Political Rants
The failure of Public Schooling: And why it's outdated
I think it's generally agreed that one should always strive to learn more than he or she knows. You'd be suprise to uncover some rather useful knowledge that can come in handy in your career or your personal life. It's better to work smarter than it is to work harder as the old saying goes. Public schooling on paper sounds like a good idea initially. Free and structured education for the masses that will help them form a solid basis for their future endevours is something that was brought with the demands of industrialization revolution. I believe the term for this sort of education is known as the Prussian Education System. In a way, it sort of works like a factory in which a school would systematically education the students to recieve the same Curriculum regardless of their upbringing. While it was probably very progressive and revolutionary for it's time, this form of education soon became the standard in schools all over the world and the weakness of this system have started to become more apparent as society and technology advances.
One of the biggest issues with public education is the inability to appeal to specific needs of the student. Some students are going to excel in some subjects while struggling in other topics. In many cases, the student isn't going to have any desire to presuit knowledge in weaker subjects or in subjects that are just not interesting in any way. The way the modern education system is setup, there is no personalization for the student. A passionate student is going to be held back by this standardization that is placed upon them. There's no room for self-growth or going beyond what the student is capable. Sure you have advance placement programs in places like the United States that provide a more challenging circulium for certain subjects but it's still not a tailored experience for the student. Prior to the days of standardized education, knowledge would normally be passed down from the experience of a parent or in the laborforce. The advantage of this method of learning is that the student is able to learn from a master in some craft or skill while skipping over the uneccessary knowledge which in turn, produces a future specialisits. Specialists who will not only be very skilled at his or her profession but also enthusiastic in most cases for their craft and skills. You'll get more opportunities for inovation from those who learn at their own pace and methods as opposed to a more general and universal form of education. The other issue with standardized education is that it puts so much emphasis on being universal in knowledge (literature, maths, sciences) that it completely misses out some important life skills that one should know prior to going into the workforce or higher education. Things like personal financing, care for one's own health, political processes (sometimes covered in history courses), and pretty much anything that has to do with making the student more self reliant in situtations where they may not have the help they need to get by some situtations.
There's also the issue of agendas when it comes to public education. Sometimes it can be an issue of pushing a nation's ideals as a priority in public education. Other times, it can be interest groups pushing some sort of ideology that they want for the future workforce. Rather than have the students deicede, argue, and debate ideas, teachers often force answers to questions that really shouldn't have any answer to begin with. It discourages the students ability to think for oneself and forces them to comform to the standards and ethics of the school. There's also the issue of censorship when it comes to learnign material, particularly in subjects like history. Not to mention, though there are some prerequisites to becoming a certified teacher, that doesn't mean the quality of the teachers will be the same all through out. Many teachers are simply there to recieve their paycheck and don't really care about the material nor the well being of the student's ability to learn a subject. Others may even have some sort of agenda they want to push on the students. Generally, as a parent, you're not going to know who is going to teach your student and what they'll be teaching them. It seems like for U.S. schools in particular, the major focus tends to be on getting the highest standardized test scores, having the best sport teams, or the best rankings in club compitions. The focus is hardly on improving the potential of the average students.
There's no point in forcing students to attend public institutions where they will be poorly educated in such a way that they won't even be ready for the working world once they are out of education. It's probably one of the biggests waste of tax payer money considering that these days, you can obtain most if not all the knowledge you need from the internet. Not only that, but I think personally, society as a whole needs to move away from the idea of obtaining education in order to obtain some "high wage" job for some mega corporation that expects it's employees to be skilled in specific subjects, behave in a certain way, and follow the rules to the letter. People need to start developing skills that would make them self sufficent. Through self sufficency, is one able to obtain the time to perfect a skill that one has a passion for. While self teaching and homeschooling does limit social oppertunities for the pupil in question, that's not to say there comes a point in everyone's life that you just need to take a break from learning or labor. You can't treat people like machines. Neither can you program them like one. Self learning or homeschooling with a close community or family is ideal in my opinion. Education in a sense is alot like configuring a GNU/Linux setup for your own needs. You only install the drivers/programs you need and don't include all this bloat like you don't need in like in operating systems such as Windows or MacOS. Keeping things personalized leads to better efficiency for the individual and consequently to a wiser society as a whole.
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