How We Are Letting Our Children Down

"I believe that children are our future. Teach them well and let them show the way..." These words make up the opening lines of Whitney Houston's song "The Greatest Love of All" and I believe them with all of my heart. Children are the leaders of tomorrow. They are our future teachers, doctors, scientists and so on and so forth. They will be the ones who make the decisions and lead the next generations onward. And we owe it to them to teach them well and show them the way, just as the song states. And herein lies the problem. We are not doing our jobs. We are disappointing our children, and in turn, many future generations. This country's educational system is not cutting it to mold and inspire children the way it is intended to do. The kids are becoming farther and farther behind in the basic skills and are being taught little in the way of respect and responsiblity or what it means to have a good work ethic.

I was talking to one of my friends last week who is a teacher and she was telling me about how they had all recently gotten "audited". They had the big shots come in to the rooms and evaluate the way they taught and their methods. And the results they ended up with absolutely astounds me!!! But they really don't shock me that much because it is not that hard to figure out just where the decline in our educational system has happened. When we  have administrators who think that our children are being taught too much in schools that they are getting overstimulated. Or that teaching them a foreign language at a young age is overstimulating their minds and a detriment to their growth process it really can't be that amazing to see why the literacy rates are as low as they are. And when teachers are told that they can not say the word no to their students as it does irreprable damage to their self-esteem, is it any wonder why there is so much damn bullying and fighting and disrespectful behavior in schools today? And that these kids take that attitude with them wherever they go in society. If any of you wonder why our youth seem to be so disrespectful and lazy, look no further than our school systems. It stopped being about what is the best for our children long ago and was replaced by what is best for the political agenda whomever is in charge has? It is no longer about teaching our children well and preparing them for life as leaders out in the real world some day but about how can I use this to my advantage in my political campaign? It is atrocious and beyond reprehensible that that is what our nation's education system has been reduced to, but it is the harsh truth that surrounds us.

Teachers have to be able to inspire the children under their care and to do that, they have to be able to use methods that include getting the child to reach to the highest limit and give everything they have. When I was in school, my teachers wanted and expected me to give it my full and complete effort. They commanded that I be willing to commit myself to being the best I could be and never being willing to settle for anything less than that. And they taught me to not just get by. They taught me to strive for more, to be more, to never stop learning or growing. Maybe that is why to this day, I love learning and I have an endless thirst and an insatiable desire to know more. I am curious on so many topics and I never like to hear that something is the way it is just because. I love being able to research and understand more and fill my mind with more knowledge. My mind knows no limits and that is due to the work ethic and desire to learn that my teachers instilled in me while I was under their guidance. Where is that guidance today? Where is that work ethic and that desire to learn? I believe it is still there as my ten year old niece loves to learn. She reads and loves to gain knowledge and has the same insatiable curiousity that I do. But she doesn't like going to school. Why? Because she is bored and she is bored because the teachers are not stimulating her at all. They don't seek the very best of herself. They don't ask her to go to that limit in her mind and reach even farther. They are so afraid of "overstimulating" her that they have now completely made her hate going to school. She sits there in class and can hardly pay attention due to how her teachers are holding back on what they can teach. They give the bare minimum of what they can teach because they don't want to break the rules set by those people who have no actual clue what it is like to teach or what it is like to implant that grain of knowledge into someone and have them grow that seed into a beautiful tree of knowledge. These higher ups are letting the kids slide and are undercutting the teachers ability to implant any seed of inspiration or any ember of curiousity and they just let them fall through the cracks. My niece is very smart and is very capable of greatness but is being held back due to this new idea that less is somehow more. I truly don't get it and I don't like it at all. Our children are suffering and no one who is in a position to do a thing about it seems to care enough to fix it. They just keep making it worse. The kids are getting less and less stimulated and less and less motivated and somehow, this is a good thing to the highest levels of education officials. They will compliment the teachers for implementing these plans even though it is literally debilitating our young people. Oh well right? As long as they still get paid and still get elected who cares about a little thing like our children or the future of this country?

