If you’re a current student at any academic institution in the continental United States who has paid for tuition in some form or another, you may have questioned a few things along the way. You may question why is it when you are stressed about a paper due that evening, you decide to take a nap instead or the way you consume what seems like a gallon of coffee in an hour to compensate for lost energy. Whatever the case may be, the main question is still there: Why? Possibly more importantly, why do students not question why they constantly invest time, money and energy into a system that pushes us forward, while sometimes mocking us at the same time? There are multiple reasons why students should question the education system from multiple perspectives.
Have you ever felt weary of asking a teacher a question in fear of them disregarding you out of pure irritation? Have you ever heard a teacher reply in regards of not covering material by saying, “Oh, you’ll learn this next year, so we’ll skip it,” “You’re previous teacher obviously taught you this, so no point in repeating it,” or “I’m going to give you guys a break today?” Have you ever agreed in frustration with another student about a trick question on a test or sighed in relief when your teacher played a movie in class? If so, you are not alone.
Firstly, you should never feel fear when wanting to learn due to the possibility that a teacher might become annoyed with you when you ironically ask them to teach you. My current statistics teacher, Mr. Jonathan Eaton, put it so clearly one day in class when he said, “Disregarding the students who purposely do not pay attention in class, I never understood why students were afraid to ask me questions. Why would I get mad for doing my job?” If your teacher runs away like you think they want to when they look at you disapprovingly, they would essentially be running away from their current job, credibility and paycheck. So, the odds are in your favor, even if they do get unreasonably testy. Also, the frustration from a trick question is most certainly justifiable when the frustration derives from the fact that the majority of institutions equate a student’s intelligence and work ethic with either a numerical or letter grade. By provoking an incorrect answer and potentially problematic grade, a teacher is essentially devaluing the ability of any student to demonstrate their level of attained mastery thus far in the course on a ‘standard’ test and mocking the system that their students are invested in and depend on for their future success. The same frustration might be recognized when a teacher decides to play a movie in class one day without an assignment along with it. No, I am not referring to the teachers who are tactfully challenging students to figure out an answer or explain their course work visually rather than lecture. I am describing the teacher who purposely throws an off the wall question to make it close to impossible, sometimes completely impossible, to answer, and plays movies to ‘give the students a break,’ but ultimately themselves a break as well. With statistics from The Institute for College Access and Success seven in 10 seniors (69 percent) who graduated from public and nonprofit colleges in 2013 had student loan debt, with an average of $28,400 and specifically an average debt of $29,200 of 2013 Mississippi State University graduates per borrower, lingering over a student’s head, it’s hard to think that students are going into debt just to appease some of their teachers not doing their jobs.
The trickiest and stickiest perspective in this whole situation seems to come from another question: Why do students continue to notice these things and continue to comply regardless of the evident flaws? My answer; because students do not know better. As so very well presented in my social psychology class, we continue this cycle due to a particular compliance technique based off “the basic heuristic that authorities know better than we do and therefore we should trust their judgment when making decisions,” according to our textbook. It is often used as a persuasive and social influence technique but is utilized by the education system as well.
For example, American Student Assistance persuades students to review finance online through a resource tab by saying, “The financial aid industry is constantly changing. Stay up to date—and compliant—with all that is happening with news and resources from American Student Assistance.” As long as students comply with their influential guidelines, nothing controversial is addressed. The system itself ironically and discretely teaches students how they manipulate them to continue the cyclic, flawed structure of our academic system.
Most can agree that college is not for everyone. With the resources readily available today, you can practically teach yourself. Some people do not have the same access to resources as others. Some people invest a significant amount of their life into a school of their choosing to reach this goal. This leaves a good portion of college students across the nation in some form of debt, whether it be through time, energy or money, only to be lead on a questionable path through adulthood. This is not to insult any institution or their faculty. I am merely trying to make other students aware as to how we think about our current academic situation, what we are truly getting out of it and why we do so. It is important to be aware of it in a different perspective, since we are living it and it directly affects us both individually and collectively. In fact, many might ask, “Why should we even question these things?” Which leads us back to the main question stated before: Why? But, to answer that I might ask the biggest trick question of all: Why not?
