Author: Jalin Slater

Unlike most Education Narratives, this narrative is going to be a critique of the American education system. While it’s not a unique stance, the american education system fails the people within it daily. My history with education is just one of the many examples of near missing a catastrophe. The education system attempts to turn unruly children into functioning members of society while at the same time showing that the exact same society they are supposed to join, cares little about them themselves. The system is far from a perfect one, but it should have a focus on creating an environment that emphasizes how important education truly is.

Early on in my educational career I started to amass a large amount of absences which were never addressed until my late high school years. Even with all these absences, every school I’ve ever been in let me slide by year after year without correcting my behavior. I started missing school for the basic reason that my mother was sick. In my life it’s always been just me and my mother so I somehow got it into my head that it was my job to stay home with her as much as possible, which in hindsight just sounds like a childish excuse to miss school. Despite me missing school for weeks on end and still getting sent to the next grade, school quickly became boring and I became quite disillusioned with it. It wasn’t until I was nearly a senior in  high school that my “sliding” stopped abruptly. I was a whole 33 credits shy of graduating. After thinking I could get away with anything I was simply and abruptly told do not pass go, do not collect $200.

After hitting the limitations of putting in no effort with school I was given a choice by both my parents and school: go to a transfer school or get my GED. In my eyes a GED was tantamount to failure. I also didn’t want to leave my current school as I had been there for almost a decade. After months of back and forth something in me relented, some part of me knew this wasn’t the way things were supposed to go and wanted me back on track. Leaving my old school and going to a transfer school was the best decision I could have ever made. If I didn’t I doubt I’d have graduated high school. The key difference between the transfer school and normal school were the staff. While most teachers were a bit distant, the teachers at the transfer school took the time to know you and tried to help based on your individual needs. That’s where I feel the education system needs the most help. It’s a vicious machine that teaches you that you’re nothing but a cog in the machine that has one path in life. The compassion and love they held for teaching forever changed my standard of learning.

My story isn’t a unique one but think about all the people who have had to stay home to take care of a sick loved one or thought they had a better use of their time than school? What happens to those kids who end up not knowing the true value of an education? Those kids end up falling out of the machine, ground up and spit out without anyone to actually care. Traditional education could benefit more from compassionate individuals who truly care for their students.

I:  My lackluster educational career is indicative of a larger problem with the school systems of the united states. Being able to slide through year after year without any real consequences or without anyone truly noticing simply adds to the problem of people not believing school is of importance or without a quality education.

II:  I will discuss what prompted my many many absences and how my elementary school chose to deal with it.

III: I will discuss how long it took for someone to actually notice that I was sliding through school and help me get on the right track.

Conclusion: In conclusion the educational system in America fails many children from the start and nearly failed me.

When I think about the history of my education I think about the course of my high school years. School was always a bit too easy for me. Up until my junior year of High school I coasted through class after class until it just seemed pointless. At some point I just stopped attending at all. Until one day a guidance counselor told me I had no where near enough credits to graduate and that I needed to go to a transfer school, that’ll help me get my credits faster. Being told that I needed to change schools was oddly enough the most embarrassing the thing that could’ve happened to me back then. In hindsight, it was actually the greatest thing that could’ve happened to me. If I hadn’t gone, I might have just dropped out of high school all together and would not be sitting here writing this. Up until changing schools, my view of education was a negative one. School was boring, people were annoying, teachers did not make class interesting. What changed my perspective was actually my first English teacher in the new school. She was a no nonsense kind of teacher who understood everything that kids my age were going through and saw that I kind of hated the new environment and took it upon herself to get to know me and make me feel comfortable. I can honestly say that she single-handedly made my educational experience positive. The majority of the teachers in that school were amazing but she stood out to me the most. A particular moment that I’m very fond of is when she introduced me to the large library in her classroom and let me pick a book and after I finished I would just keep reading and reading and reading. She instilled a deeper love of reading than I already had and made me actually think about the way I read similarly to How to read like a writer and she made us focus on writing everyday simply to get any ideas or feelings out like Shitty first drafts. I’m glad I had her as a teacher, she prepared me more for college in a year than my other school did in 8.