Schools encourage students to think for themselves and embrace their unique ways of interpreting the world. Ironically, the very institution that represents themselves as ‘promoting individuality and independence,’ is what ultimately forces us to conform to societal norms.
Everyone is born different with their own method of understanding their surroundings, but as soon as we enter kindergarten, we are all wired to think and behave in a certain way – the correct way. Little kids are taught the chosen curriculum of that grade like learning the alphabets or how to color inside the lines. Then, they are tested on the facts that they have learned and given a score based on what the teacher, or rather what the world believes is correct.
From the grades, we learn that there are right and wrong answers. That cows make the sound moo and not maaa. It doesn’t matter whether you interpreted the sounds that the cows made to be different because the textbook, the rules, state otherwise. Schools tell us that our opinion and thoughts are ‘important’, but they are still treated as irrelevant by the regulations that schools place.
Instead of taking into account the individual qualities of each student, the ‘experts’ come up with a general curriculum and grading system. They decide for us what is worth learning, how we are taught the information, and whether our answers or our interpretations are correct. Ellen Sypolt (11) claims that “it is not fair for others to decide what is and what is not worth learning.” While the school does supply us with a surplus of knowledge on “technical skills like the math and sciences,” they often seem to leave out “practical skills that we will use in our future.”
Carol Black, a writer from the Blog, “School The World” carries this concept further and makes an stimulating point about what the children are not required to learn at school. She claims that “kids are compelled to solve quadratic equations and write essays on Shakespeare, and they graduate without understanding how to calculate the interest on credit card debt or decode a mortgage agreement.” Children enroll into school to become more knowledgeable, but are being ‘book smart’ coming at the cost of common sense and the awareness of our world? We often learn information without a clear understanding of why we learn it, or how it is applicable to the “real” world.
It is ridiculous that there are teenagers that would like to learn more about the issue gender equality but can’t because they are swamped with English or Math homework. As Carol Black asked, is society’s need to control the quality of our education controlling in the wrong way? Is what we’re doing – making exact copies of the same students year after year just to ensure that they are ‘smart enough’ for college and life afterwards, wrong in terms of taking away their individual mind-set?
IB English Teacher Mr. Duffy agrees that “sometimes ISB’s curriculum may seem limiting and assessments may be aimed at evaluating unifying skill sets.” However, he adds that “ISB has worked hard to respect the diverse range of interests that students have, to allow students to have a chance to develop their individuality.”In our world, we are used to the perception that good students are those who excel in school subjects. However, there are children in various parts of this world that can identify numerous birds just by their songs, and others that can survive in the wild for days with nothing other than their basic familiarity with nature.
By the standard of curriculum alone, these children would be deemed as uneducated for their knowledge and way of thinking is not the same as ours. To them, we would be uneducated because we wouldn’t survive a day in their environment. So who is truly intelligent?
Sarah Lim
