Dazibao 2 (Distribution Grade Attack on the Public School System)

School is not for learning. It's not about preparing you for the real world. It's not about teaching you valuable skills. And it's certainly got nothing to do with satisfying curiosity. Most students believe that school is, in fact, meant to prepare you for the real world and teach you valuable skills, and most of those who don't can't explain what school really is for. After all, the government pours millions of dollars every week into the Department of Education, so school must be about something. But it's not about what you think.
       School does not prepare you for the real world. Ask any teacher why they make rules that almost all of their students disagree with, and they will tell you, point blank, that their class is a dictatorship, not a democracy, sometimes using those words exactly. The real world is a democracy, not a dictatorship. It would seem illogical to contend that subjecting students to a fascist police state will prepare them for life in a democratic republic. It doesn't help that most of what you do in school is pointless busywork meant to keep you busy. No real life manager is going to give his employees work for works sake if he wants to stay a manager for very long.
       School does not teach you valuable skills. The things you learn in school are designed to help you pass tests. A teacher will list off for you a bunch of facts without bothering to connect them to the real world in any way (and indeed, the teacher probably doesn't much care how they're connected to the real world), and then will ask you to regurgitate the facts on a test a week later. Once the test is passed, you will most likely forget the dissonant information almost immediately. If you hold onto it, it is because you made connections to the information yourself. That's why, when the teacher asks if anyone remembers what they learned last year, no one raises their hand.
       The purpose of schools is to keep teenagers in school for eight hours a day so they don't spend their time kicking puppies instead. More than eight hours, actually, homework takes up plenty of time as well. Of course, the teachers probably don't know this. I don't blame them, they've been just as brutally abused by this system as the students. They come into the profession usually intending to teach the next generation, to instill a love of learning in them, or some equally idealistic goal. They're then taken by the system and reduced to petty wardens of a glorified prison.
       The primary problem with the school system is that almost no one cares to think about its effects and side-effects. Without sitting down to think things through, we all simply believe what we're told. So what are the effects of school? Students are indeed kept in school for eight hours a day, and presumably are kept quiet at home for however long it takes them to do their homework. But they're also left to their own devices to build their own society within the school. Within this society there is no source of resources except the superior society that exists outside it, and all physical violence is strictly regulated by that society, so the only resource left to the students is status.  Popularity, being a zero-sum game, naturally breeds fierce competition and, thus, lots of spite between rival factions.  This was never true historically, and thus it must be assumed that either hormones are a recent invention, or else they are not the culprit.  This hostile environment is self-propogating, and cannot be undone unless it is directly reformed.  Despite the good
intentions of the anti-bullying programs, they cannot succeed. They're fighting the very nature of the society students live in.
       The true purpose of school is to educate. I suggest we do just that. I suggest that instead of having students mindlessly regurgitate facts a week after they've been shoved down their throats, that we allow the students to prove their knowledge by using it. There are no multiple-choice tests in real life, but there are projects, thus projects and not tests will be the true measure of a person capabilities.
       Further, there is no need to continue wasting students time with specialized information. Algebra in general is a generalized skill that everyone benefits from learning. The ability to calculate projectile motion on other planets, a skill inexplicably taught in some Algebra classes, is highly specialized and need not be learned by any student who isn't interested in such things. I believe the only reason this unit was added in is because it is tangentially related to Algebra and they need to fill up space.
       What I suggest is a system that will make teenagers happier, more respectful of other people, and better respected by other people.  I suggest a system that is more rewarding to students and teachers alike.  I suggest a system that is more efficient in producing effective employees.  I suggest a system that will render the bulk of the Department of Education’s bureaucracy useless, and that’s where I expect to find most of my opposition. Everyone else has a lot to gain.

 -Ashen