SCHOOL IS BAD FOR CHILDREN
Kathmandu, 7 Jan. 2025: A school is an institution for children. A good school is supposed to provide resources, facilities, and independent opportunities by enhancing children’s innate potential. However, in the understanding of some scholars, critics, and pragmatists, a school is only an industry to produce humans with common features despite their cognitive capacity, abilities, and spending a quarter of their lives in school. On the other hand, the majority believe that school is good, but a minority have been arguing that sending children to school is changing their curiosity, desires, natural intelligence, confidence, and independence into passivity, skepticism, selfishness, aggression, bullying, dependence, and so on. I also strongly believe that the schooling environment and system are not practical enough to build skilled helmsman of the future, without demolishing their innate abilities and intelligence.
There is no concern in school about children’s desires, interests, independence, and growth of mental abilities. When parents send their innocent children to school, they are set among the four walls from the very first day, under the supervision of teachers, and are instructed to follow their command. The teachers start teaching oral and written lessons beyond their interests and desires. Additionally, they also start teaching dos and don’ts, what is right and what is wrong, with fear of punishment, which limits their liberty and natural ability is obstructed. When they cross or ignore the boundaries they have set, they are scolded and punished, and as a result, the children become very repugnant and aggressive. To educate them, teachers are supposed to be more open, friendly, motherly, and understand their psychology, desires, interests, and treat them accordingly; however, they never attempt to know them, and only rule despotically by subduing their wishes. Furthermore, during their mental growth and kindergarten time, children love free movement, playing, talking, asking different inquisitive questions, acting, and having fun independently, but schools rarely provide such an environment and opportunities to them as schools only aim and give priority to teach them lessons and make them bookish. Thus, school is hellish and beyond the children’s expectations.
Schools are failing to enhance the essential and practical life skills; rather leading towards bullying. A school is considered a place to be educated and produce good human beings; however, it is often argued that schools do not emphasize useful, practical, and innovative lessons but follow traditional teaching methods, which is not favorable for them to adapt in future life. Firstly, schools put the children on a production line. Although they are born with distinct abilities, they are sent to the same educational factory and are led with a common curriculum and goal. Their continuous and final evaluation is based on theory and the grade they achieve. If their ideas are beyond it or do not fit the set mold, they will be rejected and marked down. Robinson (2009) also noticed that within the school system, students are taught that being wrong is the worst outcome. For this reason, the fear of making mistakes and being different stops children from developing creativity. Secondly, their innate intelligence and desires are ignored and setting them fixated with much importance in a particular subject, which does not fulfill future requirements, as they need more practical and life skills. According to Staff (2018) many dancers, artists, and musicians have had their potential wasted because schools do not provide such an environment for specific ability, and ultimately these talents would gradually become wasted due to the setup of the same program. Additionally, schools with a grading and competitive education system are creating a small society in which bullying mostly happens. According to the article ‘ why does bulling happen?’ published on Australia government’s newspaper, bullying usually happen in schools due to their unscientific formation of competitive and hierarchic environment with tests, scores, grading system and learning competition; and such environment and system is leading them towards the sense of jealousy, ruling over, feeling of superiority and inferiority, misunderstanding, violence, etc. . Therefore, schools are required to change the educational environment and assessment system with a practical lesson and priority to every child with value education.
On the contrary, the majority of people, including scholars and analysts, claim that schools are the best places to educate children and learn life lessons. In school, they have opportunities to adjust to a community, socialize, develop linguistic skills, develop personality, participate in local, national, and international programs, learn about different cultures, and play some games and sports. Not all these opportunities can be available in a society or an independent environment. Therefore, schools are a worthwhile place to learn, delve foundation, and grow together. However, I believe that this idea is a very shortsighted view. According to Peter Gray (2013), schools nowadays are a product of history, which does not fit the children in modern life, and specifically in the need to experience. Instead of gaining realistic and pragmatic knowledge, which is supposed to be important and useful in daily life, students are forced to spend all school time on only rotting momentary of knowledge, but no practical and foundational knowledge for the future.
In conclusion, although schools might still be a preference for parents to educate their children, they are no longer necessary in modern life, as the traditional schooling environment and teaching system do not match and fulfill the requirements of modern children. Rather than sharpening children’s minds, founding their foundations, and educating them according to their interests and desires, children are taught traditionally to be dependent on the production line. Therefore, more or less parents should make a thoughtful decision when choosing the most suitable method for educating children to enhance their innate abilities.
Ref.1. gradefixer.com 2. Academia.edu