by Shirley Zheng ‘21

The state of Maryland has a set requirement of 21 total credits that every high school student must complete in order to graduate. Those 21 credits consist of three years of social studies, three years of science, four years of English, three years of mathematics, one year of fine arts, one year of technology education, a semester of health, a semester of physical education, at least two to four years of world language or a career program, and one to three years of electives to include courses beyond requirements.

These 21 required courses occupy the majority of a student’s space in their schedule, leaving very little flexibility in scheduling and class options. Sherwood offers a large selection of electives, but most students cannot take full advantage of them since they must make sure to take the required fine arts and technology courses.

Moreover, such requirements demand most juniors, sophomores, and freshmen to take very similar, if not, all the same courses. For example, most sophomores at Sherwood have to take a math, English, science, history, and a foreign language course, along with a fine art or technology and health class in order to be on track for completing their graduation requirements. This creates a problem for students that want to invest more of their time in taking more double period or AP courses, career path programs, or take other more interesting electives such as newspaper and yearbook. Those students would not be able to take the classes they want to take along with all the specifically required credits simultaneously. Thus, if students chose to take those more important APs or other electives, they might have to take the required credits such as arts or health classes online at the cost of $300 per semester, creating an unnecessary financial burden for those students.

A solution for this would be to generalize the requirements to fit a greater variety of classes under each category. This will give students more classes to choose from while completing each of their requirements. For instance, the fine arts credit is very specific in that it includes so few classes to choose from, as most students choose to take ceramics or studio arts to fill their art credit. Instead of having such narrow options, other electives such as newspaper or career-path programs should be included to make it a broader scope.

As a result, the more extensive categories will allow students to have much more freedom when it comes to building their schedule and giving them more chances to explore lots of different career fields and take classes that interest them while at the same time not conflicting with the graduation requirements.