Education is boundless, the Education System is Flawed by Isabella

Education is boundless, the Education System is Flawed by Isabella - May 2020 Scholarship Essay

Education as a whole means many different things, to some it’s reading a bunch of books on a new topic, or watching YouTube tutorial videos, it could be hours of practice for one meaningful breakthrough. Learning comes in so many forms and each individual learns in their own way. To limit education to a list of requirements of what a school district thinks qualifies you as “smart” is a severe disservice to the hunger for knowledge that kids naturally possess.

Historically the typical classroom has stayed practically the same since its conception, chalkboards became paper, paper became a Chromebook so on and so forth. On a field trip in middle school my class went to an old school house from the late 1800’s and we were taught “like they were back then.” It was practically a normal day at school minus the electricity. The only change to occur to the school system over time has been the new technologies. The parameters of what it means to learn have since remained the same.

In this time of pandemic it’s supposed to be lucky that we have access to the internet and resources so that we may continue school but I have seen quite the opposite. Many schools are being vague about what is required, causing a sense of anxiety over what students should try to focus on. Some students are neglecting all assignments and are experiencing severe mental health issues with no sympathy. It’s worse when the student was already struggling to keep up in the pre-pandemic environment. Now they are dealing with isolation, lack of structure, fear, uncertainty, and in some cases, more assignments than they had when they were in the classroom.

The education system is inherently flawed and it fails so many students year after year. In my sophomore year honors English class we read an article about a type of school system known as a Sudbury school. Many in the class reacted negatively, in a Sudbury school all of the learning is motivated by what the child wants to learn. Most of us realized that we were reacting with anger out of jealousy. We grew up in a system that only cared about the grades we got and we were taught that as long as we could remember it for the test that we had succeeded in learning. Kids in advanced reading groups who loved reading eventually grew to hate it because they became so attached to the grade aspect of it.

The only way that the education system will change in the next fifty years is in the way it uses new technology to enforce what it always has. Unless there is some type of universal reform in the way schools are run and education is viewed there will be no progress, there never truly has been.