Opinion: The Problem With Public Education

If you ask any student how they feel right now about school, you are almost guaranteed an answer of something to the effect of, “It stresses me out,” or “I hate my classes,” or even, “I feel unprepared for college.” School is a part of life for every United States citizen, and the general concept is to educate the public so that they may be able to contribute in some kind of larger way in society, whether contributing as an engineer, or public service worker, or a doctor, or anything they choose. Now that we live in a time of great abundance and wealth, it would make sense that any form of government-funded education would make sure that its students are ready for entering the world around them. Unfortunately, this is clearly not the case. Very few high school students who are in the modern education system feel that school has been a tool for success, instead they view it as an obstacle. They view school as something as just a trial in order to get to what they really want in life, whether it’s higher education or directly entering the workforce. School should be designed as a tool to help people learn and help aid students to be invigorated by what they find interesting. This tendency that the education system has to not properly serve their students need to be changed quickly, lest large amounts of students will become bored with learning completely and live the rest of their lives in compliance or without a passion for finding their interests.

It may seem like I am trying to bash modern education, but that’s not the case. Many people, including myself, will benefit greatly from the way current education is set up and will continue to go on to a form of higher education that is encouraged in school. There are many students like me who have the ability to succeed and achieve in the school system, even if they find no joy in what they are learning or how they learn it. These students are those who have the temperance to sit down for hours and have the ability to go home and continue the same work they have at school. It should be understood that when the modern school system was created back during the industrial revolution its purpose was to support and help the middle class white families who previously had their kids working in factories. I am a direct benefactor of such system as I am a part of that description, my needs have been met and I believe I will be successful in what I want to do, but the modern education system is not comprised entirely of people like me with my background, and public school fails to meet the needs of the large underserved groups that do not match such a description. The educational reformer Ken Robinson would describe tasks made for class as “clerical work,” and simply not all students (including children in elementary school) have the ability to do them. The kids who don’t have the ability to return home to a stable environment, or are simply unable to learn by sitting down for hours while being lectured at, are those that will never benefit from this way of teaching and this should be recognized.

Every school has to face this challenge of what to do with the kids who will “not make it” in the school system, meaning those who cannot be stimulated in the same, uniform way that public school enforces, and it should be their job to properly give each kid the style that benefits the most. Many students discover options that lead them to find different educational paths, such as taking online classes or discovering new schools entirely, but many cannot fit into such options or simply don’t know where to look. Kids who also have any kind of disorder have very little chance of being stimulated in such a bland and rigorous environment that is public school. This also seeps in towards how parents view their children, for instead of trying to find an easier learning environment for their kid, they will load them with ADHD medication for not being able to sit still and do what the child may view as boring work.

It might be easy to say that reaching the potential and the learning style of every kid is an impossible task, and you may be right. There are millions of children in the United States, which holds a great amount of diversity, and it would certainly be a challenge to reach them all. But even so, that is no excuse to simply keep a broken system that leaves behind all those that do not benefit from an industrial style of learning. Other forms of education exist, vocational schools and dance schools and others, but they are not being broadcasted as options to those that do not benefit from the typical learning style. If it is too much of a challenge to integrate a variety of learning styles in public school, then maybe a simple first step would be to publicly encourage different forms of learning.

Until a time comes when students no longer publicly state they don’t enjoy school, or when there is no dropout rate to speak of, there is a vast amount of work that can be done to fix public education. Ever since its inception mass amounts of knowledge have been brought to people who never would have received it otherwise, helping to open doors for many who seek to find their passions and change themselves. We now understand the faults in public education, and we now have the responsibility to reach out to those that are being left behind and help a new group of people to become more curious and driven towards their passions.