▶ Your Answer :
There is a controversy about allowing high school students to take courses they want. Some people say that a school should ensure their preference of studying. However, in my point of view, requiring them mandatory courses holds more advantages than letting them free.
To begin with, there are many fundamental classes that students must to take.
The primary purpose of requiring mandatory classes is to develop students' basic academic capacity for better work when they grow up. Subjects such as history or science is what they must know as members of society even though some of them are not interested in. In my case, I had to learn about history in high school, even though I did not feel necessity of learning that subject. However, I had study hard to prepare exams and now I appreciate it because it made me understand various social issues. If I were allowed to study only what I wanted, I might not have accumulated basic knowledges for my social activity.
On top of that, students do not know well which courses are beneficial for them.
Unfortunately, they even cannot figure out what they are good at. If they are free to choose subjects to take, majority of them would be confused. Also, as a teenager's future holds a variety of possibilities, what we should do is trying to make them opened to all kinds of subject to find out what their potentials are. When I was a freshman in high school I was not sure of what I am in capable of. However, after taking various courses such as mathematics and physics, I realized that I am deeply interested in architecture. As a result, those courses I took in high school greatly helped me choose my major.
Lastly, a school cannot handle the entire demand of students to take classes they want.
If the majority of students sign up for only few classes, the school will be in a big trouble. As teaching resources such as teachers and laboratories are limited, a school need to organize the course schedule in order to lead students to better learning. Contrast to a university, a high school is not capable of accept all students' demand for class schedule. Thus, in consideration of school management, leaving classes to be taken on discretion of students can not be done.
To sum up, allowing students to take classes what they want leaves many disadvantages. They can not properly choose which courses to take and it will harm their capacity as a social member.
In this regard, I firmly believe that we should not let high school students to study subjects only they want to do. |