The Positive Attitude Of Education

Someone once said, “Your attitude determines your altitude.” When it comes to education that is certainly true. When it comes to learning in today’s society, one’s attitude effects a lot of one’s learning. Attitude and education go hand in hand. Today students are learning that grades are the most important thing and not necessarily the learning that comes along with those grades. Students spend time blaming others, especially teachers and their teaching styles, instead of taking initiative and doing the work. Students also, unfortunately, resort to cheating; because they feel like that’s what they have to do to pass the class. When in all reality if students just had a better, more positive attitude towards education; their learning would

Today students have gotten into the habit of blaming others for their mistake, or their failures. In his book, Sanders wrote about students who “blamed their struggles on the professor’s teaching style” (20). In high school I took a spinning class. I was excited because I had taken a class the year before with a different teacher. The teacher this semester however, had no idea what he was doing. He was the football coach, not a spinning instructor. He would come into class everyday tell us to run a couple laps, then get on the bikes and “run” or “jog” or “climb” or “squat” on the bikes. He would then leave the room and go next door to the weight room and talk with another coach until class was over. He never came and checked on us, so everyone, except a few students, just lounged around and barely moved on the bikes. I unfortunately was one of the lazy kids who did nothing all class period. At the end of the semester I was so mad because the class hadn’t really done anything for me. I hadn’t lost the weight I wanted to, like I had the year before. I blamed my lack of effort on the teacher, when in all reality it was my fault. I knew what I needed to do and how to do it, but I chose not to. My attitude towards the class was a negative one because I thought the teacher wasn’t doing his job so I blamed my lacking on him. It wasn’t his fault though, it was my own. If I had

The amount of pressure put one students today is incredible. Teachers have to teach so much in a short amount of time, so that they can cover everything that students need to know to pass the tests at the end of the year. Information is being crammed down students’ necks and it’s not helping it’s hindering them. So much focus is put on getting a good grade that students will do anything to get that grade. Independent Scholar, Alfie Kohn found that “the more students are led to focus on getting good grades, the more likely they are to cheat, even if they themselves regard cheating ad wrong” (2). Students feel as if they have to cheat to get the grade, but all they are doing is short changing themselves. This attitude of feeling that cheating is an acceptable answer to a problem is crumbling students’ creativity and ability to think outside the box. Cheating can come in many forms. There’s the obvious form, stealing someone else’s work and calling it your own, looking up answers on the internet for a test, etc. Then there is the not so obvious form of cheating. It takes a form called “cheating yourself”. Because the system today focuses on almost solely grades, students take the easy way out. Mr. Kohn insinuates, “The more pressure to get an A, the less inclination to truly challenge oneself” (1). This is so true. More times than I can count, I can remember hearing fellow students whisper, “let’s do which ever one is easiest” as