On the Death of Curiosity

Before I begin, I would like to give you a reference link to ponder at. It is a link to the United States Department of Labor concerning compulsory school attendance laws. I speak not as a wise, old, stubborn fool but as a junior in high school, someone who has walked the halls of campus and attended classes in two different states. I have been to school in two different countries. I have, as with many people in public education, have had to deal with emo to wannabe-gangsters. My semester grades range anywhere from 3.5(B+) to 4.0(A+)--although I will admit that lately it is closer to 3.0(B).

The Current State of United States Schools

Humans are stupid. There I said it. Race does not matter. Religion does not matter. Richness does not matter. In all the corners of our round world, human babies are born--stupid, lame, and dumb. Thus the duty of any civilized culture is to educate, develop and refine their young for society. Then and there, is the birth of schools. It fascinates me how the Latin word schola (also sometimes spelled scola) originally meant free time. Here is my tale of how free time came to be our modern definition of school. During their leisure, the wealthy philosophized and experimented and when there comes a piece of succulent intellect, they bragged their discovery during their causal public baths or forum meetings. Schola soon came to be known as the exchanging of ideas. Later, it referred to the location for that information exchange. And that is our current definition of school.

I now state that United States educational institutions--especially the public facilities--are blessed for failure. In recent decades, the accursed institution deviated turbulently from its humble beginnings. That tumultuous disorder renders schools useless. Parents expect schools to teach their children basic skills--a sincere and justified assumption in accordance with specified duties. However, the same schools are supposed to inform of, and restrain children from, the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse. Schools must prevent unexpected pregnancies and limit the spread of HIV through AIDS awareness and abstinence programs. Schools must stop the obesity problem. Schools must overcome ethnic and religious barriers. All on top of providing necessary programs for disabled or mentally ill children, bringing nourishment for the poor children during meal times, and serving every, single, distinct individual with equal fervor. The next time a serious social issue arises, there lies no doubt that schools must account a fix for that as well.

Teaching is a difficult profession that yields little recompense for its many troubles. I make no light of that matter and truly respect my teachers. Yet at the same time, I feel the frustration both from my peers and the various instructors. It happens everyday. A constant week of repetition of the same idea ten, twenty, even thirty times and, in the end, a few in a class of thirty will still not understand. Many do not comprehend the concept, some only memorize the patterns or formula, others abandoned attempts outright years ago. The current education system does not mark skill.

It marks loyalty and obedience. Although not designed to do so, trivial homework, senseless classwork, and just plain busy work pile upon this notion. How long can one remain in the herd before one comes the next day disobeying authority? Since primary school, it is ingrained that you will stay where you belong. If you escape someone will recover you back where you belong and keep you there. Who decided where you belong? Surely not you yourself for you were too young. In time you learn your place. That is society in this capitalistic, dog-eat-dog world--know where you belong. At least this most basic notion was taught right.

Likewise, teachers nurture a renouncing of the little one's rights and a subordination of oneself to higher, more sophisticated powers. Children--and their teachers--do not, and can not, select a majority of the curriculum. Education prior to high school understandably pursue this method due to the prerequisite need for a preset knowledge base common throughout. However, the knowledge acquired encounters scrutiny with the rate of its attainment. Quick learners slow their accelerated minds so as to follow the teaching criteria. An ample sum of such retardation foreshadows an eventual halt further in later years. And thence, a sharp mind is lost in the haystack.

Compulsory attendance worsens the failure of the educational system to educate its pupils. Attendance is a highly desired commodity in the educational system. Schools are paid depending on the number of students who attend, how long they attend, and how often they attend. It is reasonable to use this as a measure; there is no reason to give a school with 1,000 students the same yearly budget as a similar school with 5,000. I understand that. The fact that schools must meet certain attendance criteria to receive funding imposes a diligence to withhold the students...against the attendee's will. It can justifiably, although incorrectly, be argued that without such due diligence the children will no doubt meander confusedly in this world. Yet, beyond junior high, children acquire expensively truncated, insufficient skill sets for their future lives. Few will ever need to make use of matrix multiplication required of by Algebra II in high school graduation criteria. Even fewer will need to write full-length essays that are often required of in English classes. Knowledge is forgotten over the years if it lays unused.

Let me make note of No Child Left Behind; a good idea with an honorable cause: to effectuate literacy and mathematical skills to United States citizens. Many excellent, virtuous, and righteous consequences have occurred in regards to No Child Left Behind such as the loss of interest (ergo funding) in the arts (as a tuba/sousaphone player, I am concerned), and the deprecation of learning goals and standardized test quality. Not to mention adding massive stress to hapless schools attempting to educate the impoverished ghettos. I understand why many schools did not meet the expected Adequate Yearly Progress required of them in the first few years--teachers can attempt the impossible, but if students hold no interest, it amounts to little or no knowledge retainment. Good ideas must be supplemented with good execution. I heard little of the reforms made in 2007 and have also heard rumors of finally ridding students of that pest in 2008. Hopefully, some of the beneficial ideas shall be kept for further revision and ensuing better execution.

Continuous federal mandates on education reveal an aspect of our government that many citizens may not wish to notice. The administrative authority of the government is concentrating its power towards a centralization of the nation (maybe I have been listening to too many conspiracy theories...). Schools attempt to control practically all aspects of what happens within its premises. In California, my school did not have centralized control; there were no school-wide speakers and information traveled on scraps of paper or word of mouth via teachers-aid students. By contrast, my current school in Texas has consolidated centralized control; a school-wide speaker suddenly wakes during 2nd period (homeroom) to pledge a salute to the flag and mention daily news, a computer for each teacher operates an entire day relaying email messages from upper administration, and surveillance cameras survey the corridors for misconduct. The sight of those cameras forced a drastic, agitated realization within me, and somehow, I expected it would happen to me eventually. The school's duty to safeguard children from harm causes an imposition of the breach of privacy. As such an action actively matures as permissible behavior, children lose their ability to discern the privacy versus security trade off and it will carry into adulthood.

