending on what grade you’re in, you might have more electives or you might have fewer. Unfortunately, most students have more lackluster electives, and even when you don’t, you usually don’t retain the knowledge for future use.

Electives, when first thought of, sound like classes that’ll make school less dull and make you rethink what you want to be in life. However, when you get Band class for three years in a row you tend to think less of electives.

Now, not every elective is inherently worthless; the enjoyment you experience in those elective classes depends entirely on the person and sometimes the instructor as well. While you may have enjoyed Art, one may have found it blander than watching paint dry. The truth is, electives aren’t meant for everybody however, that comes with its own set of problems.

Electives require a plethora of credits. At Pahrump Valley High School, located in the State of Nevada, it is required to have six elective credits to graduate. It requires the most credits to graduate, requiring more than Math and English.

Electives help you have a chance at classes outside of courses like Math, Science, and English. Pareeshti Rao from UniScholarz said, “In both college and high school, elective courses give students the chance to take classes outside of a prescribed plan of coursework. This lets students pursue other interests they may have, giving them a more well-rounded education.”

The problem, however, is that you are required to pass all of those elective classes. If you’re not interested in any of the given electives, you are forced to participate in the class anyway. This not only dissatisfies the student, but it violates the reason electives were created.

With the upbringing of technology, the idea that electives should be required to give students new avenues to explore outside the curriculum just doesn’t work anymore. This new age brings about new changes, and electives need to be a part of those changes.

Electives should function entirely differently. They shouldn’t be entirely optional, as that wouldn’t allow students to find unknown passions. However, it should function more as a testing ground, allowing students to find that passion yet still not participate in classes they don’t want.

Overall, school electives need a plethora of changes. They don’t need to be removed as they are vital to school, but they need a change so they can fit the current world’s standards. As the world changes, schools should as well, and electives need this change. Not only is it old and outdated, but for such a seemingly great idea it was, it hasn’t lived up to its standards.