The System at Work
Education in the United States (and, I imagine, elsewhere) is a strange beast. Educators are, unfortunately, forced to throw as much information at us as possible from as many different subjects as possible in the hopes that some of it sticks. Regrettably, our surfaces in this metaphor are not particularly sticky. In fact, it often seems we’re better at repelling that information than anything else, like some kind of rubber wall lined with grease.
That metaphor just got a little weird.
Thinking back on grades K-12, there’s very little in terms of specific raw data that stands out in my mind. While teachers were throwing facts and preparing everyone for tests, my brain was busy elsewhere most of the time. I was never a bad student, personally, I’m clever enough to get through tests without really knowing what the hell I’m talking about, but much of the specifics are lost to me now. I’d hoped this trend would be alleviated in college, but so far, the only things that really stick out are the practical ones, the things that I use every day regarding the creation of art and the mixing of words. Art History is a blur of images and while I’m certainly learning some things, many others are just little factoids that I use to pass tests and then immediately discard.
The problem here isn’t the educators themselves and that’s unfortunate. If teachers were to blame for the state of education today, we could just fire them all and hire new ones. Unfortunately, the problem seems to be systemic and it’s forcing this country and others into a downward spiral. The million dollar question is what do we do about it?
That thing people tell you when you’re little about how everyone is a unique and beautiful snowflake is sort of true when it comes to learning. Everyone learns in different ways and everyone has aptitudes and desire for learning different things. The issue with this is that we aren’t born with a label or some tell-tale mark that tells us exactly how we learn or what we like. School in the States is more about shoving a bunch of things in your face in the hopes that a particular subject or career path will interest you enough to pursue it independently. Some people find that out sooner and some later, and sometimes there are hurdles that one can’t entirely anticipate. Because of the extremely varied nature of learning and the different levels of desire for learning itself, it’s difficult to create a curriculum that caters to the many needs of students. Being unable to get classes engaged in a topic is a sure sign of failure and at that point the only resolution is to test and hope that fear of failure will spark some effort.
As it stands, education here in the United States is more like a very difficult babysitting gig with impossible expectations placed on both students and teachers. We look at falling grades and proficiency levels and the first places we look are at the kids and the ones teaching those kids when the real problem is the system itself. Education right now is simply a way to drill societal expectations into your brain and to get you thinking about how you fit into the great machine that is your society. If you can recognize and overcome that particular mental hurdle, you can get through school with a bit of knowledge, at the very least.
Up until the point you figure out what you’re really going to do with yourself, much of the information that passes to your brain is likely going to be discarded. What happens for most of us is a kind of general experience where you understand a few basic concepts in variety of subjects and have a much more specific knowledge of social workings. There are much worse things that could happen, for sure. You could go to a facility where they put you to work milking cows for eight hours or simply be buried up to your neck in sand every day from 8am to 3pm, but there are also better things that could happen. Hopefully parents, students, and educators can come together in the near future and start working out a better process for future generations instead of the institutionalized mess we have now.
Still, I have to say that I’m glad for at least getting SOME education. Something is certainly more than nothing, and for that, at least, I am grateful.
I think I am anyway.
I can’t really remember.
**On an unrelated note: as I said a few posts back, William and I will be at table 96 in the Artist’s Alley of Anime Boston this year selling prints of illustrations, some comics, buttons, and t-shirts! I will try very hard to at least get something up for Friday, but I’m just letting you all know now that this might not be possible. Either way, I hope to see some of you there!**
Story of my life, sometimes I wonder why I’ve even here in college. Being a writer is something that doesn’t really lend itself to needing much of a degree, but then again, this will give me options outside of hoping to sell well.
Hahaha, love Li’l K’s face in the last panel! But yeah, it does feel like you spend 13 years learning the same basic stuff over and over; all that changes is expectations of HOW you do it.
On an unrelated note, when is this website gonna get a “random” button?
This was a major cause of my depression in years 10, 11, 11 (second try) and 12. It angers me.
Oooh, how I know this feeling! I tend to forget what I was supposed to learn merely hours after. And then everyone around me think that I haven’t pay enough attention.
