The Education System

I think that the education system in America is very outdated and obsolete. I say this being a person who went through this system not too long ago. I think that it reduces the intellectual capacity in children because it quantifies the learning process. Applying data analysis in human qualities such as creativity, leadership, ingenuity, and social aptitude doesn’t end well because it’s not supposed to be applied into a chart. All of these skills are definitely hard to teach without a basis on what to teach with, but school shouldn’t be specialized on a certain criteria. However, everyone will not want to learn due to our tendency to slack off. But no one should be forced to learn either. They should want it. They should crave it. Humans are built and wired to be curious, and this curiosity drives the economy full-force. First of all, the system implanted today was meant to churn out workers for factories and perpetuate the industrial society. While the industrialism part is still relevant, making millions of factory workers isn’t. The American society today is not meant for everyone just working everyday to survive. It is meant to make leaders, artists, and entrepreneurs, not the same cookie cutter student who was meant to do one thing and one thing only, which is pretty much to take tests nowadays. Now, there’s more to this subject such as standardized testing and less funding for the arts, but this goes on into another separate debate. All of this might not make sense, but I think that we’re not utilizing the potential within these students, which really hurts the future in many ways. It inhibits the greatness within the very thing that it tries to increase in a person: human talent. I’m not saying that everyone is meant to be engineers or doctors or artists, for that matter. What I’m saying is that school needs to be something that kids should want to go to, not something that everyone dreads. Learning should be personal, not mass produced. It should inspire people to achieve, not drag them down to the gutter. Learning is a gift. Knowledge is key to become successful. Placing humans on a standard and meeting criterion does not reflect any of those statements. Implementing a new and experimental system will be costly and very scary, but the system now is already costly and scary based on that the future looks really bleak (In the sense that no one is actually learning anything). We have to be able to adapt to our culture and our environment, and the learning system now does not help with any of it. Think of all of the successful people out there in the world today. I know for a fact that they didn’t just sit around and became successful that way. Everyone needs to understand that humans have different sets of skills and values that are not increased to their full potential with this system, and if we don’t recognize this, then the future will not be as promising as it should be.