I heard the excited chatter of voices all around me. I was waiting for my oldest daughter and our neighbor’s girl as well to take them home. This is my routine now, I take a late lunch to get them home. It was a hot day and inside my car was hot. I was waiting patiently while watching the clock.
Several students passed me, all speaking at the same time, each with something more important than the other to talk about. Then I overheard one conversation which made me listen more intently. A young girl was with her group of friends, they were walking hurriedly, and you know kids, always in a hurry. One of them said quite loudly "I got an 80 on my test, I couldn't believe it; and I copied from everyone.....I was like yo...."
This comment was greeted with excited laughter and more chattering. I don't know which was worse, the fact that everyone around her laughed in agreement because they're so used to that and it's the norm, or that no one admonish her. I shook my head saying to myself, there goes our future generation. We're in big trouble if this is how they are going to be.
When will she learn to do things for herself, even if she doesn't get it right? When will she learn that her future depends on her being able to think on her own? That it's very important for her to understand what's actually being taught to her? That if she has a problem to go to the teacher, or her parent? That's if the parent is even there for her. But that's too generalized for me to think that her mom or dad isn't there for her, too easy to think this way.
I hope that one day she will grasp that cheating is not the way to learn. I hope that one day she will be proud of the work that she has done on her own, to enjoy the experience of that great feeling that comes when she does.
Is it her fault though? I don't know if I can blame her. What with the way the school system is, there's more focus on getting the numbers up (ratings) rather than making sure that each and every child do learn what they are being taught. That it's not just repetitive learning techniques to get students to recite and in so doing they're able to ace that test.
It sometimes makes me wonder what is more important, the fact that the school receives an A or B rating from the amount of students who pass the standardized tests or that little Johnny actually knows how to read and is able to write a sentence? There are so many students in our school system that falls through the cracks and never get pulled out. They will go through their lives sleepwalking, like robots doing as they're told, never questioning, and never thinking for themselves. Because "this is the way my teacher says it has to be done" no other way.
Perhaps I'm being too harsh on our education system. It's such a quagmire that I don’t know what the answer is, and unfortunately it seems, neither do our leaders who are in charge of the education system. Too many times it’s a matter of the blame game.
But I do know one thing, some of these boys and girls out there are in need of help and will be in too deep and too far gone by the time they graduate.
The time to focus on them is now.