Since its original conception in the May of 2008, this speech has been kind of a transient work-in-progress for me. Its size has varied from six to eleven minutes, depending on my mood, and the work features both dated and modern iterations of my own humorous tastes. Each version is a different indication of my own artistic strengths and weaknesses, but the message has remained, almost stubbornly, the same: education doesn’t work.
“There are many factors concerning the influence of Chinese culture today. They can be categorized into three main categories: Political, Economic, and Social things. These things do stuff to impact the outcome of other things. This stuff continues from the past, into the present, and eventually in the future, and alot of good stuff comes out of it.”
“A+.” . . . “Excellent Thesis!” The midterm essay for my AP Man Love (Mandarin Love Poetry) class from which this paragraph was taken was given this grade and comment and nothing more. Yes. I know. I’m a fantastic writer. And you know what? I wasn’t always this good. Thanks to our education system, of course, I was able to iron out all of that gross, distracting “creative” crap that I was writing before. I’m a proud product of the system.
Heck, before, I even had emotions towards the topics I was told to write about. Ugh, that was indeed a terrible time in my childhood. And…I – I can’t do this. No one will squeal if I drift away from what the school says I’m supposed to think, right? Good…good… If you couldn’t tell from my AP Man Love essay, I have had all of my creativity and uniqueness sucked from my skull as if it were a free smoothie at an obesity convention- vigorously and painfully, but with shame.
It’s only one of the many issues that we are facing today in regards to the education system. Creativity is being crushed in favor of boilerplate formulaic teaching, and as a result we are turning into a society full of answerers, not askers.
“Write an essay about having envy towards someone else from your kindergarden years” . . . “Write an essay about your feelings for Lil’ Wayne’s dreadlocks” . . . “Write an essay about your recent battle against prostate cancer.”
Yes, it’s true. In killing creativity, history and English are the primary courses to blame. They’re the villains of our young lives, tying our brains to the train-tracks of cookie-cutter doom. They tell us to be creative, and original – be SOMEONE, but in reality they achieve the exact opposite. Their first mistake is obviously that they assume that their students are all the same. In making us think we’re creative, they actually mold us into one uniform body.
My English teacher told me to use my voice in a paper, so I did. When I got my paper back, she told me that I used the “wrong voice.” How can my voice be wrong? Not everyone can sing soprano. In history, I used a lot of flowery language and wrote a creative intro, and before you could say “disgustingly generic curriculum,” we spent a month in ‘essay boot camp,’ which is like regular boot camp, but with significantly more crying. Why? “Because that’s what they are looking for on the AP Test.” I always wonder, these people that sit in a smoke-filled room grading the AP, SAT, PSAT, NMSQT, LMAO, badger badger, and WTF test papers must have terrible lives to actually want to give a positive grade to something that reads like it was written by an incredibly boring (but literate) hammerhead shark. (You can smell the wasted potential from a mile away). When did we decide that being generic is acceptable?
And then there’s tests in general. Now, don’t get me wrong. Tests are amazing. Who’s with me? . . . I can’t wait for the next time I have to walk into a classroom that stinks of a strange florescent ozone, sit in a hard chair, bubble letters, and wait anxiously for the bell, sucking in the beautiful shame from the answers I know I got horribly wrong. Ahhh, it feels good to fail a test. . . Sorry got caught in the moment.
I once believed that in school, we were actually supposed to learn as much we possibly could and aspire to be what we possibly could be! – - – Soon, the smile of my potential was stripped from my face by the frowning jaws of bitter truth. The only thing we are spoon-fed nowadays are taught “for the test” and nothing more. They don’t tell us how to apply the information (not the knowledge) they give us. They only want a passing grade.
I repetitively asked my math teacher, to her dismay, one simple question: “WHY?” “Why is e so important?” “Why isn’t pi delicious?” “Why are you naked?” – and she gives me the same boilerplate answer to every question, every time. “Don’t worry about it, it’s not on the test.” Sure, I still aced the tests she threw at me, but I still wonder…why IS e important? Why can’t pi be delicious? I’m not sure I or you want to know why she was naked, though. The point is that the test has become more of a benefit to the curriculum’s organization than an educational tool. We are the sole casualties of such a cutback, becoming short-term memory banks rather than wells of useful knowledge.
Sir Ken Robinson (yes, a KNIGHT), agreed with me a couple years ago, arguing that our education system kills our preparedness to be wrong, and, as a result, grows us “out of our creativity.” He indicated that children have no problem being wrong; it’s the process of learning. Adults on the other hand are the exact opposite. They violently reject any situation that could possibly result in failure or prove themselves wrong. We need that willingness to be wrong to progress and innovate, and we as students are slowly being deprived of that.
So what needs to change? We can’t just continue on like this, can we? I mean, based on what I learned from school, we could just wait it out and study for the next test on society, but do we have that kind of time? We need to move forward, and emphasize individuality in education, and let creativity flourish under a new regime that emphasizes knowledge over memory.
‘Education reform’ is just a phrase that implies increased budget programs with inspiring titles. I’d like to rename it to Education. That’s what I’m pushing for. I want the education system to remember its purpose, and begin to do its job again. Turn us back into a society of askers, not a wandering group of answerers, and then we will truly see a bright future ahead of us.
In conclusion, there again have been many factors concerning the influence of Mandarin Love Poetry, and they are classified as political, economic, and social things. These things, again, influenced our past, our present, and will do good stuff for our everlasting future for poetry, and that will be doing a good thing for our stuff.
God, I HATE AP Man Love.