It has recently come to my attention...well, it has recently become the object of my attention, that education has really suffered. This generation coming after me, and some even my own age, are receiving the crappiest education in American history. This society in which we can receive awards simply for participating is creating a group of Americans who feel that they can refuse to work simply because they don't want to. This group of Americans is the future of our country, they are the foundation of the political system that our children and grandchildren will be raised under. Who will my children look up to, if our entire society is built on being "happy" instead of successful, or proud, or kind...
Where are the morals in our society? They have been lost in the belief that it's okay to question everything, to disprove everything you grew up believing. I don't believe this is what John Locke and others meant when they spoke of Tabula Rasa: blank slate. We don't want our twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings still "finding themselves" and "searching for happiness"...our grandparents grew up believing that happiness was a side effect of success, of living a life worth looking back on.
So what does education have to do with all of this? Is it not obvious? Our children spend 6-8 hours a day, five days a week, 180 days a (school) year in a classroom, out of their parents' watchful eye, learning the views of a stranger whom the parents may never know, or may never speak to. Our children grow up learning that "everyone is a winner" and that it's okay to misbehave in a classroom, we'll just give you some medicine to calm you down, instead of teaching self-control. We send our children to these schools in which children are taught that you'll still get at least a B on your paper if you can spark-notes the book you were supposed to read, because the teacher probably didn't read it either. I was in a classroom one time, in high school, it was a Geography class...my teacher performed for us his cheer from his high school cheer leading experience. We also learned all about his lesbian wife and her life choices after they had their daughter. I shouldn't know anything about his personal life, he was a high school Geography teacher, with a doctorate...
Would it not be better, and safer, to place your child in an educational program where you could be involved? A place that not only teaches your child valuable, and useful information, such as how to use economic ideas in a small business or in everyday life, or how to write a professional looking paper and deliver it publicly as well...but how to think. A program that teaches that everyone has purpose, and promise, and potential to be great, and not just how to get a job. A school in which a child is able to propose ideas and discuss them with their class, their teacher, and be treated as someone with a brain instead of just another part of the machine.
This industrialized society has neglected to bring up educated children to run the country. It has neglected to teach children how to think for themselves, how to be responsible, and respectful, and...regretfully, how to be adults. We teach our children how to be college students, but after that we leave them to fend for themselves...believing that questioning truth is the answer to maturity, instead of teaching them that maturity is earned, after a lot of hard work, and some brains to back it up.
My children deserve to be taught. My children deserve to learn how to respect other people. My children deserve to learn how to respect themselves. My children deserve to learn, every day, because knowledge is power, and knowledge opens doors to so many incredible, and unexplainable worlds within our own.
Would you want anything less for your own children?
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