Ahhhhh, the old scchhhoolyard.

This semester I am back at highschool — literally. I’m taking my university classes in a far corner of a high-school in an old room with fruit-flies, a hump of a floor (it’s like standing on the surface of the Earth: whoever is at the front disappearing into the horizon, as well as whoever is in the back), with pipes labelled “ASBESTOS” overhead. Despite the less-than-exotic context, I love it. I love the bells that ring, the “Can the following students please come to the office” over the intercom, and most of all, the students.

The purpose of pre-internship is to get us ready for internship, which is supposed to get us ready for teaching, which I am told will be a matter of life-and-death survival mode for at least two years (though I just talked to a teacher who said she’s in her fifth year and still feels like she’s in that mode). I am surrounded by skeptical university students who feel completely unprepared to get on out there. Okay maybe not completely. Students who, when in groups of five, were supposed to assess paragraphs, and rated them 4, 2, 5, 4, and 4, out of 5. That’s the assessment my paragraph got. I couldn’t help but wonder: a two? What was the reasoning behind a 2/5? The criteria we were given said that a 2/5 would say that my paragraph was unclear and unsatisfactory. Someone can give me a 2/5 and someone else a 5/5? Aside from the fact that I believe I deserved a 4/5 (even though this wasn’t for legitimate marks), I’m disturbed and alarmed for our future students.

This is what troubles me about the Education system: future educators speak up and say things like: “I read my paragraph and didn’t agree with it, so I gave it a low grade.” Is that a joke? Sure, if the paragraph was riddled with errors and was unconvincing, but because you didn’t agree with it? Because there is only one right answer (in cases like math, sure, 2+2=4, but aren’t we trying to teach students to be creative and critical?) and that right answer is based on your own past experiences? We’ve all had that teacher: the one who outlines very carefully what he or she wants, and if you do exactly what he or she says, you’ll do great.

Education for the sake of 90% is completely against my philosophy of Education — regardless of the fact that I have spent the majority of my own education striving for 90%.
Some of the wisest words I’ve ever heard from an educator were something along these lines: “Whenever I say anything, make sure you’re constantly repeating in your head ‘[she's] an idiot, [she's] an idiot, [she's] an idiot.’”