Most students would agree that our education system has many flaws. Many school districts and universities have shocking priorities, which do not necessarily align with what one would expect from an institution which should have one goal in mind: the education and preparation of its students for their future. Teaching to test, charging students ridiculous and unattainable tuition, and the extreme emphasis on grades over qualitative understanding are among the priorities of administrative systems that many students are forced to adapt to. This environment of shortcuts and ill-placed emphasis has seemingly led to an unhealthy outlook in students: often times the most successful are those who know how to work the system, rather than those who put in the most work. We’re all guilty of it – I’m sure you’ll recognize the below phrases, commonly overheard on campuses, which prove that our school system needs a reality check.
1. It’s a great class: there’s a lot of reading, but you don’t have to do it.
Isn’t the point of reading to learn? We all miss reading assignments, in some classes more often than others, but this reflects badly on the teacher as well as the student. If a professor cannot make a class interesting enough that their students want to read the material, or cannot connect the reading material to the syllabus enough for students to feel that it is necessary, there may be some disconnect with what the professor may be intending and what is actually happening in the classroom.
2. The homework’s online so it’s an automatic 100.
This may be less suspect than others….but I guarantee you the professor didn’t assign that homework so you could find the answers to it on quizlet. The fact that so much pressure has been put on grades over learning that students feel compelled to take shortcuts is as much a fault of the system as it is the student.
3. You really don’t need to go to lecture, it’s all in the book.
If this was how college was supposed to be, everyone would just skip paying tuition and teach themselves from books. Countless teachers are only employed by their respective universities because of the research they do, and their teaching skills fall flat.
4. Everyone gets 40’s but it’s curved so you’ll do well in the class
True, there are some cases where there’s simply so much information that it’s difficult to recall all of it for the test, but a professor’s job is to teach their students the material, not present them with all of it, help them remember some of it, and adjust the results to make their own success rates look greater. If you think of the class average as a way of determining how well a professor has taught their students, low averages suggest bad teaching or at least an unreasonably inflated ego.
5. I love ___ but I’m majoring in ___ because it’s practical.
Higher education should promote learning the subjects each student is interested in, not learning how to settle for less in order to make money…
6.I don’t think I’ll ever pay off my student loans.
Most universities charge their students extremely inflated tuitions, put them into debt, and force them to study subject matters they are not interested in just to keep up with their student loans. If that isn’t propagating a culture of misled priorities, I don’t know what is.
7. It doesn’t matter if I do well – my parents have a jobs lined up for me anyway.
What is the point of an education if those who work the hardest are not being rewarded for it? And if students are only taking education their education seriously because they need a job, what does that tell us about their interest in actually learning the material?
No one can be expected to love every single class they take, but the frequency with which these and similar statements can be heard around campus shows a serious trend of terrible prioritization in the education system.