Children seldom heed caution over unscrupulous observation of them from overseers, but they will vigilantly regard the perception of their peers. For children, school is a social occasion, a time to meet new friends, spread rumors of enemies and engage in daily gossip. This generation embraces entertainment and recreation, not general learning and information attainment. School is to blame. It does not foster learning and discipline, but instead causes an uprising of pleasure-seeking youngsters. With the concept of grades, an educator essentially wields the capability to assign a mark to evaluate the child's worth for the parents. It failed; this measure of an apparent lack of ability connects together those who despise the system with a common bond. This further promotes propagation of a nonchalant class that manifests itself to grand proportions during the four high school years. Those able to ride the system freely, feign fictitious disillusionment during school hours and contently conform to true scholarly virtues by meticulously availing whatever unoccupied time left after schoolwork for more wholesome, worthy knowledge. Those unable to ride easily often linger in an attempt to garner respect from peers and parents. And lastly, there are those who care not to ride at all.

The flaws described herein are the result of the institutionalized education system. As long as the curriculum choices are under the hands of the authority issues will eventually surface again. Public schools serve as an apparatus for social hypnosis and under restrictive control certain mindsets may be nurtured laboriously over the course of around ten years. The American education system fails in its attempt to teach students, because information is inflicted upon them as though knowledge is a scar. In countries that do not have free public schools education is cherished and whatever limited knowledge available is a hard-earned gift. I come from that background; my mother had to sell away her small collection of jewelry and scrape our haggard revenues to pay for my primary schooling. My younger brother and sister would have received the exhausted remains. We came to California in my brother's kindergarten year. If we had remained in Viet Nam, there would not have been enough to suffice all of us. School is taken too lightly here. With exception to a minute proportion of educators, the students receive information pampered to them. In the words of one of my teachers, education is like "momma-bird regurgitating to baby-bird". Children lose their sense of curiosity. I am not alledging that the teacher directly answers all the questions posed in the worksheets given to the students, I am implying that those worksheets coerce a mindset that sputters information directly from the text. And often times the emphasis is given towards attaining a single correct answer. This type of education confines students into approaching problems as though there exists only one answer. I am a programmer and even while working on a systematic machine like a computer, there exists a myriad of procedures to arrive at similar solutions. People who approach situations with a preset limit of what can be achieved, or how it can be achieved, undeniably achieve little.

In an age of entrepreneurial success, the media repeatedly announce news of teens who construct powerful businesses with their talents and intelligence. The envious should learn from these stories. Length of education does not matter, it is what is learned and how it is applied. Where you learn it rarely matters in some instances. This is especially true in our era of Internet media. OpenCourseWare initiatives (publishing of college course syllabi, notes, and even recorded lectures), sponsored by various colleges around the world, are making way into YouTube, Google Video, and several other websites. Information is literally at the tip of the finger and the lazy ones can soak it all in while munching cornflakes in their underwear (trust me, it actually happens...).

Deinstitutionalized education--a branching of high schools into vocational, career-based education--should be the next wave towards grander learning. Compulsory attendance in education did not become a national endeavor until around 1918, and although a wonderful idea recently accepted by a majority of nations in the word, the execution of methods used to teach is flawed. I am not petitioning a removal of compulsory education; I am petitioning to transform our current system of education. In most states, the age when the attendee is allowed to choose whether to remain in education or not is set between 16 to 18. Personally, my 16th year in this world was the year I began to sincerely loathe school. Junior high, otherwise known as middle school, is where students should be given a choice whether to attend a vocational study or high school education. For students who have not decided, the freshman year of high school can be used to show how education in high school is and whether it would pertain to that individual. Occupational studies allow for specialization of trades and earlier entry into the workplace for those disinterested in writing essays or deriving the angle of sines. The elimination of such students from the high school environment encourages those who remain to acquaint themselves with superior efforts at comprehending knowledge which will simultaneously guide education to prominence and sophistication.

The diploma from vocational schools should have similar weight in their respective fields as a high school diploma in college admissions. The disadvantage of a vocational diploma is the fact that it specializes on one certain occupation or type of occupation and certain pieces of "general" knowledge is lacking. That disadvantage is jointly a favorable circumstance due to the fact that the vocational school graduates specialize specifically with an occupation and will have knowledge of many aspects of that occupation without need for training or experience. The advantage of a high school diploma is that the student has been tested to show minimum proficiency in nation-wide standards. The disadvantage with that is experience in actual career-oriented ventures is destitute. Certain unions have already initiated an apprenticeship system whereby people that aspire for certain careers learn while working with professionals in the career or field (and earn money while doing so). Technical schools are emerging throughout the country to meet rising demand in the computer industry. If federal education policymakers are able to come to a consensus with these new education facilities and establish an infrastructure to manage connections, then education will reach the long-awaited twenty-first century enlightenment.

--end &awaiting possible revision*

*I intended this to be a very strongly worded and convincing argument to split high school to more trade-school studies...it didn't have the strength that I wanted to. I will probably come back to this again to edit and revise it, but right now, I just don't have the time. NaNoWriMo is coming up in a month and a few days, more or less, so I'll be getting ready for it. Anyways, I'll leave off with some random links for those of you interested, in no particular order:

Inquiry-based learning
OpenCourseWare Finder
MIT OpenCourseWare Home
(Free) Massive Resource for Autodidacts
Taking Children Seriously
Wikipedia : Unschooling && Free School
Department of Labor: State Compulsory Education (Jan 1 2007)

I had some more but like...they ran away and hid themselves somewhere...