I just saw a little news segment for a new documentary on education problems called Race to Nowhere. So I checked out its website.
I can’t comment on the film itself, because I haven’t seen it. And, to be totally honest, it doesn’t look entirely worth seeing; I’m not sure I’d learn much from it. From the promotional videos on the website, and what I just saw about it on the news, its main message seems to be: “Look, we’ve got a pretty serious and undeniable problem here. Students are suffering needlessly.”
Um, yeah. Great observation. Is this really surprising news?
Well, it’s a step, at least. You can’t address the problem if you don’t see the problem, and apparently a lot of people don’t. And the problem isn’t that students aren’t achieving enough, aren’t doing well enough on their tests, aren’t doing better at math than the Asians. The problem is that they’re suffering needlessly. Right?
It’s a step, but it’s still not the holy grail of the problem with schools. The main problem is, as I’ve stated before, the memorization of the material itself is useless. Until parents, educators, and students realize this, the problem will remain. You can put a band-aid on the wound by collectively lowering academic standards to create less stress, but the wound’s not going to heal until you have concrete answers for what your goals are with education (and not just the vague “I want to get into a good college so I can get a good job so I can be happy”). That is, you have to know why you are learning specific material. You can’t be taking a course simply for the credit. If you do that, the actual content is meaningless. That it can be horribly stressful is just a side effect. It’s like doing a documentary on how uncomfortable hospital outfits are instead of looking at the disease.
So… yes, school causes lots of stress, boo-hoo, it’s so hard. Get to the point. Take that final step of logic.
From what I can see from Race to Nowhere, it doesn’t get to the point. It might not necessarily be wrong or bad, but it looks incomplete.