A former homeschooler's take on how the American School System is not geared for successful learning.
Hey, it's not my fault the acronym for the most abysmal education system in the "first world" spells ASS.
The following is a paper I wrote in college years ago on some of the most apparent pitfalls of the American School System.
Please enjoy and let me know in the comments what your learning styles are!
The American School System as a whole is teaching it’s constituents that unless they can learn the way they are taught they are learning improperly, or if they are unable to learn this way they are somehow at an intellectual loss, or stunted beyond the general public’s level of intelligence. I believe this is a totally fucked way of seeing things. We are teaching our youth that they are stupid by implementing a one-size-fits-all theory of education. The way our current system has been arranged stipulates that there is one correct, effective, and true way of learning even though common psychological and psychosocial studies of learning style, preferences, and stipulations say the opposite.
For example, we know that there are two main personal orientations of learning, ‘social or interpersonal’ and ‘solitary or intrapersonal.’ Everyone on Earth uses one or both of these styles, with most people having a strong preference for one style over the other. Our learning styles may indeed be hierarchically inclusive. In other words, it may be true that we each are capable of every learning style, but we have a preset preference for one above another—as if our learning styles are stacked.
The American School System (ASS) forces the idea that social learning is the only correct style of learning. According to the ASS, though it’s important to learn skills of focusing, being quiet and stretching one’s brain in the space of original thoughts, it’s not nearly as important as becoming socialized in a learning environment, learning to work in a group, or learning to accept a higher, unquestionable authority at a young age. From here the ASS teaches by forceable example that learning in a group is the only acceptable, correct style of learning, and if you are of the opposite persuasion, or adhere to the preference of an intrapersonal learning style, rather than an interpersonal style then you are consistently punished throughout your time in the ASS.
Punishments for preferring solitary learning over group learning are exhibited in manufactured consequences such as being docked credits for not speaking up enough in class, refusal to perform public speaking in class, or poor performance at public speaking. Students are given low grades on group projects due to doing their part but having less than adequate group-mates. They are graded on participation rather than understanding, repeatedly receiving poor marks for low in-class participation which may be due to learning style; or they are marked down for a lack of desire to attend field trips, or extracurricular activities, etc. All of which I personally experienced in my short time in the ASS.
A more indirect punishment is evidenced in the requirement of in-person class attendance for graduation regardless of work turned in, or amount of material learned or retained during the semester; as well as in the fact that online or off-campus education is only offered by a special few institutions, and even when it is offered there is often a requirement to attend in-person classes in order to receive a degree. I believe this is entirely due to the fact that public schools only get paid for the children who attend classes. What would our world look like if instead they were paid for the children who exhibited genuine understanding of the material?
We know from Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences there are 8 learning styles—
Linguistic Intelligence (word smart)
Logical-Mathematical Intelligence (number/reasoning smart)
Spatial Intelligence (picture smart)
Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence (body smart)
Musical Intelligence (music smart)
Interpersonal Intelligence (people smart)
Intrapersonal Intelligence (self-smart)
Naturalist intelligence (nature smart)
As it stands the ASS seems to all-but refuse to take these into account, still preferring to use only the vastly outdated method of lectures, reading, and arbitrary testing; be it multiple choice, written, or verbal, these methods are unimaginative and punitive to those who aren’t fortunate enough to naturally adhere to the ordained learning styles.
The ASS selectively employs the ‘Logical’ and ‘Linguistic’ learning styles to the detriment of the other six. It is true that teachers often implement the use of powerpoint in their lectures and presentations, often encouraging students to find visual representations of concepts. However, this is insufficient for a visual learner, and once again, falls short. When one has a preference of learning style, it is because their unique brain has developed naturally to take in and reference information in a certain sequence, this is a benefit and a useful talent to both the human and to the world at large since the world needs all types of processors, not a narrow few.
Each learning style adheres to a specific section of the brain that has been made dominant in learning through genetics as well as nurture. It’s not as simple as learning to activate a different portion of your brain since you are being forced to. Throughout your life your preferred learning styles will most likely stay the same. Though it is absolutely possible to strengthen your auxiliary learning styles it is by far preferable to work within the framework that your brain is requesting, especially in formative years. Beyond that, the quality of learning would be vastly superior, being of better quality, more stable, easier, quicker, with greater retention and more natural to the student being allowed to embrace their procurement preference.
The ASS has been made aware of these relatively *recent advances in the psychology of learning styles and in response there have been programs implemented into public schools to show a willingness to accommodate different learning styles. However, individual learning styles are still being treated as the exception, rather than the rule. The programs designed to work within specific learning styles are still geared largely towards a one-size-fits-all goal.
[*It has been 41 years since Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences was published]
Rather than allowing children and young adults to determine and adopt their preferred learning styles throughout the whole of their education, the ASS has instead opted to implement programs such as mandatory physical education— again, largely in a group setting— and offering music or art classes in addition to regular programming. These are not considered core material, but rather they are offered as electives. Put simply, meaningful accommodations have not been implemented. Within their regularly scheduled, widely required, mass-produced curriculum students are still subjected to methods of repetition, dull memorization, absurd amounts of reading, biased (as seen from the multiple intelligences point of view) writing assessments, and other forms of verbal and logical learning styles, with the occasional, narrowly specific visual aide. This is academic discrimination.
Learning styles are often entirely ignored in the ASS, this unfortunate fact results in young students who grow up believing that they are intellectually abnormal, slow, or even downright stupid. This dismal and often crippling belief follows the student throughout the course of their education and often into the rest of their lives, as an underlying insecurity or an overt self-fulfilling prophecy. Due to repeatedly low test scores brought about by chronically ignored, or overlooked learning styles in the ASS the student may begin to believe that this is their best work, and as such is all that they are capable of.
They may soon learn to expect this of themselves while simultaneously becoming evermore disheartened by redundantly poor marks regardless of effort, until eventually accepting their fate as a dunce. They may go their entire lives without realizing that perhaps they are, in fact, of average or above average intelligence but they are auditory-musical and kinesthetic learners. As such, when they couldn’t perform on a ‘simple’ memory task no matter how many pneumonic devices the teacher applied, they never thought to consider that if there were a song or dance applied to the same memory task, they would still remember it to this day.
This is just one of the reasons that I believe academia is arrogant, discriminatory, and wildly unhelpful to people with different learning styles, such as myself. It is also why I believe that the ASS is fucked, and desperately needs a good restructuring, like yesterday.