Justine
Morales
Monique
Williams
T/TH
9-10:15
English
1a
February
17 ,2015
Education and its flaws
What do
you think about our educational system, do you
believe there are have been many flaws? It has been noted that in the
educational system there have been many changes that have had a negative effect. The
most effected have been the students. Are the students simply
following what other students do or do they follow what they want. How
about the learning methods are the students’ actually putting effort into
learning or are they being taught rehearsed facts? What it comes down to, are the
teachers actually putting effort into teaching. In the
following text I will explain these problems as well as some solutions with the
help of Paulo Freire and the Passion Project II. These
two sources explain in depth how the educational system has been broken. Education
is too important to let it be what it has become.
This
generations students follow the ones who are ahead instead of their own paths.
As said in The Passion Project II; Jasmine Garcia says “I guess our
expectations of succeeding is very unfair because we basically just think one
way.” This
means to me that we as students see what others do to succeed, so we believe
that’s the only way to do so, If we followed each other’s footsteps. Sometimes
similar has been said by Ken Robinson in the TED talk. Ken
stated, “we have moved to linearly education, only one path in education… we
are obsessed with getting people to go to college, nobody needs to go to
college now. They can go later.” We would all have the same
ideas, the
same point of view’s. Everything would be the same;
no one would have their own creativity to express their own thoughts. We as a
generation don’t acknowledge what we are good at; we just follow everyone else
and what they are doing. Nowadays people just like to get through life
they don’t see any real enjoyment in life. That’s no way to live life, you need to enjoy yourself, live the moment. With this revolution everything will change, we will no longer ignore our talents and show
improvement, Change in our
generation is a much-needed thing. The change will include transforming education in to what it once was
and yet many times better.
Everyone has forgotten what education really means. Education was about finding what you loved to do,
what you wanted to pursue. Education
in this generation has been manipulated into a competition. A competition that has narrowed our views where we
only think about how long will it takes us to transfer and what classes I need
to take to make that happen in little as possible. Education will no longer be about who has a better GPA, the better
grade, or who got in to what college. It will now be about what you want and not what others think is best
for you. A
solution could fix this would be to think of what you want, not what path
everyone else is taking. Be the one to take a different path and express your self,
show your thoughts in ways no one would. In order to accomplish
what you want, you need to know what you like and from there figure out what
majors consist of your interests. Although
the students follow each other’s success paths, are they the ones to blame for
being asked to memorize facts. It has been shown learning
today is not about comprehending our history or materials rather now, Its about
who can recall more information.
What is more beneficial to the student,
Learning?, Or rehearing the facts that are being taught. Many
students now just remember for a test and not to actually learn. As said in Paulo Freire: “Narration (with the
teacher as narrator) leads the students to memorize mechanically the narrated
account. Worse yet, it turns them in to “container,” into “receptacles” to be “
filled” by the teachers.” (Page 1) To me this means that the students are
“jars” and the teacher says material and the students just take it in. They
don’t question why or how. Many students take there notes
from that class and memorize it cause it will be on the quiz or test at the end
of the week. But after the quiz students would just “throw
it away” and remember the next section for the test.
Another quote to back my statement would be “Instead of communicating, the
teacher issues communiqués and makes deposits which the students patiently
receive, memorize, and repeat.” (Page 1, Paulo Freire). This
quote means that between the students and teachers there is a lack of
communication. The lack of communication between the student
and the teacher is a very important part in learning. Having
lack of communication can affect the learning process of the student. If the
student and the teacher are not on the same page nothing will be learned or
taught. In
order for the teacher to communicate with the student, the teacher needs to
know what the student is interested in. If the teacher knows
what the student likes or enjoys he can use that as the icebreaker to
communicate to the student actual information that benefits the student, as
well as a process where the student actually take in the information and save
it for later use (long term). Like stated above the students
aren’t the ones to blame rather, some percentage of teachers
not putting enough effort into teaching.
Although most teachers actually teach
because they love to teach, while other teachers do it for a paycheck. As said
in the Passion Project II, Peter Mutch say’s “Having a teacher take a personal
interest in you and show their personality through what they’ re teaching is
incredibly helpful to the process of learning. Its
almost essential, right.” (Page 11) This quote means that when you as a
student have a teacher that actually puts in interest towards you. And
gets to know you, you as a students gets more interested in what is being
taught. We as
students don’t really express ourselves to teachers if we are really
comfortable with them. Knowing this from personal
experience when a teacher actually talks to me on another level I feel more
comfortable to express myself to that teacher, knowing even if I’m wrong ill
ask for help with out hesitation. In the short interview
we watched in class with Jeff Duncan-Andrade. He
states, “ A teacher should not only talk to his students in a classroom but
outside the classroom, but also outside the classroom at a baseball game or a
play.” When kids have a bond with a teacher they
focus more. Students are able to express themselves because
they know that the teacher is listening. Jeff also talks about
how if teachers actually made their lesson are started with what’s going on
around the kids, the kids actually find interest in what the teachers are
teaching. Students know when a teacher Is there for the money or actually there
for the kids education. Like in the short You-tube
video about Jeff Bliss. When he said that his teacher keeps getting mad because
the student doesn’t get the lessons but all she is giving them is packets to do. When
he is telling her the facts she gets upset and tells him he is wasting her time. Shows
that she doesn’t care what he is saying. When
teachers are handing out packets and expecting the students to know the
material, how do teacher expect them to learn. To fix this issue with teachers
not showing any affection to the students learning would be to talk to the
teachers and let them know what they can do to help the students, although a
teacher may have hundreds of students at least putting some kind of effort to
the students, letting students know you are there for the would help as a
teacher means a lot to students, so they can feel comfortable in talking to the
teacher.
In conclusion, the educational system has
had a lot of changes. These changes have had a
negative effect towards the learning process of the students. I have
explained some of the issues with the educational system, they are as follows:
the students have yet to follow their own paths they have stuck into following
the people before them. Also following that another
problem would be that students have been taught to memorize the information
then actually learning it. Last but not least we have the issue where the
teachers don’t put enough effort in to teaching. This
leaves us with a very poor educational system. The
only way that we could overcome these issues is to give solutions to these
problems. These
solutions include the teacher giving more to the student not just in the sense
of information but also in the sense where the teacher makes a relationship
with the student. Having a relationship with the
student will increase the chances of the student getting a creative sense while
being interested in learning and will actually learn because the student will
have a strong close relationship with the student. Now
that we know what’s wrong and know how to fix it, what will we do about it?
