There’s a spectrum that denotes the relationship students have with school .
The scale goes from “I hate school it’s a complete waste of time” to “I like school and I do well at it”.
It seems that more and more students sit closer to the “I hate school” end of the scale, which is clearly demonstrated by truancy rates anywhere in the world!
Most of us can relate
We can all remember having a certain subject(s) that we wished we didn’t have to go to.
For lots of us this was probably maths and this trend certainly continues today.
What subject does your teen think is a waste of time? Well whatever it is, I think there’s something you can do to help them see that school really isn’t a waste of time…
What your kids are thinking
For a lot of kids at school, they don’t see how math or science or English relates one bit to the life they have planned for themselves. And I don’t blame them because they’re not really told why school is so important.
Why is it that students aren’t told why maths is so important?
Why isn’t it explained to all students at the beginning of the year what math actually is and why they need to learn it?
Students are never told of the subject’s relevance being explained or told why you’re screwed if you don’t know your times tables. Generally, students think math is just this thing that everyone is made to do that hardly anyone enjoys, and so they come to the conclusion that it is a complete waste time.
How you can help
By the time we ‘grow up’ and get jobs we know that school really wasn’t a waste of time. But when we were still at school, it was something a lot of us took for granted.
And today’s students are feeling the same way.
They don’t realise just how important education is, and how lucky they are to have essentially free access to 13 years of education. This isn’t the students’ fault though – they feel this way because no one tells them!
I believe that if the importance of school and education was explained to students, they would realise how lucky they are to receive such a good education.
Teenagers aren’t stupid and I really think they would respond to knowing why they need school and how fortunate they are to have it.
The Final Word
Sure, for some students they’re never going to give a rats about school no matter what the teacher tells them.
But I think if we all stop taking school and education for granted, at least a chunk of students will respond and realise how cool it is that they get to go to school and get an education.
Especially if you compare our quality of life to that of countries where school consists of 50 children packed into one room with no desks, no chairs, no books, no pencils, just one teacher and possibly a blackboard.
Jose Corrales says
Coming from a “child” like myself it’s a very simple as to why a ‘kid’, like myself, wouldn’t enjoy this form of education.
Now please don’t look down or frown upon me, look at me as your equivilant. I’m a kid diagnosed with ADHD I believe.. and as you would imagine it’s very hard to concentrate. But otherwise I’ve always looked at many thoughts or decisions differently.
I don’t know where I was going with that, but in the end after much thought and effort has been put into the decisions I have made, I’ve concluded that whatever I was doing was never an incentive for me.
I couldn’t wire my brain to do so.
I could argue that early education like reading and writing and simple math is essential but otherwise, all it took was simple understanding of human knowledge, acknowledging the environment I live in, and lastly humbling myself at least at one point to a certain degree.
Through media is where I sought enlightenment.
Or maybe a pictured I fancied.
Or an idea that captivated me for a brief moment. Those are incentives, a motivation.
Education for me has to be an incentive something that I’m actively apart of whenever, or where ever I please. For me efficiency is everything and I’m sitting here scratching my head at why we are living like this still.
I DO care about an education, just not this one.
Jose Corrales says
Kids should be eager to school.
Because it has to be an INCENTIVE.
If kids are thudding to school sometimes because “they have to”, or find it un-amusing, there’s something clearly wrong with the way things are structured.
Though the answer may not be clear I believe there has to be a better alternative.
I’m not saying that the stuff that is taught is ‘wrong’ of course, but it could be that maybe it’s presentation is all wrong.
And no I don’t just mean, “Lets make textbooks readable on computers.”
What we really need is something that makes people feel in control of what they intake at a certain point.
I’m trying hard to word my thoughts but at this point I’m getting desperate.