By Coleman Morris ’20

What Greek Philosopher discovered the Pythagorean theorem?

Who are the main Characters of Catcher in the Rye?

Who was the emperor of Japan during World War 2?

If your asking why you are being asked these questions, then maybe you should ask why you are being taught them.

These are all things we were told to be essential, and yet many people can’t answer them.

Change,

The world is forever changing, that’s how it is.

The world as a whole changes, but for some reason, it seems at times that the little things stay in the past, don’t move forward to change.

Change is scary, but it is inevitable.

One thing in particular that don’t seem to change is the way core classes, in grade school, middle school, and in high school, stay in the past. They are structured the same, and have been for many years.

That’s difficult because we want to learn about things that we think are relevant to who we are, the way we live, and what we use, and what we need to have learned for us to live out our lives.

“We wan’t to feel wired in, and excited about what we are learning in our core classes, but unfortunately it’s more of an environment where kids are picking classes not because they want to, but because they know they have to get it off the list of required classes to take.” Said junior, Sam Stern.

It’s simple, you need to be passionate about what you learn.

Something as simple as World History, a High School course class, talks mainly about the past. This makes it a challenge because you are trying to connect with what you don’t know.

We can’t connect to what it was like to live in the 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, ext, because we live in a drastically different world today.

A survey was sent out to the students of Regis Jesuit High School asking one question.

The question states, “In core classes are you passionate about what you are learning, can you really dive in deep and connect with it, do you think you will lose what you have learned in these classes in your later life?”

You could answer Yes, No, or I don’t know.

Of the 17 people who had taken it, 30 percent said yes, 47 percent said no, and 23 percent answered I don’t know.

A large percentage of peoples survey showed that they are not seeing the impact that core classes can offer.

Some Juniors at Regis Jesuit had to construct a project on the main effects of vaping for an  Algebra 2 unit.

Vaping is a current problem today, especially with teens.

The math office saw this problem, and decided to connect it with their classes.

This was revealing a current problem in today’s world, and bringing it to light. The math department understood that teenagers perform better when they are learning something they have a connection with, in any way possible.

The average for this project was a 96.7 percent.

This needs to be brought to the attention to all teachers, staff, and faculty in our Regis Jesuit community and beyond that.

People are afraid of change, yes.

Because people are scared of things they don’t know.

But if you change things to make it prevalent, and something we do know and do understand.

That is the change we need.