The education system is supposed to be an unbiased institution in which it's purpose is to teach kids facts and teach them how to think critically, become meticulous, and form work ethics. But does it do more than that?
In my experience this has not always been the case. In fact I would argue that the schools and the teachers that were apart of the schools had the largest impact on my opinions and how I form my opinions. From an early age we were thrust into an environment full of our peers and were taught to listen to every word that the instructor said, analyze it, interpret it, and learn from it. Teachers were the sole authority in a classroom full of all of my peers always the pinnacle of attention for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 9 months a year. We were trained to take in everything they say as fact because we are open minded. With all of that attention it's kind of hard to imagine that at some point those teachers weren't biased or didn't express their own opinions and through those biases some of my own opinions were formed.
During my time at Park High School one of the biggest emphasis of all of the teachers was "preparing" us for college. With that came stories that they would tell us of when they were in college or things that we should expect in college. At that time since I obviously was not in college or had experience college, I trusted everything that they said about it. It was as if because I had no personal experience I couldn't filter their opinions about college and consequently took their opinions and used them as my own.
These opinions that I formed about what college should be like from my teachers were not permanent. They have been altered as I have experienced college. I am able to form new opinions by filtering the previous opinions I had in high school with what I had actually experienced. Thus discrediting some previous opinions I had and enforcing others making the opinions I have about college unique to someone else's opinions of college.
I think that you make a really interesting point about how schools have one of the largest impacts on a child growing up, even if we don't recognize it. How much you like school, based on your teachers and the curriculum, lead to whether or not you want to attend college. How liberal your social science teachers are shape your opinons, either because you agree with what they say or you disagree and it makes you believe your point more. Especially when kids are little and take everything a teacher says to be fact, their subconsciouses can be shaped by how the teacher explains things and tells the students the "facts". I think you bring up an interesting idea of maybe our personalities aren't so genetic as they are a reflection of the ideas of our grade school teachers.
ReplyDeleteI agree with both of your ideas. Teachers make a huge impact on the lives of people from the ages of 6 to 18. In my personal experiences, my teachers were very vocal about their own college experiences and each one had a different experience and point of view. My English teacher was very anti-social, my History teacher was a standout baseball player, my Gym teacher was a jerk (no surprise), and my Dean of Students was a party-er. Though I feel that my Chemistry teacher prepared me for college the most, because she never talked about her college experience, but she taught in a way that challenged us and academically prepared for college,
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ReplyDeleteSchool is not unbiased what so ever. There is no way it can be because teachers are just humans and they express thier views on things even when they don't mean too. Also our teachers aren't just the ones who are biased but our textbooks are too. Just they way things are written in our text books give us the viewpoint that America, and the decisions made by its politicial leaders, is moral and always right. For example how come our text books call the American Revoultion the American Revolution while the British call it the Clensing of the Empire? Very different view points
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