I saw this pretty interesting link on Tumblr the other day concerning public schools and how they've essentially failed at everything they've set out to do.
I've never been completly thrilled with how states go about teaching their children (and, uhm, I've never been too quiet about it.) However, being a, you know, actual student-slash-victim of this societies' idea of education, the opinions of my classmates and I have been systamatically brushed aside as the whining of lazy teenagers who would rather troll facebook then do their homework. And in a lot of cases, this is pretty true. I'd be the first to admit my generation is pretty fucking stupid in a lot of ways, but I'd also be the last to blame it on the kids themselves. In my opinion, there is no such thing as an entirely dumb generation of people who became that way due to the natural progression of society; someone did something wrong. Someone continues to do something wrong, except they won't be the ones suffering for it; they won't be the ones fighting tooth and nail for remedial jobs that came so easy to them, they won't be the ones thrashing their heads against desks in stress-induced breakdowns because of the sheer amount of baseless factoids we have to memorize only to forget it as soon as the tests are over and they won't be the ones having to except this with a docile obedience that could, if slightly stretched, be compared to that of some of the greater dictatorships of these last hundreds of years. You guys, how many of you feel like you got a real education from the confines of your classrooms? How many of you feel like you ever got a truly fair shot at happiness? How many of you actually remember what was on that biology tests and, even if you have, what has it been applied to?
Maybe I'm biased, being one of those frustrated, stressed and increasingly unhappy teenagers being told what is and is not relavent. And maybe thats okay. Because do you know how many times I've heard something like, "Oh, we won't be learning that, it's not on the exam" come out of a teacher's--an educator--mouth and wanted to scream? Do you know how many times I've been punished for speaking my mind or told I wasn't going anywhere because I didn't know what a fucking gerund is?
I live in New Jersey, where Gov. Christie cut millions of dollars in educational funds and lots of people have used this as an excuse for the fucked up students and what they're learning. But I don't. Know why? School was sucking long before those cuts and, yeah, a lot of the younger and more enthusiastic teachers were fired because of these money cuts, which may effect the way some people learn (since we've all been left with the tenored, tired and frankly boring faculty members) but COME ON, you're really going to blame it on which teachers got fired? How about the fact that Sophmores in New Jersey have to take a test in the middle of the year determining whether they graduate or not on biology, potentially one of the least-used school subjects in the last fifty years, and are encouraged to drop out if the guidence department feels they won't pass this test so that the SCHOOL TEST SCORE STATISTICS ARE RAISED SO WE CAN COMPETE WITH FUCKING JAPAN.
Let me tell you something, dipshits:
NO ONE CAN COMPETE WITH JAPAN.
THEY ARE JAPAN.
And the worse part is that seventy percent of students have no problem with this. Well, they do. But they don't know it. They don't know that the overwhelming amount of homework they struggle with every night is bullshit, and they don't know that this is not okay because it was their parents before them who had to do it too. This is "normal", even though it's not. This is middle aged white, rich men in Washington passively deciding how and how much a student will learn in their lifetimes to benefit everything but their actual well-being. And by the time I get out of school, there will be no jobs available (no matter how many years I attend goddamn college), no assistance from the goverment that fucked it up and no sympathy because, hey, you should have tried harder.
Whatever. Just click the link.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Reasons the Educational System Has Failed
Posted by D Swizzle at 9:57 AM
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5 comments:
I think too much emphasis is placed on graduating for the sake of graduating, or so you can get into a good university. From what I've seen amongst my friends, university is really only a necessity if you want to become a doctor or a lawyer. For most other things, you can probably get a decent education in a lot less time and for a lot less money (a good trade school course, for example). The four year degree, in many cases, is just a very expensive piece of paper.
Not necessarily. In the states right now, a high school degree is required just to work at MCDONALDS. It'd definatly necessary to go to school, really not for the learning aspect, but the whole i-don't-want-to-be-homeless aspect. It's become so important because smaller companies have confused degrees with ableness and that mentality has basically spread out into less relevant avenues of buisness, creating this giant clusterfuck of a society where only the well-educated can work at all. It's sucks super hard.
Of course you're biased. You're still in high school. lol
The problem is we don't value learning in our society because we feel like it doesn't contribute to society the way working does. If we did school programs, especially the arts, wouldn't be the first to get cut. But they always are. Critical thinking skills have been pushed aside for more tangent fill-in-the-blank style learning and because of it people aren't able to keep up in college. And even though a college degree does not equal intelligence, it does so more than not having one usually does. The reality is people value not paying taxes above all else and that's never beneficial for public services. And once kids are old enough to actually change the system, say like voting, they don't. We're all to blame.
It's not just new, and it's not just America. I was ranting about this recently, too. I've been out of high school for six years now, and I still think the whole thing sucks like an interstellar vacuum. Stay angry! It's the only way anything might ever get done.
Somethings never change. I remember feeling this way when I was in high school, over 25 years ago.
There is a positive difference between your generation and mine. While you are still learning useless skills your generation is starting to learn the truth about our country. When I was in school we "learned" we are the best and white people always know what is best for everyone else.
Take heart that higher education is better. College is where you will really start learning. Channel your anger towards getting out of high school and into college. I promise, it gets better.
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