Education in my Vision

Education, just the word can bring up some of the most heated debates we've heard. Whether or not we are doing it the right way or the wrong way, which district gets more funding, what school is better, etc. It seems like no matter what news channel you're on, they always talk about our country's education. But on the other hand, it's also something we take for granted here in the country. Being from Nevada, I'm always hearing about how our state is the worst in education. But not only Nevada, the USA is also ranked very lowly. We might think that it's about this generation, which is very unlikely. To really find out about why we are so bad in our category, let’s look at the key elements.

Students today are provided with so many different means of activity outside of school, whether it is from sports to social networking. Students now are used to a fast paced environment with a lot of things happening at once, for example, a teenager can sit in front of a TV for hours, but almost be asleep after 30 minutes of a math lecture. Why is this? Well we can look at how our education system writes the curriculum or how a teacher actually teaches.

After being in school for quite a while now, I can see how students reaction certain situations, as well as myself. It seems where a class is mainly taking notes or reading from a textbook, students tend to doze off, become uninterested, start texting, etc. Where as a class that involves activity and full involvement in the class, the students are ecstatic to learn. Students tend to excel in these classes and leave the class with actual knowledge on the subject.

Another reason we can look at is how the public schools are run. After the "No child left behind act" was signed, schools were rewarded for "attendance" and not so much what the students were learning. We tend to teach in a memory-based repetitive scenario. Students are required to remember answers to a test, or remember facts to pass the class, never actually having the knowledge of the subject. One way we could change this is to teach strictly by doing, instead of being told the simple facts, the Earth is round, mammals have hair, etc. Students need to be able to come up with their own ideas and be able to think, not have to conform to a general idea. There are numerous times where I have been in classes where teachers stick by their personal belief and push that down the students' throats, and nobody says a word differently. Students need to have their own thoughts, the need to see why the Earth is round, or why certain things in the environment act the way they do. If not, the future won't have any advancement with a bunch of high school graduates memorizing things their teacher told them to believe.

Education is one of the best opportunities our society has to offer. It could make or break our progress as human beings in a civilization. It is not meant to be taken lightly. I believe we are able to turn this around, we need to realize better means of teaching, allowing the students to reach their own goals, not the goals of their classmates. They need to leave the school knowing how to live in the real world and contribute to our society. We won't be able to do this though if we continue on the road we're already driving down.