But on the other hand, there were sometimes fascinating things in some classes that I remembered forever – like all those things about different cells in plants, animals and mushrooms. I learned about them some about ten years ago and still remember and photosynthesis is still a great thing. Not to start about topics which were interesting for me to begin with – like history or literature.
Maybe it’s a way not to overuse one’s brain – but I wish I could remember more school things and less irrelevant, popculture trivia.
There is nothing more atrocious, detestable, and morally and intellectually deprecating than the U.S. educational system.
Ah yes, an alzheimer’s nation in the making. I guess cramming for tests really doesn’t pay off in the… what was I talking about?
I certainly remember things that I was taught, although most of them are now only valid in a trivial sense. It seemed such a strange mish-mash of unrelated ideas designed to cast my mental net wide, so to speak, and to prepare me for everything while really preparing me for nothing. I had to relearn everything in university, like how to write an essay, to read and engage with the material. It actually seems, upon reflection, that my first year in university was designed to make me un-learn most of what I had thought I knew from high school.
How terribly disappointing…
http://www.schoolsucksproject.com/podcasts
Really like the colours in this one. I know you’ve used them before, but this time, it really struck me.
And that last panel is just perfect.
I totally agree. Math just leqaves my brain instantly, but unfoertunately I have to take up to calc I. 🙁 I think having a good teacher can help though. Unfortunately, like you said what works for one person doesn’t work for another.
Yeah…. story of my life… or at least my school life.
In the end though, I think all it boils down to is this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH2-TGUlwu4
Nyan nyan nyan nyan nyan nyan nyan nyan nyan
I graduated college 2 years ago and got a job in my field of accounting.
Having worked here over a year now, can tell you for a fact I could get by in this job using literally zero of the “raw” accounting data I obtained from the collegiate level.
From what I’ve heard from others, this is very true of most professions of the entry level.
Education, from my experience, seems to have next to nothing to do with teaching you skills aside from social skills required out there in the real world. And possibly proving you have enough commitment to endure 4-5 years of (mostly) uninteresting coursework.
I think I was in the same boat as you. I never really paid attention in high school because it didn’t interest me. I managed to pass with a relatively high GPA because I was clever enough to do well on the multiple choice tests that they always gave. I had a professor that said the reason American students can’t think by the time they get to college is that we’ve become accustomed to guessing multiple choice questions instead of actually remembering what we were supposed to learn, and how to apply it to various situations.
Now that I’m in college, and I’m paying for it, I find myself paying more attention. I guess I’m trying to get my money’s worth. Even so, the subjects that I don’t really care about, well, I’m not doing such a good job of remembering anything from them. The courses that I do enjoy right now, Art History and World Humanities 1, I’m doing better in because I actually want to know the material.
Maybe the solution is to gear early education towards finding out what students are interested in, and then placing them in educational tracks that cater to their interests. For example, if you get a kid that enjoys computers/math/building things, give him lots of classes related to engineering and computer engineering, math, accounting, etc. and then keep narrowing that field until the student is on track for becoming a master in his field of interest. Same for humanities students, etc.
I think part of the problem is that it’s hard to predict what you’ll be interested in later in life. I attended a high school that specialized in math, science and computers. Went to the 10 year reunion, and most of us had college degrees in one of the liberal arts. Very few chose to stick with math, science or computers, although I think the background in that helped many in my class do well with their careers.
Sounds more like defiance and boredom.
I have to disagree with some of the things you’re saying. I personally think we retain a lot more information due to the educational system them we realize.I personally know that I like America’s education system (especially higher education) far better than France’s and many other European countries which are just an aggressive process of elimination and expect you to have made a decision about your career by age 15-16. I don’t know much about Asian countries and their method of education. I get the impression its more effective in terms of aptitude, but just far more miserable (drilling it in your head, constant repetition, etc).
I do agree that there are problems with our system, but I think that American education has been able to cultivate some unique results. By virtue of the fact that we are given such a broad education, it allows students to combine subjects in unexpected ways which I think can lead to innovation. I also think we actually retain our fair share of information. I know personally that had I not gotten such a broad education, I would have been a far more close minded individual than I am today. For example, I may not remember which psychologist lead what study and what were the results of it, but in the end because of some of my psych courses I have learned to stop regarding gender as something that influences our behaviors all that much.
