škola.

im not a fan of school.

big surprise huh? i mean, seriously, what kid actually likes going to school, right?

well, lets just say, croatian school makes me miss school back in america. 

i think i would even go as far as saying that it makes me want to be in school back in america, actually want to go there. 

i think ive talking about school before, but lemme recap about what its like, okay?

kids here have 17 subjects a year. yes, 17. from things like math and history to sociology and ethics and logics and psychology. not to mention croatian, english, 2nd language and 3rd language.. which confuses me since that makes 4 languages. plus other seemingly random classes which i find, well honestly, kind of unnecessary.

not only do they have around 3 times as many classes as we do in the states, but the teaching style is very old fashioned. it is endless lecturing and note taking, no worksheets, no projects, no hands on learning or anything. you sit there while the teacher talks or writes on the board and write everything down. then you go home that night, read your notes and learn everything on them because they also have this fabulous and totally awesome things that i love called oral examinations. (and for those of you with no sense of sarcasm.. that was it.) yeah, by that i mean you better have studying and learned everything your teachers ‘taught’ you because they randomly pick people each day and ask them questions or make them do problems in front of the entire class, for a grade. oh, yeah, well thats not embarrassing at all. seriously? are they trying to make the teenagers hate their lives? because its succeeding very well. 

and you know what, i think i figured it out today why im having such troubles here in school. i dont think its so much the fact that its all lecturing and note taking, but the fact that we dont ever review anything. no lie, we ‘learn’ something (i use that word lightly, since the learning takes place at home by yourself) one day, then the next day its on to something new. if you didnt go home and learn it that day, oop, your screwed, moving on, next. now take that, multiply it by 17 classes and what do you get? kids who are excited if they get a D on the test because they didnt fail. kids who are so stressed with school they dont know what to do. kids who have 5 F’s, 9 F’s. 

at home im not happy with getting anything under a B. Theres no reason to be getting C’s or D’s and certainly not F’s, because our teachers TEACH us. they make sure we understand what they are saying. they teach in a way that we learn and remember it, not that we memorize it long enough to pass the test and oral examinations. okay sure, so we may not cover nearly as much material as they do here, we may not know about all the different things the kids learn here, but on the other hand, were happy, were not overwhelmed to the point where school and studying IS our life. life isnt all learning things from books, you need to learn by being social, taking part in activities, leading a real life, hell even getting a job, which teenagers cant even do here because of the amount of studying they must do. ridiculous. 

so, i mean, maybe im just being a lazy teenager and complaining because i dont want to spend my entire life studying and learning everything there is to know. i want to have a social life and i want to be happy, i want to spend my time doing other things. 

but really.. after hearing about croatian school.. can you blame me?