Education, is without a doubt, one of the most important necessity of life that everyone should be able to acquire. But what good do you get from an education that suppresses your abilities and talent for a letter grade? What good can you get from an education that doesn’t give you the chance to bloom into your prime and to pollinate your success to your posterities? Our education system, unsurprisingly, is a broken one. It was a system that was constructed over hundreds of years ago for a different age and a different societal construct. Our aged system needs to be dismantled and reconstructed into a whole new way that best fits this modern society and is caught up with our science. Fixing this system requires being reshaped into an engaging …show more content…
One of the many issues in the United States’s school system includes the intention to develop students to think and act alike as possible. This is known as the conformity function is which children are molded to have matching attitudes, beliefs and behaviors which can be more easily manipulated and harnessed. This is especially useful for controlling a large labor force. (Gatto) Human beings are essentially born creative–from infancy on we find innovative ways to negotiate life. The most creative people see impediments as an opportunity and not a roadblock. But most importantly, with a school system that is made to suppress and force everyone to think alike, we are essentially taking away their human instinct to comply with the difficulties common in life. Dormant successful minds will never germinate when fed with a system that intends to create minds that think …show more content…
In the article, Against School: How Public Education Cripples Our Kids, and Why, students told Gatto that, “teachers didn't seem to know much about their subjects and clearly weren't interested in teaching more.” That’s a problem because the mind doesn’t function at its best when you are bored and uninterested. With today’s scientific discoveries, we know more about the brain and more about learning now than in history of all humankind. The problem is that the education system has not caught up with the science and that they are completely mismatched. What do we know? We know that joyful learning is important and that it’s really good to sing, dance, and laugh in school because doing so, your brain will release chemicals that will allow you to relieve stress and learn better. If we can get students to be engaged into their subject, chances are that they will improve their academic achievements. Students will grow old but will never really grow up with a system that they don’t seem interested in working
Looking at the actual amount of conformity present in schools, as opposed to the ideal amount, it seems that schools have moved past a healthy level to a point where students don’t often have to genuinely think for themselves. On a basic level, students don’t have to plan or use their judgment to ensure that they arrive to class on time. They become dependent on bells to tell them when they need to be in class and when they are late (Source B). On a more complex level, students rarely have to use their problem solving skills to come to their own conclusions. Learning in the classroom is typically centered around the memorization of facts and methods as opposed to critical thinking. Students are requested to learn the details and regurgitate them on test day, despite the fact that very little of it will be remembered later on. On the rare occasions when students are confronted by a critical thinking question, they often struggle as they have little practice in this area. If schools were to put more emphasis on individuality, where students could think freely and responsibly and contribute their own ideas, students would better themselves and society
For example, my very intelligent child had been labeled as a “trouble maker” at a young age. He could not sit still in Kindergarten and focus on lessons. He had not yet developed these skills that were expected of him. Children are designed for movement and play. In a formal school setting, these natural impulses are stifled and pushed aside to obtain high test scores. The school system is designed to create a model student conformed to produce model citizens.
I agree with the point that was made in the video about conformity that occur in the American education system. Conformity is a type of social influence involving a change in belief or behavior in order to fit in with a group. However, conformity is not just acting as other people act, it is also being affected by how they act. it is acting or thinking differently from the way you would act and think if you were alone (pg 188). Nowadays people are choosing not to study they just want to be on the internet and be playing video games because they are conforming to the society new ways of not wanting to study or even finish school. Meanwhile, the best things is to be focus in school so you can have a good career. According, to the video, divergent
The human mind is perhaps the greatest object on the earth, animate or inanimate, but without the proper training, the mind is a relatively useless tool. Through the development of formal education systems, humans as a whole have tried to ensure the training of all minds so as to continue prosperity for the world. Most of the time, though, education systems do not realize the harm they are doing to developing minds and the subsequent negative consequences. Among the largest of these inadequate education systems is the American primary schooling system. The American education system is in fact failing; it continues to deplete children of their natural creativity and thirst for knowledge while preaching conformity, which in turn creates an
The manifest function of schools in our society is to socialize children. School grooms young people for the various roles and positions they will hold later in life by teaching them reading, writing, mathematics and the sciences. The various activities and experiences at school help expose children to values that are important in our society such as capitalism, so-called democracy and environmentalism. The text suggests that one of the latent functions of schools is actually producing “passive, non-problematic conformists who will fit into the existing social order (Gracey, 1991). Schools are able to do this by training children to act in specific ways and expect certain things from the authority figures in their lives.
