Ajaypal Singh
English 1A
Sean McFarland
Society
plays a huge role in how you are placed in the hierarchy. Most of us start from
below and start to slowly work our way onto the pinnacle. The amount of
education you have helps you move up the staircase but the system is setup in a
way for those who know early on exactly what they want to become. Having a
narrow-minded approach is actually praised in the society we live in. Knowing
exactly what you want and that is the only thing you want to achieve is the
wrong way to beat the system. While those who are trying to find themselves
from within are drowning because the social acceptance is not there. We spend
the first half of our life in a classroom, yet it all seems like we are waiting
to be enlightened. Teachers are the most influential things from early
development, but the only thing we develop through them is hatred toward learning.
In Into The
Wild by Jon Krakaur, Christopher
Johnson McCandless the protagonist in the book
comes from a privileged family but resents it. Chris graduates from Emory University
and after he decides he will travel around in the summer.. His plan is to go to
Alaska and live in the wild. Even though he has a degree he still doesn’t know
what his passion is, he is privileged in a way where he is white and is rich.
Yet the fact that all these things are given to him irritates him. Chris takes
all of his money with him on the trip and tells his parents he will be
traveling but doesn’t provide them enough information. He drives his car but
then plans to abandon his car and hitchhike the rest of the way. Along the way
Chris decides to change his name to Alex. After that he decides to burn the
money he has left and just try to make it out to Alaska. Through his voyage he
meets people that greatly influence his survival and point of view. Some of the
people me meets, give him advice on how to survive in the wild while most give
him advice on how to stay sane. He gets into Alaska and takes shelter in an
abandon bus that is broken down in the middle of nowhere. He uses the skills he
picked up from people along the way but after some week even those are not
enough. Alex has lost weight and has gone into starvation mode. A few weeks’
later hunters discover his body in the bus.
In this
paper I will help you understand how the education system reflects upon
passion. From passion we can branch off into having success. The first way we
can define success is from feeling satisfied in a workplace. Another definition
of success is being able to achieve the goals you have set out for yourself.
After so many years in the education systems we (students) have figured out the
qualities that can make or break if a professor is good or bad. One deal
breaker many students face today is how engaging is the teacher and can they
connect to the student on a deeper basis. The second deal breaker is how good are the
reviews about the teachers. The last deal breaker is how empathetic is the
professor toward the student. The consequence of bad teachers is higher crime rates.
Another consequence of bad teachers is students will begin to passively learn
the stuff rather than really understand the deeper meaning of it. We must
combat these problems with simple but effective solutions. The first solution
is teachers should have make learning fun. Another solution is to have broad
material, which can help a student find his passion in what they want to learn.
One definition of success is feeling content with yourself in the
workplace. Most people as kids dream to be one thing but as they get older
those dreams get crushed, so they end up in a poor work environment and they
hate what they do. When waking up everyday the feeling of going to work
should be exciting. It is those people who thrive and feel successful when they
enjoy what they do for a living. It is not the paycheck that is reward but the
craft someone truly is passionate about.
Furthermore, when Chris is working his manager says,” Alex, I don't mean to be on
you about everything. You're doing a great job. I wanna keep you on and we all
wanna help you get to Alaska, but you've got to start wearing socks”.
Since this job for him was just for the time being so he can get to Alaska it
didn’t bother him too much. For those people who are continually harassed by
their bosses it is frustrating and it dehumanizes the person. In addition when
Chris sends out a post card, it reads, “My days were more exciting when I was
penniless and had to forage around for my next meal”(33). It is going through
the motions day in and day out that eats a person from the inside out. Success
comes from how you feel when you are at work rather than satisfying the social
acceptance of having a high paying job.
Another
definition for success is being able to achieve what goals you have set. There
is not greater satisfaction than finally achieve what you have worked so hard
for. The challenges you face in the road toward your goal are going to make
success feel that much better. It is failures that shape how magnified your
success will feel. Those who attain a certain goal without any hard work and
struggle behind don’t feel like they have won, rather you feel worse. When Alex
was eating with his parents, they said,” Since you graduated college, why don’t
we buy you a new car. No I’m fine with the one I have.” He was content
with the car he had even though it wasn’t the greatest car. Those don’t work
hard for what they want will never actually value the material good they have,
for them it’s something mom and dad gave me. It’s the struggle that changes how
you view your achievements; it will give you so much pride.
Some
potential deal breakers we face today is students not being able to connect
with teachers on a deeper basis. Every semester we walk into a new class
thinking if this teacher will actually care about how we do in this class, well
the sad reality is that most of them don’t care. When I mean caring, I don’t
mean being an easy teacher and not challenging the student. When Jeff Bliss was
talking to his teacher, he said, “You want kids to
come in your class, you want them to get excited for this? You gotta' come in
here and you gotta' make 'em excited.”. It angers me how most teachers are not
passionate about there job. If you cannot reach the student on a much deeper
level how can you accept them to download information into their brains like a
computer? As the years go on, the education system seems more of an assembly
line than an institution where students are eager to learn. Not all students start at the same spot, but
its not how far you are compared to the other student. Teachers must not pool
all students under one standard; they must individualize the education of the
student.
Another deal breaker we face today is what
kind of reviews the teacher has. The reviews are posted on this website, where
students go to read what kind of experience they had with a certain teacher.
