Don't Stay in Scho- WHAT?!

There’s a post going around Facebook right now linking to this video. The author goes on to sing about how education didn’t teach him anything useful and how he can do extravagantly long math equations, but knows nothing of current events, our human rights, how to do taxes, how to take care of our health, being a parent, how to mortgage a home, and how to discuss domestic abuse and help a friend in a depressive state. He basically ends the video with a hash tag of #DontStayInSchool.

Now, as an educator, this shook me for a few reasons.

Firstly, things like citizenship, voting, knowing laws and our human rights SHOULD have been covered in our civics classes in high school…but if your civic classes were anything like mine, we spent it on our phones, boredly flipping through the news paper, and listening to the teacher go on about whatever sports team he was into that week. Obviously the system and the teachers are failing to deliver the proper information…or are they? Realistically, even having had a good teacher teach us about these subjects, would you, as a 16 year old, attentively sat in class with the mindset of “oh wow this will be so useful for me in a few years when I become an adult!!” No. Definitely, probably not.

I myself is guilty of even KNOWING that certain information may serve me in the future, yet still choose to not listen because, well, I was a teenager who was too caught up in my little social bubble or in my head thinking about literally anything that what was directly in front of me. This being said, how could this have been changed? How could this information stick to a partially uncaring teenager? Well, I’d imagine it would probably stick if the students were learning about global governments by building towers while adhering to the guidelines and styles of different types of governments, or maybe they’d learn the judicial system by enacting each branch with movements that each correlate with the specific branch and then creating a giant moving machine which essentially encompasses each section of the judicial system, or maybe they’d learn if they were asked to debate about seemingly “adult” topics as well as encouraged to get on their feet. I like to think that this is exactly what I'm learning to do in my program RIGHT. NOW. I feel proud to know that I will educate students in a way that is better that what this man has gotten as an education. I hope to make a change for the better.

Now, to be honest, I do agree with some of what he’s saying. I do think we could have a class about how to pay taxes, what a mortgage is and maybe on how to budget our money properly. I might not be able to include those types of life lessons in my lessons because, well, they are life lessons. What I can do is give the students the need to learn. I can give them the desire to learn. I can encourage them to go fourth and learn on their own about everything and anything! As a teacher, we can inspire learning, we can give them the tools to get out and DO.

Perhaps if he had a teacher who encouraged independence, and ownership he might have taken matters into his own hands and spoken to his parents or an adult about budging. Maybe he would have made an appointment with his bank and asked about starting a savings account. Maybe he would have reached out to a relative who is great with tax or maybe even watched a Youtube video about what a mortgage is. What I’m trying to say in too many words is that as teachers, we cannot cover EVERYTHING. We just can’t because this world is filled with things to learn, and stuff to know. What we can do, however, is give students the tools to reach out and seek that knowledge, to take ownership in their lives, in their future and in their education.

So I’ll end with this: #StayInSchool