Tell your fellow Americans that the school system is trash, and guess what most Americans will agree with your statement. There are a lot of reasons why in the United States K-12 schooling is low standard. Depending how you slice it, the public school education system in the United States conditions students to be gullible and mindless consumers. The consequences for both school and society shows that we students and teachers are potentially devastating in contribution to the system.
Someday people will cling to the hope that the school system will change, and view its service not as something that sucks and that they hate, but as something that is actually nice and that they don’t hate. In my life as I experienced K-12 schooling I noticed that when I was in middle school, each of my classes I attended we didn’t learn anything in class because the teachers couldn’t handle the students. There was only one particular class where the students didn’t misbehave and that was with our homeroom teacher.
A lot of teachers in our schools don’t know how to teach and make the students enjoy school. Of course the students also need to cooperate with the teachers, however it is the teachers responsibility to guide and make the students behave in class. There are also times in school when students get bored sitting for hours just listening to teachers. As John Taylor Gatto the author of “Against School” states in his article, “One afternoon when I was seven I complained to him of boredom, and he batted me hard on the head.(1)” The author also says when he was in school he was bored just as most kids during school. This also shows why most kids during school don’t want to learn, and listen to the teacher. This leads to the reason why the students do whatever they want in class because they are bored, or not interested during class when the teacher is conducting their lesson.
The goal for schools needs to be making sure that our children who are the future that they are in good place where they learn and continue progressing in school. Construct a school system where students are enjoying school with activities that involve moving around and cooperating with other students. Sitting for hours in chairs is boring and make students sleepy. Create social efficiency, the purpose of education is not to produce citizens, but productive workers that can succeed in life.
As I quickly learned in my experience, schools throw in unnecessary exams, and focuses more based on tests instead of making sure students actually learn something. “We have, for example, the great H.L. Mencken, who wrote in The American Mercury for April 1924 that the aim of public education is not to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence…”(2) Thus, Gatto states that the education system doesn’t fill our young generations with knowledge as an alternative, they give us pressure with passing common core, regents, or other exams. Therefore, the modern schooling needs to be modified and reconstruct how they want to test the students learning.
In our American public school system, schools make our students to be gullible and mindless consumers. If the system would change and try to make our children into real thinkers who will benefit later on effectively is just a hope. Of course there are some people who benefited from our schooling, however there have been more who dropped out of school too. The change would help make students not being bored in classroom, but being involved in activities, and develop skills like teamwork and social efficiency with other students. Taking out of unnecessary exams that pressure students into passing them instead of testing their real knowledge. As a change this will only be a hope that our future won’t stay gullible and mindless consumers.
