Today 's Society Is Not More Then Average

The United State’s education system pay noticeably more attention to appear intelligent rather than actually being intelligent. As a scholar in the United States, I felt compelled to rely heavily on my ability to memorize to achieve success in the future rather than taking the time and effort to engage in deeper learning.

Do you think your school system prepared you enough for the workforce you want to pursue. Their is a correlation between an area's income to education. Those in the working class have different attitudes of teaching children compared to the elite class. There are four types of schools based on income, working, middle, upper, and elite class. The attitudes these classes give toward knowledge and work teaching their students for the working class is teach information because it is required, middle-class is to learn how to get right answer and not understand why it's correct, upper class teaches material and children know why they are learning, and the elite class prepares students to be quality hard workers who stand by their work.

Whether we realize it or not, test scores play a vital role in many people’s self esteem. A person who frequently scores high will be confident that they are very intelligent and will expect others to see them that way. Asimov attested to this when he stated, “All my life I’ve been registering scores like that, so that I have the complacent feeling that I’m highly intelligent, and I expect other people to think that too.” (Asimov, 536). On the other hand, those who score low on tests often write themselves off to be unintelligent. Emphasis on the importance of the ACT or SAT test scores can lead an adolescent to conclude that he or she is not capable of succeeding in college and lead them to not pursue higher education. The tragedy is that we may pass on opportunities because we have labelled ourselves unintelligent based on a test score which is not a true refelection of our

Society’s view on intelligence is becoming watered down from the truth. In Rose’s article, “Blue Collar Brilliance” Rose discusses societies outlook on intelligence. Rose explains how society thinks blue collared jobs don’t involve any intelligence, and anyone can do a blue collared job. He explains how society thinks that since you don’t have to have a high education to perform well in blue collared jobs, it takes little to no intelligence. Rose says, “We reinforce this notion by defining intelligence solely on grades in school and numbers on IQ test” (Rose 279). Rose explains that even though most blue collared jobs don’t require a college degree, they still demand many forms of intelligence. Rose also explains how his brother dropped out of school in the ninth grade but eventually became a successful employee of the company General Motors. In Graff’s article, “Hidden Intellectualism” he explains how there are many students in today’s world who have an outstanding amount of “street smarts” but are failing school. He explains

Additionally, Albert Einstein once said, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” There are different forms of intelligence that go beyond what our school system measures. Students are not a unit to be measured, and students cannot be assigned a numerical value to identify their intelligence. Students are diverse—they learn at different speeds, and they learn in different ways. Focusing solely on test scores is hurting our students and deviating away from building our society on success and excellence. Critics are slowly realizing the problems associated with standardized tests—they create anxiety, they are extremely biased, and they do not measure the ability to think deeply.

I have always had Final Grades being above a B! In fifth grade, I was apart of a handful in having straight A+’s in my whole school! In sixth grade, I was apart of a test to participate in accelerated classes! Today, I am in Algebra I and in seventh grade; the lowest grade I had in this class was a B+, even above some eighth graders. During sixth and fifth grade, I got involved in Math club at Franklin Woods Intermediate, I competed against other kids in other schools, doing eighth and even high school math! I have participated in accelerated Language Arts and Math since fifth grade; I have continued to grow since then! I pride myself in being in advanced classes, many people ask how I got to be really “smart,” I say, “ I listen, speak at a low amount and come to school; I pay attention and ask questions.” Overall, I think that the choices I made, got me here; I really like a quote from Robert Kiyosaki, that was mentioned in one of the books he

When comes to education in America, far to offer our society labels people as un- educated because the inability to pass standardized tests. In reality, we shouldn’t base a person's ability to determine if they're educated because that’s far from the truth. I believe that standardized test isn’t the only way to determine every student’s education knowledge. For example, high scores standardized test doesn’t signify that you are talented thinking or a student. The goal of education is more education, but the majority of people like this don’t get the opportunity like others. Just think they could have been people who made good grades and excelled in school, but didn’t get a full ride scholarship to a certain college. There are people who didn’t go to college, but are successful today. It doesn’t happen, for the majority of us, but we can’t just single out those people who have originated up with creativity, intelligence with ideas or investment with no college background.

