School system is a Rotten seed
When i was in high-school i struggled a lot, i felt unmotivated to memorize the content. I was always wondering the why of the facts, but teachers would constantly criticize me for wasting time “wondering on the moon”, as they used to say (among others ones).
I had high marks on the beginning because of the hype of thinking that high-school would be engaging and meaningful. Afterwards the magic was lost and i started struggling with tests, studying at the last moment.
Each summer holiday i would rest and do what i love and the magic would momentary appear again, i was feeling curious and happy overall. Although it would once again disappoint and bore me and the magic would die after a month or two.
I had high hopes for my career (i was dreamy and hard worker) and often showed teachers what i wanted to do, although no one could give me orientations. I was confused on where to go and later frustrated, what took me to destructive behavior (i was addicted at playing games).
Since it disappointed every cell of my being, i started to disobey the school system and afterwards the whole life. I was asking myself questions such as:
“What is the meaning of rules?”;
“Why do people like me when i have high-school points, but hate me when i have low ones?”;
“Why do i need school at all, since we only memorize and don’t truly understand it?”;
“isn’t this the same as being trained in a factory?”
This is one of my quotes when i was in the disobedience period:
“In order to fight, you need some type of sword. If you lose it, you have to bet your hands, then the arms and the legs…
This is what they call “Reality”. But it’s a nightmare that absorb you without hesitating until you become one of them.”
Recently i found a student on a discord group nicknamed “Townie” expressing her disagreement with the school system, which i totally understand, she said:
“The exams are clearly not truly a test of our abilities as people and students but rather a test of the teachers competence at their job.
It’s incredibly unfair since this not only dictates our futures but also mean students with incompetent teachers are virtually doomed to have a shit future.
(omitted professor name) is a nice guy but he is not adept at gaining the attention of a classroom full of 15 or 16 year old.
These teachers who need a lesson in teenage interaction have set me and the rest of my classmates up to fail at something that according to the information given to us by the school, will 100% dictate the rest of my human life.
This alone pisses me off since it is simply not true. There are so many successful people who didn’t let exams control who they grew up to be.
Surely school should be teaching us to be kind and compassionate towards other people. Instead of still using teaching methods designed to prepare future factory workers. We are taught to follow rules, conform to society and accept embarrassment and trauma as part of everyday life, when they should be showing us how to combat these issues.
What we learn is not even knowledge, its the ability to recall unnecessary facts. And we forget up to 60% of the facts we learnt after 2 months of an exam.
Also 3/4 students don’t know what they want to be because we never experienced real jobs. So we don’t know where we want to work”
In short the problems in the majority of schools are:
Rote learning (memorize by repeating the words);
Outdated, not meaningful and badly organized content;
Disinterested, ignorant and closed minded teachers;
Unfair grading system;
Stressful environment;
Lack of spiritual growth (i will explain what this means next).
Spiritual Growth on education, what and why?
Spiritualism is a discipline who is based on understanding ourselves on the big picture of the universe. There is something deep about developing spiritual growth, which empower us. And it is no surprise that this research shows that teenagers with a greater sense of spirituality report higher levels of purpose and meaning.
But our high-schools do little to nurture this type of personal growth, and as a result we are creating a whole new generation of students who look great on the outside and hollow on the inside.
Having spiritual growth as part education makes us realize who we are and what we truly want to do. We will be able to handle our emotions better, be more focused on our work, follow our heart and ignore what others expect from us. We are set free.
By lacking this spiritual discipline, students subject themselves as factory machines, to addictions and to consumerism society, without questioning why they are doing this. They will be sucked their whole life without realizing it.
Teachers and parents command us to focus and study, without teaching us the correct methods to do so, or without inspiring us.
In high-school, i asked teachers several times for help: “how can i improve on reading?”. They replied, “just read more!”. I used to read a lot, and i started to think that i may have some unavoidable defect myself. Later on i realized that there are many methods to achieve better reading.
Teachers were not able to analyse and guide me correctly. They were like an old notebook, unable to push me forward, i was stuck, without directions on where to go.
Also many parents threat us and yell at us for focusing on class and studying more. That’s so selfish and destructive (they treats us like objects, it’s so disrespectful).
That is like asking: “be a millionaire”, i want it now. If you become one, i love you, otherwise i hate you. (That’s not true love, i advise reading the book “The art of loving”, by Erich Fromm)
Good parents would help us find answers to questions such as:
“how can we help you find inspiration?”;
“are you happy with what you are doing?”;
“is there any methodology/game that you may like which will help you increase focus?”;
“where can you find people who can understand you and help you?”.
What would be the ideal educational system?
Like we saw, the majority of school systems are not that great. It’s given weak support overall to students. Institutions see us like a memorizing and problem solving machinery, which is either rewarded for being perfectionist or shamed for failing. Because of this, school kills so many talent and genius.
Sometimes i and my colleges complained to teachers how bad education is. Their response was: “ you need to be grateful”, which they justified by the fact that “in the old days, teachers would even beat students! So you are so lucky”.
That’s a jealous and lazy way of trying to justify why they stopped improving.
Why should we stop improving for the ideal just because we moved a single step forward? Why should an athlete stop at 1 km on a marathon (42 km) just because he is farther away from the begging?
The ideal school system must have some basic attributes to be considered ideal. First of all it must be accommodating to students (not pressuring and stressing). This can be achieved by making sure that exam marks are confidential (or exams are not obligatory) and don’t influence student career success.
Other essential feature is that it must have at least one mentor with good teenager communication, respectful not matter what, and who everyone admires. He is capable of teaching students the meaning of life (spiritual growth) and give them good orientations for what they are passionate about doing.
Also, content needs to be specific and extremely optimized for each student. (the useless content is excluded, and we end up with an organized and personalized learning guide which will make students ready to strive for their ambitions)
Also, it should be incentivized that people with same ambitions meet each other. They will gain each other’s friendships (they will understand each other) and new perspectives (they become more powerful).
What can we do?
We are making a website/app to start putting into practice what we believe in to be the ideal educational system.
Our mission is to aid school students and other people who want to self-improve. We want to incentivize people with same interests and ambitions studying together and share the best optimized content.
The goal is to learn as fast as possible and as much fun as possible while getting to meet people who can understand you.
We also want to help people improve their perspective of themselves and the universe, setting them more free and powerful than ever.
You can help us tremendously by answering this short questionnaire, and you will gain the opportunity to be one of the 300 people to be in our open-beta. (while replying, let us know that you read this article)
you can also send me an email! andre.marques.edu@gmail.com
