Overcoming the Carrot and the Stick

The Truth About The American Education System

I was a freshman the first time I heard anyone say: “I want to be an engineer.” I had not realized at the time that it would be a line that I would hear repeatedly from my peers during my time in high school. As a freshman, I didn’t think about the growing popularity engineering had in the eyes of my classmates; it was merely something I noted and moved on from. By the time I entered tenth grade the trend among my classmates remained unusually steady. How many sophomores really know what they want to do with the rest of their lives? I was struck by how very curious it was that so many of my peers had adopted what I later began to call the I-want-to-be-an-engineer-mentality.

I started to probe my peers on the subject of their unwavering goal by asking them two very simple questions: What type of engineer do you want to be and why? The responses were generally unvaried. Few had given much thought on what type of engineer they want to be; it’s unimportant to them. While my classmates lacked specifics about the career they were so resolutely pursuing, they all shared common motivations. A degree in engineering means a job right out of college; engineering means $75,000 a year or more; engineering means frequent vacations and tangible evidence that you’ve made something with your life. Engineering—any type of engineering—is desirable in the eyes of my peers because it means proof of success. After coming to realize the superficial reasons behind wanting to be an engineer, I used the phrase “I-want-to-be-an-engineer-mentality” for the attitude behind striving for any career that is pursued for paltry reasons. I’ve come to use my invented terminology to encompass not only engineering jobs but rather any profession pursued for materialistic reasons. As someone who defines success in terms other than wealth or prestige, I began to search for the root cause behind this trivial need to prove success to others and found my answer in the mechanism of the education system. Students have permitted themselves to be manipulated into a lower existence by the values perpetuated in school and our society as a whole. In order to become a society that encourages seeking fulfillment, students must shake each other awake and demand the reconfiguration of a system that suppresses them.

Based on my personal research regarding the engineer allure, I came to realize that students have allowed themselves to become donkeys—slow, ignorant, and incredibly stubborn. We live in a system in which we are reduced to unenlightened animals whose lives are ruled by seeking simple pleasure and avoiding simple pain. Dangling in front of us is a glossy, orange carrot, and even though we have no idea what it tastes like, we have been led to believe that attaining the carrot is the secret to happiness. Retrieving the carrot has become our life to the point where we would feel meaningless and insignificant if we were to realize that the joy from the carrot is fleeting and petty. The carrot appears in our education system in the form of grade based learning. Like the carrot, grades are a form of extrinsic motivation, motivation that occurs outside of oneself as a reward or punishment of some kind. We are now at the point in which students need concrete proof of their intelligence in order to verify their self-worth to themselves and others. In fact, the fear of being worthless, the fear of failure, is what lies behind the donkeys, represented by a pointed stick. Somewhere along the line in school we came to believe that all humans are not equal in worth. We were imprinted with the idea that to be intelligentwealthybeautifultalentedathletic, somehow makes us fundamentally better than our peers. Likewise, if we were lacking any component of success we became a lesser person in the eyes of not only others, but ourselves as well. All students fear being considered a lesser person as all donkeys fear the sharp tip of a pointed stick.

While students have allowed themselves to become donkeys, they can only be blamed partially for their current state. Little do they realize that they run on treadmills, going nowhere. They forever race in place on treadmills powering a large factory that produces more carrots, more superficial rewards. The first grand architects of the factory, of public schooling, existed long ago in a different time that was the antecedent of our world today. New leaders have taken up the mantel in orchestrating the archaic scheme with little deviation from the original blueprints. Our society is stuck in the mindset of the Industrial Revolution, and it is reflected in our schools.

A new golden age of learning and thinking and living is before us if we can make it happen. Change must come from the students themselves. The students of today can turn into the next generation of a mindless labor force, obsessed with accumulating material wealth—or they can be something greater. Amongst the great mass of stubbornly ignorant donkeys are a few enlightened students hidden amongst their classmates wearing clever disguises. The aware students of today have the best chance of overthrowing an unjust system now more than ever because of the tools that lay before them. At their disposal is a network of information that can be quickly and easily circulated via the internet, and when properly harnessed, can move the many. The students who recognize that they are trapped in a backward system have the ability to plant into the minds of the donkeys the seed of doubt until their trust in the education system, and society as a whole, slowly unravels.

The students that are cognizant of, and actively are motivated by these intrinsic motivators, may be the key to inspiring the donkeys to break from their shackles. The only true obstacle in changing how we think about what is important and what is not, lies in communication. In order to arouse the donkey from their preoccupation with the carrot and the stick, they must be persuaded that the alternative is infinitely better. It will not be an easy task, but it is a worthy one. In fact, it is the duty of any free mind to fight against a system that reduces people to mere beasts every chance they get.

The desire to lead a fulfilling life instead of acquiring external wealth must come to be the dominant motivator among students. Replace property and prestige as the ultimate driving force behind our actions with the desire to serve humanity and to create. Once students refuse to be propelled by a carrot and a stick then not only will our education system be forced to reconfigure itself, removing extrinsic motivation, but perhaps our whole society will begin to awaken, at last, from slumber.