Memorizing terms that mean nothing to me doesn’t raise my IQ, but gaining understanding of a complex idea definitely does. It helps you gain perspective and maybe see a viewpoint you never understood before. This is what education should be based on. Normally, I would be insulted if a guy tried to tell me that I couldn’t think for myself because of the education system I was brought up in, but I can’t really disagree with that, either. Don’t get me wrong, I can think for myself, but I certainly wasn’t taught that in school. I learned that outside of school through socialization with my family and friends. I definitely agree with this guy in the sense that public education needs reformed. Maybe not to the drastic degree that he would like, but I do believe something needs to be done to improve the current system.
One great example of this was a chemistry teacher I had back in high school. He was a great guy and a great teacher, but he really didn’t like when students ask questions. I remember one specific time when I asked him why a certain chemical reaction took place, and he responded, “It just does.” In other words, he really didn’t want to answer my question, he just wanted me to trust that the chemical reaction was correct and to accept it that way. Most of education today, in my opinion, is just memorization and regurgitation. I’m guilty of it myself. Us students cram the night before a test to remember all of the required terms, regurgitate them on the test the next day, and then forget them until we are forced to learn them again. We don’t really know what they mean, but hey, as long as we pass the test we’re happy as can be. I think asking questions should be encouraged in the class room, because that’s when learning really occurs.
I had never heard of this guy until I watched this video and I don’t consider myself a “leftist,” but I really could not agree more with what this guy is saying. I believe the education system now is flawed-there is too much emphasis on just getting a passing grade and not enough emphasis on actually learning. One thing he said that I think really hit the nail on the head was near the 5:40 mark, when he was talking about teachers discouraging students from asking questions. He said, “A lot of teachers say ‘These are the correct thoughts, all the others are rubbish. I’ll pick the right ones and you memerize them.’” This, to me, is 90% of education today. Maybe not so much in college, but it was definitely the case in high school.
This never made sense to me, because the Chinese population of my school and the surrounding areas are much higher than the Latino population. So how can you justify teaching one and not the other? You can’t really, in my opinion. It goes for other languages, too. How can you justify teaching French or German and not Chinese? What about Latin? I mean, that’s a dead language, nobody even uses it anymore. If I’m a student and I want to learn a language, my mindset is going to be, which language will look the best on my resume if I can become fluent? In reality, that would be either Spanish or Chinese. Being fluent in those two languages are extremely marketable traits. I’m not saying German and French aren’t, but not to the same degree. I think when it really comes down to it, Chinese never has to be more universally taught simply because doing business with China is inevitable and we could always use more people fluent in the language.
In the current system, the only positive really is that it could spark a student’s interest in a language and they may choose to continue their studies after they graduate high school. With China becoming such a world power, I think Chinese should be offered more widely in high schools. Yes, that article talks about how it has increased. But if you read through the article, it goes on to say that Chinese is still only offered in 4% of high schools. Compare that to 88% for Spanish. Now, I’m not saying that Spanish isn’t important, but I certainly don’t see it being that much more important than Chinese. If anything, they should be taught an equal amount. Maybe we could make it required for a school to teach Chinese if it currently teaches Spanish. Just an idea, I don’t know if it’s doable. For me personally, my high school did not offer Chinese, but it did offer Spanish.
To see that Chinese being taught in public schools here in America is on the upswing is definitely encouraging. China is a major business partner of the U.S, whether we like to admit it or not, and being able to speak Chinese fluently is an extremely marketable trait for any business person to have. That being said, however, I think the way that public schools go about teaching foreign languages is flawed. I know that at my school district, languages are not even offered until high school. And even at that point, every student is only required to take two years. Students know that, and most are lazy, so most only drift through the minimum two years just to earn the grade, and really learn almost nothing about the language. In my opinion, basic language instruction should start in elementary school and be continued about high school.
Another thing I disagree with is that white people have only one option, which is white. As stated in the video, Hispanic people have the options Puerto Rican, Chicano, Mexican, Cuban, etc. So, why shouldn’t white people be able to check off Italian, German, or Polish? That doesn’t make much sense to me. I also feel that there should be a box for mixed race people to respond, and they should be able to write in what races are represented in them. If somebody is fifty percent black and fifty percent Hispanic, what box do they check off? Both? I don’t know, maybe there is an option for this and I just don’t know about it. Either way, I think this issue just comes down to a matter of generations and what terms are deemed “politically correct.”
It’s all generational. I think the people at the census bureau simply included all three terms because there are different people who relate to the different terms. So, from that point of view, I can see where people are coming from. However, the whole reason I disagree with this controversy is because on the census form, the terms are interchangeable. It explicitly states next to the box “Black, African-american, or negro.” It’s not like the only term listed is negro, as if to force all black Americans to label themselves as a negro. They are simply three terms that mean the same thing. It would be the same thing if, next to the white box, it stated, “White, Caucasian, non-Hispanic.” Like I said earlier, these are all interchangeable terms, they all mean the same thing.
I think this whole issue about the census is a little ridiculous, but at the same time I can see where people are coming from. As far as the whole Negro/African-American/Black issue, all it is is a generational divide. I’ll give you a personal example. In my neighborhood back home, there are only 2 black households. One is an old man, he’s over 70, who lives up the street from me and the other is a whole family. The parents are in their 40s, and all of their kids are my age or younger. The old man refers to himself as a negro, and calls other black people negroes. Why? Because as he was growing up, his parents told him that’s what the proper word was, because that was the preferred term at the time. The younger black family, however, gets offended if he calls their children negroes, because society has told them that that is not an acceptable term anymore. If negro was the term that was deemed acceptable today, I bet you would have a lot of people upset with the fact that African-american was included on the census.
Personally, I think this whole situation just represents everything that is wrong with politics today, and is one of the reasons that I choose to stay independent. But either way, I guess every person is entitled to their own opinion. Protests like these, however degrading they may be, aren’t technically breaking any laws, and so I guess there’s not much you can do. This is a country where free speech is encouraged, and when something like this happens I think protests are to be expected. Protests of this nature definitely shouldn’t be encouraged and I think there are measures that can be taken to slow them down, but at the end of the day people are going to have their voice heard.
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