The other thing that irks me with these rules is that it teaches children it is okay to be average. It is okay to settle for less. It is perfectly fine to not give your best. If you pass and get a C, well you passed. You did enough to pass onto the next grade. But did they really learn the material or are they just barely getting by? My niece is bored because the teachers teach beneath her. They teach the bare minimum and the basics so that the ones who don't have that same drive or work ethic don't get behind. The teachers are catering to the ones who don't mind settling or who don't have that insatiable curiosity and because of that, my niece becomes bored and withdrawn. It is a shame to turn people who are so bright and intelligent away from school where those things should be embraced because those things are not embraced, but rather, looked down upon as wrong somehow. It is giving them too much to think about and too much to work on. Give me a break already. Kids need to be stimulated and need to be given more than the "bare minimum". With that attitude, our children are slowly being turned away from the greatness and brilliance they possess because it is now wrong to teach them to be that way. And as an example of what this type of teaching is doing and how it is hurting every single student by teaching down to the lowest level and allowing everyone to settle is that when I was in English Composition I a few years ago, one of my fellow classmates got asked to identify the verb in this sentence: The cat is hungry and tired. He chose cat as the verb. I rememeber sitting there feeling sorry for this guy because he was being snickered at sitting there in college level english and he didn't know that cat is not the verb in that or any other sentence.  I didn't snicker, but rather, held my head down because I felt sad and bad for him. He had no knowledge or understanding of even the basic skills necessary to be in college, yet alone succeed. So from that moment on, my professor had to prety much teach remedial english to us because he couldn't fear that this young man would be even further behind. And so we all sat there bored and subdued because we had to wait for him to catch up to a level that he could succeed in the course. It is not fair to any of us in that situation. Not for myself or those of us who were beyond that basic level, not for our professor who had to go back and teach the fundamentals of english to this one student, and most of all, not fair to the student in question. Somewhere, somehow he was lost in the mix of this nonsense where education has become secondary to politics and he was passed on grade after grade because the teachers are told to not overstimulate and teach too much, so that the complete opposite happens. They don't teach at all and the students ability to think, to learn and to succeed falls by the wayside. It is as if suddenly the trend is to do as little as possible and still get by. What happened to being challenged and to be the very best you could be? When did that become a bad and evil thing? I don't know but it scares me to think this is what is now considered the wrong way to teach for fear of overstimulating the mind and overexposure. Is is just me who feels this is completely and utterly wrong?

This is not helping out the future of this country. If we keep on this downward slide, we will have children who grow up without the necessary skills to go out in the world and not only thrive but do well. They will be hanging on by a thread due to the lack of knowledge they received while in school. And I am not blaming the teachers for this as they are bound by a set of rules they have to follow. It is not their fault that these students are slipping through cracks and are being allowed to just settle for mediocrity. They do what they are told. This is soemthing that has to be changed from the top. The people who are truly in charge of the school systems and the guidelines the teachers have are the ones that have to repair this damage. I hope they do so before it is too late. The education of our young people is being neglected and so we are not teaching them well and letting them lead the way. We are failing them. They are the leaders of tomorrow but have no concept of true work ethic. They seem to be getting left further and further behind.

They are also allowed to behave in certain ways that lets them believe they can misuse, mistreat and disrespect others. The children have become the bosses in the classroom and that is NOT the way it is supposed to work. Those kids are suppposed to be learning and a lot of what they should be learning is how to respect others and the different points of view every one has. They should be learning how to share and how every one is an individual and should be respected as such. But, instead, the word no is not allowed for fear of what that may do to their psyche. What will them being allowed to do whatever they want affect their psyche? They will begin to think it is okay and acceptable to act however they want and that the world revolves around them. They will feel like they are entitled. That is not something any child should be learning in school. The youth of tomorrow are being led alright......but in the wrong direction. They are being taught to be lazy, be disrespectful and do the bare minimum both in the classroom and in the community. They are being taught the wrong things and the teachers hands are tied. They are being led as well. Being led into letting kids down and letting kids fail at life. That is why so many people don't want to teach. Why would anyone subject themselves to being told how to inspire and guide young people, especially when you know it is the wrong way? I know for me personally, it is why I cannot be a teacher. I thought about it for a long time but I am the type of person who doesn't like a lot of rules to begin with, as I feel they are just arbitrary and unnecessary. But these rules they are starting to implement with teachers being subjected to underachieving and allowing their children in their care to barely get by is something I could not ever deal with. I know in my heart and believe with everything I have that our children deserve more than that and they command more than that. Ask my nieces, both of them, and they will tell you they want to learn. They want to expand their imaginations and their knowledge. They seek to know more and understand more. Children crave learning and to hold them back in that journey is wrong as can be. As Whitney Houston said, "children are our future" and judging by the way things are going now, it is not a future filled with greatness, just mediocrity because that is what the new political agenda is.

Sorry that took so long but this is something I just feel really passionate about
Until next time,
Mel