At the end of every lecture, the professor asks the class, “Any questions?” to which the students respond with cricket chirps. “OK,” he says, as everyone packs up their things, “See you all next class.”
At any school across the country, teachers and administrators will say that “creativity blooms here,” and “students are free to explore and learn.” However, the way that our typical classroom is designed contradicts those statements.
From kindergarten onwards, we have been told to sit down, shut up, and listen to the teacher. We were told to face forward and keep our legs under the desks. We were to ask permission to use the restroom or to get up from our seats. To even speak in class, we had to raise our hands and wait to be called on, which the teacher may sometimes not do. Under these circumstances, I will make the bold claim that school in the United States destroys creativity and turns its students into robots.
When I was in primary and middle school, I was the kid that sat perfectly still, turned all my homework in on time, earned superb grades, and rarely missed a day of school. I was the teacher-pleasing type. Contrary to students like me, there were always two or three kids in every class that the teacher reprimanded several times a day, whether it was for talking amongst his classmates, speaking out of turn, or not paying attention. As someone who enjoyed school, I always wondered why they didn’t do so as much as I did.
When I reached the seventh grade I made friends with one of those kids. He had a special-ed teacher accompany him throughout the school day to keep him on task. He sat in front of me in history class and always spun around in his seat to talk to me. He then was promptly guided back around by his assistant. This happened about five times during the entire class period. I also remember one time seeing him stare out the window we sat next to at a falcon soaring over the school; when his assistant tried to get him to pay attention, he said, “No way, this is so much more interesting.”
As I got to know him more, I discovered how intelligent he was. His brilliance may not have shined its brightest through his grades, but he loved learning and he loved science. What he didn’t love was being made to sit still for seven hours a day. Seventh-grade me still didn’t exactly understand how someone could dislike school, but my friend certainly shaped my eventual realization.
When I got to high school, my view of school had changed. The way we were shuffled around and policed by the administration made me feel like a pig being prepared for slaughter. We weren’t students, we were robots; we spent every minute of every school day being yelled at by an administrator to stop lingering in the hallways and to come to school on time. On top of being required to have a pass to travel to the restroom, said restroom was most likely locked, on account of several instances of students smoking in them. When we were in our lunch period, we weren’t allowed to leave the cafeteria under any circumstances. And if we came to school late, we had to sit in the main office until the next bell rang, missing key classes entirely.
With preparation for standardized tests, shunting us around like sheep, and unnecessary micromanaging of our free time, it became clear to me that my education meant nothing to the school’s administration. They just wanted to get me out with a diploma as fast as they could. But at what cost?
Now that I’m in college, where my education is actually up to me, I’ve come to find that I can’t shake how grade school has conditioned me to take to my education. I don’t ask questions in class because I simply don’t know what I don’t know. I don’t think outside the box anymore, because I was taught to shut up and listen. I only take the info I’m given and don’t question it. I’m a self-aware robot and I don’t like it.
I envy kids like my friend in seventh grade. He still had his humanity, his child-like wonder. It was obvious that school wasn’t exactly his thing, and I’ve come to realize that that’s more than OK. I wish I was like him.
When I become a high school teacher, myself, I know fully well that I’ll be putting myself through an underpaid and overworked job. If it weren’t for my love of teaching, I wouldn’t even consider it. But I will stress to my kids that they’re all smart, no matter how they are made to feel by the administration. I will make sure they understand that not being good at math doesn’t imply not being good at anything else. I will help create beautiful, intelligent, constructive thinkers. I will help them discover that they are people, not mere robots. And most of all, I will never, ever discourage them.
