The Pitfalls of The American Education System

Trying to figure out what you are passionate about in today’s age isn’t easy. In fact, the odds are stacked against you from the start nowadays. When looking at something which is very close to me, Art, we can really see how we are set up poorly from an academic perspective. In a post 2001, No Child Left Behind Act world, American education is regimented in a way that is detrimental to creativity in a gross and debilitating manner. To remind everyone, the No Child Left Behind Act, “authorizes several federal education programs that are administered by the states — -states are required to test students in reading and math in grades 3–8 and once in high school. All students are expected to meet or exceed state standards in reading and math by 2014.” For most people who didn’t grow up with this, it means ensuring the “children of the United States don’t fall behind the rest of the world”- probably some government official running for an office position vacated decades ago. That’s the problem though, it’s measuring intelligence on a scorable basis. For me and many other people surrounding me it meant 99% of our education was designed to meet the standards of federally designed test, on a yearly basis, and nobody learned a fucking thing. The problem with this system is layed out beautifully by Kenneth Steinbach. Steinbach commentates about this detriment during his considerations of education on the creativity of an artist:

“In short, it moved further toward a problem-solving way of thinking. Art in these environments is typically taught in classes that define it within educational blocks that have specified learning objectives. Krista Anderson, a university art student, described a typical assignment from her third grade art class in which students were instructed to reproduce the sunflowers in a Van Gogh painting, and evaluated on their ability to do so. The exercise included art history, materials, and techniques that were likely shaped in response to mandated educational requirements that could be objectively assessed. What seemed to be missing was any opportunity for the young artist to take the image apart, or add things to it, or invent a new palette for the project, or simply paint her own flowers (and most likely fail a few times along the way). This packaging of a learning block is not inherently detrimental to the teaching of art, and in fact can be very useful for the teaching of specific technical and cognitive skills. But as Krista explained, “That project was pretty typical of all my art education.” A steady stream of similar experiences reinforces problem-solving as the principal method by which one approaches his or her studio work: baggage that the artist has to contend with as they began to work independently. The solutions generated for such educational requirements also tend to separate one’s work into a series of distinct and disconnected episodes, further challenging continuity between classes or the opportunity for the artist to develop a critical mass of ideas within their own production. The increased structure of the classroom also limits the potential for the kind of individualized teacher/student interactions that can counteract some of these forces — -Even for artists who understand this influence, what has been internalized in the course of twelve years of education is not easily discarded simply because one is aware of it. Such habits run deep. Art students in K-12 education after 2001 have been taught that meeting externally defined goals, rather than developing a sustained and self-directed process, is most important. Not only have students learned how to work within this system, they have also learned how to “game” it, focusing tightly on those sets of activities that bring the most reward for the least amount of work; an effect that standardized assessment allows to a greater degree.” (Steinbach, p. 13–14)

Listening to my own Creative Writing professor Daniel Dissinger, I hear a similar sentiment almost every week. Daniel sees this in the body of students he teaches at The University of Southern California, as well as in his travels. A comment I remember him saying on the first day of class was, “I know you guys are all really good at regurgitating information at this point, that’s all you’ve been doing for most of your education, now I want to hear what YOU actually have to say!” This stuck with me, because at the time I realized I had been struggling to find my own artistic vision. Sure I had written plenty for school over the years and I knew how to write well, but I didn’t know how to articulate my own thoughts, because I had never had to literally grasp them before. I’ll be honest, it shocked me. Ultimately I realized though, I’ve been looking at everything the wrong way from the start, and the society and the education system don’t help. In 2021 the worst thing you can be is a failure. Failure is no longer just a literal thing though, it has become a convoluted blanket of fear over us. According to Mick Herron “Its definition expanded in the twentieth century to cover not only those deadbeats who can’t settle their debts, but also those whose lives are lived in “routine obscurity”(Herron, A look Aimed Very Far Away), for failure can now mean lack of fame, and its targets include the plodding scrapers-by”. I reiterate this sentiment in my article “What the F*** is My Potential” when I state:

“In today’s age it’s almost impossible to live in the United States without being constantly exposed to this damaging mentality. We hear it in the heart of our music now; “the grind never stops,” “get rich or die trying,” “everyday I’m hustling,” “I don’t speak broke”, and so many other modern colloquialisms. Many of us have grown up listening to our parent’s say, “You should be getting A’s in your classes/you are smarter than that”, or “You weren’t playing as well as you should have today, we’ll run extra drills this weekend to fix that for next week”. I even remember when I was learning how to type in school, the program we were using forced you to reach a certain word per minute before you could progress. This wasn’t terrible, but in combination with the delete key being disabled, you had to type every sentence perfectly and within the WPM requirement, putting undue stress on the student. This idea, that we must be the best at all times so we can be even better tomorrow, can fuel the ego when it works, and push people to do extraordinary things, but when it doesn’t work it can destroy us. We cannot be our best 24/7, it’s just not possible, it’s perfectionism at its worst.”

This idea that to be average means you have failed, in combination with the mindset that we must succeed at all times, means even the smallest failure makes you just that more average. In today’s society, to be average almost seems like a fate worse than death for many. From birth it seems we are bred to chase a degree or money, and we are subconsciously told these are our measures of self concept, without them we don’t exist. So many friends of mine take Adderall and pull all-nighters to do assignments at the last minute, just because they have so much going on they can’t get to it until the final hours near a deadline. Everyone is caffeine addicted, drawn out, exhausted, and by the time graduation comes we have no idea if the thing we set out to do is something we even wanted. We were so panicked just to get that diploma, regardless of what it was for, because if we didn’t get it, we were just one step closer to being average. The most fucked up thing is we feel like we don’t have a choice, and we can’t even slow down to think if something we decided when we were 16 still is relevant to us as adults in the real world:

“For a student trying to complete a college degree, who is likely working outside school and taking a heavy load of classes, the idea of investing money and labor in developing such speculative ventures may seem not only inefficient but unrealistic. The increased costs of higher education over the last two decades have increased time and financial pressures that have the potential for real and significant negative impact on his or her education. As a result of these costs, students now take a higher number of credits in a semester and fewer classes that are not required for their degree. While social and electronic media often gets the larger share of blame for consuming one’s spare time, the requirements of the increased homework of a large number of simultaneous classes and increased work hours to meet higher tuition payments likely have far more impact.” (Steinbach, p. 15)

As a collective we need to understand the detrimental effects our own drive for success has on us. We have to step back and really analyze what the hell is wrong with everything, to make us feel the need to burn ourselves at both ends of the candle. It’s a pervasive issue that is not entirely layed out to everyone. I think it’s time we talked about education. Not because it’s a problem that we see, but because it’s time that we fix it. The first step to fixing a problem is to acknowledge that there is one in the first place. It’s an issue that surpasses the realm of just education, but learning starts in the classroom, so lets begin there.