Rants about school starting earlier each year, the smarter balanced tests, fanfictions, and badminton.

School starts earlier each year

The sun blazes on the quad as students rush to class … in early August? School will commence on Aug. 17 this fall, earlier than ever. This pattern began several years ago and has continued since then. Before we know it, the first day will be in July.

On the East Coast, school starts the day after Labor Day, as it has for decades. This August-starting schedule defeats the idea of “summer vacation” by forcing students to return to school when the traditional summer season is not yet over, making the return to school seem out-of-place and abrupt.

Common Core testing falls flat

Remember when you thought STAR testing was annoying? Welcome to the all-new and considerably harder Common Core Smarter Balanced Exam, which was rudely forced upon juniors amidst AP/SAT studying.

     While the new Common Core definitely tests critical-thinking, it cannot yet be considered a reliable assessment of students’ abilities.

      For one, its math word problems were unnecessarily complex: They had so many variables and conditions that I had to scroll through three pages just to read them all. On the bright side, I now know how to construct a zipline.

      Meanwhile, the English portion was exasperating because most of the answers were “check all that apply,” which made me paranoid that if I even missed one checkmark, I’d get the entire question wrong.

   In the end, Common Core testing turned out to be a poorly thought out waste of valuable class time. Indeed, the main thing it did test was students’ abilities to cope with their increased workloads following the test, which required them to miss several classes.

Fanfictioners are real writers too

Writing (noun): when someone puts effort into creating a coherent story with an intriguing storyline, characters, dialogue and descriptions. But if the writer borrows existing characters? No, that’s not real writing. (Of course, it’s irrelevant that the writer crafted his or her own version of the borrowed material, using this content as a mere springboard for the story.)

It’s true that some fanfictions have poor writing, bland or too-perfect characters, cliched/nonexistent plot, etc., but so do original works, published or not. And would you denounce Shakespeare because he didn’t create the character Julius Caesar? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Badminton discriminated against

Another “Week at a Glance” email appears in my inbox. Principal Paul Robinson talks about sports teams and their recent games. But like every other email, he rarely mentions anything about badminton. Why is badminton discriminated against? Badminton players face tough opponents just like other sports. Badminton has international tournaments just like other sports. Badminton is just as, if not more, demanding on the body as other sports, yet most schools don’t have a badminton team and the sport is viewed as a mere recreational activity. That isn’t right. Respect the shuttlecock.