Maybe some people will say this is a little naive of me, but I think that’s the really cool thing about US education. The educational system teaches us to be a lot more open-minded and that there are multiple sides to a story. When we are genuinely interested in a subject, because of our education, we’ll be motivated to find a more complete understanding of a topic. I also find that higher education has trained us to constantly be skeptics and question ourselves and others. To me that’s invaluable. I mean, if it wasn’t for that education, do you think you’d have these very interesting, complex thoughts on culture? You are clearly a very intelligent person with a lot of knowledge and some of it seems to be from going out and studying yourself, but I don’t think you’d be motivated to learn about fairytales and myths and legends unless you got an education that encouraged it.
You’ve got some great points here, just wanted to address a few of them. First, I’m not saying that because my experiences with education here in the states have been mediocre at best that other countries do it better. I really couldn’t tell you if that’s true and if it is, there are too many factors there to make direct comparisons. All I’m saying is that we can do a lot better for our kids but we don’t for a variety of reasons. Some of them have to do with the way people learn and some have to do with how we administrate and budget for education here. There is no elegant solution to this.
Second I did say that some education is better than none at all. I’m definitely a better person for having been through k-12, but there are real pitfalls there. You’re a bit off about me studying myth and fairy tales thanks to school, though. I was actually discouraged quite a bit from pursuing writing and comics and I was never pushed toward what I do with myths and whatnot by a teacher. I think that does happen for some people, there are great educators out there, and a lot of our experience in school depends on them. How we experience school is helped along by great teachers and hindered by bad ones.
Just because I had some bad ones doesn’t mean the whole system is 100% broken, but that also doesn’t mean the system is 100% great. I guess that’s my point. It’s possible to have a great school experience, but more often than not people don’t. As I said in the post, it’s still a lot better than nothing and much better than the education in some places!
As for retaining general information, that’s certainly true. History helped give me a general impression of what’s happened in the world and english helped give me a general idea of literature. If I had learned nothing else, those two things would still have been worth going through school for!
Anyway, great comment, thanks for the input 🙂
Followup: maybe pursuing a path of education that’s even more generalized would be better for students. Specifics are fairly useless outside of your career path and rote memorization obviously doesn’t work for retaining knowledge. Some of the biggest issues with education stem from these issues and from testing. Not teaching our students basic logic and reasoning skills seems to be another big factor, to me at least.
If we could push people toward logic in every day life (math tries to do this but it’s hard to apply outside of it when a students’ mind is turned off by the very thought of math), that alone would probably be a big step forward.
Thanks for the response!
Sorry if my comment had an aggressive or accusatory tone. It’s hard to convey an opinion without sounding aggressive. I knew you weren’t being extreme and saying this is the case for everyone. I got the sense that you are to smart to take such an extreme stance.
And I totally understand what you are saying now about the lack of funding for education. I do think our culture doesn’t value education. Sometimes it just becomes mechanic. “Just test these kids, make sure they get a certain score, and let’s move on”. I really appreciate that you responded, I get what your saying now.
Maybe you’re right: a broader approach would be better. It’d be nice if we had enough resources to help kids on developing a certain attitude about learning. Instead of just testing them, if education focused more on analytical thought, we would probably be a better world for it. Not only would people remember things better, but our nation would simply have more thoughtful individuals (something I feel we lack sometimes).
I guess the main reason for objecting is that I can’t really fathom what else we can do. I feel that the flaws in our educational system are mostly due to the fact that there are a lot of students out there, only so much time and resources. When I try to think of solutions, I usually look to other countries for inspiration. But as I said before, I’m not a big fan of other nations education system either.
Maybe the big thing we need to change is just the people’s attitufde about education. There’s not much we can do about the system. But if parents were more invested in their children’s education and tried to cultivate intelligent thinkers and encouraging deeper exploration of some topics we wouldn’t have such e big problem.
Aww, no no, you didn’t sound aggressive at all, it was a great well thought out comment, hence the response! 🙂
I’m with you, I don’t really know what the solution is for education here or anywhere else. What we’ve got is better than nothing but I still feel like we have the potential to do a lot more. I guess that’s what bugs me is that the way we educate has remained largely unchanged for so long.
