Education is one of the most universal aspects of the world and one of the most basic rights. When most people think about education, they think of the various benefits that schools are providing but no one thinks about the flaws of the modern school system. Even though it is beneficial to have an accessible education system worldwide, there are many features that need to be improved.
1. Lack of teachers that love teaching
Today, many people are in need of jobs to support themselves and their family. Many teachers look at teaching as a job instead if a passion. Most teachers teach just to make money while they do not care about preparing students to succeed in the future. Today it is very hard to find a teacher that teaches because they want students to be prepared for the innovative future in front of them. The abundance of passion-less teachers leads to students with bad grades and no motivation to move forward in life.
2. The idea of thinking inside the box
When was the last time a teacher told a student to gain experience investing in stocks? When has a teacher told a student to start your own company or to start a non-profit organization? One of the most controversial arguments about the school system is encouraging students to not express creativity in their life. Schools always want students to learn about one specific topic and not think about anything else. Schools offer a limited number of courses that won't benefit various careers that students want to pursue. If teachers encourage students to pursue what their interested in and if schools offer various courses that reflect on various careers, students will be more likely to succeed.
3. Many classes do not prepare students for the real world
When have you ever stepped out of your home and used long division in shopping? When have you used elements of poetry or the periodic table? These are only some of the various topics that students find useless in the real world. Instead of teaching students topics that they will never use, schools should have a class for various activities that are fundamental for succeeding. For example, many people that graduate college do not know how to pay their taxes. Most do not even know what the different type of taxes are. Forget about taxes what even is a social security number? Because these basic concepts are not being taught in schools and in return, many students are overwhelmed with everything they did not know about the world.
4. Knowledge is expressed in numbers and tests
Remember why schools were made in the past? They were made to offer education and knowledge to children. Today schools are made so students can compete for limited spots to get into college. Schools support the idea of limiting education, which is a basic right, to certain people who "deserve" it based on grades. An example of this is a student who is gifted in the knowledge of science and math but his grades in literature are unsatisfactory. When colleges see the GPA of the student that has been ruined by literature they assume that the student will not be fit of attending the college. When will schools realize that their is more potential in a student than what test scores show them?
5. Not teaching what students do not understand
We have all received that failing grade on a test or a quiz. After receiving that grade we have felt like we do not understand the lesson but the teacher keeps moving forward to teach more and more lessons. This is the reason why students end up receiving bad grades in the future. For example, a student takes a test on trigonometry and receives a 70% on the test. He needs help but the teacher moves on. What happened to the 30% of the test that the student does not know? The student does not understand the topic but he is forced to move on to learn additional lesson. What if the 30% of the trigonometry test the student did not do well on has to be used in the next lesson? Then the student will not understand that part of the lesson and will end up failing that test without knowing how to learn everything he missed. This will form a snowballing effect on the student which leads to poor academic performance.
These are only some of the flaws present in the school system. If schools learned that fixing certain ways of teaching can benefit students than the school system will be fixed. I hope that schools will implement these changes soon.
