Monday, April 14, 2014

Degrading our Education

Never Let Me Go  by  Kazuo Ishiguro is a story about an alternate universe.
In the story, it follows the life of Katie, a clone in Great Britain around 1970. She lives her life in Hailsham and the Cottages, much similar to American public boarding schools and college. But since she is a clone, she is designated to give her organs to actual citizens when she becomes around 20 to 30 years old.

We read this book for our C.I.S. Literature class, and we are currently having a discussion on it.

I love and hate this book and this discussion for many reasons. It really portrays the sense of how our education system is built up. Hailsham focuses on the arts and encourage students to express creativity, much as how we encourage and push math and science courses. This is the part that angers me the most

American education system really pushes my buttons.

The fact that we praise and almost worship those who are good at math and science courses, but we turn a blind eye to those who play beautiful music or can paint a masterpiece. I once watched a TED talk about it. Say someone takes all AP classes. AP classes and Honors classes allow a student to receive above a 4.0 GPA if he gets all straight As. If that student took three AP classes and one study hall (where study hall does not count for a grade) and got straight As, he would have a weighted GPA of 5.33. But, if he substituted that study hall for a regular music class, or even say Drawing 3 (which in my school is the highest drawing class you can take). If he got all straight As then, his GPA would be only a 5.08.

The thing is, our society freaks out about this number. Colleges look at it for admission, teachers look at it for class rank, and peers look at it in order to see "how smart you are." Why have we (no pun intended) degraded ourselves into mere numbers? When has learning the quadratic formula been more important that Beethoven's 5th Symphony? Why do we praise students who understand and excel at Calculus, but ignore the one who can draw a picture as though you are looking into a mirror.Finally, why does my school require you to take a math course almost every year, but only require one art credit, which is equivalent to two trimesters, less than a year of art?