A Sad Story Indeed: Reflecting on the Education System

Recently I was driving around with a friend. We stopped somewhere, rolled up the windows--with the old-style manual windows--and turned off the car. In that order. My friend says to me with a laugh, "I felt like I had to roll the window up before you turned off the car or it just wouldn't go." It was at this time that I realized, "crap. I'm doing that, too." For the majority of my life, I have been in vehicles with automatic windows, which must be rolled up while the car is on. Despite the fact that I've been driving this old-school car for a couple months now, I still roll up my windows before turning it off.

Why do I do this? Because I have been trained by my former vehicles to leave the car on until all of the windows are fully closed. It is very difficult to break the habit that this training has instilled in me.

What the heck does this have to do with the education system? This may be a teensy weensy bit of a stretch, but these two things are fundamentally similar in principal. In the same way that I learned to leave the car on because of the negative results (negative stimuli, punishment) I received when I forgot, many students learn math and science and history. The Skinner philosophy of teaching relies on a punishment/rewards system, where students who do well are rewarded and students who do not are punished.

While this ideal is dying, in favor of more student-centered ideals and a less demeaning way of looking at a students psyche, many teachers still think in this way. Many, though, don't know that they're doing it. The majority of teachers will naturally teach in the way in which they themselves learn. Or in this case, learned. So if a teacher was taught using the rewards/punishment method, he or she will likely think that's the way everyone learns or should learn.

I am currently attending Westminster Choir College (WCC) for Music Education. The teaching ideal taught at WCC is critical pedagogy. Critical pedagogy brings students to the forefront of learning, using their world and what they know as teaching devices. It is no longer all about the teacher and the pupil—the dictator and the prole. Instead, it is about everyone learning and everyone teaching. Critical thinking and dialogue are tenets of critical pedagogy. This ideal is my goal in all of my studies and in any classroom in which I teach.

Why am I talking this? Because it's important to me. The idea that students are being forced into classrooms where they are spoon fed information they don't want or need only to reiterate said information on biased, non-representative exams later is preposterous and idiotic. I love life and I love learning. Trying to incite the same passion for exploration and understanding in others is my life. My experience with the car windows has merely reminded me that conditioning is everywhere, not just in our classrooms. We must be wary of allowing ourselves to bend to the whims of the world. Analyze everything.