Last week I wrote the first of a series of articles on how
to make America great again. This week we continue in that series by taking a
look at the public school system. Are we putting our children in the best
possible environment to want to learn?
In a world where our country is falling further and further behind in
technology innovations how do we stimulate our youth to become the next wave of
great thinkers to address the worlds growing issues?
I come from a broken family. My parents split up when I was eight years
old, and we moved from an Air Force Base and what I would later find was a far
more advanced education. It was not necessarily advanced in the things they
were teaching, but in the programs they had in place to stimulate how we
learned. Upon starting at my new school
I found that I was slightly ahead in some of the concepts we were learning, and
since I was I felt I didn’t have to work as hard. This feeling would continue
through out the rest of my public school career. It wasn’t until I left high
school that I found I was not remotely prepared. In the wake of my public
school experience I felt lost. This was further compounded by the death of
someone close to me. It took me ten years and a ton of mistakes to come full
circle and return to college, this time with the end goal in mind. This brings me to the present. Now I am
currently a Ph.D candidate and doing pretty much what I love, maybe not on the
level I wish I was on yet but I have to remind myself I took ten years to get
back on track I cannot expect to bridge that gap in less. This also got me
thinking about my children and their education.
For this article we are not really
looking at the drop out rate, what we are looking at is students that can think
for critically on their own. Somewhere along the way we stopped teaching our
children how to think for themselves and started treating the public school
system as a factory to mass-produce a product. Providing the same education as
if we are all cookie cut. Why, maybe, because it is easier than the
alternative. Having to pay teachers more money and create a modern system that
educates our children for the new world we live in. So I offer to you a story
from NPR that may get you thinking enough to spark a change for the future.
We can not expect our children to grow up and become adults that can solve problems and think outside of the box if we have not equipped them with the proper tools. What we have done to our school system is allowed it to become stagnate like a pond cut off from the streams and rivers that once fed it and made it vibrant. We used to allow the world into the classroom to allow students to learn and not just memorize. If we are to ever get back to a level where we are competitive and productive we need to stand up demand changes and educate our children so that they may learn to truly think for themselves. I know this is a dangerous idea for the current way of life, but if we continue to travel down this road what kind of future can we really expect for our children. More and more people with a sense of entitlement, dodging their own responsibility for their lives. Let's choose the road less traveled. The harder of the two and do what is necessary to change our goals and expectations of the public school system.
Here is a funny but true sketch from Key and Peele Enjoy and think about it.
