Writing Feedback / Criticism of Modern Primary Education System [6]

We were instructed to address the current schooling system in a critical way from a unique viewpoint. Any style of writing is acceptable.

The System of Education

An endless supply of kids gather 5 days a week to be part of a system they hardly acknoledge to exist. A system often despised but rarely challenged; so monotonous in regularity it's very grounds for existence remain unquestioned. The weak hate the system for the physical prison it has become. The average survive with little thought outside obvious observations. The strong are aware of faults but maintain the status quo. Only few will venture to an objective oasis where true realizations manifest in the mind. This is where I plan to take you.

As of now you most likely attend a public high school 5 out of every 7 days; 9 months of every year. You wake up at 6:30 every morning to spend 7 hours in a uncomfortable desk to learn things you'd rather not learn. School is a chore. It drains energy and enthusiasm and replaces it with lethargy and a deep seeded loathing for the majority of the day. Sure you spend time with friends and enjoy fellowship during small apportioned parts of the day but that is only a bi-product of the Carnegie system of learning. All direct goals result with you in a seat sanctioned to a small area of a classroom that contains 30 other students obviously similar but strikingly different than yourself.

School has conformed you. Your own ideas have eroded to be shaped to those of your peers while theirs' to yours. Your conscious mind assures you that you're an individual; no one is like you. Your very essence contains something so unique that you alone can offer to the world. However dissettling, you know that's not the case. You may make your own choices but what are your options? From age 5 you are recruited to school where you take the classes that your "superiors" have predetermined to best fit your needs and capabilities; just like everyone else. You then endure 7 years of school where your only option is to accept the education or allow your parents to deal with the legal consequences. Flooded with choices you conclude to follow the common endeavor. Finally you are honored with a veiled choice of classes. This satisfies your subconscious with virtual responsibility for a few years. Eventually this excitement dissipates and you find yourself in high school.

After a few years the day has finally come. You are 18. School is no longer legally enforced. It seems the world has finally brought you to a place where every option is open and at hand. So stop your education; drop out of school. For what the law does not enforce society does. If you choose to stray from the typical path you will find yourself at a minimum wage job barely scraping by; ridiculed by society and a cruel disappointment to your parents. They only wished you the best; to get good grades, take AP classes and work your way into college before you can graduate high school.

But after all, you didn't drop out. The choice was clear because in all reality, there wasn't one. You drearily finish highschool and suddenly find yourself treading in a new world of freedom. New hopes flourish your mind; overrun with the possibilities and opportunities of your new life you forget the past. You forget every dreadful moment of your primary education and now when you finally have the power to push for all the change you dreamed would happen just years before, you don't. The cycle repeats. In every way it seems unstoppable; undeniably the only option there is, and ever will be.

Then why do we hate it? As children we are eager to learn everything there is to know. We didn't have to be spoon fed knowledge because we brought our own shovel to the table. Where did we lose that? The integrity of intentional learning to greater ourselves left us as soon as school came. Why? Because it stopped being a choice and became a job. We stopped doing it for ourselves and started doing it for our future. It no longer fed a mind hungry for knowledge but an apathetic mind that only grew in intelligence because it had no choice.

Often if I go for a bike ride and forget to bring water I will find myself incredibly thirsty; dying for just a sip to replenish what I lost. So intense in my mind is the lack of water I create a need for it that otherwise wouldn't exist. On other occasions I will remember water but because I know I can drink at any time I do not sense the lack of it. Because of this I often go on bike rides without ever taking a sip. On neither occasion was I truly dehydrated, but because I had no water I thirsted; and because I had water I did not thirst.

The same holds true for learning. As children when knowledge was not constantly being made available we desired it. However as soon as it began to be forced down our throats and we became aware of its inevitable presence we no longer felt a need for it. If a goal of education was to not only fill a void in a capitalist economy but to serve the students within it we would see a change in this pattern.

If students came to school every day with a true longing to be fed knowledge not only would the present idea of school as an institution be dramatically changed but the student inhabitants that have long conformed to the needs of the system would rise anew with energy and motivation to actually be the best THEY can be. I mean the best they can be as an individual. Not as a unit in a system; for no matter how high or far, systems have limits. Grades are illusions to potential. Is an A really the best you can do? What if the grading scale went higher? Then how satisfied would you be with an A? As of now you satisfy yourself by finding the limits of the system. But what if that was not the case? What truly are your limits? If you have any.