Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Is our education system the best way to education the youth?

Our system of education system is formed as a factory. We are learned that there is only one right way to answer a question and only right way of learning. For example, I worked a factory for two months and in my time I only had to make holes into a metal plate and do that for 8 hours. But what does that do with educations? I felt like a mindless robot just regurgitating ideas and instructions and the truth is that children’s feel like hopeless mindless robots just regurgitating information into paper without using critical thinking.  In our system, as no child life behind, we measure students by grades and test scores. So in the fears of teachers losing their jobs, the teachers only teach about what is going to be on the standardizing test like the ACT and SAT. That took away the privilege of asking questions that the child was curious about. That made a current education into if we repeat what the teachers said then I will pass the test. After years of being in this education, the child creativity slowly and surely fades away. As Propaganda, a spoken word artist, said, “My child is not a widget. And a school should not be an assembly line. Making my daughter’s diploma equivalent to an inspected by 2235 stamp. Dear Bored of Education, there not a scantron on the planet that can measure inspiration.” It made me wonder what happened to teachers teaching children how to live life? What happened to where teaching life lessons is less important than educating kids? Could it be that more kids have ADHD because while all the situations in our minds like life struggles, culture, heritage is more meaningful than being drown by the information they are learning in life?
In this current system philosophy is “there are only two main group of people: academic (smart people) and non-academic. (Non-smart people) In a sense saying people who are made for school and not made for school by making a big division between the two. It sad to think that smart people believe that they are dumb because they don’t want to close their mind to a narrow sense of thinking. The damage of regurgitating information is making creativity disappear. In the sense children start losing hope in their lives and start shutting down focus in their lives and feel like zombies. This connection may be wrong but I feel like the lack to focus that is cause by this system could contribute with the problem of youth of being present, in the moment. The reason is that this system isn’t letting youth to become of who they want to be but rather who the system made them to be. Let me explain, in this current system, the people who are “academic” have more opportunities to do what they want in life and the “non-academic” only hope is to work at warehouse or factory or any job that doesn’t depend in a lot of thinking and usage of the mind. You are probably thinking, “give me an example?” Alright, it will be my honor. In my former high school, Fenton High school, around half of the students fit into the profile of no child left behind or a million children left behind...which ever you want to call it. Which basically ranked the student in what they know and ranked the school on their education “progress.” Well the students who were not in child left behind were offered AP classes and made it big universities. I am happy for them, don’t get me wrong. For the students who were in no child left behind, which was half of the school, basically were passed by to help the school graduation rate and school GPA are now working at labor jobs or fast food. We were never expected or prepared to follow any education after graduating high school.
What is the problem with just regulating information? The truth is that in life we cannot answer every situation like as easy as 1+1=2 but we will need to be able to think of different solutions and interpret solutions. We expect that we need to have the right answer but the truth is that when we go six feet deep we won’t have a letter grade in how we did in life but rather the impact we had in our world. These children won’t have the freedom of thinking outside the box because they aren’t thought to critical thinking. For example, in biblical time when a rabbi (teacher) asked questions. The student critical thought about the question and responded by a question. In a sense that showed that they wanted to dig deeper into the question but now a day teachers are satisfied with single yes or no answers or a short answer without having the student to dig deeper into the question that the teacher is asking. We need to reach a point that would give the freedom to the students to feel confident and do something with their talent and skills.
How do the minority feel about the system of education? We honestly believe and feel like we are left behind. The future we go through education we learn that our history classes and reading is bias in the sense that it shows the European and “white” as the best. I am a sophomore in college and I have never read a book from a Hispanic Author and never learned about my heritage background that sometime make me wonder, “Is my people history good enough to make it in the textbooks or lectures?” Denice Frohman, spoken word artist, said it best, “the quickest way to silent a mouth is to treat it as none has come before.”

The truth about the no child left behind is that it has effected minorities more negatively than positively. The government did “accomplish” their goal of a higher graduation rate but in the consequence of the percentage of students going to college and crushed their dreams. Denice Frohman, spoken word artist used this illustration. She went into auditorium and asked “who has dreams?” eleven students raised their hands barely above their shoulders as if they were sitting in history class unsure of the right answer. One student in the first row named Luciano is waiting for me to tell him what page to turn to. Another student in the eighth roll is trying to decide if this is a trick question. There is no right answer I say but they are too comfortable with the right to remain silent.” The truth is that a lot of students are frustrating so they act out but they only get kicked out of school. All they hear from the teachers and non-facial expression from students is that they are failures. To a point, the student just deal with it and end their dreams to become scientist, police officers, a president but rather conform to what the system set them up to be.

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