On Piracy and Mathematics

After two and a half years of misery I have completed online Honors Algebra II. It took awhile. In all honesty I should have devoted more time to it, but I hate math and with online classes there are never late grades. Therefore, life and other homework assumed priority over Algebra II. However, it had always been holding me back with the thought of having to finish it, but now I feel so light. I AM DONE!!!

Throughout the entire process, however, I constantly asked myself "when am I ever gonna use this?" and I feel like that is the basis of high school math. Why spend so much time, energy and money (well...our parents' money translated from tax dollars) learning something we will forget immediately after the final? Some people will use in depth equations, but why does everyone need to learn them? I think school should teach the basics such as finance (because think: students learn about quadratic equations but not how to balance their check books) and leave the more difficult math classes for those going into the math field. Junior and senior year of high school should be career/college oriented where one focuses their education on classes and internships pertaining to their major. Others can just leave and go on to trade school. In my opinion, everyone should take the GED at the end of sophomore year and if they pass, they can move on to these trade schools or stay in high school for the career oriented years. If a student doesn't pass, then they could re-take courses in the subjects they failed. I wrote an essay on this for sociology haha.

Anyway, I have many ideas and I hate math. Basic math that's useful is fine, but Algebra II? No. I'll only need to learn how to find x if I'm a pirate.