Author: Ismael

Alternative success

Ask any college student about their time in school, and be met with shudders and groans of all the stressful memories of exams,projects, and books of essays from their ‘12 years of hell’. The work might have been stressful and exhausting, but at the end of the day, it’s the only real way to success, or so we’ve been lead to believe. Maybe all that stress and anxiety wasn’t necessary for you to succeed, and might have even had an opposite effect on some students. Personally, I’ve seen every way a student has succeed in this system of education, and the most prominent method I’ve experienced and witnessed is through unethical methods like cramming and cheating. For every hard working straight A students, there’s just as much or even more students sneaking cheat sheets into exams, and it may be due to how our public education system is set up.
Public schools are used as a means to grant children a fair and fulfilling head start in life, with a clear path to a career, and as tech grew smarter and more complicated, so did the curriculums needed for careers. Befor, classes were taught at home, basic literature and an understanding in mathematics was all that was needed. But with advancement in technology and innovation, the standard for basic education grew with the time. With such a fast growing system, the pressure to succeed grew as well. Students now are expected to learn at a far greater rate than those of a couple generations ago, and as we’re taught to put our best into our work, sometimes our best just isn’t enough to reach such high expectations.
So why exactly would a student even consider cheating as an option? Well it might be due to the way schools put more value on actually succeeding than learning. In John Taylor Gatto’s article “Against school”, he raises the argument that “schools are meant to tag the unfit – with poor grades, remedial placement, and other punishments”. School has become a competitive environment made to weed out students based on how fast they can grasp information. With long school hours and piles of work, students are expected to sacrifice their already limited free time outside of classes, to accomplish what all those long hours of classes should have done. I’ve sacrificed my own health, coming into school on no sleep, stomachs flu, migraines, and more, all because of the value school puts into ‘furthering your education’, where a single day of class is worth more than a week of pain and suffering. Students are also made to conform to a specific learning style that might not cater to their abilities. In math class, I’d have difficulty understanding a problem or method during class. So I took the time afterwards to break down the problem further than my teacher would, using my own knowledge and understanding to figure out how to better see the problem. However, regardless of my answer, if I didn’t use the ‘correct method’ to solve it, my answer was as good as wrong in the eyes of the school grading system.
So can students blame their failure on the teachers for not teaching them the right way? In most cases, no. Teachers are also victims to a flawed system. They’re also limited in time, expected to cater to classes of around 30 students, some covering multiple courses, which can average to almost 100 unique and individualized learning methods to prepare. They’re also graded based on the success of their students grades. Back in my old English class,usually a topic would be chosen for the class, based on assigned articles or novels. Then, the class period would be used to discuss this single topic in great details, while the teacher would include critical ideas and counter arguments, allowing allowing the class to not only explore concepts at a comfortable pace, but to use critical analysis in key arguments and topics without much help from the teacher. However, occasionally teachers were given unexpected visits from deans and members of the board of education to be evaluated on their performance. This changed the whole environment of the class, every talking point being driven by the teacher like a monotone orchestra, as if our thoughts on One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was all the same. The class went from a vivid discussion on different views, to a simplified agree/disagree discorce.
Learning is a time consuming process, that requires unique methods of understanding to each person. Public schools have systematically made this process into a filtration system that, as Gatto stated, “…produce mediocre intellects, to hamstring the inner life, to deny students appreciable leadership skills, and to ensure docile and incomplete citizens, all in order to render the populace ‘manageable’ “. In my 12 years of school, learning and passing were two completely different concepts, and the time needed to learn was jammed with cramming and white noise knowledge. To pass was to put myself through unnecessary anxiety, leading to habits that still haunt me through my college years. To learn was to take what precious time outside of school there was to break down the vast information given into a fine and simple concept. With no change to the current system, an increase in school time, and an increase in the want for standardized testing, this method of learning will start to become an unreachable goal set aside for more competitive and uniform learning systems.

