Purpose Of Schooling
One of the
biggest task of our lives is to find the balance between conforming to the
society we live in while maintaining our individual identities. It is a very
difficult task because we are not born with the ability to do so; rather we
have to learn how to through families, schooling, and popular culture. This is
especially critical for adolescents because there are about to step into the
real world. I strongly believe that the key of making this society better is to
educate the next generation properly and carefully through families, schooling,
and popular culture.
Living in America is very expensive,
especially if you have a family to feed. Almost 60 percent of household has
both parents in labor force, and often they are too stressed to really
communicate and spent time with their children; instead, tv and the internet
have replace the parents’ role as primary educational source in the household
today. It would not have been bad if the tv programs, and stuff on the world
wide web are meant to educational, but it is the exact opposite; Pop culture no
longer has good values because that is not what people want. Show such as “here
comes honey bobo” demonstrates no real values at all; in fact, they promote bad
behaviors such as eating unhealthy at a young age. The show is pure
entertainment, and if a family want to watch it, it’s fine as long as
parents/guardians point out the right values. It is problematic nowadays
because families do not take advantage of the situations, where kids can be
educated instead of just entertained. With the Internet, this kind of
situations arises exponentially. The worst is parents most often fail to even
supervise what their kids are watching. But there is still a chance; children
in America spend a lot of time in school, and with the right message, we can
still steer them in the right direction. Schools today should teach moral
values, social skills, and healthy life style more than ever because of the
lack of contributions from families and pop culture. The purpose of schooling
is to help students gain skills that can benefit them once they are in the real
world; it is to help students get to know this world we live in from many
different aspects, and most importantly, to better our society. I believe in
order to help students get ready for the real world; school must provide
knowledge from as many aspects as possible, and enhance students’ ability to
think critically.
There
are a few categories of skills that can benefit students once they are in the
real world; moral values, social skills, academic, and healthy life style. To help
students to gain such skills, it is critical that teachers lead by example;
this way we are not just giving more rules for them to follow; instead, we are
inspiring them to hold the same principle as us; and we not only provide the
facts that we want them to learn just by telling them, but also showing them
how it is done as well. For example, if the teacher is drinking pop all the
time; how can students take it seriously when they are told not to drink that
much pop by the same teacher? In school, many different sticky situations often
happen unexpectedly, so we must always take advantage of when situations arises
by handling the situations appropriately; this way we can demonstrate the use
of critical thinking. Situations can be current event, what happens in school,
past experience…. Any real life situations that you can relate to what you are
teaching/preaching. The worst part isn’t if students do not learn anything from
it, but learn the wrong value form it; students will need to think critically
in those situations, and that is why we must promote critical thinking.
A
basketball in one-dimension is just a line; in two dimension it’s just a
circle; only in three-dimension we can see that it is a sphere or a ball. This
is the perfect example to demonstrate the importance of knowing as many aspects
or dimensions as possible in order to understand anything and everything fully.
Teachers should promote multi-diversities not just because some
cultures/ethnicities are under represented, but also for other students and
teachers to have a chance to see the world through their ways, to adapt things
we see fit for ourselves, and to understand those cultures/ethnicities. Let’s
say a student is presenting his native American background, and the teacher
just sit there half zoning out, what message is that going to send to students?
I have personally seen teachers that see this situation as their opportunity to
take a break instead of an opportunity to learn. Again, we as educators, must
lead by example; we must keep an open mind to things, and realize that we do
not know it all either. This multi-aspects way of thinking is a good way to
increase students’ critical thinking ability, which will help you make better
decisions, and ultimately become a productive and a better person. In the
process of drafting this essay, I have talked to a lot people about the purpose
of schooling, and although there are similarities, they all present a different
aspect of this topics; my internship at Lincoln high school also gave me
another different aspect as well. I can’t say that I have become better just
yet because I have gain more questions than answers, but I have certainly gain
more understanding of the problems and limitations we have in our school
systems. The multi-aspects way of thinking is also a good way to understand
each other. It would be easier to understand where people are coming from if
you can see it from their view.
The
third purpose of schooling, to better our society, is a tricky one because it
changes depending on the person. Three of the most important aspects of knowledge
are critical thinking, moral values, and understanding others. It’s a lot like
our body; the moral value is the spine of education; the critical thinking is
the brain of the education, and understanding others is the heart of education.
Education would fail if any of the three were missing. However, schooling is
not the same as education; schooling is part of the education where the
knowledge one would gain is more critical thinking based, where as family,
peers, and pop culture are the sources of the other two aspects. Unfortunately,
this very foundation of education is no longer realistic. Many families have
both parents working, poverty, and many other family issues; pop culture are
not sending the right message to say the least; and since family and pop
culture are far less effective on helping our children gaining the knowledge,
our children’s peers, which are other children, will not be help to each other
either. The worst part is both family and pop culture are now pushing all the
responsibilities on schools, and blame schools for everything that goes wrong
in the society, and kids are starting to devalue school because of this. This
is one of the reasons why education in America is failing our children. Another
reason is our last hope, school system, is not getting it done either; the way
it is set up is to help the one who has the resources by having the
“standardize everything” policies, such as standardize testing. Fair and equal
are two different things; it is not fair to set equal standards when everyone
is different, and their resources are different.
Schooling
system for adolescents across the nation has steadily moving towards a more
business approach. It is no longer about getting adolescents ready for the real
world as a citizen; but rather is only about how to get a well-paid job. That
is why President Obama had set up this “race to the top” policy to push
everyone to go to college, which the sole goal is to have the highest college
graduation rate in the world. I thought to myself, “what is going on???” I used
three consecutive question marks due to the server level of confusion I had.
How come we distant ourselves from the communities, and pushing academics so
hard when it is clearly not the best for every student base on the current
situation. Schools are the last chance for us as adults to help the future
generation due family and pop culture issues. I was confused because this is
not going to better our society; the society America idealized, is one that
value equality, fairness, democratic, understanding, hard working...etc. This
is the culture general public would want in future American society; it might
be the case before, but it is no longer the case. The culture now is to make as
much money as you can. The pop culture promotes it by showing examples of
people that would do anything for attention because they will get pay good
money; by showing the idea that the successful people wear really nice clothes,
gold chains, nice cars… and they get what they want because they are rich; thus
created the demand for money. Families also promotes this culture; why do you
think so many parents wants their kids to be doctors, engineers, lawyers...etc.
School also promotes this by pressing strict academics (language, math,
science), and cutting back on classes such as art; with the reason that you
would be more successful if you have these academic skills. Money became so
important that the poor would gain money by any mean necessary, and rich people
wouldn’t donate money because they can never have enough money. “To better
yourself” is equal to get yourself rich in today’s society, and it had polluted
the purpose of schooling; I can guarantee more than half of the students would say
“because it will get me a good job”, if you ask them why they are in school. Sadly,
I cannot say it is wrong because it seems like this is the only way to survive
nowadays.
An awesome professor once told me that educators
are also activists. It is up to us to influence the future generation according
to what we believe the culture should be, and depending on what culture you
choose, you will have a different purpose of schooling. For me personally, the
purpose of schooling is to help students gain skills that can benefit them once
they are in the real world; it is to help students get to know this world we
live in from many different aspects, and most importantly, better themselves as
individuals, and thus create a better future society.