Nora Agafonova12/1CivicsResearch PaperThe Faults in Our Education “Education is about unleashing one’s confidence. Education is learning from failure. Education is growing from experience. Education is discovering your passions then pursuing them.” (JOHN DEXTER RODRIGUEZ)For most of their life, students have been taught that good grades determine how successful their life will be. However, whether a human gets good grades or not will not determine their success.
The system has continuously brainwashed students that good grades equal good life. This has caused students to be more stressed out, cheating has increased, students face illnesses like anorexia/bulimia, depression, and have suicidal thoughts. Sleep deprivation is famous amongst all students. Yes, the current education system teaches basic necessities, however much of what is learned is not applicable in real life. There is no money management classes, or tax management classes, or lessons on blogging, or ones dedicated to poverty, economics or business. At school, classes lack relevant reading.
Students are forced to read hard to understand texts, which just encourages a distaste for reading. Education is not just memorizing things, analyzing meaningless to one books, wasting time on subjects one hates. People are so used to being told what they can and cannot be that they no longer know what they WANT to be. Education is about growth, developing lifelong relationships with those around you, being human, experience. Students need to be inspired, so that they can change the world. Grades fail to show the potential of a student, they make people feel like they’re not good enough. This ruins the whole purpose of education.
The problem is not in getting good grades – it is letting grades dictate one’s life. Nowadays, lack of funding for public education is a big issue. Education requires a large amount of funds for resources and teachers. Teachers are not paid well which demotivates them and forces them to find a better paying job. Teachers need to be well compensated for the work they do and it is the government’s responsibility to provide that. According to research, students who live at or below poverty line are most likely to drop out of school, also if they do not get enough sleep, because they have to support themselves, or food, because they cannot afford it, are more likely to perform worse in class.
Bullying is also a huge factor as to why students perform worse. Bullies torture their victims through social media, texting and one-on-one interactions. Cyber bullying is one of the most common ways of bullying nowadays. A number of suicides can be connected to bullying. Abuse demotivates students and makes them incapable of studying efficiently or even going to school. One of the major reasons children do not excel in studies or show lack of interest is because their parents do not help or motivate them; or they just don’t care. Some parents do not bother to learn what their children are studying at school.
This causes increased dropout rates amongst students. Obesity and anorexia are the two extremes students suffer from. Main reasons are poor eating habits and lack of health education, this also leads to lower achievement amongst children. These illnesses also increase the risk of other medical conditions like increased blood pressure, anemia, diabetes, muscle atrophy, increased chance of stroke, which could all result in low attendance at school. The system requires all students to be the same, all colour is stripped down from them, as they’re left black and white. Kept for hours between closed doors and four walls, students get stressed out and are forced to choose between grades and knowledge. School has diminished the desire to learn. Instead of opening students’ eyes for learning, the educational system has strict rules that no one is allowed to break.
As soon as one steps in high school, personal styles of writing, expressing oneself and art are stripped off. If one does not succeed in a certain subject, for years they believe they are failures and they will never accomplish anything in life. As much as everyone keeps repeating an individual is unique, school attempts to turn everyone into the same person.
The key to succeeding at school is memorizing everything, sucking information up like a sponge. There is no difference between math, science, literature or languages – a student is still expected to memorize everything and recite it perfectly, and this is what they’re graded on. The education system needs an update, they are trying to teach how one can survive in the 21st century, while they base their manners in the previous century, because that is how they have been taught. There is a difference between the past and the present and education should be updated according to the time period. There is so much more to the world than just trigonometry and the periodic table, which will not have much impact on a student’s life in the future. Humans strive to find themselves but are rewarded with self-destruction in the form of a number or letter grade. These are all labels, comparing students to one another based on how well they’re able to compress and use certain information that teachers instruct. Everyone is programmed to strive for a 4.
0 GPA; students live like they’re the numbers and letters in their gradebooks. Some would rather lie and cheat just so that they can receive a what is considered to be a “good grade,” basically what is the socially acceptable grade. Teenagers struggle with mental health issues but get ignored because “this is not a valid reason not to attend class.” They just get labeled as “stressed-out” and put into a corner, where there is much more just like them.
Adolescents are not being educated according to what their talents are, instead they are punished for their faults. Students are grouped into age levels instead of levels of capability. They’re told there is only one answer in specific subjects, like physics, instead of the limitless possibilities that an individual’s mind can come up with. Education is no longer about teachers and students; it has become a business. Standardized testing looks at the person’s score instead of their individuality.
To the school, students are just GPA, which they use to make money. Rote memorization cannot be considered learning. Students that have learned certain information before a test usually forget everything immediately after it has served its purpose on paper. Of course, some knowledge is retained, but usually most of it is gone soon enough.
The education system exists to create compliant individuals that are one and the same. When they leave school, they are said to be unfit for employment unless they have received certain grades in every subject they have studied; otherwise they’re considered to be less intelligent than the others. Over the course of high school, students are flooded with information and what is expected from them is to remember it all from beginning to end. This is impossible seeing as it it a massive amount of information, most of which is invalid in life outside of school. Of course, some subjects like basic maths and languages are necessary, but those are applicable later in life. The current system attempts to force students to be good at things they might not be fit to be good at.
In the Journal of Educational Psychology, it is said that each individual requiers a study program tailored to his needs. In order to have interested students, they need to be curious, however the educational system wants students who are smart; they refuse to have ones who are ready to explore, they want individuals who would raise the school’s ratings, which means getting more money. When is the system going to teach students how to be functional members of society or how to be at least a decent human being. Education shouldn’t be only textbooks and homework and tests; it is knowledge – knowing what to make of what you see. Education is progress, and curiosity, not just memorizing certain information.
Governments have underfunded schools and teachers, most public schools have not upgraded their books and interior for many years which is also affecting how students view school. Less fortunate students are not helped in any way. Students who cannot afford to go to school because they have to work, or take care for relatives are not supported and therefore fail later in life. The problem of education is very structural. Students cannot take charge of their own education. There needs to be flexibility and freedom of choice. Every individual should be able to choose the courses they want to study which will probably be the ones they are good at. This way grades will no longer be a reason for low self esteem and self loath, instead they will be truly gotten and they will be motivated to continue excelling in what they do.
Teachers should not only be there to raise the scores on standardized tests but to truly educate students. Research shows that students are least happiest when they are at school as opposed to any other setting. We are entering an era in which creativeness and initiativity are appreciated; sadly these trends have not reached the school system.
These are reasons why some people have started seeing school as a jail: repressive and unhealthy. School has failed to actually educate individuals and prepare them for real life. The system has tried to create robots who are all the same. Instead of making going to school a pleasant experience they have caused students to hate going to school, they have increased the rates of mental illnesses amongst adolescent individuals, they have turned knowledge into a business. The fault in the education system turns out not to be just one. There are many errors that need to be fixed immediately before its too late. Works CitedSowapark, Montita. “A Grievance on the Faults of Our Education System: The Student Version.
” The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 18 Oct. 2013.
Web. 10 Jan. 2018.Journal of educational psychology. (1966). American Psychological Association, Washington, D.C.
Alyssa Figueroa / AlterNet. “The Real Problem with Education Today? Kids Hate School — and Here’s Why.” Alternet., Web. 10 Jan. 2018.National Center for Education Statistics