It is a taboo in today’s society because it goes against society's definition of success and intelligence. Despite this course of action, people such as Bill Gates and the creator of the popular social media app called “Facebook” became extremely successful. Upon surfing through Facebook myself, I stumbled upon a video touching the topic of how the educational system bases students’ intelligence from the standardized tests they took. The speaker in the video made a point claiming that students attend school to learn what others had already learned, but people who break away from doing so produce new creations. The disobedience of not conforming to society’s definition can potentially result in more creativity and ideas from one’s identity.
“See nothing, hear nothing, you may not have any beliefs.” Many people think that conformity is harmful to children and that it makes them less imaginative, but not necessarily. School is an important part of people's lives, but we shouldn’t let them get away with being too lazy. Schools should have a daily bell schedule and kids should attend school every day, but we shouldn’t force kindergarteners to go through standardized testing. Children should conform to the ‘system’ but we shouldn’t stress them out. We shouldn’t make young children stress out about a big test that will change their future forever. We should have some conformity in schools but not to the point where it makes people overly stressed-out and anxious. School shouldn’t be like a prison.
Introduction: “If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?” Coloring inside the lines, apple products, teenagers rapidly changing their preferences in clothing, music, relationships, college students drinking at parties to avoid being the odd one out, . We are all conformists everyday, even simply by following the laws. Conformity is part of life. Conformity is the act of matching attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors to group norms.
“Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.” It prevents us from using our imagination and limits our thoughts. Limiting our thoughts keeps us from growing and learning. Without expanding our intellectual horizons, it is difficult to succeed and do what we want. Our parents, teachers, and peers forget that we are all different people and have different lives. They often pressure us to do things we don’t agree with or want to do.
In the United States, many lack the skills necessary for college. Unfortunately, the education system fails to prepare some of its students for work or higher learning. Despite these circumstances, teachers and bureaucrats seek improvements to obtain higher success. In spite of the pressure for success, the current situation is not yielding the desired results. Moreover, in the recent State of the Union Address in early 2014, President Barack Obama stated the need for improved education, especially in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, or STEM fields. Yet, what should reformers pursue? Researchers have observed recurring problems to direct the improvement of education. The information presented, particularly over the past
The first time the education of children became serious was in the Age of Enlightenment. During this time, the quality of education was based on the economy, thus it was a primitive basis of education. The current education system still runs on some of these old ideas, but in truth, the validity of these principles has expired (RSA). However, the education system has developed somewhat, and some aspects of the information taught to students have advanced. Nevertheless, it is advancing in the wrong direction. The education students receive prepare them for college; it doesn’t prepare them for any other pathway. “When we went to school, we were kept there with a story which is if you worked hard and did well and got a college degree, you would have a job” (RSA). This is a common
We exist in a state where education is a prominent force of succeeding in life. Kids learn the critical and analytical skills for twelve years in school to prepare to graduate high school, and hopes of going on to a two or four college education. Today the American education system is no longer the finest in the world. With declining test scores and poor scholastic accomplishment, individuals have addressed whether our current educational system is working for us? To see how to tackle an issue, we must first understand what we are attempting to fix. Case in point, can a carpenter without any former medical experience repair a puncture lung? Obviously not, he or she must first hold the proper schooling necessary to do such a
education. Society has shifted from words of reason and sensibility to an era with an epitome for
Teachers are of vital importance for molding students into individual beings. They are the ones who are supposed to challenge kids on the significance of self-identity and individuality. According to Gatto, teachers are "bored" and highly un-enthusiastic to teach their young pupils (684). Instead of providing a real education that could touch the hearts of young students to learn and think, teachers have given much disregard for their students' success. Rather, students are given what Gatto describes as "schooling" where teachers train students to become "docile and incomplete citizens"(693). This type of learning leads to
Everyone knows that education is very important, but not everyone understands why? Education is essential to help kids develop the skills necessary to prepare them for the modern world. Furthermore, education endows kids with the ability to be independent, creative, and innovative learners, which can help encourage kids to take on greater tasks. However, most schools lack the support for greater student success because they have outdated textbooks, bad school facilities, and no student autonomy. Therefore, holding back students from realizing their full potential and rendering them vulnerable to challenges. In order for students to become greater critical thinkers the federal government must reform the educational system and increase school funds so that schools can replace older textbooks with new ones, improve educational facilities, and permit greater student autonomy