The System of Formal Education
When I was younger, I liked school, but I’m in high school now and I’ve gradually learned to hate it. I used to not mind all the classes I was taking because I was still learning things. My mom could help me if I struggled and I could talk to people about things I was learning and they understood. Now, only the friends that I have in the specific classes I take understand what I’m talking about when I speak about how I understand how to do derivatives, but I struggle with its application or how I finally learned how to respond to a DBQ (Document Based Question) in history, but I still can’t write an analytical essay about “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and the language it uses to save my life. Friends outside those classes have no clue what I’m saying. They think I’ve gone insane. My junior friends understand the struggle of trying to breathe in a room full of Formaldehyde, but my parents see it as a distant memory and describe it as “not that bad,” but everyone in my class knows that “yes, yes, it is that bad”. My step-grandmother as a used-to-be 1st grade teacher knows that the way people test kids these days is ridiculous and the things that are mandatory to learn are hardly ever used anywhere other than a job that people have to go to college for and relearn the same things all over again because the high school version is essentially useless to them.
If high school were to change its structure in such a way so that instead of teaching kids things they’ll never learn again, teachers helped their students find a career and had them take classes to give them the tools they need to be successful in that career, then college wouldn’t be nearly as necessary because college would be only used to help further their education to a more advanced form of that career, like a master’s degree instead of a bachelor’s degree. Doing this may reduce the need for kids to be in college and spend excessive of amounts of money and stay in debt for decades. After all, college prepares their students for the career they’re going in, which should have proved to be goal of the average middle and high school all along. I’m not saying people becoming doctors shouldn’t go to Medical School because that’s necessary to gain the required experience and the general population’s trust to become a doctor, but businessmen, singers, designers, and certain mathematicians shouldn’t have to go to college to prove that they’re qualified.
Changing school to fit the idea of quality not quantity or depth not breadth would ultimately improve the school environment because students wouldn’t be forced to take subjects they haven’t any interest in and they could learn things that they’d find useful, therefore making them more willing to come to school, if not make them want to go to school. However, nowadays, we focus on the core classes of English, Math, and Science. Indeed, math classes are probably the most accused classes of being useless in the “real world”. After Algebra 2, most math classes teach you equations that you’d never use outside of having a job that requires it, like being a mathematician or a math teacher/professor. After all, people don’t need calculus to do their taxes, or trigonometry to find the amount of money you should tip your waiter. Not to mention the fact that both calculus and trigonometry are very difficult subjects because not only are you learning something that will be essentially useless in the future, so you lack the incentive to properly learn the course material, but those courses are also quite complex.
Quite a few other classes create the same sort of feeling of futility and discouragement while hindering the classes that may prove useful in the future. For example, my school no longer teaches home economics, assuming it ever was taught, which could prove fatal to many in the long run because this way kids don’t know how to cook for themselves and rely on restaurants and fast food for nourishment. However, such forms of food lead to obesity, which plays its hand in most of the leading causes of death in the United States. This is information I learned from health class, which I believe is far more important than learning how to dissect a frog or learn derivatives or read supposed classics that hardly anyone understands. Although, I’ll admit most classes can help in the long run if the lessons are conducted in such a way that would stress its application to everyday life. For example, in biology, a few months ago, I learned about the fats, carbohydrates, and proteins in food and, although we did talk a bit about what each type can do, I had to research for myself as to how much fat is too much fat, and the same with both protein and carbohydrates. If this were taught in school it could be utilized as a way to help teach people how to stay healthy and take care of themselves beyond health class, which no one thinks much of.
It would have been more beneficial for us if biology class had more links to our everyday life instead of giving us a bunch of trivia that will only be useful in a specialized job or in jeopardy. I think that learning about how to best handle ourselves in the real world is more important than teaching us information that might be useful. Classes like personal finance, health and wellness, gym, home economics, and general English classes that teach us grammar, how to sign our names, and how to write a good college essay should be our core classes and focus in school. After all, many go to college and those that don’t should learn the basics of living in our society in high school, formal education legally required by the government for children and is paid through taxpayer money instead of causing massive debts for the student who go to school, like college does.
