Free Yourself by Sarai

Free Yourself by Sarai - January 2015 Scholarship Essay

Stop listening to politicians. Honestly, when I think of every bit of advice I could give to a teacher, that single comment sums up all the possible points. The statement has been said time and time again regarding multiple separate circumstances, but I feel that in the case of teaching, this simple sentence should be taken to heart like never before.

In so many different circumstances, politicians are the ones who begin turning the wheels regarding different educational reforms. However, according to Bloomberg Businessweek, there are only seven former educators in the Senate, and forty-four former educators in the House. Even if these statistics seem relatively high, it must be noted that these numbers do not show how long ago these men and women were working in that particular profession.

This being said, it's obvious to see that most politicians don't know enough about how education best functions to make suggestions of how schools should be run. Therefore, those who currently work to teach students should be the ones really controlling what is taught as well as the best way to go about teaching it. Teachers, being constantly in the classroom, are closest to each unique set of students, and therefore it is simple to comprehend how the teachers are those who best understand how their classrooms should be run.

Much how teachers themselves can tire of the constant fluff they are lectured on in meetings, I personally tire of their being obligated to spoon feed concepts that the both of us understand don’t need to be so heavily concentrated on. More specifically, teachers are often required to teach to the middle of the class so that standardized tests scores are raised, which often leaves the higher level students being bored out of their minds, and the lower level students still struggling. Because of politicians, standardized testing is what most lessons are centered around, and because of this many subjects are taught in ways that are drained of creativity just so that testing information can continue to be shoved down students’ throats.

If teachers are able to, they should separate themselves from what the politicians deem as being the correct way to teach, because honestly politicians often don’t know the best way to even run a country.