The government regulates and assigns all of these little standards that we must learn within the school year. It is the teacher’s job to teach these to us, and maybe add a little bit of their own input (rarely). Education. Education. Education. The emphasis on education is endless. The emphasis on the use of our stripped to the bone, filtered, censored education is even higher; of course, not to the general public. But we are never told about the way education is used as a tool to shape the minds of citizens, and affect their ideas and attitudes towards life. A little more subtle than you think. Every bit of knowledge we accumulate through the public schooling system is processed and approved by school district, and the city, and the state, etc.
Textbooks - the keys that open doors…screw that, they’re the keys that jam in your doors. Where do these books come from? The friendly neighborhood publishing company of course! No they’re from that giant company that you’re never going to reach the top of because it’s just our system. The truth can be so easily screwed around with. It doesn’t take much for anyone to twist it to their liking. Of course it's quite hard.
Education is put upon such a high pedestal, and it’s horrible to see that it’s not going anywhere or doing anything to the people. The only thing you really get out of it is the basics, not a true education. You may know Calculus but you don’t know what the hell is going on in the confines of your own city hall or all of the shady corruption taking place. That’s just not what they want. They’ll teach you a lot of useless Algebra, but won’t teach you how to understand how the world or the system works, or to question it. “Let’s not have these kids become too smart now.” Sadly, not everybody will go out of their way to achieve a state of awareness and truly be educated. Nobody cares, they’re too distracted by what they want you to be preoccupied by: the media, celebrities – lifestyles of the rich and famous, material possessions.
What else is there? Standardized tests. No Child Left Behind. I mean, seriously? You’re going to force teachers to do a good job, and when they crack, they’ll stop teaching us and start to teach by the test. When a school is not doing well, you’re basically going to make it even worse by cutting their funding. How’s that for motivation? Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Don’t give me this bullshit about racial minorities because you know exactly why things are the way they are.
This won’t change in our lifetime. Just understand that you can make the most of it and utilize the crap they give us to its fullest potential. In the meantime, I suggest you learn on your own. Maybe when they realize they’re screwing us over, just maybe they’ll change. I doubt that. No, when enough people are as pissed off as I am, finally they’ll hear us out. That’s going to take a while.
4 comments:
I am a teacher and became one in order to teach history to young people. When I was in school I had one teacher (yes - that's one out of all the twelve years of pre-college schooling) who taught me the truth of this country and of the world. He motivated me to do the same so that young people would not grow up ignorant to what is really happening in society.
I have been able to teach (along with other colleagues) some real shit. And it is evident with the students that the appreciate it. Some are shocked at first, but they are really into it. They feel that we are treating them maturely and that we care enough to teach them reality.
I am moving to a new school this year, so I'm not sure if I will have the freedom there to do the same. But TRUST that I will do so until they tell me to stop.
I hope that one day all students will be able to learn real stuff in school and not have to rely on the miseducation that exists in the corporate education that they typically get.
I hope that they will find information out on their own as well if the day of real textbooks never comes.
And I hope that all people (in school and finished with school) come across people who are kind enough to introduce them to reality.
I don't agree with this at all, please try not to make false assumption without any premises. I am an Algebra Teacher at the New Haven District and given what the state has ordered me to do. Many students have returned to me with graceful experiences under my teaching.
@stuck in my head, thank you very much for your comment, I have responded to you on your blog.
@newhavenalgebrateacher, I think you may have misinterpreted my point. I wasn't disrespecting any teacher, or their teaching ability, any course, or any school for that matter. I am not attacking you or your colleagues, I am pinpointing the system that would choose to teach us quadratic functions but not things of equal importance such as certain events that are not mentioned in history books or even current events going on right now. Algebra (I don't actually think it's useless) was just an example I used in contrast to things they don't teach us about like the Japanese internment camps or the true story behind Thanksgiving. This, all in all, was more of a history issue. The problem is that they prepare us for employers, but not for ilfe. And this is not the fault of a teacher or the school. In this post, I have used generalizations, but that was only so that the reader can get a general idea of what I wanted to say. If you felt offended by my post, then I apologize, for that was not my true intention. But I do not take back any of the things I said.
not sure as to who the author is. i just luckily stumbled upon it and basked in its awesomeness.
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