Author: anb6019

 

Money-the greatest driving force of American culture to date. It is not crazy to say in the world of 2021 that the sentiment that, “money makes the world go round,” has been held true by most developed nations. The economy is a plague that infiltrates every aspect of life. In order to have the essential needs of living- food, water, shelter, and clothes- items must be bought. In order to have the money to buy life needs, one must work in a job, not matter how cruelly laborious, to provide a steady source of income to provide for themselves, and potentially a family. In order for workers to get paid, their bosses must be finding a steady source of wealth to provide the income to their workers. It is a constant ongoing cycle, where only the wealthy, the top 1%, ever get to feel comfortable, while everyone else suffers trying to claw their way through life with the bare necessities.

Much of this issue, can be seen through the public education system. While the government does not hold stake in all businesses, as some are private, government controls almost everything when it comes to schooling. They control the curriculums, sometimes with no one in government having prior experience with teaching children, that are used to make children better test takers, where the child grows up unprepared for the outside working world. An even bigger issue, however, is that education is the means of sustaining a country, training children to get to the next step in their life to become a doctor, a teacher, a prolific writer, or even a garbageman, but it is not treated as such. Education does not see a decent portion of money from the government; a huge chunk ends up in the pockets of the military. This then fuels a system of miserable administration and teachers, that came into a job intrinsically, but find no benefit to it beyond helping children. At a certain point, a teacher’s intrinsic want to aid others in working their way up through life cannot sustain their enjoyment of teaching. In many other countries, teachers are paid a lot more than what is seen in America, where some are even paid salaries close to those doctors see in those countries. Teaching, overseas, is a prestigious occupation, where most are influenced to get their doctorate’s in education and have to endure strict certification protocol, to have the best of the best influencing children through the next stages of their life. That same grandeur of the profession is not seen in America. Many of my own teachers only got paid between $40,000- $50,000, with some that are close to retire getting more towards $60,000, forcing some to get second jobs outside of their teaching schedule. They have to juggle reviewing lesson plans, creating plans to engage the most students, grade papers, all while trying to remain content when their own country is not supporting their endeavors. Teachers deserve better because the children of America, the future of America, deserve better. Teachers are the building blocks of a childhood and should be treated as such, but the American government does not value them enough, equating a beg for a slightly heighten income as an inconvenience to all.

 

It is not hidden, as of 2021, that teaching is one of the most rigorous occupations that have an income that does not reflect that. No matter what level a teacher is teaching at, they deserve praise, but with the way the world works, that is not good enough. Money is the fuel that keeps America aflame, making it a necessity for teachers to get paid more, so that they do not end up passing their misery onto their students. A happy teacher is a happy student, where a teacher would be a lot happier if they were paid in the way they deserve, as they have the ability to make or break the future, through their influence of the children they teach.

 

Schools are a means to capture and achieve the goals education sets forth- teaching the rising adults of a country to keep it running economically and socially. However, it is quite obvious how important that economic component is in America. Little focus is on a student or a teacher, but focus lies in the system as a whole to provide people to make more money. The American public education system has several flaws. While America is generally better off than some nations of the world when it comes to any aspect of the country- the word privileged does not even begin to cover- it still should be better than it is, currently. One dominant component in the lacking ability of the public education system to get children where they need to be, to aid the country economically, is the national curriculum, or lack thereof.

America preaches freedom left and right. Part of the has integrated into education where states get to dictate what should and should be taught in the classrooms of that particular state. Furthermore, private schools are able to act outside of the state mandate to form their own curriculum. Without much inhibition from the federal government, practically anything could be involved in these curriculums such as a heavy religious influence or a lack of sexual education. For instance, I was raised in Virginia basically all of my life and was taught world history through the lens of the state’s importance. When I got to college, no one I had met knew much about the state, maybe aside from a brief mentioning of Jamestown or Yorktown. There have even been many of times when people move to Virginia Beach for military family deployment purposes and are completely lost in the difference of curriculum from where they came from.  It is often that a child is left behind and confused in the realm of learning, since they learned a different way and learned different information in a different location than where they ended up.  The main point is that not everyone is learning the same ideas and information between preschool and college. Too much time is put into preparing a child for a state’s standardized testing, where not enough time is spent pushing a child to be college-ready (or workforce ready). A greater focus has been put into competitive state mandated testing than actually teaching a child. The lack of consistency could be giving others from different areas a better chance of being accepted into a university. That potential advantage could very well wreck the life of someone, especially if there family was not in a privileged position in the first place. It could take a while to implement a nation-wide curriculum, due to the sear size of the United States, but it would be worth it, to put everyone on a more even playing field; not giving all children the same information can hold some of those children back.

