Education About Education

The American educational system, especially California's, is embarrassingly dysfunctional. For some idiosyncratic reason, whenever the state government is having monetary issues, one of the first places to make cutbacks is education. I cannot imagine what the logic behind further dementing our society is, but frankly, it pisses me off. I have several criticisms, predictions and suggestions to make about this.

The current educational system, regardless of effectiveness, is corrupt at the curriculum level. Fundamental skills are important and absolutely necessary. Reading, writing, basic math. These matter, but they are only so stimulating. Additionally, only so much education in each subject is really necessary for the average person, until they decide to become especially capable in some subject area. We learn about as much about the fundamentals as we will ever need to know by the eighth grade level, the end of middle school. High school, then becomes four years of repeating these subjects, making sure we REALLY get it. Though statistically we are not really quite getting it yet. We take the same history and science classes several times. A few useless elective classes here and there. I say useless because generally, specialized topics are offered as one semester classes. For this reason, what is learned in those classes only sustainably impacts a handful of the total students in the class.

Being a public school student myself, the public school system is not about education. For me, the quality of education I think was quite good. However, I lacked any real awareness of my education's significance, as did/do most students. In addition, I felt stagnant relearning so many subjects that I had previously done well in. I cannot imagine what the poor fellows retaking failed classes must have been feeling like.

Obedience seems to be the primary focus of public education, especially at the high school level. Many teachers uninhibitedly refer to their jobs as baby-sitting. School doesn't seem to get serious for most students, myself included, until college. Until you have control of your education, and you are learning about the world at a whole new level. Why isn't high school education like this?

The future will have no choice but to start reinstating those subjects most applicable and useful for real world applications. I think requirements should be considerably more varied and practical. Computer technology is an important skill for the future whose necessity cannot be argued as it is now. I think technology education will become more important as we move into the future. Students will be learning programing and engineering just as they currently learn biology and chemistry. Horticulture will also become necessary for future generations. Considering the mass depletion of agricultural areas in the United States, we will have no choice but to start growing more of our own food in the future (i.e. in our own backyards).

With regard to agriculture: it is a culture. An almost completely lost culture in the United States. What we have replaced it with is what is known as factory farming, a practice already proving to be non-viable. America's lack of realistic perception keeps factory farming alive for now, but when it finally collapses, I would like to hope we know how to at least water tomatoes.

Most importantly, education should be, and will need to be, based around awareness. Self-awareness. Global awareness. Students should be able to coherently explain, even when they are young, why they go to school. Young people need to be mindful of the future, and themselves in its context. Currently, popular culture is mostly mindful of the self and the world as a means to propel oneself. Selfish. Narcissistic. By doing nothing about this, we are only breeding more over-consuming naiveté.