Mock on education

Zambrano, Roxana
Ms. Autumn Beechler
British Literature: Honors
4 October 2010
Zombie School
Education is vital. It provides global knowledge and helps people establish opinions and develop diverse points of view in life. Education is presumably best imparted in school. However, learning should not be about being surrounded by walls and boundaries; learning should be an active process inwhich every individual has a voice. The paradox of education is that it expects a student to learn about the world by shunning the natural world. People believe that school is the only place to learn. That learning begins just after the first bell rings and stops after graduation. There is more to that! Learning is for the living, being wrong is being right, learning is more than just a perfectscore. The current educational system misdirects today's youth.
Learning and living should go together. At school, students are taught that there is no similarity between these two. Mrs. Melissa Domingo says, “Children are taught that there is a difference between learning and living. Teachers actually say that learning is for the school building, and living is done outside” (Domingo 89). Learningand living are seen as a separate family, there is no correlation between the two. When people are toddlers they learn to walk at home. When people are at school, they also learn to write. Seventy five percent of the time teachers believe students are not alive when they are learning. A hundred percent of that time, they are wrong (Saade 32). Students learn when they are alive, but teachers thinkthat when they get to school they are dead, and as they exit it, they become alive again. Zero percent of the time that happens (Saade 24). School is bad since teachers, who supposedly are at school to teach, do not know the difference between being alive, and being dead.
When people go to school they are breathing, but teachers see them as dead, isn’t that befuddling? What is even moreconfusing is that teachers expect students to know the right answers. Teachers want only right answers (Nunez 12). Being confused is a crime. Therefore, students are forced to develop ways to cheat or bluff the teacher into thinking they know something that they really don’t. Consequently, the student learns to lie in a place were values and morals are supposed to be encouraged. Schools today are teachingthe opposite of what they are supposed to be teaching. So-called “Places of learning” have become a place where being a good human isn't considered priority and where the survival of the fittest is the norm.
On the other hand, students also need to learn to embrace the self. They are not just like every other student; there exists unique characteristics in every individual student. In otherwords, school programs students to become robots. “We don’t need no thought control”, sings the band Pink Floyd, “All in all it's just another brick in the wall” (Floyd). If all students were the same, individuality wouldn’t exist. How can schools that show morals and values transform their students into selfless, cheating robots? Schools are not letting students think for themselves, they are notletting them develop their own thoughts.
How can people grow if they are robots? To grow is to learn. Eighty three percent of the time, the real reason students learn in school is to get good grades (Saade 65). Students want to get good grades because they want to get into a good college. They want to enter a good college since they think they will be more likely to lead a happy, successful andfulfilling life (Mr. Know it All 97). This shows that in the end what counts is not whether the student has learned the material and will apply it to enrich his life, but that higher numbers would get the students a better life.
As students get older, and having higher grades gets more important, the student itself becomes a number. Not a number as in a grade, but a number that distinguishes...