ng down for hours at a time. Elementary school was not physically stimulating, my physical education class was an attempt at keeping us all from getting fat, but other than that there was little or no physical activity involved. This would cause all of the students to become unhappy and restless and we were allowed to have access to fresh air and sunlight for 35 minutes a day to release all that pesky “energy” teachers complain about so much. It seems apparent to me that the setup of a standard school day is inherently wrong. The human mind and body are not intended to remain focused on one bland topic for more than 10 minutes. The school systems have been using the same boring and ineffective methods for more than 100 years. Having children sit down at their desks and be lectured to is not as effective as using an interactive approach that involves the students and relates the subject matter to the real world. And by the real world I don’t always mean the economy, or America, or the community the students live in. While these are all valid subjects to teach, what I call the “real world” is actually The World. The Earth, the effect of humans on this planet (not our planet), and what we can do to improve the really important issues. My idea of really important issues is different than most people’s. Within the lifetime of today’s students, there will be a phenomenal problem with overpopulation. There are currently estimated to be 6,157,756,751 people in the year 2001. Projections indicate that by the year 2050 there will be 9,309,051,539 human beings running around on the Earth. That seems to me to be a much more important issue than George Washington cutting down a cherry tree, or the names of constellations, or all the words to the “Star Spangled Banner” or any of the countless other bits of junk that I have already (and will) learn and forget in the course of my educa...
