Marilyn Thipthorpe

These days EDUCATION and LEARNING don’t stand for the same thing anymore, I’ve come to think did they ever really? I mean there was a time we went to school and actually learnt something besides what was written in our books by people we didn’t even know or didn’t even care to know about. There was so much out there, there was so much we could be exposed to without fear. Learning was freedom. These days education is defined as “idea’s or principles taught by an authority in order to give intellectual, moral and social instructions to a child” ; personally I don’t see a lot of learning going on in this education system.
Schools have basically become a systematic cloning facility rather than learning or education centers they once were. Children are pushed into factories for 12 years of their life and the perfect endure while the eccentric are bullied into become zombies. No wonder drop- outs are on the rise. No one seems to appreciate these unique and creative skills that set the children apart.
Have you noticed these new standardized testing systems- PSC (Primary School Certificate) JSC (Junior School Certificate), as if the regular SSC & HSC wasn’t enough pressure on a kid! It just seems so much easier to push information down a child’s throat so that they can just regurgitate it later during an exam. Like “Hey kids, today’s class on our version of history of this country, you should really learn this, and guess what we have a ‘pop’- quiz on Thursday- which really isn’t a pop-quiz because I just told you about it so you would study”!! This is just the easy way out, so that you don’t really have to sit down with these children and take the time to explain to them what really happened, could and should have happened and the results. Why? Because then they could raise some very valid, thought -provoking and interesting questions, as children are prone to do. In this way schools and educators get off scoot free from accessing individual intelligence and rather focus on what the hoard can achieve.
The funny thing here is that the teachers are not to blame as much as the system is to blame. Teachers are given specific guidelines and timelines to finish their curriculum in- and are given no lee-way whatsoever. If anyone thinks that they will take on the system and do something different- they could- but for how long before they are transferred from school to school and finally fired with some ridiculous accusation of not following rules and rebellion or corrupting children’s minds with ‘free-thinking’. Lets get one thing straight here teaching is a very demanding job and people rarely go into it for the money, it’s either a passion or because they have no other option’ ‘cuz guess what they weren’t shown how to be free thinkers so they could think out of the box and go down some other career path. What you end up with is a system where teachers, the very people responsible for the end result (the children), are handcuffed.
Now that you have fundamentally removed both aspects of what would drive a healthy education system, you have this withering thing with kids trapped in it. Bright kids. Special kids. Kids with endless potential who are under-diagnosed and over-medicated on a level that rivals anything in history. “Oh little Masud likes to talk a lot, and is hyper, and has a crazy imagination – clearly he is ADD/HD and needs to be medicated back to a zombie-like status so that we can deal with him”. No, Masud is loud and rambunctious because he is a KID. That’s what they do. Schools are not daycare or simply a holding pen for your child. They are the catalyst for the most formative years of their lives, and should be treated with that kind of reverence. The brightest kids in the system are the ones that suffer the most. Making waves and acting smart does not earn you points. It’s very goal oriented. So what’s the order of the day: Do ENOUGH to get by. Don’t make any waves. Be a square peg in a square hole. You’re a cog in badly oiled machine- What they don’t get is one cog out of order and you machine breaks down. Wohoo for you!
After all this is said what can be dome? The best option is for the parents to band together, that is if they care enough for their children to get the best education all around not just text book knowledge that is probably distorted and outdated and shoved in a meditative process into their child’s mind.
These parents need to band together and talk to like minded-parents and talk to the school administrators or even the district officials. We’ve seen time and again what can be achieved when people stand together. You might be labeled a rebel but you certainly won’t be a rebel without a cause!