I don’t need my education squandered to understand that the book is about being taken advantage of and relinquishing my rights. I also don’t need to contract the Black Plague when in AP European History to comprehend that it was disgusting and killed thousands of people. I’m here to learn, not for my time to be wasted.

The Big Brother project is an excuse for teachers to have students kiss up and buy them a surplus of gifts. Sure, technically students aren’t “supposed” to buy things, but everyone knows that if you really want to get ahead you have to buy teachers stuff. (And the teachers know that, and don’t really dissuade kids.)

It sickens me watching students pretend to listen intently to what a teacher, hall monitor, or administrator has to say, when I know a few minutes before they were talking about how much they hate the project.

I personally value authenticity and genuity. If someone didn’t like me, I wouldn’t want them to pretend to, and I definitely wouldn’t create a project specifically to make them pretend to like me and find me hilarious.

The Big Brother project is also extended way longer than any other project I have ever encountered in high school. That’s four years of academically rigorous classes that can’t find a project worth a month of your time.

So, no I don’t think that extending the project to last that long of time is helpful. I can get actual insightful and interesting projects done in far less time.

More time does not mean better. I even calculated it for you. On the basis that school is ten months long, and you go all four years, you just wasted 2.5% of your high school career on a useless, meaningless project.

I did in fact read 1984. I even enjoyed it. It is pessimistic and depressing, so of course I thought the book was great. I was even able to fully comprehend and appreciate the book without a month-long project that mimics the repressive society.

The project does not add to a student’s understanding of the book. I will tell you what it does teach a student: how to kiss up to teachers/hall monitors/administrators and how to buy stuff and bring it to school

How illuminating…

It seems that none of those actually contribute to literary understanding. Perhaps the project could be more applicable if it is performed just inside the classroom, or even more radically – just in English class. Instead the “sticker mania” extends into every aspect of a student’s life, at times affecting their social life.

This could be understandable if it actually contributed to a student’s understanding. But, again, it doesn’t.

This is the purpose of Big Brother: for teachers to get gifts and supplies for their classrooms: for teachers to get pampered and have students pretend they think they are fantastic, ethereal beings; and for teachers to micro-manage seniors.

We are all adults, or nearly adults. So you would think that we would be allowed to manage ourselves.

We could be drafted in the war or vote in the next election. We are active citizens of the United States, choosing the careers that will dictate the rest of our lives.
So yes, I think that we should not be given a project that allows teachers to dictate and pull our strings like useless puppets.