Prince Ea made a video about him “suing” the education system for killing creativity, individuality, and being intellectually abusive.
Quoting Albert Einstein, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its own life believing that it is stupid.”
Prince said that modern school nowadays not only do they make the fish climb trees, but also make them climb down and do a ten-mile run. Many students relate to the fish; Swimming upstream in class, never finding their gifts, thinking they are stupid, believing they are useless.
He provided a parable for his case by showing pictures.
On the left is the picture of a cellphone nowadays and on the right is a picture of a phone 150 years ago.
The second parable is a picture of today’s car and the right is a picture of a 150-year-old car.
On the contrary, a picture of a classroom today is nothing different from the one from 150 years ago.
In, literally, more than a century, nothing has changed. He said, “Yet schools claim to prepare students for the future? With evidence like that, do they prepare students for the future or the past?”
Based on the background check, the records say that schools made to train people to work in factories, which explains why they put students in straight rows. Schools were said to also force students to sit still, raise their hands before they speak, give them only a short break to eat, and for eight hours a day students are being told what to think.
On top of everything, students are forced to compete to get an A. A letter which determines product quality.
However, the world has progressed and it needs people who think creatively, innovatively, critically, independently with the ability to connect.
We need to bear in mind that humans’ brain are not the same. Every parent with two children or more will confirm that claim. So the question is, why do the schools treat children like cookie cutter frames or snapback hat, giving them this ‘one size fits all’ thing?
Another parable is that what if a doctor prescribed the exact same medicine to all of his patients? The result would be indeed tragic. The world would be filled with illness.
This educational malpractice is exactly what happens at schools where students are being taught the same thing and the same way with one teacher standing in front of 20 students. While, in fact, students have different strengths, different needs, different gifts, and different dreams.
The other thing that should be a problem is how the teachers are being treated. While teachers are the most important job on the planet, they are underpaid which may have resulted in students’ short changed.
Teachers should earn just as much as doctors. Doctors can do a heart surgery and save the life of a kid, while great teachers may reach the heart of that kid and allow him to truly live.
To make it even worse, teacher are often the ones who get blames. The fact is that they work in a system without many options or rights. Because curriculums are created by policy makers, most of which never taught a day in their lives.
People are obsessed with standardised tests in which they think that multiple choices will determine someone’s success. However, Frederick. J. Kelly, the inventor of standardised tests himself said, “These tests are too crude to be used and should be abandoned.”
Looking through all the explanations made, the conclusion is clear. If we can customise healthcare, cars, and even Facebook page, then it is our duty to do the same to our education system to upgrade and change it and do away with school spirit because that is useless.
Our task should be to bring the spirit out of each and every student and give every gift an equal chance. Sure math is important, however please, bear in mind that it is no more important than art or dance.
As impossible as it may sound, we can take a look at Finland where the students have no homework, shorter school hours, start going to school at the age of seven, teachers make a decent wage, and they focus on collaboration instead of competition.
Still, their educational system outperforms every country in the world.
There is no single solution. However, there are other countries like Singapore which grow rapidly and there are Montessori school and programmes like Khan Academy.
While the students are only 20 percent of our population, they are 100 percent of our future. So let’s get moving towards the world where fish are no longer forced to climb trees.
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