Lately, I have been seeing a lot of cartoons and drawings that symbolize how schools take away the bright minds of children and replace them with harsh structure. This is damaging and can take away a lot of a child's potential. Here are a few images that represent this concept:

The education system needs to embrace what children bring to the classroom, including creativity. Through structured exams, like the SAT, ACT, Keystone, and others, children focus more on memorizing answers than learning new material. Now that I am at Penn State Altoona, I know how to learn new material rather than memorize answers. Embracing and using new knowledge is a skill children must learn throughout their educational careers. Without this skill, children cannot survive the real world, which is not as structured as an exam. When I am an educator, I plan to not teach through exams, but rather through other methods, such as essays, discussions, and projects. Through these ways of teaching, students will learn to embrace the knowledge they know, rather than to memorize it all for a pointless exam.