Why the School System is Failing: Student's Opinion on How it Can Improve

“Schools cram you too full too fast. I don’t mean they challenge you. I mean they throw to much busywork in your face. Being in school is like being incredibly hungry and sitting at Burger King eating too much, too fast to be satisfied, and then pucking it up. Good learning, like good eating, is not only mental and physical, but also spiritual. Generally you can satisfy the craving only in calm. If you don’t have sufficient time or peace to digest knowledge, it only gives you a headache. (Llewellyn 49)

Learning in the busywork fashion makes it pointless to go to school. Your regurgitation, or rote learning, of random pointless facts about the antebellum period or how many molecules of oxygen it takes to convert sulfur dioxide to sulfuric acid will not help facilitate learning. This is because you are not learning. You are memorizing. Learning is from doing, from using, from trying and failing. The usage of grades as a basis for failing or passing is wrong. This is because of how little feedback they give. They shouldn’t be used to “tag the unfit” or to “ wash the dirt down the drain.” (Gatto 4) The gradual increase of knowledge, experience, and love from doing things, sometimes successfully and sometimes not, is learning. If someone wants to learn they will pursue this knowledge, and in turn become successful in learning. It may not be possible to remove all rote learning from school, but it is possible to remove it from classes, like science or English, that don’t need it.

Rote learning is unavoidable. How else are you going to be able to know how to add or subtract, memorize all of the presidents, or many other important things? This knowledge taught can be very useful. Going to college, for example, would be impossible withou...

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...ds should learn. They need a constructive environment where they can knowledge through doing not memorizing. They need to know why their math formula is like it is, or why iron oxidizes not that it does. With these things changed in school, students may actually enjoy going to school and learn at the same time. There is no point, besides keeping the kids out of the house, to go to school. You are not learning. Schools should be a time of joy and happiness, but can anyone honestly answer yes to the question of returning to grade school? Why would a child want to waste their life not actually learning? I am sure their parents didn’t.

References

Llewellyn, Grace. The Teenage Liberation Handbook. 1st ed. 1 vol.

Rockport, MA: Element, 1997. 41,49. Print.

Gatto, John. "How public education cripples our kids, and why."

School on a Hill Sep. 2003: 4. Print.