Regardless, more investment in education from everyone, even people without kids, would benefit us all. When we bring people out of ignorance and into knowledge, even if it isn’t through a system that works perfectly for everyone, we all win. Hopefully soon people will stop caring quite so much about wars and profit and care more about sustainability, peace, and education. 🙂
Ahh! A good ol’ swing set comic!
That is me most days, but some days I do remember stuff. The rest of the time is testing. Testing is the problem, as it takes a lot of time away from teaching. If a student doesn’t care enough to retain the information, they don’t want to peruse a future that entails using it. Testing just organizes kids in to what their futures, career, retirement age and ease of living will be based on how well they do on answering A, B C or D as a 13-18 year old.
I think it is funny you put this up on a day when it was party day at school, we chose weird student-taught classes to take (Mural painting, Irish Step, Martial Arts, Mushroom Picking[all real examples]) then had the afternoon off to do as we pleased on the school ground.
Possibly setting up a tent or hiding in a dark room with 7 computers, 1 GameCube, and 30 nerds trying to escape the pep rally. I learned a lot, though. Did you know Irish Step competitors have to wear curly wigs to competition? I do now!
Ken Robinson on education, with excellent doodled accompaniment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U&feature=related
I was going to recommend that link!
Education is not about teaching kids.
It’s about freeing parents so they can work in their 9-5 jobs.
It’s about teaching kids to compete with each other rather than collaborate.
It’s about programming them to do meaningless tasks which have no application to their lives just to gain the approval of an authority figure. Which makes them suited to the jobs they will spend the rest of their lives doing.
This.
I’ve always felt that school isn’t so much about acquiring specific knowledge as learning different approaches to problem solving. Like most everyone else here has said, I hardly remember anything specific from my K-12 days. Part of this is because some of this knowledge (Reading, writing, basic arithmetic, how to interact with others, influence from literature, etc.) simply becomes a part of who we are, and much like trying to remember when we started walking or talking, it becomes impossible to recall exactly when these things were learned. But more trivial knowledge that didn’t stick, such as trigonometry and discrete math in high school, has still left an impression on me. While today I couldn’t calculate the area of a triangle or multiply two matrices to save my life, the concepts of logic and reasoning involved with these topics is something I have found applicable and interesting. The broader concepts, not the specific formulas, are what encouraged me to develop this interest by pursuing a minor in computer science. Of course, some topics are lost forever to us as well. Last year I took a basic philosophy course, and whether by my own developed apathy or by sheer incomprehensibility, the whole subject went right over my head. But even this was useful to me – I learned that I was not actually cut out for the field of philosophy, and in doing so learned where my own limitations are.
I’m personally glad to have received a public education. The system isn’t perfect, but like all things, it’s worth what you’re willing put into it.
The real problem, in my opinion, is corporate/employment-driven college. But that’s for another discussion 🙂
You don’t use it, you lose it. What you lose, you usually don’t need.
One thing that I think could greatly help the education system in America is more money in all accounts. Though since this wasn’t in the topic, I’ll speak no more if it.
This is generally one of the pitfalls and triumphs of liberal arts education, that is, do a whole bunch of coursework and then focus on one or two topics later. While we endure a load of bullshit along the way and topics we have no interest in, or avoiding the entire subject*, there are (hopefully some great things that do stick that we never would have guessed before.
For me, ever since Starcraft came out in ’98, I wanted to work with computers. Well, come college, I learned that I utterly hate coding and there was no way in hell I could do it for 30 years. Had my education been solely focused on computer science, I’d be rightly effed right now. Yet thanks to all those core courses, I learned that I loved history, (something that never stuck in high school,) and thus became my new focus.
Sadly, unless you want to teach, which I didn’t, that degree’s kinda limited in traditional courses. So now I’m in grad school for library science and that’s completely focused on the one topic. It has its own pitfalls…lets just say I’m glad my course work in ending in a week.
*i.e. Physical Relaxation instead of a hard gym course or “world classes” instead of a foreign language. I did both of these.
I’m going to have to disagree. Education isn’t supposed to teach you facts. Wikipedia can do that for you. Education is supposed to train your mind in the ways of thinking.
Now you can debate if it’s successful in that regard.