Essay1

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?