As other countries develop further or start to develop, America’s mean of sustaining the economy are dwindling. The lack of collectivism has put the future of America’s children at risk. It should not be about a school having to rely on meeting the standards of a state, that are already poor, in order to get the money, they need to survive. America might be referred to as the United States, but the large disparities between states in their curriculums is pushing the boundary of the word “united.” In part, curriculums should be able to accommodate for the different learning speeds and capabilities of children, but making a, at least somewhat, cohesive and consistent educational curriculum across the nation is the first step to making education more fair.   By providing children with the same material and ability to grow in the same way, everyone is given the same chance to prosper, which allows the country to prosper. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2014/02/24/one-way-to-help-solve-americas-major-curriculum-problem/ 

https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1058495.pdf 

Overwhelmed. A state in which many students reach at some point in their career, whether that be in middle school or in college. It is fair to say that a person will reach their breaking point at least once in life but are never taught how to recover from it. Education, the grand central station of learning, does nothing to prepare students for the worst. Instead, it treats kids as numbers, sources of money, and forced memorizers. Mental health challenges that overcome students reflect the constant strain and stress put on children, from a young age, to be absolutely perfect in a world that makes them struggle to thrive. The way the current education system is built, is not to foster healthy minds, but to produce several copies of beaten and bruised minds  shoved into a world they were never properly taught how to face.

It is quite easy to see the limited amount of work put in by administrators to protect the fragile brains of the future, that are still in development. Even at Pennsylvania State University, plans were put into place to take away the precious Spring Break students look forward to and replace it with three random days, albeit in the middle of the week, throughout the semester where no classes can be held. Personally, many of my teachers found a loophole and assigned a bunch of work due early in the morning of the day after that so called ‘Wellness Day.’ I was given no time to relax, because I already felt the impending stress waiting for me that next day. When talking to my peers and friends, they sadly felt the same way, wishing for more than a day to find peace within their loud head. Beyond breaks, not much is discussed about a student’s wellness or mental health. Usually, it is the objective of many great teachers, who actually take the time to discuss their students’ mental health with them. A considerable amount of educators attempt to find opportunities to bring up the sensitive issue of mental illness, which inflicts a large portion of world. They invest several moments and hours of their time to help their children prosper, because there are a numerous amount of people who never received that care that could have saved their life. While it is a touchy subject, that mental illness discussion is a very real and needed discussion to have, since it can be a matter of life and death. It could be talking about how to live and deal with anxiety, or how to get help when one cannot help themselves any longer. Luckily, teachers, not administrators or the overarching government that controls educational regulation, stood up for students that need to hear words of support and went ahead to discuss psychological disorders. I’m going to be honest that if I did not have a select few teachers in my life, that impacted me greatly and was there for me to talk to, I might not still be here. Teachers do not get enough credit for all of the work they do, that is not even seen as essential to the people that create the standards and guidelines students must follow to be considered ‘successful.’ It is a shame to live in the year 2021 and not see a change in mental illness education.

Mental health matters, above grades and above assignments. Without a prospering mind, there cannot be a student. It is sickening to see that those who make up important positions in educational regulation still exploit the steadiness of a student’s life to continue an economy that will only serve them, major players in government or administration, never the student breaking their back to aide a world that will rarely give back to them. The time is now to be better for all generations to come, because the mental health discussion has the ability to save the lives of those who do not think they cannot be saved.

https://www.wgu.edu/heyteach/article/importance-mental-health-awareness-schools1810.html

Pressure. It is a word that is struck as more of a scientific term, which only proves it is not discussed regarding which it impacts people’s lives. People, no matter what profession they are in or their life situation, face loads of it. Pressure tends to build and build until it is too much for one to bear by their lonesome. This is because people are not meant to handle such high levels of stress placed on themselves by others. In all grade levels, students, preschool to college, have or continue to feel the overwhelming expectations placed upon them, created by a system not forged with their best interest in mind. Pressure is a dangerous flaw produced by the way education is laid out, as of late.

It is rarely at the fault of a teacher to which education fails. The system was not built for teachers that much in mind either, more so focused on pushing people into fields of work that, whether they like it or not, makes money. With this perspective, education has created a framework in which students’ or teachers’ feelings and emotions do not fit into the puzzle. In the realm of education itself, it teaches children not how to be people but working machines for the economy, which happens to create an everlasting, nightmarish cycle bound to continue. Students feel as if they have no more value than the grade assigned to them or their high school class rank. Education puts kids against each other when the focus should be on them thriving. The system is not sufficient enough to build new world leaders or those who try to bring more positivity into the world because that was never the focus.

