Sublette School: Student Analysis

Point Loma Nazarene University (PLNU) has an established community living agreement, which directs all its members on how to carry themselves within the institution’s environment, as well as in the community. The institution’s mission is to offer higher education within a Christian community where character is modeled and transformed to express Christian faith. Students who join the institution are expected to maintain good conducts, which are guided by the Holy Spirit.

In the United States, the average student wakes up around 6-8 a.m. in order to attend school to meet the country’s requirements in education. Because students are waking up early everyday, they are extremely unmotivated to achieve their country’s expectations. Students are expected to excel in math, science, English, and social studies, and they expect them to use their knowledge in these four categories to help make the country the best educated country. In my opinion, this puts a lot of pressure on the students, and discourages them to actually learn the material they are taught. Rather than absorbing the material, the students are memorizing it in order to pass the next exam, and once they pass the exam with an A, they completely forget about the material. Because the students are disinterested, this makes the teachers jobs extremely boring. In the piece, “Against School” by John Taylor Gatto, Gatto utilizes ethos and logos to convince the public that the school system is flawed, and students deserve a better education that what they are receiving due to the fact that students are constantly bored in their ‘laboratories of experimentation’.

This schooling occurs close to three quarters of the course of the year, for twelve years and maybe even more. He calls this routine “deadly,” and the schools in which this is occurring are “forced confinement” and “virtual factories of childishness.” Children are told when they are going to do something, they receive a schedule made for them and must go to them at the assigned time, usually at the sound of the bell. The schools themselves “all too often resemble prisons.” This abrupt truth makes people realize that getting an education would be difficult to do, considering the teachers closely resemble the boring and controlled environment, the students must learn in. These factories where children are “shaped and fashioned” into a product of society’s “specifications.” This negative tone and views really allows the reader to see that school environments are not beneficial to everyone and can be quite negative.

School is an environment for those who want to learn, and receive an education. Schools are an equal place for everyone to learn, and try to understand one another. People of all color go there to learn how to read, write, and become a great person in society. I believe that school does have its flaws and caveats. In a book called Rereading America there are passages that my classmates and I have been reading that really opens up your mind, and views about school and education issues.

Consistency and dedication. Two qualities that saved me from a significant drop in my academics in my sophomore year. I was doing just fine at Cajon High School, my grades were not as good as I wanted them to be, but they were still acceptable. Overall I was very delighted to be there. However, this all changed when my parents told me that we were moving from San Bernardino to Hesperia, California and I would be transferring high schools.

Olson’s premises for the book are that engagement in learning is the key to a happy life and that school separates many individuals from that possibility. School practices that wound and make students hesitant learners have to be investigated so they can be changed. If we understand what school wounds are, why they occur and what can be done about it, we don’t need to harbor these wounds forever.

In my time here at Sublette Middle School, I have never perceived more about myself or my peers. I have gained massive amounts of intelligence, and stress, through my experience. But, I believe that all of the stress and anxiety was worth it, because it has contributed to my perspective on education. Education gives you a motive to get a good job, and not to rely on your parents or loved ones for support.

The average person spends 18,720 hours in “prison”- I mean school and that's not including the 9,360 hours spent doing homework. Therefore, that means a person spends almost 28,080 hours of their life dedicated to kindergarten through senior year. That gives a student a lot of time to learn and develop as a person, but do the students really learn? In the essay, “School is a prison-and damaging our kids”, author Peter Gray poorly argues that the school in our society has not helped, but hurt its students. In doing so Gray weakens his piece by using invalid premises, a lack of credibility, and informal writing structure .

Education and school. Some of you are now grimacing at the prospect of being trapped inside a classroom. Others are now thinking what I wouldn’t do to be able to go back and start all over again. Now don’t worry, I’m not going to convince you that you should love school. My job isn’t to change your perspective on school like a politician would do.

Towson University is committed to academic excellence by providing an environment that fosters appreciation for diversity and where creativity and critical thinking are honed for success. These attributes are fundamental to who I am and I believe that my communication and leadership skills will allow me to grow and contribute to the overall experience at Towson University. To support this view I am sharing a story of experiences underpinning important aspects of me that align with the values of Towson University.

Some people believe education enslaves us and other people believe education liberates us. The education that students receive is both boring and incorrect; in the Oxford dictionary it defined education, “a process of receiving or giving systematic instruction, especially at a school or university”. I strongly believe education enslaves us. Schools don’t educate, they only teach people to follow orders. Sherman Alexie tackles his own process of education, one that includes a voracious hunger for the written word. His experience with education was one of autonomy, and his relationship to learning led him to future success. On the other hand, John Taylor Gatto also suggests for a more unrestricted learning experience, a complete opposite from the regimented factory-like settings of compulsory mass education. Arguing against the harm that public school creates, Gatto suggests promoting learning instead of “schooling”.

When children dread going to school, do you ever question why the child has already lost their eagerness for learning? In Chicago, Illinois, and numerous other places in the US, you can come across kids walking with their heads down and hands behind their backs in a single file line as if they are inmates. You’ll also discover that the cafeteria is dead silent to avoid the “overwhelming noise” of children enjoying their food and friends. With all of this being said, these schools sound more like boot camps than a place of learning. In the article, “Why some schools feel like prisons?” the writer, Samina Hadi-Tabassum, begins with a brilliant introduction, provides outstanding personal stories, and detailed examples to support their claim. The

Because they expect opportunities and rewards to come out of school, some students perceive school as a wonderful place to be. To illustrate, Annie Dillard, in her essay, “Seeing,” explains how expectations affect how a person sees, “But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days” (Dillard 17). Dillard means that if an individual expects the penny to contribute to their attitude or life, then it will. But, if an individual expects the penny to be worthless, then it

With all those students in there you would think there would be at least one teacher per class. This is the reason many kids are doing dangerous activities such as stealing and joining gangs because there's no teacher to keep them occupied otherwise. they find any reason they can do to keep themselves busy. Is this the direction our nation is going towards, a nation full of ignorance and violence? The sad truth is that in many parts yes, it has been taken over by savagery.’There are not enough teachers who are both qualified and willing to teach.”(Heather Voke)

Just think, on average, how many times a week does one get overly stressed, now a month, how about a whole year; now for the average student, memorializing and repeating the same information the same way for seventeen years. How are we expected to advance from that? The term “insane” is defined as repeating the same actions expecting different results. This is what we are being brainwashed into doing. This challenge to be average but excel and surpass others is an unrealistic goal that has been preset for us. Achieving this goal is unattainable and when being creative or changing the way one is expected to act, we are punished, creating stress and self-doubt. More then 1,000 students commit suicide each year. A classmate from my graduating class just hung himself from a tree in his backyard this past summer due to college loans and this idea of perfection in society