This day in age, kids are required to start attending school at the young age of 5. From 5 years old on, kids will be in school for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 9 months a year for 13 straight years. If a child fails to complete this regimen, they are viewed as a failure. This strict schedule leaves little time for students to do anything with their lives, outside of school. To even play a competitive sport is a major feat. With hours of homework and studying to be done after the actual school day, it’s a miracle that kids have not transformed into, walking, talking, breathing robots.
Schools claim that their ultimate goals are to (1) to help each student gain personal fulfillment and (2) to help create good citizens. For a school to have these goals is quite lofty, considering that they have no idea what personal fulfillment is for each student. Public schools do not take the time to get to know each individual; they’re too busy worrying about fulfilling the state’s standards. Each student is just another tool used to do that. Source E suggests that, “by giving children every year a large number of authorized absences” students would feel less pressured and likely to act out. Some kids simply do not have any desire to go to school; these are the kids who are going to make trouble. In high school especially, students feel as if they can not miss school, no matter what. Even missing for a school sponsored event, such as an athletic competition, comes with the almost unbearable consequences of make up work and make up quizzes and tests. All of which have to be done on the students own time because of course during class time, teachers have other ‘important’ things to teach. With so much schooling, “It is a rare child who can come through his schooling with much left of his curiosity, his independence or his sense of his own dignity, competence and worth.” (source E). Is it not a school’s desire to encourage some sort of curiosity, independence, sense of dignity, competence, and worth? Without all of these things, it must be very hard for a school to achieve their number one goal of helping each student gain personal fulfillment.
A school’s second goal of creating good citizens can be seen as a success or a failure depending which point of view one takes. According to source D, “You cannot have a democratic—indeed, civilized—community life unless people have learned how to participate in a disciplined
way as a part of a group.” The conformity that schools force upon children definitely in grain discipline and being a part of a group into young minds. This conformity will make for a civilized nation, but is that what America needs? The American belief is that everyone is free. Shoving children into “a system of compulsory secondary schools that all too often resemble prisons.” (source A) doesn’t exactly ring of freedom. John Taylor Gatto, the author of Source A points out that some of the most successful American minds came not from a “school system”, but were educated through other means. “George Washington, Benjamin
Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln….were not products of a
school system, and not one of them was ever “graduated” from a secondary school” (source A), but they learned through life experiences and were taught by the adult influences in their lives. Each one of these successful men had creative, radical ideas that helped make America what it is today. Modern schools squash creativity and radicalism. Being creative and radical does not help one conform to society and become a ‘good citizen’.
Conformity does not only occur in the way that teachers are teaching, but also in the general schedule of a school day. Source B shows a high school bell schedule. The schedule portrays that every class is exactly 46 minutes long and students only get 4 minutes between every class. This strict schedule does not allow students any time to socialize with their peers, let alone go to the bathroom between classes. Of course, every high school has punishments for being late to class. Even being a few seconds late will result in a tardy, if not eventually detention. A routine like this discourages human interaction; every student is always in a rush to get to their next mundane, 46 minute block of day. And just think, impressionable children do this for 13 years.
School’s across the United States have the best intentions of raising kids to be successful adults in the world. But to achieve this success schools believe that conformity is the answer. Conformity is often taken so far that the children are no longer given the opportunity to grow and learn in a way that encouraging to them. Schools need to focus less on conformity and more on individualism. An increase in individualism would give students the opportunity to transform into not only successful adults, but successful adults that are eager to tackle the world.
Apr17
Jordanmm7's Blog 