High School Subject Reform

We are graduating students from a catholic school in Drayton Valley, Alberta, and are unsatisfied with the subjects offered, both in this school and the other, secular high school in the same town. We want other kids from our town to have more opportunities than we did, so that they have more success in the real world.

We want to be able to learn useful skills for when we graduate, such as Home economics, history, and finance. We want to cut down on useless subjects and focus on important life skills, like communication and public speaking/relations. Many students find communication with people outside of school difficult because they have little contact with the outside world, and thus have little experience dealing with real-world issues.                                    

More creative classes, like music, fine arts, drama should be encouraged, especially outside of the scheduled class time. Oftentimes, these activities are discouraged outside of class time, despite their importance in teenage development.

We want the government to cut down on specialized subjects, such as the higher level Maths, Social Studies and Sciences (over 20-level) and make them options rather than mandatory, since these skills are not utilized past the time most students graduate. That way, those students who need these subjects for university can still take them, while the less advanced students can skip them without fear of failing high school.

Cutting down on higher-level courses will also give students more time for extracurricular activities and interaction with their families, since the homework would not be so intense, and would allow for specialization in areas the students are interested in, rather than forcing them into subjects they hate, and consequently, failing them.