By: Maria Eduarda Marques and Thereza Castilho
The traditional cycle of life goes from birth, into intense study, and finally results in a successful future depending on how hard you studied and your ability to perform in a situation of pressure, in a specific date and environment, called a test. Students are required to perform well on their testing as well as pay attention to class independently of their situation outside of class, and especially their mental problems. The future of our society depends on kids being extremely pressured in school, and having more than 15 years of their life in a constant environment of stress, for 8 hour 5 days a week. Students are required to walk in a linear path, whereas one slip leads to a punishment and multiple slips results in almost life failure. Students who break the pattern of obedience and good grades, have their lives compromised forcing them to fight twice as hard.
What our society for hundreds of years fails to realize is how these kids, often labeled as “ignorant” and “lazy”, possess the ability to become just as successful as their peers who are getting all straight As. When speaking of such matters, ignorant close minds debate with the fact that these are specific cases to which the person got lucky, and the rational formula for success is the one that has been impregnated in our society for as long as education was invented. Academic intelligence does in fact, prove many aspects of one’s personality, like their level of dedication, fast thinking, logical thinking, as well as their priorities in life. Being smart, however, should never be seen as equivalent to academic intelligence. Intelligence is a very subjective topic, since all humans have some area to which they will excel at, some might be in school while another might be in some much other areas of a human life cycle.
Just through the label “cycle/circle of life”, we can see how society is stuck in a mindset that there is some specific order and path we must follow. Although these paths might have brought many individuals to success, this success will definitely be seen as good by some people, or an extreme waste of time to others. One cristal clear example is working within the sport world, more specifically pursuing the professional player career. Up until the 1920s, being a professional sports player didn’t exist, those were merely hobbies, and once the Jazz Age came around did these become legitimate professions from which people could sustain themselves and families out of (not a waste of money like a hobby, but a money income, real job). To simply understand that we know deep analysis of a man from the mid 1600s (around 400 years ago), Isaac Newton, and we are only able to name a sports player of less than 100 years ago, already proves how society is still brand new to the discussion of intelligence.
Looking at Chicago’s population, around 15 percent of all kids in the Metropolitan City have mental issues, furthermore; 20% of families in Chicago live in extreme poverty, whereas going to school and college is an extremely far reality for them. Once we look with detail all of these astonishing statics, it is visible how students, mostly kids who has zero to no control over their financial situation, will not attend school to their fullest potential, and once more be limited from showing their abilities in any other area of society where they could futurely excel at. In the poor areas of the United States, going to college is extremely luxurious since all good colleges are private, demanding an enormous financial burden to these families.
Individuals with an amazing view and sport technique, nowadays, (mainly in the United States) are not even provided the option to just drop out of school/college in order to reach to division one teams. Zooming deeper into a specific area of the United States, the Chicago Public Schools. All of these school boards link grades with being able to play sports with a simple motto, “no grades no playing”. Looking at a glass-half-full point of view, schools are simply encouraging students to study and go well in class by removing something they dearly care about. Once we look at this motto with a more analytical eye, it is clear how many walls these requirements build for students with less emotional/social privilege.
General knowledge is extremely important for our society to keep improving in all areas, from sciences to languages. Brilliant minds come from both study extremely hard throughout their whole lifetime, all well as comes from experience, to which the person lives on a daily day basis. There is no doubt of how in school, we can differentiate brilliant minds when providing them a division of subjects to which they each show their potential individually. What schools fail miserably to understand is that all these subjects, activities, despite looking like an enormous amount of things, are not merely close to the amount of knowledge students have.
Inserting all potentially sport stars in to a box, whereas they either follow the tricky path of managing school work and sport practices (if living in a utopia where mental and domestic problems are far from existence), or they simply fall into the “failure” tracks, and live on the rest of their lives blaming themselves for not trying as much. This toxic view of life is what limits our society from having big stars in more artistic areas.
It can be argued that these cases are simply specific and special people, which is a completely futile and spineless argument. People who lack family or mental issues are in fact the special cases, since humans are creatures who developed from primary and instinctive, to progressive and futuristic ideologies. Choosing to blind yourself to these cases, further proves the point of how society turns their back on people with such difficulty, playing some sort of checkers, instead of playing chess, thinking about the future plays (this person to be a future societal star).
We have famous cases, that every member of society has one heard of and is now looked at with enormous praise and admiration, Walt Disney. Walt Disney was extremely condemned in school, since from a very early age he would use his high school classes as time to draw, he would even draw in his school’s hardcover textbooks. Disney would constantly receive physical punishment for such a matter, but that wasn’t an even close form stopping him following his dreams. He got into an adventure of joining the army and Red Cross at the age of 16, and after years of adventure and no education he returned to America. With his minimal high school knowledge he got a job as a newspaper artist, slowly progressing and learning from life, he built his way up to being one of the most influential animators the world has ever seen. Through this anecdote, we have one of the most successful men in human history, who dared to diverge from the traditional pathway constantly being forced on him by school through punishment. The society of the time lacked in the most horrible way empathy and understanding of his dreams, through the small opportunities he searched in life, Walt disney was able to make the E-bay of himself, however he was lucky enough to receive these opportunities due to his privileged status of Red Cross member. In no means do I blame his success in his privilege, but once analyzed it and gave it a deeper thought, it is, without a doubt, concluded that may other young minds such as Walt Disney’s, will receive any of these opportunities, shutting them out of the chance to show their full potential to our society.
Today there is a lack of solution to such a problem, this happens due to the fact that it deals with individuality, where a formula and common solution will not solve nor help with the problem. A simple alternative from keeping quiet and ignoring whatever issue the kids is going through, is to provide the schools, especially public ones, with professionals, such as psychologists or even teachers who are with the students best interest in mind. This can be a complicated solution if not executed well, since instead of creating a trusting bond with these kids, such an unprepared “professional” might completely traumatize the kid and, instead of building a bond, will completely destroy whatever trust they might have in mind.
EAC PRESS 