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Our school system today

December 15, 2017   ·   0 Comments

By Avery Park

In Canada, it’s pretty safe to assume that a lot of kids don’t like going to school, myself included. One question we haven’t looked into is, why?

When you hear someone complain about school, it’s not unusual. It always seems as if no one likes school because it’s boring, they don’t get it, or it’s too hard.

What some people don’t understand is that there is a deeper meaning behind these complaints.

School is supposed to prepare us for the real world, what life after school will be like, right? Well I can tell you that it does nothing of the sort. I now have experience in a real world job here at the Citizen, and nothing I have learned after grade 8 has prepared me for this.

I don’t use quadratics or algebra, I don’t need to know how to dissect a frog and name all of its organs. I haven’t used any of that here. I’m not saying that others won’t need that information for their future, because some people will, but as individuals we don’t all need to know that.

For my real world after school, I won’t need any of that, yet they are all in required courses everyone has to take. You can take it at two levels, academic and applied, but you still have about the same knowledge at the end of the semester that you will most likely forget after the exam.

So why is the school system like this?

We are living in a rapidly changing world, where everything is slightly changing daily, but our school system has not changed in many, many years. This school system was created for industrial workers, when their real world was going to a factory and doing what they were told, nothing more and nothing less.

Now, the real world is very different. Businesses want creative, independent people who work well with a team and will openly give and accept any ideas. That’s not what I was taught. We were told what to do and how we would do it, you don’t get any individuality or creative freedom.

I don’t want to make school sound like a prison; you do get to make friends in the limited amount of time you’re let out, in lines, to eat and go outside, and you know when that time is by a bell you obey, and your teachers expect you to be silent and do exactly what they say…

Anyways, looking into the difficulty of school, it all depends on the child itself. Some find different subjects easier than others, but that’s because nobody can be perfect at everything, even though that’s how the school system views it.

There can be a child struggling in art, drama, social studies, geography, and there could be a child having trouble in math and science, but when it comes to art and creative writing, they are the best in the class. There is one issue with this situation though.

If a child struggles with math or science, they are seen as unequal to the other students, and in some cases not as smart. An art teacher will say it’s okay, not everyone is artistic, but I have never in my life heard a math teacher say, that’s okay, not everyone can understand math. That is a very large problem.

Our focus has always been on maths and sciences, and those are the marks people want to know. They are seen as most important, and I’m not sure why. Why would we value one subject over another, when we need people that excel in all of the different courses to make our world what it is.

“You got a 97% in drama? Oh that’s easy, anyone can do that. I got a 90% in math, now that’s impressive.” Why do conversations like this happen? It boggles my mind that some courses are more valued than others, just because of how we see the work you do in the course.

In the real world the school system says they’re preparing us for there are many different people, with a lot of different skill sets and ideas that they can express.

There are so many individuals making the world a better place by being who they are, but we have all been raised to think exactly like our teachers, our parents, or whoever tells us what our life will look like when we’re older.

We should all be able to express our interests while we are still in school, and not have those who aren’t interested in school because they have nothing to gain from it. “I’m not going to use this, so why am I here? What is this doing to benefit me?”

Sure, it might sound a little selfish, but it’s true. Everybody wants to do what benefits them the most. Unless we want to keep raising the next generations as a whole group, and not as the individuals they are, we will never hear the end of the complaints about school.

My whole point is that our schools have a lot of issues, and should evolve with our society. If children have been complaining about school for years, don’t you think there’s an issue with that?


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