Speech on Education - Assignment 16 - Tobias Cox

       It is often pointed out by the intellectuals of our day and age that we really need to reform the education system. When you look at the state of our schools in this country, it doesn't take an intellectual to realize that there is a problem. Some blame the teachers, some blame constant testing; some even blame the attempts to make education standardized through common core. None of these are the root of the problem though. Some teachers aren't great, but many dedicate their lives to the education of kids. Some schools put too much stock into tests, it’s true, to the point that schools teach to the test, but many teachers resist this and persist in giving kids a well rounded education. Some education reform efforts in Common Core seem to dumb-down kids, but most of the pillars of that legislation are intended to give kids the essential knowledge they need  - the bare minimum. The real problem in this country, though? We have completely discounted the honor, blessing, and importance of the human child.

     Being one of six, I am well aware of the concept of having a child in the house. It isn't for everyone. It is stressful and it is expensive. It is physically, mentally, emotionally, and financially taxing. Many times, though, throughout my childhood, my parents were stopped by people who were often complete strangers, but sometimes even family and friends, that felt the need to chastise my parents for having as many kids as they did. THIS is the reason for the education problem in this country. The "occupation" (and it is, most definitely, a job, and a hard one at that) of having many kids, or raising them yourself, has been demeaned as something only the stupid, only the people without career potential, only the old fashioned conservatives do. Imagine what it is like to be a child and to have your parents asked what sort of stupidity possessed them to waste their lives raising you? This is why we have a failure of education in this country, because we have a culture against children.

      People wonder why education is treated like such a machine, why it is so mechanized and impersonal, after all, Ted Robinson, education expert, noted in his Ted Talk "Do Schools Kill Creativity" that education is only important to the extent that it prepares children for work in the industrial world. To find the answer, you have to look deeper than education. If you believe the economic culture of consumerism is to blame, you are partly correct, but it is necessary to look even further than that. Think about a perfect family for a moment. Parents, out of college and into a career, have one or two children, put them through school, and send them off to college, retiring at the age of 60 after completing the tradition that has become raising children in the American middle class. How can we expect to cultivate individuality, creativity, and diversity in education, when our concept of what the "right" and "wrong" family is so black and white? "Only two kids," says the society. "Don't give up your career," says the society. Children are not valued in this country, and are looked upon too often as dream-crushers, bad decisions, accidents, and inconveniences. Naturally, the education system is going to be modeled after this "grow em' up, ship em' out, pronto" attitude that prevails throughout our communities.

    So when you sit back and try to pinpoint the problems with education in this country, don't think for a minute it’s the teachers that toil day and night though the school years to raise your dreaded children. Look to the nation. Look to the industry standards, the consumerist centered society we have created. Look at how we have made the child less important than the career, the nice house, the sports car, the pastimes, everything. That's why our kids don't get the focus they need in schools and elsewhere. We simply don't assign them the importance and honor they deserve. It will all be alright in the end though, if we don't respect the bearing of children, soon we won't have any. Then education won't be a problem at all.

          We must not despair though, not yet. There are still some people whose eyes light up when you say you are going to have a child. You can still come into an institution of education and see all of the teachers that really do care about the kids. We can still focus on what is important. After all, as children, what do most dream of? They dream of a legacy, they dream of something to make themselves worth the world’s time. We just need to take our minds off ourselves for a while and think about what others who are younger than us are going to do with their lives. Looking at children as real people, with real importance, will serve to take away some of these effects of a mechanized education. Perhaps if we listened to the weird kid that can’t sit still, we would realize that he needs a different type of schooling. That kid who talks too much may need to have his skills and confidence honed to make him one of the passionate, fact based debaters that we lack in this country. Schools that treat kids with differences from the others as defects in the machinery of the American community are destined to continue to fail to adequately teach any child. According to Jonathan Plucker, education and talent expert, and co writer of Creativity and Reason in Cognitive Development, the only way to completely extinguish creativity is for there to be no more children. In other words, there is no “normal” child. Therefore, making education like an assembly line factory is not going to be effective, because all children need to be educated differently. This is going to take a fundamental change in our worldview about how children should be raised, and it will be difficult, but if we treat every child with the dignity and honor that they deserve, there is no doubt that we will be able to create a perfect future for later generations.