old education systems...

A friend once told me that one of her friends (yes, a friend of a friend) went to an A- school - alternative school. There, grades didn't matter and the students learned for the sake of learning, nothing more. They provided themselves with their own motivation because they actually wondered why things happened the way they did.

My second hour of chemistry book learnin' I found myself wanting to derive the equations that had been sent our way for simple average velocities in three dimensions. After I learned why the equations were set up the way they were, a lot of the material made a lot more sense. It wasn't the same old response of "yeah, an old guy hundreds of years ago used an experiment to figure it out and yes, its way beyond you to even try". I actually felt like I was learning something and that actually mattered.

Of course, like any good story, there was the inevitable downfall from this high point. A friend of mine walked into the study room as I was putting the finishing touches on the derivation and he asked me, "sooo, which of these actually matters?". I circled a small piece here and a small piece there and he said, "got it, so we don't need to know all that other stuff for the test, right?".

Simply put, he was right. For the test, that's all he needed to know and there would even be a convenient equation sheet provided so that he could look up any equations he had forgotten. Has education really become such a formality that it has taken over learning entirely. What scares me most is that these tactics of simple memorization for the test and application to the barest degree in future years have become not only the norm but a necessity to pass. Even when a class goes into great detail, the following year it seems as if we're starting all over again. Breaking down new barriers by building on the old is frowned upon.

As I was sitting in one of the hundreds of chairs lining Louderman this morning waiting for one of my finals to begin, I heard a friend of mine complain a few seats back that he was really aggravated at how the midterm had expected him to recall information from his high school chemistry course. At first, I scoffed at the idea of forgetting everything than I remembered my own 'peevedness' at the same idea when I was taking finals my senior year of high school and recalling how they had forced us to recall information from just two years prior. It's not that my friend isn't a bright student; on the contrary, he was valedictorian of his graduating class. The problem arises in how the material is presented and the emphasis on why education is important. I'm not saying that a corny promo for how 'education is super!' is the solution. Instead, maybe its simpler to have the teachers and parents understand that grades aren't everything and change their curriculum so that students don't become overwhelmed with the near useless and are actually positively charged to work.

Then again, I think of my grade school Spanish teacher who absolutely loved to teach but just couldn't motivate a group of children who didn't want to be taught. At the end of the day, you can't blame a system that provides the children with every possible resource (this is America, after all) for having a means to rank the participants. The pressure falls on the children themselves.

I remember seeing three kids from my trip in India. They were standing on the banks of a muddy bay clenching one tattered umbrella between them and wearing clothes that would make a beggar from New York wonder how they managed. I asked our tour guide who they were and what they were doing. These kids, in the middle of monsoon season, wearing nothing but rags were going to school. I couldn't believe it. This moment was a turning point for a lot of perceptions I had on the education system.

If these kids managed to go to a school in the poorest of conditions and at the very least kept trying to improve their condition, how could I possibly have any sympathy for those in America who choose to give up. I'm not talking about the exceptions - not the orphans, the kids who need to work to keep a roof over their heads, the ones with alcoholic parents that beat them and have been in prison more than in the home, etc. I'm talking about the kids who have been told that because they're of a certain race, or because they live in a certain area, they aren't as good as the other kids and aren't supposed to succeed. That's not right. They don't need sympathy, they need their eyes to be opened up.

On service first day, three bus loads of college students were taken to various 'inner city' schools around the area to help them rejuvenate the grounds. The school I went to amazed me for being just an elementary school. They had a library stocked full of books, a computer lab, a gymnasium, and a cafeteria not to mention a full janitorial and kitchen staff with enough teachers for the ratio of kids to teacher to be less than 25.

These kids had the lowest test scores in the state and were dropping out of their own accord because they just didn't see the point.

If anything needs to be changed about education, it needs to be this critical element that education is an immensely powerful tool and that you do have every resource out there to strive, if you want it.