For today’s prompt, we were given a choice of 5 different tweets to write in. This one caught my attention the most:
People close to me know that I am a HUGE advocate for education, especially self-education and personal development. I set a goal for myself to read at least 3 books a month that are geared towards helping me grow in some way.
When it comes to our education system (school), however, I have to be honest and say I do have some reservations.
I think the concept of education from elementary to high school more or less accomplishes the goals of getting kids acclimated to a social environment, teach them to follow rules, respect authority, and gain a general understanding of different academic fields (i.e. history, art, math, science, etc).
One big issue with school is that it’s gearwd toward pushing kids through a specified curriculum based on age. It doesn’t take into consideration the different types of intelligence. Each student is expected to score at a certain criteria regardless of their natural strengths or weaknesses. School doesn’t generally cultivate these inherent strengths.
During college, similar issues arise. General education requirements force student to take classes that don’t pertain to what they need to know for their chosen field (given they have an idea of what they want to do). Some see this as unnecessarily prolonging their college journey and subsequently their debt.
But one of the biggest issues I have with school is that everything students do is focused on one thing: passing a test.
As this tweet points out, students spend hundreds upon hundreds of hours studying for an hour-long test. They cram a semesters worth of material over the course of several sleepless nights just to regurgitate it and forget all they learned minutes after the test is turned in. And all for what?
For a grade that makes up a GPA that they can put on their resume after they graduate so they have some shot at standing out amongst a stack of other resumes from their fellow college graduates, thousands of dollars in debt with so much useless and forgotten knowledge.
Dont get me wrong. As I’ve said, I’m not anti-school or education. College for me was an amazing experience where I met many longtime friends, joined several dance teams, learned a lot of interesting things (95% of which I probably will never use professionally), met my current girlfriend of almost 4 years, and learned how to interact in a professional/academic environment, and most importantly learn how to learn.
My stance is, if you don’t know what you want to pursue as a career, don’t go into huge debt. It’s a great experience but every college has the potential to create a lasting undergraduate experience. Try going to a JC and transfer after 2 years. Go somewhere significantly cheaper until you find something you can get behind.
One more thought as I revisit the tweet at the top, it can also mean that the more you learn, the more you learn that there’s so much more to learn. Like the 4 stages of learning:
- unconscious incompetence
- conscious incompetence
- conscious competence
- conscious incompetence
Final thoughts: our school system definitely needs to be restructured. Two very important things I believe need to be taught from the beginning are 1) personal finance, and 2) people skills. If these can be incorporated successfully, I strongly believe our students will be in a better position to succeed.
Thoughts? What do you think needs to be taught in school? I’d love to know in the comments! I respond to them all 🙂
Marlo Yonocruz 