In a recent conversation I heard a fourteen year old say, "What is the point in learning anything in school? Anything they teach us is not useful to our lives," to which I sat dumbstruck at the naivety of this person. It amazes me how our generation has the most advanced level of technology with the swipe of a finger, and we use it to watch ridiculous cat videos and Spongebob memes. We use this technology to "socialize" only to complain about we are not worth living. We constantly need someone to vent to about our problems and to assure us that we are worthy to be loved by others. We become so overburdened with petty social drama that we can hardly see through the film covering our eyes to acknowledge our potential and capabilities. We have succumbed to our most basic needs, the inclinations of an animal while the human is trapped in between our posts, snaps and tweets.
Our generation is so aggravated by themselves, by others and by the expectations society places on them that we do not contemplate about how much we can accomplish and grow. We measure intellect with grades rather than effort, and take 4.0 students to be the smartest people in the school, while someone whose character is outstanding as subpar. We have reduced the quality of education to be a number rather than the thirst for knowledge. Books are seen to be scanned rather than read; they have now become fantasies of the mind and illusions to the heart because even they-- the ultimate source for knowledge have been reduced to nothing but pure entertainment for the likes of students who wish to escape reality. We do not read a book to learn a lesson so that we may apply it to our lives, rather we read it to either pass a test, or purely for entertainment. When we have this wealth of knowledge in our pockets, we choose to ignore it for something more appealing. Now, education is not appealing but has become a source of misery and anxiety. The issues we have in our education system could be the reason that students are not as involved in their studies and are not investing time to learn. It could also be due to the overtake of entertainment in their lives that keeps them from taking anything else as boring or uninteresting.
If a book does not have a plot twist or amusing characters then it is not a "good read." Since a textbook is associated with schoolwork, it is not meant to teach us, but used once only and then meant to be thrown in the corner to collect dust. Entertainment has taken control of what we deem interesting; Generations before us had thirst for a new book since they saw it as a new channel to engage their mind and challenge the way they see life, but ours has lost its drive to learn. Without this drive, we are going backwards rather than forward. Our society has lost its will to work; shifts nine to five are there for us to simply make money than to make a difference. We are not working for the greater good, we only think that we do, since our will to work is lost. Now, our generation is perfectly content lying back and making a living off of other people's hard work, because an easy life is considered to be ideal. However, it is not real. Without problems that require effort to be resolved, we never grow to tackle the next phase of our lives. We do not live our life, but the past lives since there is no regression forward. Our lives are backwards escalators; we keep trying to run up, but do not realize that our path is taking us down.
The only solution to this problem is to learn, learn with the ferocity of the generations before us and a force of a new generation ahead of us. Despite issues in the education system, it is our duty to learn for ourselves in order to grow and appreciate the luxury of technology that we have. Most of us are going out into the world with no set purpose or direction of where they are headed. Education and learning are not the same; the former may help find one a job but the latter helps shape one's character and self. It is by learning that we can enter the world confident in our potential. We need to help ourselves not take education for granted, for while it has its issues it is still an outlet for us to gain some knowledge about the world we live in. It is a means for us to grow, but with the social stigmas surrounding students and grades in our education system, it is not surprising to have someone say that school is a waste of time. We have all the resources, now we just need to apply them.
We have the potential to be the generation that takes learning to its ultimate high, to apply the skills we teach ourselves and build grand monuments of knowledge. We can change the perception of education to be about learning how we can think for ourselves and become scholars in our fields of study. We can challenge notions, change perspectives, overcome obstacles but, we are too busy playing Pokemon Go.