William Deresiewicz does an on key job at analyzing and capturing the typical experience of today's over achieving student population. We are scared. The analogy of the calm on the surface “Stanford duck” reaches far past the campus limits of Stanford and into college campuses all around America. An example of this was a young Nicholas Barne of The University of Chicago. Alone in his dorm room Nicholas was paddling away, day in and day out, to reach his constantly shifting goals. Too afraid to derail from the status quo set at an early age by his parents and peers, and too afraid to decisively follow any inkling of passion that would put an end to the versatility of his “stem cell” ambitious college student state, Nicholas just kept paddling into the center of a dark lake, ever expanding around him in all directions. The only thing to stopp Nicholas’ paddling would be his untimely death on UChicago's

In the excerpt “I Just Wanna Be Average” written by Mike Rose, Rose describes his life in vocational education, which are lower division classes for students. Rose was placed in vocational educational classes accidentally when they confused his placement test with someone else's. Moreover, his teachers, Mr.Montez, Mr. Mitropetros, were no help to in vocational education. The teachers had no interest in assisting with the students and utilized physical violence towards them. Rose’s fellow classmates were all different and unique in their own way, however, had on quality in common- that they had no motivation towards learning and receiving an education. One of his classmate named Ken Harvey stated: “I just wanna be average.”(Rose 127) At first

Why should we improve if we can just be average ? That’s how Mike Rose felt in school everyday as a kid in story called "I just want to be average".Ken Harvey was placed in vocational classes which the teachers made him feel as if he shouldn’t even improve but to lower your intelligence. None of his teachers gave him that inspiration to go even further than the average student. Rose goes of explaining how he was in environment that really didn't keep that flame lit inside of him to want to keep learning. All he wanted to do was to just get by like any other regular person going into class copying and just being straight up simple minded.

Constant overcrowding of a majority of public institutions has played a major role in the lack of passionate administrators as well as within the minds of many impressionable young individuals attending. A formal education has wrongly been conceptualized as being the only sure pathway to a successful future and an overall happy life. John Taylor Gatto refers to our upcoming generation as “sitting ducks for another great invention of the modern era – marketing “ because they are easily influenced by persuasive or often times false advertising. (Gatto,4) Many individuals lack maturity and responsibility because it has now become a concept of the past due to the increasingly low expectations from both teacher and

I somehow believed that by working hard, maintaining good grades, and applying myself, I would develop an increased level of competence. I was shocked to realize that the level of competence I strove for wasn’t presenting itself to me no matter how many classes I took.

Note that these classifications (“better”, “average” and “weakest”) were all defined solely by the teacher according to her impressionistic perception, with nothing whatsoever like a placement test. This categorization was also found to be based on the social classes of the students, whereby the “better” ones belong to a higher social class and the “weakest” one from lower social classes (Covington, 1992, p.140). Other researchers have also been carried out since then and the expectancy effect seems to thrive in all context of social life be it with university scholar at higher educational institutions or working adults at manufacturing company. This phenomenon has also been later coined as the “Pygmalion phenomenon” (Rhem, 1999).

Getting an education from a school for some reason is considered the ‘key’ to success. The key to our life goals and dream jobs, but why? We are letting a letter grade determine if we are smart or unintelligent regardless of any other acquired talent. Ralph Emerson states in “The Education” text, “the power of performance is worth more than knowledge.” This quote is extremely powerful because it can relate to a child. From day one, children are taught what to think and what they ‘need’ to learn. They are being brainwashed by these schools that should be called factories. Schools kill any sense of creativity and reasoning because kids and teenagers are so overpowered with a fear of failing and letting a letter grade decide what kind of student they are. Failing throws a label on our forehead and lowers self confidence all because test scores are so highly looked upon and all that people care about. Sooner or later, we are going to all be considered robots if we continue sitting on the conveyor belt in a factory. This path is leading us in an opposite way of

Graff says that putting students in classes in the contemporary system is wasting and limiting students’ potential and creativity (198). Complaining that intellects do not meet the success standard set by schools, Graff proves that schools limit the intellect students can achieve in their academic career (198-199).