Saturday, January 24, 2015

The Fuction or Education by Jiddue Krishnamurti

After reading this article i found out the similar beliefs that i share with the author and some confusion as well. Every student that goes through the educational system with elementary , middle school , and then high school have been subjected to endless hours of the academic system. The system that categorizes the honor students and the delinquent by their behavior in class and the gpa that they have. This pushes students to be so utterly focused on the point value of their assignments and exams that then determine if they are “capable" to succeed their following school years. Since the students treat their grades being the center of attention they rely only on memorization and dictation in order for their grades to be good. They lose the appreciation of truly learning what the the subject is about, beyond the dates and the terms there is the actual realization of the history behind the development of the subject. Instead, the school system rewards the students with high achievements that thus help the school reputation because of their achievement numbers. In high school , students from an early point are taught about how a student's future occupation can impact their future lifestyle. This fear of not being able to be financially stable pushes students to major in high income fields instead of their interested occupation because of finance. Studies such as arts and dramatic theatre are majors that are looked down upon by society due to its occupants' finacial lifestyle. It is because of this outlook on occupations that lead students to avoid taking majors that they would truly enjoy but would be disapproved by their parents. There is always the fear of being a disappointment to people around them, most commonly those are their parents; so as a result they choose the job field that would satisfy the expectations of their parents. And as they continue their journey to their occupation they find themselves ten years down the road working as what other people wanted them to be. They then start to resent and regret following the path of which others wanted them to follow and wished that they just pursued their dreams. Most people when they reach this point in their life it is already too late to go back to school and try to follow the occupation of their desire, because of the setbacks they already have such as a family of their own to take care of and the risks of doing such a thing. So this endless cycle of parents making sure their child will be promised a financially well future continues when they become parents of their own and do the same thing to their own children. It is the consequences of being brave enough to follow their dreams that might let them end up risking their future because of their actions. However, if individuals continue down this path of following the road of what others want them to do then are they not just robots following other people's commands? Where is the freedom to decide what they desire to do? It is because of this cruel educational system that urges them to focus on the point value objective rather than taking the time to understand and discover the details of their studies. The traditional set up of a class room is the teacher being the authoritive figure that stands in the front while facing a group of students sitting at their desks, eyeing the teacher for information to be received. The thought that teachers will only teach and the students will only receive is not true. Anyone can be a teacher, and any teacher can be a student. Teachers can learn from their students and students can teach their teacher many things. Such as how better to improve the schooling system to better fit each individual student and helps them along with their studies. Students who get low grades are often not given options to how they can learn in a classroom; the academic system decides how the subject should be taught, at what pace, and in what setting; all within a set of rule for instructors and students to follow at their discretion. The difficult school setting then proves to be too hard for some students to handle and they are then left behind while the other students improve by the teaching method at hand. Only when we are able to provide options and changed to how academics are taught will each individual student be given a chance to improve their education.

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