An Education Reset: Rethinking one size fits all
The mere mention of school triggers negative emotions in members of any age group. Children would sooner choose chaotic, messy activities over organized rows of desks and seven-hour schedules.
Teens and adults dread the classroom to an even greater extent, as they experience it transforms from a simple part of their daily life to the greatest stressor in it.
There is an increasing aversion to academic activities outside the classroom. These being anything from reading for enjoyment to independent research to simply maintaining stimulating conversations.
Individuals are generally quick to lay the blame on modern technology, but computers and their counterparts are little more than distractions, and people would likely employ them less if formulated education were less demanding.
In the past century alone, attending college has become less of a privilege and more of a prerequisite for life. So, after spending 12 years in a desk completing repetitive tasks and standardized tests, young adults are granted the opportunity to accumulate massive debt when many of them possess little to no genuine life involvement.
When high school seniors are asked their post-high school plans, the conventional answer would be that they are attending either a 4-year institution or trade school.
Students who choose to take a year to work or travel are deemed unmotivated, burned out, and usually expected to fall off the academic track. Thus, the students that take time to determine their life goals outside of the school setting are few.
Not everyone can be grouped in the gap year category, as some students who choose the college path directly after high school thrive and maintain the star pupil label. Some students not geared in the same way struggle with a steep decline in motivation and desire to succeed academically.
They are more engrossed in their phones and television shows because of the mindless entertainment and freedom they provide from the rigidity of regular days.
The lack of flexibility in America’s education system reveals that it was cultivated to create a nation that ultimately produces more workers than thinkers.
The same kids given near full-time jobs in grade school move hastily on to a costly college environment, and in this time of ambiguity they select majors and career paths that will likely be utilized until retirement age.
Perhaps there is no ideal blueprint for education, and the one operating now is best suited for the masses, but when pure desire for knowledge begins to become mindless memorization, change is necessary.
