OPINION: students need more of a say in education

A lot of the talk about education reform is about how we can increase standardize tests, train teachers better, have better college plans, etc.

What we don't pay attention to is the struggles the individual students have.

I'm lucky enough to go to a Waldorf school now (mostly loving it), but I spent my first year of high school and all of middle school in public school. And what did I see? Students struggling. Students talking about skipping and cheating. Students lacking the motivation to learn. Students barely making it thru the day.

Why is this? Are schools not strict enough? Do we need harder punishment for students going astray? Do we need more forceful encouragement to go to college, to study harder? No. This is backwards. The reason so many students are struggling is because of the immense amount of pressure put on them. Sir Ken Robinson was absolutely right. Instead of learning creativity, free expression, critical thinking, etc, students are taught that if they don't memorize pointless facts hard and fast enough (facts that they'll soon forget) they'll get lower grades. And lower grades means shame, guilt, disappointed parents, bullying, shocked friends and an uncertain future. This isn't education, this is physiological abuse.

Yet we ignore this. And whenever a student tries to bring this up, they're often labeled as whining, lazy slackers. No. Education reform means more punishment, more standardization. Education reform is up to the smart, polished, professional adults.

This is wrong. The students are the ones that are struggling. The students are the one that are being crippled by this backward system. They need to have a say in how to fix it.

Youtuber boyinaband saw what it was like to give students a voice in this video and others. And a 14 year old student wrote this incredibly moving article on the abuse that is public education. We need more of this. Why won't we let students talk about education? If more students rise up, if we stop hiding, we can change the system for the better.

Submitted September 08, 2019 at 10:17PM by kabiman https://ift.tt/317Xk7P