Teach Your Children Well...

Brief exchange with a friend this morning about high school drama (as in plays not as in whatever it is that Becky thinks she's doing) and realized that I would hate school now. 

I didn't quite hate it when I was in high school. I would have had to care more to hate it. 

It's always one of those regret things. I wish I would have handled it differently. I wish I would have advocated for myself a little more, gotten into classes that were more challenging and interesting. I wish I hadn't had prerequisites that had to be filled before I could take the more interesting things. But I'm also really grateful that I missed what we do with school now. 

See the only thing that really kept me engaged at all was the plethora of English credits I accumulated by taking Drama and Speech and Journalism. I was able to sample a few of those things and I enjoyed them. Also since I needed to be at the school to work on whatever play we were currently doing I might as well make it to a few classes. If it hadn't been for that I'm not sure I would have graduated. I could imagine getting my GED and moving on. 

Like I said, hate would be strong, but I was apathetic to the point where I couldn't bother to make it to class very often. I still was able to keep my grades up (the boredom issue) and it wasn't until our class graduated that the mandatory attendance numbers were put in place (one of my lasting legacy moments, though to be fair our entire graduating class was not so diligent about attendance). 

But now? Now that all of the classes are geared toward the standardized tests? And if you are testing well then you get to do AP classes that are geared toward another test? Oh my gosh I cannot even imagine how much I would hate that. 

Because why? Why do I need to learn the things on that standardized test? Why do most people? Why are we teaching test taking instead of how to learn? How to process information? How to actually figure out what you believe and why?

I know none of this is new. We all complain about it a lot, but today was one of the first times I stopped and thought about it as it pertains to me. To who I was in school. To the fact that I would have been lost to the system. And I was a bright student. I was not the student that you think of as faltering. The ones who struggle. But it would have been a struggle for me. It would have soured me on school forever. I mean high school when I went almost did that, I cannot even imagine how much worse it would be now, testing from elementary school on. No chance at all to explore other areas to find things that are interesting and engaging. 

How many people are we losing in the system right now? I already know from my friends how many teachers we are losing. The burn out level is high. They are facing it daily. Administrations that are rigid in how and what has to be taught. Kids who listen to their parents talk about how teachers are overpaid and get so much time off and why are they complaining about their jobs and so the kids treat their teachers with the level of respect that sort of talk breeds. And the kids who are BORED out of their fucking minds having to learn to a test that they could ace right now, or have no need to ace ever. 

For kids like I was our education system has been stripped of the things that make it worth being there. It has been narrowed down to a space that doesn't even make sense for the majority of people. Not everyone needs to know calculus, but everyone needs to know how to process information. Not everyone needs to learn geology but we should all have a good handle on geography. Not everyone needs to speak a foreign language (though it's a good one to encourage) but we should all have a good handle on our actual history. And we should have art, drama, music, shop, mechanics, creative writing, A/V, all of those extras that capture a kid's imagination and then springboards them into more.

I mean if you are loving music and you find out that math is just music you are going to have an easier time. If you are loving your art classes and realize how geometry will make your art better you will study it much more willingly. If you are interested in being a fine actor and realize having a multitude of accents at your disposal will increase your odds then foreign language study becomes very exciting. 

We need to look at our reasons for what we are teaching, and beating the Chinese in standardized testing is a lousy reason, and we need to look at how we are encouraging our kids to learn. 

I know, we all have varied ideas on what school should be, but for me? What we are doing right now? It wouldn't have worked. I wouldn't have made it. 

Would you?