#29

3 february 2011

Today I almost forgot to write my learning journal entry. What a mistake :o but then I remembered and I'm now going to do it so that I will not ruin my new year's resolution.

So, today we had our round table, where I was one of the experts that was going to discuss the topic : "Does school prepare young people to the future?" . Many questions were made, by the audience and by the chair person, Gonçalo Ramalho, and us, as experts had to answer there questions, based on our opinion, and of course our knowledge and information about the subject. There were asked many questions, as I just said, one of them was, by the audience (Alexandre Oliveira) if we could throw out one subject, in our high school life, what would it be; and I believe that the two subjects refered were phisical education and philosophy. The arguments were, by Diogo Ferreira, to throw out Phisical Education, made based on examples, if a rather large person has phisical education, he can't have a good mark, and that will influence his global grade, and someone who has 20 at phisical education will raise his grade. I think, as I said, that if phisical education didn't had a mark, then nobody would put any effort in to doing the things that the teacher says to do.

Another question which created a lot of controversy was the question made by our chair person, if we think it's fair to the kids who go to the regular school, high school, that supposedly is a lot harder, to have an option to the also supposedly bad students, and that option would be professional courses. In my opinion, I think that it's not easier, I think that is an option, and we shouldn't label right away the professional schools, schools for idiots just based on some people we know that now went to those courses and have better marks, because a lot can change, and they could just be more into school as they grow older...

I think the round table went really well, the subject was interesting, and everyone seemed into the theme, and with interest on exploring a little bit more.