Growing up, most of the pressure I felt as a student was me putting it onto myself. However, I was never taught differently. It was normalized to fear one small bad grade; I still get upset when I do. The emphasis was put on my grades and not bettering myself. There would be times when I would stay up late and hungry because I did not want to give myself the satisfaction that comes from rewards that I did not earn. Yet, food and sleep are necessary for adequate human functioning. A toxic system had taught me that me getting a good grade mattered more than myself. I was a middle schooler, trying to go through puberty when education trained many young children that they will not go anywhere without being perfect. In and of itself, this created many issues that schools try to combat when they brought them up themselves. Cheating became more popularized. Buying essays or Chegg subscriptions became a normalized behavior. Children were forced to be desperate enough to perform morally grey actions because their only thought was to get the “perfect” grade. Perfection is not supposed to a goal, but education taught students that it was the bare minimum to be considered worthy in society. People can still get jobs, quite amazing ones, in fact, but the environmental pressures of schooling made it seem as if the great occupation were unachievable if one does not break their back to get there. This has and continues to have a lasting effect on children.

Children are not given time to be kids, truthfully. There are pushed and broken by a society that lives in the past of morality and exceptions. Students develop anxiety, depression, self-esteem issues, and many more cognitive disorders at a higher rate because the outside world is telling them they are not good enough. Parents and teachers can indeed play a role in pressure and stress. Still, it is the foundation of education that has been built to push everyone towards the mindset that students need to be top tier or else they need to destroy themselves getting there. Education is meant to be a system that teaches children of all ages how to be better learners and adults than previous generations. In reality, the focus was never on learning; it was on doing anything to get the grade from everyone’s pressures on a student. Students should focus on their well-being first and then learn, not with a focus on being perfect.

https://www.verywellfamily.com/the-dangers-of-putting-too-much-pressure-on-kids-1094823#:~:text=The%20constant%20stress%20to%20perform%20interferes%20with%20children%E2%80%99s,late%20studying%20and%20struggle%20to%20get%20enough%20sleep.  

https://howtoadult.com/parental-pressure-children-5276.html

https://graduateway.com/essay-the-effects-of-pressure-on-students-to-get-good-grades-ideas/

Technology. The Internet. Both have become a major part of people’s lives over the course of the last forty or so years. It is hard to do practically anything without either, yet the recent COVID-19 pandemic has proved that both are not readily accessible to the general public. As great in supply as people think modern technology is, not everyone can afford it. Some people were born into bad situations and lack support to get out of them, causing them to work multiple jobs. Their focus never shifts to the Internet or technology, as they are fully in it to have a decent home to live and sleep in, as well as enough food and water to sustain them and their family. When those people have children, especially in this day and age, their education quality declines in their families inability to obtain the proper means of technology. While technology has inspired people to push past the limitations of knowledge to learn more about the world, it further creates a barrier between the upper class and the lower/middle class.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, technology proved itself to be a dominate force to stay. Behind individuals are the years of grinding out extended math problems by hand. Behind individuals are the years of searching through library catalogs, all to find quick information for a research project. Now, people can just look up a question, of any kind, and get the answer in an instant. No matter how great it sounds, it is another indicator of those who struggle to live and those who struggle to struggle living. Quality of education should not focus on what a child can readily obtain, but it has.

Due to the work of my parents, I am extremely lucky to have not ended up in that situation. Even though I will still be paying back hundreds of thousands of dollars back towards a loan after college and, hopefully, medical school, I am lucky to have had the opportunity to go to college. Part of which is because I could go out and get a highly functional calculator and a computer for college. Sadly, I would grow up watching people not have the same chance. In my city of Virginia Beach, Virginia, there are high school academies located in poorer areas to boost state mandated test scores. I would end up attending the Health Sciences Academy in my local area because of my passion for the healthcare field. The academy was in one of the least, if not the least, developed area within the town. I met a lot of great people that would have to stay after or go to the local library, just to have the chance of completing an essay or a part of their homework. When the pandemic hit, I immediately worried about those same kids. I had a pretty stable Wi-Fi connection and a quality computer, while they were stuck competing against other needing families for a hotspot or a laptop. If education is highly valued, it should not be barred by the access to technology. If the world wants to raise the next generation to change the world, why not give everyone the same chance at receiving the idealistic education they deserve? If technology is the new normal, why not help out students that cannot receive that normal by themselves or with the help of a multitude of family members?

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