Reply #117: Yeah and...

[FunkyLeprechaun]

This was '99 I think (graduated in 2000). The Art department created their own school focused entirely on the arts and there were plenty of gifted art students that decided not to go (thought getting the other education completed). One of my family friends graduated from the same school in 2004 and I asked her what has happened to those departments. The Art dept was cut to barely nothing (some projects I did in Art like clay sculpture are no longer there), there's no Drama classes, barely anything for Music.

I visited a friend at Edward R. Murrow HS in Brooklyn and they had a good idea. She had a series of small paper (thick) booklets (the size of a driver's course manual) for each class (like Science and Math), they were purchaseable. Not like the books we were given out in class and had to return (or risk paying the $70 to replace it). I think this would save money, cut back on the heavy, unyielding books and go for a school edited paper booklet. At BU's College of General Studies, where I attended, the Science and Social Science departments edited their own booklets and as a result their booklets were cheaper than the rest of my classes. Not only that, once I got those books, I knew what was most likely to be discussed. I had to take a Computer Science course for my math requirement and I got a $80 textbook that we hardly ever used in class, one of the biggest wastes of money ever.

Murrow also had a good idea, they divided up the girls and boys in PE. I was like, "I wish my High School would do the same!" I mean academically, I don't know about dividing them up, but physically, oh yes I agree. We had PE classes where the boys kept beating the girls, and we would complain that it was so unfair. PE was a requirement at Murrow (not at where I went after 2 years of HS), which was another good idea.

Another point from those tv shows, Celebrity Fit Club (I think that's the show) and Biggest Loser, the adults were given assignments, very much like school, to lose weight. I think if this was applied to school (weighed each one of the students and if they're a certain weight, etc). If there's more incentive to lose weight and better fitness (get a grade for losing weight without problems like anorexia), I think this should be applied.

In my first year of BU I exercised (without trying) for the first time in years and dropped about 40 lbs (from 150 to 115 lbs) because I walked from my dorm on Bay State Road to CGS, every day. Even though the T was free going towards Boston College, I didn't take it (I didn't know it was free! whoops). I didn't know how to keep it off though, and went back up to 150. Now I've lost about 20 pounds, I wish I knew the ways to exercise, since my school didn't even emphasise stretching (I only got that the year I was in Cross Country running) and running a certain way to keep breathing up, etc. I really do think this should be emphasised in Elem, Middle, and High school and making it required all through HS so people know how to exercise after they leave school.