Education Is Broken

Education is broken

Education is broken. The deeply ingrained hierarchy that defines intelligence, marking from zero to 100 where each student lies, is faulty to say the least. Currently, aside from a small number of more specialized "Out of the box" educational institutions, the honoring of academic achievement focuses on math and science which stand at the top of the hierarchical ladder followed by English, perhaps a foreign language and then physical education, health classes, and all of the arts classes are found pathetically situated at the bottom. When the goal, once students have been uploaded with enough data, is to go off in to the world and succeed, the question needs to change from "Are you good in school?" to "What are you great at?"

In the last ten years, the United States entertainment industry has really thrust this country in to a new era in which the highly skilled are deified like only entertainers were in the past. If a person is a great cook, hair stylist, make-up artist, mechanic or anything else, such a person can create a business around his or her skill-set and amass the kind of wealth once only afforded to high level bankers, lawyers, doctors and the like. It was not until very recently that someone could answer the "Where did you go to college?" question with the name of a cooking school without being judged for his or response. It is my belief that lasting and sustainable success is only possible when one's career choice represents a true intersection between passion and capacity. What am I great at? Do I love doing it?

I grew up in a traditional household where the same intelligence hierarchy ideal was enforced. While my parents are really devoted to the arts attending plays on a weekly basis and visiting every museum available to us in this city for every new exhibit that arrives, their passion for such subjects in their lives had no effect on their attention to these subjects in the educational arena. My father even majored in art history at Columbia and still, were I to get a bad grade in a class like that, he wouldn't really have cared all that much. However, if I didn't keep up in math class, he would be very upset. Now, I know this to be true for most of my contemporaries to whom I am close enough that I know intimately the dynamics of their parent's attention to education. I am sure it is not true for all but I feel as if it is a majority. I have witnessed the negative effects of this belief system many times in my life. I have friends who could be masters in their fields were they not embarrassed to define their passions as their career choices. Sons of bankers who want to be artists... Oh No!! A daughter of lawyers whose desire to attend a culinary school was looked at like a weak cop-out of a career choice which would leave her helpless and skilled only to provide phenomenal meals to a husband hopefully rich enough to allow a decent life for a single income household. This is not the way to shape young minds and send them passionately in to the future excited about exploring the world and seeking achievement.

So it's easy to point fingers and explain why something is wrong. It is not as easy to offer a replacement process that works in its place. It seems, however, that the first and most important dynamic shift, that needs to occur, must be to focus every student's education on the discovery of that one thing that blends each student's capacity to understand something with the passion to execute that same something. Such focus would provide students with a sense of consistent fulfillment, an unmatched requisite for happy living.

by: PSmith

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