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Hi my pretties,
Why in the world are hot dog buns sold in packages of 6 and hot dogs sold in packages of 8? Personally, I think it's because there are always a couple of kids running around needing to eat. What does one do? Give them the hot dog, sans bun, and let them eat the chemically-processed cow parts as they tear through the house; the remaining hot dogs are then matched with the buns, and it all works out nicely. I'm pretty sure the purveyors of all things hot doggery packaged their products for just this reason. Corporate America has our back.
The same holds for education. The educational system works for us and with us. Right? Think back to your high school days. In English class, some guy named Hamlet was murdering someone behind a curtain, history was teaching us all about the Monroe Doctrine, science was revealing the magic of magnetic force, and math was thrilling us with the quadratic formula. Add to that a few art classes (where you got to color outside the lines and get away with it), tons of cookbook compositions, and a smattering of home economics/shop/music/PE/foreign language, and what do you have? You guessed it: a high-school graduate. We are ready to take on the world. My teachers told me so.
The problem is, high school doesn't really prepare kids for anything very useful, including college. Oh, sure, they are taught simile, metaphor, linear equations, stoichiometry and the like, but can they figure out the total cost of a vehicle financed over 72 months with a 6.3% APR? Do they even know if they're getting royally screwed or not? Can they cook a healthy, flavorful meal? Can they make the garden grow? I suspect that high school prepares our kids for "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" but I doubt that much else is accomplished.
This is not the most startling news out there; people have been cracking on education for centuries, and for good reason. The school experience is nothing like life experiences, except for the social part. The classes are taught piecemeal, in isolation, as if one subject has very little to do with any other subject. And to top it all off, we reduce an entire 6 weeks' worth of work and effort and struggle and illumination and growth and academic maturity to one number.
ONE NUMBER! FUCK!!!
No wonder kids (and lots of teachers) hate school; if one's work is defined by one paltry number, then it doesn't seem worth it. And don't even get me started on how effectively this one number describes a kid's progress in education. That's like saying one can judge the authenticity of an alleged Rembrandt by intermittent flashes of lightning in a dark room. It just can't be done.
So, who's to blame for this travesty? We all are. The parents are to blame for not getting involved enough to change the system. The leaders of the educational system are to blame for the current disjointed and ineffective structure. The teachers are to blame for buying in to the lie. The kids are to blame for discounting the value of a good education (though it is hard to attach much blame to, say, a 13-year-old kid who really doesn't know what education is supposed to do for him/her), and, of course, the educational politicians who have foisted state-mandated testing and the evil known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB).
We need to blow up (metaphorically, of course) our schools and start over. We need to value thinking more than memorization. We need to forget numerical grades and go to a non-numeric rubric to gauge progress. We need to train our psyches to accept the fact that not all kids should go to college, that becoming involved as a parent is time-consuming, that teachers should be accountable for teaching and kids should be accountable for learning, that administrators should earn less than teachers, that good school board members should be noted and lauded for their valuable services, and that schools should be about the kids, not the adults.
We really need to get back to essentials. Our economy is shit, we farm out too many good jobs, and the rest of the world works harder thn we do to educate their kids. It does, however, require a grass roots movement to do something like this. I really think that the vast majority of parents would be willing to see these types of changes, and most parents would be willing to invest time and effort to effect these changes and to perpetuate these changes.
All of you parents should think on these matters; your kids are your legacy. What do you want for them, really? As a parent, I want my kids to be better off than me, naturally, but I also want them to be able to think well, to be able to solve problems, to be not only employable but to be sought after. This is the dream of almost all parents, irrespective of culture, economic level, gender, religion, political affiliation, or educational level. And the cool thing is, all of this is possible.
Anyway, these are my thoughts on education. Gotta go now and earn that paycheck.
Peace
DS
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Posted by DentedSyke on 2009-01-16 06:42:59 | Rating: | Views: 57
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