Author: jasonn

Have you ever been in an unfamiliar environment and had no idea who to talk to or what to do? Chances are you have been, this is what I was going through when first entering school all the way back in elementary school. Just like any other kid, I was pretty nervous to go to school back in the day and there was 1 major problem that also led me to not wanting to be there. Not speaking English. The education system in America is made default for those who speak English, its made especially for them. Its very unfair for those who have setbacks and people fail to realize that the education system does not care about them. To the system, that kid is just another number that will eventually either go down the wrong path or find a way to overcome their obstacles. Going through school with my language setback really changed the way I saw the education system. Its was very disappointing to see.

 

I was born in the United States but I grew up in a Hispanic household. My mom at the time only spoke Spanish and my dad barely spoke English. It was hard for all of us and the only person who was good at English was my sister. She was in high school though. So Spanish was inevitably going to be my first language and I was really good at it. When school hit it was a different story, I remember walking in and just hearing people talk super fast, I would tell my dad I want to go to the bathroom and bring him so I could cry that I did not want them to leave. It was terrifying because being so innocent and never leaving my parent’s side I didn’t know what to think or do. I was hopeless. The first days I didn’t make any friends, people thought I was weird and no one really approached me. They told my parents that I was going to be put into ESL and my father didn’t like the idea. They had to anyways. Going up in grade, I started to get the hang of English and be able to understand and speak words. Though I could tell that I would be treated differently when talking to a teacher or asking a question out loud rather than if someone who spoke English fluently asked the same question. At the time I didn’t think much of it but looking back people thought less of me because I was a Latin-American who spoke broken English. I don’t remember having a Spanish teacher back in elementary school, they were usually either white or African American. Most students were black or white. You could see where my issue was raised from. I had no one to share my struggles with, I was the odd one out. I was different.

 

Saying that… not everything was terrible. There were some teachers that offered to stay with me after class and help me out in certain areas. There were some who understood my issues and why I wasn’t doing so well. What upsets me is that this education system is made in a very unfair way. You cant teach every kid the same thing and expect the same results from everyone. Some kids dominate math and suffer in English and some kids are opposite. Yet, subjects are still forced onto kids and it leads to them being insecure about their learning abilities. With my, I was always pretty good at math, it was rather simple to understand. Mostly because there was not that much English involved. I tried my best to do amazing in that subject which I did, but English was a different story for me. I would struggle, I would fail tests and it would reflect on my report card. Even though I had such a good grade in math, my English grade always made my overall report card average drop to around an 80. Every student has a gift, the school system needs to help them find their gift and embrace it. Don’t tell them that they aren’t going to get anywhere in life just because they cant do good on a math test. Everyone has a purpose in this world and everyone is smart in their own unique way.

 

Schools need to start treating people like people, not statistics. The education system needs to stop judging kids based off what they are able to do with textbooks and useless information. School is really not for everyone and it isn’t the main key to success. People can choose whatever route they want in life and a degree should not hold them back on what they want to do with their life. A degree should not determine ones intelligence or whether they are able to think critically or not. The system needs to find a better way to accommodate kids who aren’t as textbook gifted as others.

 

In the year 2020, we were hit with an unexpected virus that led to schools shutting down and kids were forced to learn from home, this had a huge impact on their brain activity levels and learning. Kids were deprived of their in-person learning and at first, it seemed like it was nothing serious. It went from a 2 week break to still have to learn remotely in 2021. As you know kids will be kids and everyone found ways to get around learning and make it easier for themselves to be able to pass school. Teachers and school officials were not prepared for this at all and it took a while before they can get rules established in remote learning. These little tricks that kids came up with had a harsh impact on learning.

Kids would do things like join the class and fall asleep, go away and do their own thing, cheat and find answers online, get distracted easily, and much more. This seemed beneficial at first, who doesn’t like to get around their work easily, but it proved to have a harsh impact later on, including on me. People went back to school lost and not knowing any curriculum. They didn’t know what to do on their grade level even though they passed grades remotely. Although, that wasn’t truly them working. We have all done it before but obviously in person learning had so much more benefits. Concentration, being active, having someone to keep you focused are all things that we overlooked.

There is no way that a person could be someone in this world without education. We all know this. Although, not everyone has access to the same opportunities when it comes to progressing with education. You see… you are judged by how smart you are and people determine your intelligence by the amount of schooling you’ve had in life. For some odd reason, good jobs always require a bachelor’s, master’s, or even a Ph.D.  That should not be the case because a degree does not automatically make you smart. Society has a bad habit of stereotyping not having a degree to not having intelligence. A prime example of education not being linked to schooling is Mark Zuckerberg, who dropped out of an ivy league school in 2005 to expand his small project that is now a trillion dollar company. This is just one of a million cases of dropouts making their way up to the top. There are also some things that hold people back from getting an education from school. It’s their language. It’s extremely hard for people to live in America and not be able to speak good English. I’ve seen it in my mom’s case. She was born in Ecuador and speaks English in a very broken manner. She gets treated differently from someone who could speak English fluently and it’s very upsetting because that’s not how it should work. She’s been denied jobs, not taken seriously, ignored, the list goes on and on. People think she doesn’t have intelligence but she does, she just doesn’t have the platform to explain it. Someone’s intelligence should not be determined by how easily another person could understand them.