Another Angle | Changing time frame won’t change behavior

Amanda Melillo Opinions Editor

By senior year of high school, no one was more ready to move on to college than I was. Many students feel it: they’re tired of the same mind-numbing academic routine and everything that teachers assign seems like busy work—especially when college acceptance letters arrive in the mail. At the end of the year, high school and college students experience burn-out, but the situation becomes chronic for high school seinors suffering from “senioritis.”

Recently, state governors have been discussing how to re-vamp the educational system so that senior year is not just a waste of electives that leaves students unprepared for college. they are working to remedy the claim that, “The 12th grade is the biggest wasteland in America,” according to California State University System chancellor Charles Reed as quoted in a USA Today article. (The biggest wasteland in America? A little dramatic, perhaps.)

Some valid suggestions have been made by the National Governors Association, including making graduation requirements more rigorous and creating dual-enrollment programs in which high school seniors could earn college credits in more demanding courses, thereby spending less time and money when they are enrolled in college post-graduation.

Of course, this would create a “ripple effect” of freeing up classroom space and reducing cost of construction and facility upkeep. In turn, the money students would save by earning early credits from public colleges, states would also save in tuition subsidization at their institutions. One has to wonder if there is an ulterior motive in discussions of overhauling the high school education system now, just when public schools are going more and more into debt.

However, Republican Texas Governor Rick Perry said in the same article, “I think we will see more and more students finishing their primary education and moving to higher education more quickly after 11 or 11 and a half years, rather than waiting for the historic 12-year graduation cycle.” This is something lawmakers resort to time and time again: they believe that changing the time frame will alter the behavior. Would eliminating a semester or even a year of high school really “cure” senioritis, which adults talk about like it’s a disease? Or would it only change when senioritis sets in during the school year?

This is the same philosophy that caused lawmakers to change the drinking age in this country to 21-years-old, while all other countries remained at 18- or 19-years-old. Did that stop teenagers from drinking irresponsibly? No. Does underage drinking occur on this campus? Of course. Now instead of legally drinking, people step around the law by using fake IDs. And with every news station reporting binge drinking on campus colleges, it would appear to that the trend is on the rise. According to the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, binge drinking rates are highest among those ages 18 to 25.

This does not necessarily imply that teens are the only ones drinking irresponsibly. Of the 1.5 million binge drinking episodes, 70 percent of those were aged 26 and older. Do people make better choices about alcohol consumption or health when they get older? Well, not according to statistics.

The end of high school is always a period of lethargy, even for the brightest students; shortening the time before graduation won’t make a difference in that regard. Making increa doesn’t change human nature, it just forces people to get a little more creative.