Essay 4

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.