God Hates Us All (Part 7)

The sun had come out to play as if it had advance knowledge that Helen and Devon were going to take the day off. There wasn't a single cloud in the sky and they had decided to return to the park that afternoon, since window shopping got a little too boring. Devon was more of an in and out kind of shopper, where as Helen only liked to shop if she had a reasonable amount of cash on hand, or else looking around was just one big tease. They decided to get away from the shops and take a stroll around one of the downtown residential areas where a lot of tall apartment buildings and even a large school resided. As they approached the school, it was obvious that the school in question was still at lunch hour but the bell was just ringing to call them back into class. They both watched from the fences as the kids lined up and slowly filed back into the building to fill their heads with information they may or may not use in the not so far off distant future. Once the kids were all packed back into their sardine like classrooms, Helen slipped onto the playground and took to one of the swing sets and started to swing around and enjoy herself. Devon didn't feel like doing any kind of swing motion so he sat down on a bench and relaxed and looked around the playground.

"This is a pretty fancy school." Helen said as she kept swinging.

"Looks nice, but I likely won't be sending any kids here anytime soon. This place probably costs an arm and a leg to send just one kid to." Devon replied.

"Would you send them here if you could afford it?"

"I'm not sure, it depends on the kid. Some of them might thrive in a setting like this, some might find it suffocating. I don't know if I would have done that well here, I seemed to do all right where I was raised. I was a product of a public school, and I turned out all right."

"Not everyone does."

"Not everyone tries."

"So you're saying the student is responsible for their own grades, that no one else is to blame for their failure? Not the teacher, parent or the schools?"

"Everyone has a job and a responsibility to live up to, I understand, but none of it will make a lick of difference if the kid doesn't want to try." Devon sat up and he could sense another great debate flowing up, "It's like sending someone off to therapy. Unless they want to be treated, no treatment will ever work without the co-operation of the subject. They have to want the help in order for it to be successful. Education is very similar. Unless the student wants to be educated, there is little else anyone can do. You can try to convince them, but you can't force them."

"So is this the reason our education system is one of the worst when it comes to modern, industrialized nations?"

"Not really, there's a whole whack of reasons why we fall behind. Some of it has to do with a lack of effort on our part, while some of it even has to do with a lot of effort on everyone else's part."

Helen had stopped swinging at this point and was just sitting and listening. "I don't understand."

"Well, when I first graduated from university�"

"Wait a second, you have a university degree?"

"Yes, but we can get back to that later."

"Wow, I didn't realize you were that educated."

"Well, I am. One of the first things I did right after I got my degree was travel. I took a job overseas to teach English. Seemed like a perfectly logical thing to do. Make some money, get some interesting job experience and see the world."

"Where did you teach?"

"I was in Asia for almost two years." Devon said as he recalled the time back, "I worked at a private after school program. You see kids would go to a normal school just like this one, but once they finished their normal six hour school days they didn't go home and do homework and play with their friends. They would come straight to our school for an additional four hours of after hour private school. We were like professional tutors, teaching the same subjects but all in English to advance their knowledge in the subject. Some students didn't leave our school until eight at night. Then they would proceed to go home and do hours of homework before going to bed around midnight. And that is the normal school day for a kid in my class and they ranged from eight to thirteen years of age. Could you imagine a kid of ten years old being forced to go to school for ten hours a day and then have to do homework until near exhaustion, and then six hours later he would start it all over again."

"My goodness." Helen said with a sense of disgust, "That's obscene."

"The worst part is parents approve and encourage this. Competition to get kids into college in these nations is nothing short of psychotic and because of that kids are pretty much forced to take this brutal schedule to stay ahead." Devon seemed a little more disgusted, because he actually took part in the act himself, "I remember nine year old kids falling asleep in my class because they were exhausted and they couldn't stay awake if they tried."

"That's awful! What did you do?"

"I felt for the kid so I let him sleep. I could have gotten in trouble for it but I really didn't approve of his exhaustion and chances are if he was that tired, he wouldn't remember anything I taught in class anyway."

"What else did you see over there?"

"I saw a lot of things that these schools would never consider doing in order to instill higher learning." Devon answered, "Over there kids are slapped on the hands with open hands or even rulers when they do things that are deemed inappropriate. I once saw one teacher use a meter stick on someone wrists just for getting wrong answers on a test. Then if a student was ever really bad to the point where they had to be disciplined, they were told to go out into the hall and stand with their face to the wall and their hands up in the air. The school I worked at had one man walking the halls with a big stick, and any kid he came across that was standing face to the wall in his halls got some big time smacks from him for being out of the classroom. Do you think any of this abuse would be tolerated in a school here in this nation?"

"Never, people would be charged with assault. Schools would be sued."

"Exactly, but over there it's common. Slap them for being bad or for getting too many incorrect answers on your tests long enough and sooner or later the kids learn from their beatings. They stop doing what is considered bad and get the good grades. This kind of physical, emotional and systematic abuse is very common over there in Asia, and the parents not only make their kids take it� but they encourage and partake in it as well."

"I had no idea it was that bad."

"By our standards, these teachers and schools would be charged with a crime. Over there it's called discipline. So when you see those international test scores, you have to take all of them with a grain of salt because all it might mean is the nations with the best test scores might be crossing a lot of lines to make their kids excel that high to begin with. I'm not sure that's a price I want our nation children to pay in order to excel."

"No� never!" Helen said, obviously upset but what she had heard. "While an education is important, so is the ability to have a healthy childhood. I mean what good is an education if you don't have the appropriate social skills to apply it?"

"You hit the nail right on the head." Devon said as he stood up from his bench, "The lack of social interaction and endless studying made most of these students the kind of people you wouldn't want to associate with. They had the social ability of a fruit fly, and all the adults do whenever they're not working is drink, drink and drink. It's like driving a car. Sure anyone can get a license, but that doesn't automatically make you a good driver. Anyone can give into road rage, be neglectful with their turn signal or ignore it all together."

"What point are you trying to make?" Helen quickly asked.

"What I'm saying is proper social interaction is just as important to a child as education is. A lack of social ability to apply that education just cheapens the value of their education. If that was applied to the tests the UN and all these other agencies use to grade nations, I guarantee you a lot of nations that usually finish first would drop from the top and fall way down the charts. It takes more than just paper smarts to make it in life: it takes common sense and wisdom to apply it. That's what needs to be taught along with math and the sciences in order for any child to evolve into a productive citizen of this planet."