Overall the reviews are consistent with the way the teacher teaches. It comes
into question that while the reviews keep piling up, maybe good or bad,
teachers don’t take into consideration that their way of teaching doesn’t suit
this generation of students. Teachers are privileged in a way that they think
just because they have been teachers for however many years, that if you keep
doing the same thing it will work. This is more ignorance rather than
privilege. Teachers should read these reviews and reflect upon what they can do
better or what is working for the community. The typical ignorant teacher
refuses to radically change teaching styles. It’s these graduate and doctorate
degrees that blow teachers ego out of proportion.
The last deal breaker is the teacher
empathetic toward the coursework and due dates. These days’ teachers assign
work as if nothing is going in our lives, being that we either get behind or
have to spend too much time. Having a more humanistic approach to education can
help the student teacher connection. When Jeff Bliss walks out, he says, “[I’m tired of] hearing this freakin’ lady go off on kids because they
don’t get this crap. If you can just get up and teach them instead of handing
them a freakin’ packet, yo”. I feel like teachers need to put themselves in the
shoes of the students they are teaching and see how they feel. Jeffs Bliss’s
teacher clearly didn’t have any empathy toward the way she was teaching her
students. I believe teachers distance themselves to not feel guilty about
students not being up to par. Furthermore, as Jeff tries to makes his point
across, the teachers says, “No. 'Cause you’re wasting my time”. It just shows
how much she cares about what a student has to say. Which personally really
angers me about how the teacher even got into the education field. Its people
like this who subliminally gives students the right to also not to care about
the material.
One
consequence of teachers not doing their job is having higher crime rates. In
neighborhoods where there are already a lot of crime a way out of the concrete
is through education. Students are coming to school with the notion of already
not being good enough for society but once they figure out schools not good for
them they revert to something they can do, which is being on the streets. Jeff
Duncan Andrade talks about homicides in Oakland and states, “You tell me where
a young person can live in my community where they don’t personally by
witnessing homicide”. Since students aren’t being attracted to any subject in
school why should they even go? This question is relevant to all schools no
matter what there geographic location is. Those who have found there passion
can totally immerse themselves in the context they like. It’s the boredom that
kills the student slowly. You can only
force yourself to do something for a short period of time. Since students
cannot find a passion they are introduced to a new life, which is the streets.
The streets is where the feel like they have knowledge. Furthermore, in Jeff
Duncan Andrade’s video he says, “[…] and the next day these young brothers
showed up to school, and what are we giving them in school. What’s the
conversation about? Test scores attendance and quantifiable”. The worst
influence is teachers that are not passionate themselves about teaching. They
reflect how much they care about the students, yet they want the students to
care about them. This reinforces the student’s point of view of not coming to
school. Students that go to school seek to be enlightened by the teacher, not
have them shove material in your brain.
Most
people throughout grades K-12 learn passively. Meaning that they only learn
some of the material that is taught but not to the full extent. This only
happens when you are not engaged completely with the material and it does not
seem to be attractive. It is the teacher’s responsibility to teach the course
in a way that makes the students have fun while learning. For example, most
teachers assign classwork by simply going through the book and writing down
definitions. This may be helpful in learning how to spell words but doesn’t
encourage critical thinking. Once you actually start to think deep about
something you are learning then passion is ignited. Without making the student
think in different ways, the student is just going through the motions. At the
end of it, it hurts the student more because they are loosing out on a
potential passion. Moreover in the passion project, someone says, “ you must
find your passion no matter what the barriers. Passion is what truly makes you
happy”. The greatest barrier to finding your passion is the experiences you
have. I believe most students are stuck in having to go through the same
routine day in and day out. Everything becomes rather depressing knowing the
tomorrow you will go to school for 8 hours and have a teachers talk to you. The
only thing that would break this routine is field trips. Wherever we went I
could apply the knowledge I learned and apply it to the real world, which meant
so much more to me than getting a good grade on the test.
The
first solution in solving these problems is to have fun while you learn. Doing
both of these things isn’t difficult; you just have to be creative in the way
you teach. Through fun we can achieve a students attention and make them more
alert. Making students engaged in the material taught makes the student
comprehend way more. In the book Creativity by Mihaly Csikszentimihalyi,
mihaly says, “ happiness roots out from fun, without fun we are stuck in a
black hole”. In having fun you get the attention of all the students. Branching
off from fun is happiness, without having fun while doing something it just
becomes a hassle. The education system has become a hassle to many students. I
found my passion from doing something that I loved, which was very fun. Most
students don’t experience an area of study that is fun. In doing creative
things to still teach the same material students are actually excited to come
to school everyday and break the routine. Waking up and wanting to come to
school is very rare thing for a student in middle school.
The last solution is that the
schools must introduce many types of career paths early on. Schools that
include this type of thing early on have a better chance of students finding their
passion. Having a class, which introduces you to every single career that makes
you sure that the one you are picking is the right one for you. Furthermore, in
the passion project, she says, “ Parents say follow your dreams but when you
turn 18 then your dreams aren’t realistic”. I feel that schools don’t influence
passion enough; they shut passion down with logic. Schools that base there
teaching on passion can turn students into people that have great influence on
the world. In addition, in the movie focusing the lasers, she says, “ when I
first came here I really didn’t know what to do, I wanted a degree in
something”. It angers me that after 12 years of schooling a person still
doesn’t know what they like to study in, and its not the students fault. The
teachers that taught the student for the last 12 years didn’t inspire the
student to pursue a field. The teachers that are passionate about their job
should spread the love they have for that subject onto other students.
Incorporating many different types of career fields into a classroom will make
the student aware of what exactly they want to do.
