The current public school system was created with the main intention to give children a head start in life, with a vast understanding and knowledge of the world through innovation. However, with a burst of big products, comes higher need of consumption, and school has become the catalyst of bloom for big companies to take advantage on the gullible and mindless consumers created through the system.
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”. in my personal experience, school has been a competitive environment made to weed out students based on how fast they can grasp information. Instead of an environment of free thinking and understanding, schools breed competitive cut throat needs of memorization for tests and exams, where those who pass are either the lucky few who can grasp concepts faster than others, those who cram empty information to then regurgitate onto papers for their teachers, or in most cases that I’ve experienced, used unethical needs to pass a class that refuses to take its time to create an understanding of the subject.
According to Robert leamnson’s article “Learning”, the key to true education comes from a balance of both understanding and memorization. Through most of my time in school, teachers were graded on how well their students can succeed in tests and exams, regardless of whether or not they actually understand the concepts. With redundant measures on how the subject must be taught, the primary focus of education came from constant memorization. with many classes crammed within long hours with little time to soak in the information, students were expected to cram hours and pages of information into minutes, not for the purpose of actually knowing the subject, but to know enough for a decent grade. For the few, understanding the subject and memorization was a simple task taught with time and effort. However for the rest, who were not shown the proper way of utilizing information, were thrashed into humiliation and inferiority, branding us as mere grades rather than lost students in need of understanding. If a student wasn’t able to memorize historic dates, which are seen useless to them to their outside understanding, then they are deemed inefficient. This leads to rash and unethical methods of passing, as previously stated. Where most will stuff information down without grasping the key reasoning behind it, or in some cases, use disapproved methods such as cheat notes and copying when memorization is seen too far to achieve.
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 problem. 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. Without a passion for learning, future leaders become gullible and mindless consumers, made to follow their trends instead of creating one themselves.
