Critiquing
Education
What’s Important
After All?
Jarrett Johnson
English 101
John Gatto brings up a great
question in Against School when he
says, “Do
we really need school? I don't mean education, just forced schooling: six
classes a day, five days a week, nine months a year, for twelve years. Is this
deadly routine really necessary? And if so, for what?” (2). I think school is very well needed and it serves a great purpose even
as it stands right now. Without school, education would be tough and dependent
on the parents for their kids to learn. Sadly many kids wouldn't have that scholastic
opportunity simply because their guardians might not believe that education is
necessary and/or their kids should go straight into the workforce. The
education system that we have, this day and age, teaches necessary skills and
basic knowledge to prepare young adults for the real world. Without those
general teachings throughout elementary school, middle school, and high school,
student would not have the proper tools and knowledge to fully integrate with
the real world and be a proper contributor to society. Keith Gilyard has a
similar stance when he mentions in Children,
Arts, and Du Bois, “Obviously, I take no position against science,
technology, engineering, and mathematics efforts… In brief, preparing students
to be strong in these areas helps their life chances in the global business and
perhaps enhances our nation’s commercial functioning” (20). Math, Physical
Education, Science, and Foreign Language are all terrific subjects to learn;
however, the way we teach them and to the extent, I believe, is very
unnecessary and we should be using those extra classes to be teaching kids how
to file taxes, pay bills, manage credit, and other useful knowledge that helps
integrate kids into the real world.
I agree that these subjects are
definitely important for anyone to learn. They can help with future business
opportunities, simple problem solving, everyday life, and similar things of
that nature. The problem with our education system is that it spends too much
time focusing on particular subjects that become too specific to use in
everyday life. It is still this way because teachers are taught to dump this
information onto kids without questioning why it’s necessary or even useful.
Paolo Freire makes a great point of this in Pedagogy
of the Oppressed by stating, “Narration (with the teacher as Narrator)
leads the students to memorize mechanically the narrated content. Worse yet, it
turns them into “containers,”… The more completely he fills the Receptacle, the
better a teacher he is” (1). Kids should be learning basic math because it is
used in all aspects of life. Adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing are
things that we use everyday just to get by. Math could even go as far as
learning intermediate problem solving. Developing problem solving skills
creates intricate and critical thinkers, and our society could always use more
of those. Bell Hooks has a similar point in
Critical Thinking when he states,
“Critical thinkers are clear as to the purpose at hand and the question at
issue. They question information, conclusions and point of view” (9). The
problem with our education system is that we push this idea too far. We go
beyond what is crucial to know to a point where there is nowhere to implement
these new skill sets unless you end up in a career like engineering or
statistics. That is what college is for, not high school. I believe that math
could stop at simple algebra and there wouldn't be any problem
whatsoever. Unlike Math, Physical Education needs to step its program up
and become a class that holds more value to its students.
Physical Education has to be,
personally, one of my favorite subjects. Playing dodgeball, football, softball,
kickball, soccer, basically any sport or physical activity was something that I
have always enjoyed being a part of. I'm naturally athletic and I was raised in
a sports crazed family, so these types of activities would always beat writing
an essay or taking a two-hour chemistry test. The problem is that not everyone
has that drive to be active or might be embarrassed that he or she cannot
throw, kick, or catch a ball. Throughout my scholastic experience, these
non-active kids always seemed to have the option to sit out if they didn't feel
like being a part of a certain activity. As much as I enjoyed P.E., It definitely
did not live up to its name. Physical education should be exactly that, a class
that teaches people how to become physical and what it takes to get and stay in
shape, not some glorified recess for young adults. Obesity and heart disease is
rampant in our country. The sad thing about that problem is we can easily fight
back just by learning how to take care of our bodies and there is no better
place to learn than our own education system. There is not much of a variety
when it comes to choosing the right physical education class, at least nowhere
close to choosing a science.
Science is extremely complex and
interesting that it makes us so intrigued that we crave to learn more. Science
is simply amazing. Our education systems give us the options to learn about the
stars, why certain chemicals react, how gravity works, theories of our
universe, and many other incredibly interesting subjects along the same lines.
What doesn't make sense is why so many science credits are required. Those are
all very specific topics and would be great to know if someone were to become
an astronomer, physicist, chemist, biologist, or any type of scientist for that
matter. Basic lessons in biology and/or physics I think should be all that is
required. We could learn about our bodies and how they work in biology and
physics can give us a brief example of how things work around us. That is
really all we need to know for the time we are in high school. Anything more is
just bonus knowledge, but I can’t say the same for foreign language classes.
The way we require a foreign
language in high school is just plain wrong. We spend two years of our lives
learning a language that we soon forget a few years after high school. In fact,
we shouldn't even have the two-year requirement at all. It is a waste of our
time especially when we could be learning other valuable skills. Foreign
language is something that should either be required from the time we first
start school all the way to the end (like many European and Asian countries
do), or not at all. Taking two years of Spanish did absolutely nothing for me
sadly and I wish I didn't have to spend my time completing arbitrary
assignments for no reason when I could have been learning something that could
have applied to my life after high school. I personally believe that learning
foreign languages makes people less ignorant about the world around them and
break communication barriers with entire countries. There are so many
possibilities that come from learning a second language, especially in the
business world. I hope to one day learn another language that can easily be
applied to my life but as of right now, we need to either completely take away
the requirements or implement them at a much earlier time in our
education.
High school is a place that should teach children how to become proper adults
that can contribute and thrive in society. It should not be a place to just
feed students useless information and testing them to hinder and/or weed out
ones that may not understand that certain subject matter. Mike Rose makes a
great point of this in The Answer Sheet when
he says, “To stop making the standardized
test score the gold-standard of student achievement and teacher effectiveness.
In what other profession do we use a single metric to judge goodness? Imagine
judging competence of a cardiologist by the average of her patients’
cardiograms”. Instead of
seeing if kids can understand advanced algebraic equations or name every
element of the periodic table, why can't they be taught and judged on how they
fill out W-2 forms or file their taxes? Learning about how to manage credit and
budget money, or even pay their bills can lower bankruptcy and evictions. These
are small things that make a huge difference in society and yes; parents should
be responsible for teaching these things to their offspring. Sadly that is not
the case many individuals have to find out the hard way.
REFERENCES:
Freire, Paolo. "The Banking Concept of Education." Pedagogy
of the Oppressed, New York: Herder and Herder, 1970. Print.
Gatto, John Taylor. "Against School." How Public Education Cripples Our Kids, and Why. Harper's Magazine. New York, New York: September 2003. Print.
Hooks,
Bell. “Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom.” New York, Routledge:
2003. Print.
Gilyard,
Keith. “Children, Arts, and Du Bois.” President’s
Commentary, New York: September 2012. Print.
Rose,
Mike. “Mike Rose’s Resolutions on Education.” The Answer Sheet. California: January 5, 2011: Web.