I fear that at this point in my essay you are thinking that I don’t want classes like calculus, advanced physics, and advanced English in school. However, this isn’t true. I still think that these classes should exist, I simply don’t believe that they should be our focus or mandatory courses. I think that instead of focusing on how everyone must take history, English, science, and math every year, we should be focusing on how people should learn how to live in the world and try to choose classes that they have an interest in beyond that. This way changing majors may occur less often so that people don’t have to take extra time to become accustomed to their new field, and classes like calculus, advanced English, and advanced physics could be taught in college to people who will find such subjects useful and necessary, instead of confusing and torturous. If the focus of education shifts from our present core classes, English, Math, and Science, to more practical classes like health, home economics, and personal finance, and we focus on finding kids careers they’re interested in, not only will people become more equipped to handle the “real world”, but they will become more interested in school because they will be able to decide on what they find interesting, instead of taking classes based on what the school finds important.
After all, isn’t the goal of school and education, in general, to prepare people for living life in the “real world”? The focus of formal education should be teaching kids how to budget their spending, do their taxes, write job applications, cook for themselves, and take care of their own health, not to read Shakespeare or learn calculus or biology, which most will never use in the future. Educators should help their students to find the career they’d like to go into and instruct them accordingly. Someone who wants to become a doctor should learn biology and other subjects related to that career, instead of learning Shakespeare. However, someone who’d like to be an actor should do the opposite, instead of wasting time on biology and dissecting frogs, they should learn Shakespeare and practice soliloquies. In this approach, children can learn how to survive and gain a career they have a real interest in.
Elementary school should still be employed to learn the basics of education, like how to read, write, and do basic math and science. Those who can’t keep up should be required to at least get to a level that is acceptable in everyday life. However, these current core classes shouldn’t be the focus of school as they won’t benefit most students in the long run. Most people hardly use the skills they learned in geometry and calculus, advanced English and European history, physics and chemistry, etc. People should more often use the skills they learn in Health and Wellness as well as gym class because it’ll help keep them healthy and taking good care of themselves. Although I may be one of the first people to say that I despise gym class because I loathe sports, it is essentially the only way I’ll get exercise, so I try my best not to complain because I realize that it ultimately will benefit me.
History is also relatively important to learn as well as world politics, so people can make more informed decisions and try not to repeat the faults of the past. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a core class, however. It should be a mandatory class in middle school, during the transfer of focus from current core classes to classes that will help people function in life after school. This way high schools can still focus on the basics of functioning in society and students can learn how the population as a global community works together and can make informed votes in a democratic society. After all, people nowadays solely rely on the media to learn about politicians and who or what they should be voting for. If students are educated about how current events link to our past they’ll be more likely to vote for someone or something that they think will benefit the country instead of who or what the media tells them will benefit society. That way “fake news”, as it is being called most recently, will have less of an impact on people.
I’m sure that many reading this may have noticed I have so far said nothing of world languages. This is because I reckon they ought to be required to some degree. After all, not everyone speaks English, many speak Spanish, French, and Chinese. Regardless of the fact that many dislike learning languages and have no intention to become a linguist or move to a different country, communication is one of the most important skills human beings have and it is important to be able to communicate with as many people as you can. Communication can lead to the spreading and development of ideas as well as the correction of false stereotypes and can help people learn to accept other people more and discriminate against others less, making both a more productive society as well as a more mature and accepting population. If anything I’d change when we start learning new languages, currently some school systems start at 5th grade to 9th grade, but I think that kids should start learning a new language as early as kindergarten or first grade when the brain is more malleable and more apt to soak up information. Those who still struggle more than others in reading and writing English will be just taught how to speak another language until they have gotten to roughly the same level as the other students. After all, most communication is through speaking, the first thing we learn to do as mere infants and is, therefore, easier for people to learn.
All in all, the formal educational system should be changed the that students learn how to be in a field they enjoy, while understanding how to take care of themselves, physically, mentally, financially, and learning how to be a member of a democratic society in which they can make their own informed decisions and understand people from other countries through developed communication skills. It would be more advantageous to them as students, to us as a country, and to all as a global community.
