The school system is faulty and it's killing our creativity.
I've been away from steemit lately because of school. Been trying to balance my tight schedule - lectures, assignments, tests and my own life. At a point, I had to question myself if this is worth it? But before I start writing this post, I'll like to make some clarifications. I don't hate school; I just hate the way the system works.
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I'm a final year student at the university and also a bright student in the class. I've gotten good grades right from the very beginning but I'm now tired of these grades because it has added nothing to me but the fame that will soon expire after graduation.
I do not hate the school system because I have failed as a student but I hate the school system because it has failed me.
Earlier this week, my lecturer asked a question in class and pointed to me to answer it. The answer is simple so I explained it the way I understand it. The lecturer said I'm on the way and he thinks I have an idea but I was wrong. He opened his lecture note and read out the definition according to what he referred to as standard. If we only go to class to regurgitate facts and figure from books without being able to state our own point of view then the school system is a failed system.
Our ideas are always compared to some standards as if those standards were not made by men like us. In fact, most of these so-called standards were set by these people when they were then young students like us. Talk of Isaac Newton. Talk of Albert Einstein. Talk of Galileo Galilie who challenged the idea of falling bodies. Talk of Blaise Pascal, the young teen who invented a calculating device. These same theories are what our old professors religiously follow like a devoted cleric would follow all the laws in his religious books.
If the school system cannot welcome new ideas from its students and encourage them to challenge the existing idea, then I think it is faulty. If the school system fails to realize that we are no longer living in the past and that the future will be more different than this, then there is a big problem.
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. Albert Einstein
I agree with this quote above. This is what the school system should strive to achieve. To have students who will understand what they are teaching so well and not some robots who will recite everything in their lecture notes words for words without understanding a thing out of it.
I appreciate it when students get a good grade in school but I stopped judging students by their grades when I become the best student in biology in my secondary school. As you would guess, my mum was one of the happiest mums that day. I made her proud by coming out with flying colors. But what happened was that I was so lazy to read my notes. So I always focus on a particular page I loved to read. I read it so much until I could repeat everything written there without picking up the book. The bulk of the exam for that semester was from that part of my book. Everyone thought I was the best student but unfortunately, I was just a lucky student back then.
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In my first year in school, we used to have a general lecture with a class of about a thousand students. A lecturer will come and teach for 2 or 3 hours and expect all the students in the class to understand what he has taught. Like Prince EA said in one of his spoken word videos, "This is educational malpractice."
We all have our different gifts, different talents, and different passions. But school system treats us all like some set of tools needed to work in the labor market. So they make people who are employable but they don't care if they will enjoy the job that they were trained for.
The school system should focus on specific needs of the students and step doing a one-type-treatment for all the problems the students are facing. The school should focus more on building healthy competition in students that will lead to innovations. And not on competitions to see who will be the first position or last.
I love academic excellence but as a student reading this, if you've never thought of a way to solve the world's problem then you are just one of the robots the school system is producing.
The school system is faulty and it's killing our creativity. Let the government spend more money on education. Let us learn to read not only to pass exams but to know more. YouTube is free and there are amazing videos that show us practical things that the school has refused to show us. Let's not wait for the system to waste our time. Let us read the biography of great men and how they lived above the school standards.
Let us bring our creativity alive one more. Let us bring all our ideas all I've once more. I believe in everyone who believes in yourself. There is always more to do when we believe in yourself. I believe in good education but I believe the school system I faulty. Therefore, I will get educated at all cost.
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If only the inventor of school could see how damned the system is right now, they would have called for her suspension long time ago. If the current generation lecturers sees nothing about school but to just get paid, then innovating will not be a subject worth discussing ever.
I hope to see an educated graduates, and not a schooled graduate.