Despite the success of the current education system in place, I can't help feeling that such success is outweighed in part by it's various flaws. Having English a mandatory coarse for your high school diploma seems like a degradation of humanities intelligence as a species. While communication skills are completely necessary for society to function at uttermost efficiency, they are best built up early, and would best be taught in elem entry and middle school levels. High school should be left open for sciences, math, and social studies, cooking, and other academics. English is not a necessary on a high school level for an English-speaking country, and should not be mandatory for graduation and instead only be an option for students who did not necessarily grow up in an English-speaking country, or exchange students. Another issue that I have been pondering for a while is how outdated the system is comparatively in regards to modern technology. A lot of students grades are suffering because, well, the material taught isn't that fun or engaging and is just plane boring. School should be made in a model where students are captivated and actually want to learn, and not make it a chore to come every day. One example of this is Khan Academy, an online website dedicated to learning. They make it fun by having achievements, and other features that bring education up to par with modern technology. The website is education based, but feels like a social platform, which is mainly what contributes to it's success. It's simple, it's up to date, and it's engaging. There's no teacher you have to deal with and students can learn what they want when they want. However, such websites or third-party education are not recognized by the government as an official form of education. You cannot "graduate" or get official recognition for what you know. The fact that schools now rarely utilize the internet's capability as a learning platform, or ignores it completely, severely cripples the effectiveness of education in Canada and beyond. There is homeschooling, and online courses that people can take, sure, but it's still not utilizing it's full potential. There are so many resources that can be pulled into such programs, that are simply ignored or disregarded as 'not an official source'. YouTube being an example. Podcasts and livestreams from sources such as NASA. Sure, they are used here and there, but are spread out and disconnected, rather relying on PDF of word documents as it's main source. The simple fact is: High school students hate reading. They hate textbooks, documents, anything of the sort. Novels like fantasy and sci-fi they may read, but anything based on real life stuff is just not engaging to students in a text based format. There may be an odd student or more who may like or prefer it, but most don't. So why is English mandatory? If there's one thing that I've learned over my time as a student, it's that we hate being forced to do something. We like openness, freedom to do stuff on our own time. Being forced to do something we may not necessarily like puts a lot of stress on our shoulders, and that's when we start breaking and our grades start suffering. Sure, there should be a minimum amount of courses for graduation, and the credit system is just fine. However speaking, such courses should be engaging and fun, and using technology to provide the best experience that makes students want to learn and come back. Such things should be fun from the moment they step into kindergarten, and always fresh and new every year so it shouldn't become a chore, or flat ,or boring year after year of repetitiveness. Thus concludes my thoughts. What are yours? Agree or disagree? Thank you for reading - Cam.