Beyond Education
If you search up why is school important on google? You’ll get an answer that says, “school is important because it teaches you the basics you need to know for the future so you can get a good job for money when your older.” The key word in this definition is “teach you the basics”. Our education system does just that. It cultivates the minds of students and limits them from exploring other skills that might not be contributed in the school curriculum. There are numerous different loose ends in our education system that need to be fixed, however the two that apply to me the most is the rule of code in the classrooms that teachers but obey as well as the increasing rates of student debt.
Our educational system should be the most resourceful in our nation. Unfortunately, according to google the Trump Administration has decided to contribute only about 8% of our national funding to education and 617 billion dollars is being funded for military equipment. How is it that one of the top nations in the world cannot invest in the intelligence of young children but we can buy weapons to start a war. What does that say about what we stand for? Education should be free for everybody regardless of their race, immigration status, or their family income. Being a college student, my family who migrated here 30 years ago and pay their taxes yearly shouldn’t have to worry about sending their child to attend college in a country they spent years supporting. If we have billions to spend on military supplies where are the billions for education. Why don’t we provide about 50 billion per year to cancel out tuition and fees at any college? Our Federal government must wipe out all the student debt that exists. In a Newspaper Article named “ Student Debt is Transforming The American Family” author Hua Hsu mentions how a sociologist Randall Collins says “ the problem was that those with power were the ones determining how much money was sufficient, They made young people feel that they needed a degree no matter the cost just because they could.” It also states that “parents and children lament the feeling of burdening one another. Parents fear that their financial decisions might limit their children’s potential, even when those children are still in diapers.” Education and fear should have no correlation with one another.
Increasing numbers of student debt just leads to future problems in the workforce as well as applying unnecessary pressure on families when it can simply be cancelled out. According to a scholarly article called “ its time to broaden the conversation about the student debt crisis beyond raising tuition costs” authors Timothy and Loren mention how “ Excessive student loan debt may affect students career choice, diminish quality of life, negatively impact their ability to give back to their school and society at large, and delay progress on achieving other financial goals just as saving up for retirement. A rule that can easily be reversable to end all of this. They state how “Approximately two out of five us adults paying off student loans are unable to save for retirement.” America needs to be better than this. Citizens who contribute to society should not have to worry about sending their children off to college. They also mention “suboptimal quality of life, symptoms of burnout and depression, emotional exhaustion, and increasing cynicism were commonly associated with a students or residents increasing educational debt”. It is essential for the public to understand the underneath of effects of student debts to fight against it. Education should be free universally.
Is paying for school the only reason why students are dreading to learn and attend college? For as long as I remember, school was always dreadful. Even through grade school when it was for free. My first course on education, I learned about the banking system. This is a system rule of code teachers must follow. A system that applies to students and the teachers. The teacher has a curriculum they must follow where they empty information to the students and the students being containers must retain as much knowledge without questioning. According to the article he states that “projecting an absolute ignorance onto others, a characteristic of the ideology of oppression, negates education and knowledge as processes of inquiry.” He also states that “the students alienated like the slave in the Hegelian dialectic, accept their ignorance as justifying the teacher’s existence – but unlike the slave they never discover that they educate the teacher.” He describes the banking system as “the assumption of a dichotomy between human beings and the world; a person is merely in the world, not with the world or with others; the individual is spectator not re-creator.
We are not empty minded containers that need to be filled with knowledge. I am not a statistic on your spreadsheet to grant you more funding. My intelligence is not a monopoly. As a nation we must do a better job into paying close attention in our college students health. As one of the strongest leading nations supporting students into attending the workforce should be a main priority not pouring fear into their hearts. Our educational system must create a safe space for students to freely express themselves in a learning environment not a battlefield for students and a race to the top.
Hua, Hsu. “Student Debt is Transforming the American Family.” The New Yorker. September 9, 2019. Https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/09/student-debt-is-transforming-the-family.
Kirk, M. Loren, Ulbrich, R. Timothy. “it’s time to broaden the conversation about the student debt crisis beyond rising Tuiton costs. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education. 2017 August. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5607711/
Paulo Freire. The “Banking” Concept of Education.
