Future in Schooling by Steven

Future in Schooling by Steven - July 2022 Scholarship Essay

As a senior in High School many of my peers are well over half way done with school. Many only have about four years left, so if they were to be asked the question “What changes do you hope to see in education over the next ten years?” I am sure most of them would reply “why should I care?” or “it wouldn’t matter to me”. However, I plan on becoming a pediatric gastroenterologist, and because of this, in ten years I will still have about five years left of school. So I know better than most what I would like to see changed.
The first thing I would like to see changed is standardized testing. I was lucky enough that learning came easy to me. I have always been able to retain information no matter the teacher or the teaching method. However, I know that this is not true for many people. I recently became a swim instructor and there I saw to the extent that everyone truly does learn differently. All of the best teachers are the ones who can cater their teaching to every student and teach them all differently. People can not learn the same way so they should not be tested the same way. One of the best examples of this is my friend Noah. Noah was and still is very smart, but math didn’t come easily to him, especially calculus. He even failed his first test which he has never even come close to doing before. But the day after we got our tests back I went through the test with him and just asked him the questions verbally and he got all but two right. He knew the material even better than I did, the test just impeded his way of showing it. Many have had similar thoughts, especially towards the SATs. I even had a hard time focusing on the problems when the sheer number of questions was completely overwhelming. Luckily, our voices are being heard regarding the SATs and they are becoming optional which is a step in the right direction.
Another thing I would like to see changed is the cost. With how much school I have left I have been warned that crippling debt is a sure thing that can’t be avoided. In medical school, especially the first two years, it is very common not to work and focus completely on studying because there is so much. Two years without income is already scary even without considering how expensive medical school is. Most people don’t even make it out of undergrad without accumulating debt. A state school here is about 22 thousand dollars and that’s cheap for college. And a cheap Med school is about four times that. Even this paper, and the countless other scholarships, is to hopefully help pay for all of it. For education to cost that much is uncanny, especially when many other countries can offer free college to their citizens. The correlation between those who are uneducated and below the poverty line should already be a sign that something needs to change and it has an easy fix.