As I look back at what went down during my education…wow, so much hoop jumping just to get to the next level…not because it made sense, but because that’s just how the system worked.
We worked so hard to pass the CIM/CAM, preparing work samples and had so much pressure to pass. So much time was used to prepare for the CIM – ironically, regardless of if you passed or did not pass the CIM, you graduated…so ultimately it did not matter whether we passed or not – makes sense, right…?
What about the COG test, the IOWAs, district work samples? Do those mean anything? Are they accurate representations of one’s intelligence? Not all people learn the same, and not all people’s strengths are in reading, math or science, so why are we pigeonholing kids into three categories? Why don’t we have state testing in soccer? Or web code? Or cello? Or welding? It’s just as relevant than reading, writing and math, is it not?
I was always the kid who got #16 and #21 – consistently produces high quality work and student’s classroom behavior was commendable (one of my personal favorites…what the HECK does that mean, anyway??) So, after years of #16s and #21s, I finally got a #1 and #2 – the dreaded comments – “classwork was no completed and/or turned in” and “homework was not completed and/or turned in” – so this being the case – right next to these traumatizing comments, I receieved an A and E – can’t get a higher grade than that – if that’s the case, who cares that the work wasn’t completed? obviously it wasn’t important enough to affect my grades…
Maybe it’s good thing? It opened my eyes to the reality that so much of what is out there is not because it make sense, but because it’s what has been accepted.
Like anything else – it’s far easier to criticize than to make change – so perhaps this will be a challenge to myself – what can I do to influence a system I consider to be severely flawed?
Surprisingly, there are many things you can do to create change. I’ve realized over the past half-year that this is more possible to achieve than ever.
For instance: start your own coworking group if you feel like your current work environment isn’t the ideal. A friend and I did. Did it succeed? Not really, but it inspired a great deal of meetups mushrooming along the same vein. In this sense, you can almost say that the group is dead, but the idea lives on. In fact, we stop calling it ‘coworking’ anymore, which means that the notion has been internalized.
I’m tempted to think that reality is only what we collectively accept—but would rather say that it is, in fact, possible to change it by starting small, collect likeminded group of people to do it, have an idea (a ‘meme’ may be more apt), then let it percolate.
Building communities is a topic that I’m particularly interested in. We should talk about this sometime if you ever come to Portland!
Great read!
I sense a bit of Ken Robinson in your post. The change can start by making the students from a young age aware of different types of intelligence. Everyone is not going to excel in math or science, thus in order to preserve the self-esteem of the youth we must celebrate their strengths (whatever they may be).