School is a standard thing that everyone in North America and much of the world experiences. And we all know that there are some people who excel in school and others who hate every minute and struggle to pass classes. Many think that school just isn’t meant for those kinds of people.
But there are those out there who are questioning the foundations of education world-wide and we are seeing many alternatives to traditional schooling.
Every single person is different, with different needs and interests, yet we still force everyone to learn roughly the same thing without much passion or success. This is unacceptable. There are people who can never learn math in a classroom, but would be able to learn it on a worksite. There are students who will never understand biology until they step outside.
All my friends are always complaining that they don’t want to be in school and don’t want to go to class. And it’s sad how the education system has worn down ideas and subjects into boring textbook facts which are rehearsed by a teacher who doesn’t have the funding to make it interesting. We have built this universal hatred towards school so that it is not a place to learn but more a place to be judged and bored.
The idea of learning itself is fascinating. We take in new ideas and shape our own thoughts from it. We learn how the world works so that later in life we can do something great with our knowledge. So why has learning become a boring chore?
Maybe it’s that the education system tries to teach us everything in too little time. No one has the funding or motivation to do chemistry experiments or historical plays for everything. Not that money would fix these problems.
It’s about the mentality of school – this horrible stigma that comes with school, especially high school. On top of classes so long that your legs cramp up from sitting all day, and the whole complex social aspect of school, there is this idea that we are supposed to hate school. Those who enjoy their classes are branded nerds (even if it harmless teasing among friends).
So, what do we do? Everywhere people are asking this question, trying to find different variations of school for different people. And there are alternative schools, or outdoor schools, but the majority of us are still confined by the traditional way of education.
So, I ask again, what can we do to change the minds of those who say they hate school? What can we do to completely revolutionize the concept of education?