Sarah Menor (FGCU):Love/Hate Realtionship With School

I am future teacher. So many issues surrounding education have kept me very interested but what I do not understand is why so many children dread go to school? I have always loved school but I seem to be an exception. When children are young they ask everything about everything always wanting to know more about the world they live in but when they reach school age an interesting change occurs, they begin to not ask so many question and they begin to take the back seating in the learning process. I believe this is our American school system is failing our future generations. They stifle creative thought and questioning. The system seems to get “rushed” like so many other facets of our life; our nation is truly becoming a fast food nation even in our school systems.  They seem to rush kids to make it to certain “benchmarks” which have to be done on the schools pace…. i.e. one school year, before students can move on to the next grade level. By having the pressure on teachers to get their students to a certain place in a curriculum before a certain date they leave no time for teachers to stop and give the students the attention they truly need to be good facilitators of learning. This is all compounded by the threat of not receiving money to run their schools and pay their teachers. hummm……..  The world revolves around money even our schools?!?!?!?!  By letting this occur we basically put the brakes on learning.

                I propose that get schools get rid of the grade system all together.  Instead they use a benchmark system that allows students to move from level to level when they are ready. For example if one student needs to stay at level one for two years while another student may finish all the benchmarks in six months and move on to the next level. This would keep students involved and hopefully interested!

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