Darlene Flores February 19, 2019
Professor Hall Essay #1
Mandatory Schooling
Dear Mr. Yard,
You were my high school principal at ENYFA which im so proud to admit, but I wanted to tell you that the one-on-one times with you when you took upon the responsibility to help me understand trigonometry, were life changing. Besides a high school principal, you were also a friend, someone who anyone can confide in, and you had the best interest for your students at heart, and no matter what, yu always tried your best to see that through. You understood that school at times got to a point for all students, where they felt they had no option left but to give up on themselves. I for one, can say that as long as you were present, nothing of such, would ever happen before your eyes, and I say this because of your effort to heal your students of doubt. Being that you were also a personal tutor for me, you not only reminded me of why I used to have such enthusiasm for school, but also that the education system would be better if it became more flexible. Mandatory schooling is understandable, that should not be taken away, however, the amount of responsibility and hours put into schooling, is overwhelming, and should be set up differently for the sake of students’ mental, emotional, and physical, well being.
There are many factors that contribute to why students feel so stressed when it comes to their education. Rather than seeing education with optimism, as students should, majority often feel sickened by the thought of having to sit in a classroom(s) for an average of 7 hours, 5 days a week, and that excludes outside related forces such as tutoring, or extra help after school hours or even on weekends. A reading by John Taylor Gatto, Against Schools, is an essay about “How public education cripples our kids, and why” by mentioning that “ We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness – curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight – simply by being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids to truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he or she needs in order to take risk every now and then”(1). With this being stated, the message being sent is that the best interest for students is, if the schooling system would loosen up its grip on the time and energy of its students because in the end, the students are who hurt from the outcomes. If the resulting circumstance happens to be just this, then the purpose of mandatory schooling in the first place, would have gone to waste and produced yet, another body, without the ambitions or drive to keep going in life. Have the phrase “Strict parents raise disobedient kids”? Similarly, with the current education system, this phrase can be seen take place in the very homes or school property with students, meaning that students are only carrying more and more responsibility won their shoulders than they should have because outside of their school life, they have yet, more responsibility to keep up with. For example, an adolescent student is expected to complete an average of 7 hours of schooling, have time for extracurricular activities, take the time to arrive home, complete their homework, eat, spend time with family, and deal with their personal and domestic responsibilities, EVERYDAY. School takes up too much time from students’ hands, not to forget the overwhelming stress that we deal with, too. This isn’t okay, because if the students are expected to flourish as the best version of themselves, the strict schooling hours are hindering that ability and it has to be dealt with before it completely and permanently damages the drive students’ have or can have for their own success. Not only time, but if the material and the manner used to teach children in classrooms changed, the role played out by the students, would drastically change.
As a principal, you would understand 100% that not all students learn the same usual way, where they’d sit in a classroom and stare at the board or even the teacher or their texts, trying to grasp the point of all the mumbo jumbo thrown at them, while also having to adjust to them. In this case, students shouldn’t have to adjust to anything, because when you adjust, you settle, and settling means that you’re deciding to deal with less quality than what you should be getting. Quality, in relation to academic material, can be considered the top, if not, one of the most important aspects of education provided for students. Students are losing in the end because they are settling for less when they are tested on the improper things in school buildings, such as their ability to race time and finish their assignment, rather than the quality of their work and the extent to which they understand what they have to learn. Gatto explains something called “the integrating function” and that is “…fixed habits of reaction to authority. This, of course, precludes critical judgement completely. It also pretty much destroys the idea that useful or interesting material should be taught, because you can’t test for reflexive obedience until you know whether you can make kids learn, and do, foolish and boring things” (3). This function, is becoming a habit of schooling manners now and days because as mentioned above, school is becoming more concentrated on how fast a student can complete an assignment, with a given certain amount of time or if they can complete their work in the same manner that they are told to do so, whether that method is the best for them or not. Schooling is becoming more so about the cooperation and obedience of a student rather than the best a students can be at something, BUT at their own pace and actions because it should be about what is in THEIR best interest to become something more than the previous generation. Again, there are many factors that hurts a student when it comes their best ability academically, but working first from the inside and purifying the circumstances of these immediate issues first, would definitely give back better results compared to the current ones being produced.
Sincerely, your student for 7 years of our lives, Darlene Flores
