(Image from The Messenger Oracle)
Truly. Our education system is set up for only certain types of learning styles. For anyone who learns in a different way school is torture at best. I’m garbage at memorizing most things, to this day I don’t know my multiplication tables past three (okay and most of my fives and I can figure out my nines because I know the trick). I don’t know the years that anything in history happened (except that in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue…) But not knowing my multiplication tables or what year World War I started doesn’t bother me at all anymore. When I was a kid it was painful and hard. In third grade we had weekly math tests that were progressive and we had to pass each one to move on to the next test, they were also timed. On the wall in the classroom there was a chart with planets and all the students’ names on little rocket ships. As you passed one test you got to move on to the next planet. I have a very vivid memory of watching that chart and watching everyone else’s little rockets move forward while I was stuck behind. I also really struggled to learn how to read. I don’t remember much about second grade (since that was several lifetimes ago) but I do remember getting so frustrated I would just break down crying and my teacher would have to take me out of the class until I calmed down. In third grade I got a reading tutor (his name was Tony, I sometimes think he must have had a really profound effect on me to still remember his name after all these years) and I finally learned to read. In terms of reading I would say that I was blessed to come from a family of readers. Especially with how hard it was for me to learn to read I might no have found a love of reading if it weren’t for my family. My uncle owned a used book store and would bring us all kinds of books. We had every Garfield book, every Calvin and Hobbes, my sister had all the Nancy Drew books (no small feat), many Babysitter Club books, all the Ramona books, you get the idea. I got into reading out of necessity. I remember being bored out of my mind and desperately wanting someone to play with me but my dad and my sister were happily reading so I had to find joy in reading too. There was an amazing bookstore in Berkeley called Black Oak Books and our dad used to take us there all the time and let us pick out a book if we wanted. It was always such a special treat.
As I got older (exactly as my mom told me it would) school did get significantly easier for me. I’m amazing with a concept if I can make it make sense. So algebra was fun for me and it never mattered that I didn’t know my multiplication tables. I got good grades and my teachers liked me. But to this day I hold onto that feeling from elementary school that I’m stupid or at the very least less worthy than the people around me. That feeling has never left me and sometimes still holds me back from trying new things. The truth is that it didn’t have to be that way and that is why I still get angry sometimes. The problem is deeper than just how schools are set up and how they only teach to one or maybe two learning styles. I read something a long time ago, that I’m not going to try to quote because I will butcher it, about the difference between American schools and I believe it was Japanese schools. It talked about how in the US if a kid gets called to the blackboard and gets the question wrong they get made fun of. In the other country that they were comparing when a kid got the question wrong the whole class worked together to help them get the right answer. What stuck with me is the idea that our culture mocks people for being wrong, when you’re learning something new this makes zero sense. Of course you’re going to try and do it wrong, that’s literally how you learn. I remember being laughed at for struggling to read out loud in class. When you step back and look at that it’s so deeply wrong. How can you laugh at someone for not knowing something that they are there to learn, how does that make any sense at all? There is a deep vein of cruelty and competition in our culture and school is no exception.
I want to believe that something better is possible. Something were we are all learning at our own pace and in our own learning style. Something where we are all helping each other, one student is really good at math and another is really good at reading, let them help each other without calling that cheating. It helps both children because being able to teach something makes anyone feel more confident in their own abilities. I also really want to believe that we as a society care about education and want to improve it. Rather than people saying, “I don’t have kids, why should my taxes go to education?” It still shocks me that there are people that are actually that shortsighted.
Unfortunately, as daunting as that all feels to overcome, the issues with education in this country are bigger and deeper than that. I know to a lot of people I’m about to sound like a conspiracy theorist but open your mind and think about it for a while. The systematic defunding of public education and the rising cost of college is not accident. The powers that be want the general public to be less educated because a population that is less educated is easier to control. That’s without even getting into the issue that the military recently said that if we make college free they won’t get enough new recruits. It’s all a scam.
We’re lucky though, we live in an amazing time where anything we want to learn can be found on the internet. I also feel extremally fortunate to have taken a media literacy class in high school and had a pain in the ass English teacher when I was going to Pasadena City College. I know both the importance of and how to evaluate a source, how to recognize bias in a news piece. It is more important that we learn how to learn than that we learn some set curriculum. Even more important than that we have to stop breaking children’s spirits. Let’s all dream of and work towards a world where children love learning and are excited to go to school because they understand the value and are learning things that will help them their entire lives.
Screaming in the Dark 