The primary goals set on public schools is to grant children a fair and fulfilling head start in life, with a clear path to a career. At least that’s the initial goal, but as innovation grew, the need for workers and consumers came with, so schools became the perfect environment to nurture such gullible and manipulable groups. Having been through the whole spectrum of education, from the problem students to the honor classes, the path set by schools is not as advertised, and a proper education through these methods takes unique and almost disparaging techniques.

Education is suppose to be a slow and personal growth experience, and teachers are meant to make sure each and every student grows in their own ways. However, the current school environment is such a competitive field, with long hours of throwing information into students without proper care on whether it stuck, and so little time to retain this information. Students are expected to sacrifice their already limited time outside of classes, to accomplish what hours of classes should have done. In John Taylor Gatto’s article “Against school”, he raises the argument that “schools are meant to tag the unfit – with poor grades, remedial placement, and other punishments”. Those lucky enough to grasp concept fast enough were allowed to pass, while the rest were ostracized, labeled as a grade and nothing more. The need to pass over learning took over most, as most took to questionable methods of passing, from last second memorizing, to in most cases I’ve seen, some form of cheating.

For a student to fully understand new ideas, according to Robert leamnson’s article “Learning”, the key to true education comes from a balance of both understanding and memorization. However, schools set a much different requirement for all teachers, grading classes based on test scores instead of overall understanding. This practice may make it easy to grade several papers, but all it shows is a student’s abilities to memorize information then proceed to regurgitate it all onto standardized tests. In high school, teachers were occasionally observed during class times, to give overall grades based on teaching methods and average class grades. The teachers of course knew when these visits would occur and would set up before hand. On one of those days, an English teacher of mine was chosen, the ‘approved’ method he prepared for that day was such a drastic change from his usual classes. Usually, a topic was chosen for the class, normally from assigned article or novel for the class, then the class period would be used to discus this single topic in details, while the teacher would push for critical ideas and counter arguments, allowing the class to not only explore concepts at their own pace, but to use critical thinking in key arguments and proposals. This class period however, was completely driven by the teacher, the topic was chosen by the teacher as usual, but instead of breaking off into talking points, we were almost orchestrated by the teacher, thought by thought, as if our thoughts on one flew over the cuckoo’s nest was all in the same. The class went from a vivid discussion on different views, to simple agree/disagree discourse.

Gatto states that one of the actual basic functions of schools is to create conformity, “because its intention is to make children as alike as possible. People who conform are predictable, and this is of great use to harness and manipulate a large labor force”. If you don’t solve a problem the way you were taught, regardless if you achieved the answer through your way, then you fail. This was a concept rooted into our brain, and although it seems necessary at younger ages to fully grasp simple concepts, it becomes redundant further on where free thinking and individual growth and understanding should prosper. When a math problem was taught in a way that wasn’t clear or too complicated to understand,  I would take time to figure out patterns in the problem, see how the outcome is created, and use the understanding plus my own thought process to make an easier and clear way to solve a problem. However, in most cases, the problems are made with predetermined methods of solution, where knowing the answer is only half the problem, memorizing the steps to take it is the main goal. This method of teaching leads to an inefficient method of learning, instead of a custom and critical method of education, students are taught to think uniformly, cutting out free thought, while those attempting to think critically were told their methods were inefficient.

Learning is a time consuming process, that requires unique methods of understanding to each person. Public schools have systematically made this process into a filtration system that, as Gatto stated, “…produce mediocre intellects, to hamstring the inner life, to deny students appreciable leadership skills, and to ensure docile and incomplete citizens, all in order to render the populace ‘manageable’ “. In my 12 years of school, learning and passing were two completely different concepts, and the time needed to learn was jammed with cramming and white noise knowledge. To pass was to put myself through unnecessary anxiety, leading to habits that still haunt me through my college years. To learn was to take what precious time outside of school there was to break down the vast information given into a fine and simple concept. With no change to the current system, an increase in school time, and an increase in the want for standardized testing, this method of learning will start to become an unreachable goal set aside for more competitive and uniform learning systems.