Enabling Education
by Flaws and solutions to forming a better education system in America.
Relevant classes need to be taught in schools. I am a little disappointed in Michigan’s new academic requirements. They take time away from classes some students enjoy like shop or band and put them in the more boring classes they will probably fail anyway. If a student fails a class in Michigan they have to take summer classes or become a super senior just to graduate. The reason kids do not graduate or go to college is not because they did not have enough education, it is because they found the excess amount of classes unimportant and boring. In an individualistic society, choices need to be made that determine your own identity and future. The government seems to want conformity in the students that they produce. A student’s ability to critically think about their life is what is important in education, not the ability to participate and compete with other students in the global capitalistic economy.
I chose this topic because the education institution does not simply fall into the schools hands. Sports that have active coaches, parents that teach their children values or home school them, religion, the media, and most other aspects of society teach everyone something. Education does define a person’s success in life though. If this system is failing one person, it is failing everyone. We all go down when one person goes down. The song “Black and Blue” by The Herd has an interesting take on the failing education system. Here is a sample of their lyrics.
I can see clear that the systems dying
but I haven’t learnt the words yet to define it
but yes so fine ill step in line
and write I’m a distraction 500 times.
Other areas in pop culture try to use music or entertain people enough to make them think about the true character of the ethos of the failing education system. The song by Pink Floyd “Another Brick in the Wall” is played during the Pink Floyd movie and has hundreds of children burning down a school with all of their desks and books along with it. The popular 1990’s comic strip “Calvin and Hobbes”, starring a brilliant, troublemaking six-year old boy and his stuffed tiger that only comes to life with his imagination, satirizes and criticizes public schools quite often. In one panel Calvin’s dad is talking to him and asks him why he does not like school. He says to Calvin that he loves to learn about Dinosaurs, so why can’t he love to learn other things in school. Calvin’s response is “We don’t talk about Dinosaurs”.
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