How many time have you sat in a classroom and wondered to yourself “how this will ever be applicable to my life?” So often, throughout the lives of students we are forced into classes we probably won’t even remember the day after we write that final exam or submit that final assignment. To what extent is this information useful? Should I be able to recite the quadratic formula or  tell you that the mitochondria is the power house of a cell. If these things aren’t going to be useful in my life what is the point of drilling them into my head or telling me I can’t pass high school if I can’t perform well on a standardized test.

                Just to be clear, I am not against education. In fact, I am a university student planning on working within the education system. I am here to do what university has taught me. Which is to be critical of every “fact” that I encounter.

                If you stop to really think about education, who creates it?? Yup, the government. The very people that don’t play a prominent or large visible role in a school, get to make all the decisions for every child in Ontario.

               These are the people that determine funding based on scores of standardized tests and the names associated with schools. The government is funding private schools to help the elite, when lower income schools can barely afford to have equipment for children to play with because that money is desperately need for teaching supplies. These people aren’t the one’s sitting in the classroom as a nine-year-old has a mental breakdown and has to leave the room because he can’t comprehend what is being asked on an EQAO test.  How can they be the ones to make the decisions without these personal experiences?

The very people that have one of the largest roles to play in a child’s life can also have the largest role in breaking a child. For what?? Just so standards make us competitive with other countries around the world.  At what point do we step back and look at children’s wellbeing and mental health around certain aspects of our education system.

School is just a way for governments to control children to serve for them and their agendas. If you look at education around the world, certain countries make it almost impossible to get a higher education. Why is that you ask?? Well… the second higher education becomes a standard, people will start to question the way they rule and can change the government’s actions.

In Canada, many people couldn’t begin to accept the idea that a child couldn’t attend school. This is all because of our shaped ideas surrounding education. However, in poorer parts of the world education isn’t mandatory and doesn’t have an overall large impact on the population. On average, 66% of people without an education are living on the streets, yet 55% of people with a full education are also living in poverty. So, is it worth it??

This is all connected to the governments idea of education, and their plans for the people that receive this education. Without even knowing you, the government has a generalized plan based on how successful they believe you are going to be. So essentially, they decide your worth based on a bunch of statistics.

            Education is based on and shaped to the ideas of that specific culture in hopes of creating better people and pushing children into their ideal direction. For example, think back to past experiences within schools. If budgets get cut, what was the first thing to go?? Art departments- whether it was music, dramatic arts or visual arts. This isn’t because they are useless, but because of the value that the government puts on these programs compared to others such as science and math. These values are perpetuated and are heavily followed in society. When people deviate from this norm, and follow a career in something like music, they are looked down upon (unless they become a success).

Despite all this, there is a value in education. I just believe that certain things do not work within our current society and we need to be critical consumers around the information that is being fed to our children and ourselves.