Journal # 3
"The Irony of Education"
Why is it that in North America we (as a society) seem to take education for granted? In other countries students will take any opportunity they can get to improve themselves. In our society, educators sometimes have to take extreme measures to perform their function.
This topic is something that is really interesting to me. I totally see this all the time in our school alone. It is actually really sad, the amount of kids that just leave the chances at education, to do things that are going to get them absolutely no where in life. You see those kids that would rather smoke pot than come to school, and who just fail classes year after year, because they just do not care at all about their education or what they are going to do when they get older.
I really wish we could take every single teenager like that, and ship them off to a country where there is no schooling, or there is just very little schooling, where only certain people can go, and show them what is like to not have the chance. It would also make them see that there are millions of kids our age in the world that would kill go to go the school we go to, and to have the chance to learn the kind of things we just know. I believe that if we did that, the teens would come back, and see how lucky they are to have the opportunity to go to such a good school, and to have the chance for a good education.
Some kids our age though, are a lost cause. It is welfare that has done this too them, and it is the sad truth. Their parents are on welfare, and they go “well my mom didn’t have to finish high school” or “my dad didn’t need a college degree” and that is how they stay in the same circle when they are adults. It also does not help that our welfare system doesn’t give people enough money to actually pick up a good job and be okay, it only just lets people slide by month by month. So people who would normally be able to get out of that slump don’t, and they show their teenagers that you don’t need to work, to be okay in life, because the government will always be there in case you are in trouble. Of course I’m not saying all families on welfare do this to children, it is just how it works for some people.
This topic is something that is really interesting to me. I totally see this all the time in our school alone. It is actually really sad, the amount of kids that just leave the chances at education, to do things that are going to get them absolutely no where in life. You see those kids that would rather smoke pot than come to school, and who just fail classes year after year, because they just do not care at all about their education or what they are going to do when they get older.
I really wish we could take every single teenager like that, and ship them off to a country where there is no schooling, or there is just very little schooling, where only certain people can go, and show them what is like to not have the chance. It would also make them see that there are millions of kids our age in the world that would kill go to go the school we go to, and to have the chance to learn the kind of things we just know. I believe that if we did that, the teens would come back, and see how lucky they are to have the opportunity to go to such a good school, and to have the chance for a good education.
Some kids our age though, are a lost cause. It is welfare that has done this too them, and it is the sad truth. Their parents are on welfare, and they go “well my mom didn’t have to finish high school” or “my dad didn’t need a college degree” and that is how they stay in the same circle when they are adults. It also does not help that our welfare system doesn’t give people enough money to actually pick up a good job and be okay, it only just lets people slide by month by month. So people who would normally be able to get out of that slump don’t, and they show their teenagers that you don’t need to work, to be okay in life, because the government will always be there in case you are in trouble. Of course I’m not saying all families on welfare do this to children, it is just how it works for some people.
Chelsea, I'm really impressed with the quality of your thinking.
ReplyDeleteI would, however, like to see you try to increase the length of your journals a little (maybe another 100 words or so?) Perhaps you have room here to tackle another aspect of the issue.
To what degree, perhaps, is public education complicit in fostering a group of unmotivated students? How can we break the cycle? I always think that if some of these young people had a chance to see a different part of the world and get a sense of some of the things that are possible, then they might be tempted to exert themselves more.