Reimagining the Education System

The current public school system baffles me. Don’t get me wrong; obviously it is efficient and has proven effective, but every system has room for improvement. Just take a look at your average high school student, for example – odds are they are banging their head against the table and falling asleep in class, dreaming about either the opposite sex or food (or both?). They resort to discovering the most efficient and quick way to finish their homework with a burning pencil, just to make some grade that they can accept. Because, and no offense to my math teacher, a sixteen-year-old isn’t going to see the immediate use in knowing how to factor polynomial functions, and come to think of it, a thirty-six-year-old probably won’t either.

And what does it teach students? To jump through hoops for the teacher’s courtesy? To find lectures to sit through and not benefit from? To do what they can just so they can get out of the classroom for those three beautiful, sunny months off? How would these developed habits translate to the workplace?

Let me provide a solution before I supply too much rhetorical drawl. Most of the students I’m in contact with have an idea (however vague) of perhaps not what career they want to strive for but a general field. Why not sculpt classes around that interest?

Subjects have certain topics they need to cover, but if a classroom consists of thirty English-major aspiring students, if they need to learn about the American Civil War, teachers should teach it through primary documents by acknowledged writers of the period in history class. For aspired math majors, they should take them through historical statistics, teaching the same material, yet making it interesting for the students. Film majors would cover famous documentaries of the war, etc. Math and science classes would highlight more on what is needed for the classes’ interest and brush up on the other material. As is, an aspiring mechanic is falling asleep at their tenth Civil War lecture, but the mechanics of a Colt Navy Revolver might keep them awake long enough to learn about the other stuff, too.

Would this sort of system limit high schoolers to stick with their field? Not at all – that is what semester change is for, until they have a better idea of what they enjoy and can move to a university, trade school, or workplace. The system would truly be designed for the student’s success.

Despite their settling unpopularity, depending on the student, trade schools can be incredibly helpful as well. Perhaps scrapping the current system, redesigning trade schools (to more of a European regularity), and emphasizing on too many different things is too much to realistically envision right now, but even without trade schools, student who jump right off into the work force after high school graduation (assumedly sticking with all twelve years of public education), would if nothing else be more engaged in class and have a better idea of what they want to do for a living with this solution. After all, they would also be constantly surrounded with like-minded people equip with similar interests.

With a seemingly more individual style (keeping the same class size), dropout percentages would decrease, GPA’s would increase, and the future-uncertainty jitters might even be slightly aided.

The current system has flaws, yet admittedly so does the solution. Talk has been had about a nationwide full year round system, optional trade school after ninth grade, and many others. Activist chronically persist on the journey of reimagining the modern, generic “one-size-fits-all” teaching approach to millions of high school students.  In the end, until serious change is pondered by the Board of Education, it is currently mere food for thought.