#you may rebloggo if you want idc

[mannatea]

Can I ask why the education traumatizes students? I'm just curious.

I don’t wanna make a long-winded overblown post about this because I feel like other posts on Tumblr have expressed it better than I could, or at least more succinctly lol, so i’ll just say one of the biggest contributing factors in the public american education system is probably:

Overcrowding.

When I say overcrowding is a problem, I mean 35+ children in a classroom under the supervision of one teacher. It has been proven time and time again that this is a recipe for poor education but I am going to say it again: this is a recipe for poorly educating your children. Think about it this way: I have eight cats. I barely have the time to pay all eight of them a good amount of attention for the duration of time I am given each day to spend with them. Now imagine I have up to FIVE TIMES THAT MANY CATS. Do you think they are getting the care and attention and help that they need? Do you think I will be able to figure out who has a bladder problem? Who has an ear infection? Whose hips hurt and who needs a ramp or set of stairs for accessibility? I’m gonna miss some problems and some cats are going to suffer greatly for that neglect, intentional or no. 

35 cats seems like an overwhelming amount of cats, but for some reason it’s fine to have that many HUMAN CHILDREN IN ONE SPACE. Can you give four children the amount of attention and guidance and help they need every day? Just four? It’s hard. But now remember that many classrooms have 35+ children in them and they are under the supervision and guidance of ONLY ONE PERSON, which can lead to all the sorts of trauma related to this:

Bullying from other students, particularly during times where the children are not supervised well or at all.

Tired & underpaid teachers who don’t have the time or resources to help with the education aspect of it OR the bullying that goes on, which may end up with teachers being and acting stressed, perhaps even snapping at students for not understanding something, and then those students become afraid to admit they don’t know something/ask questions in the future.

Being ostracized/set to work on something different than the rest of the class which forces you to stand out

Special needs/accommodations are easily missed, resulting in fewer children getting the help they need, be it for ADHD, learning disabilities, or vision impairment.

I could go on. So many students also means less time for teachers to grade, less rest for teachers to recharge, more reliance on overarching lesson plans instead of being able to focus a little more on the things some students might be struggling with, et cetera.

If you were lucky enough to go to a school that had small classrooms, this may sound insane to you, but it’s very common in the USA, and bullshit like Common Core and Super Special Math Requirements to Graduate have been getting increasingly worse. I noped out of the education sector because it was depressing, because I knew I couldn’t handle the stressful environment, the shitty pay, the inability to monitor the children appropriately, and aLL OF THAT WHILE THE FUTURE OF THOSE KIDS WAS SITTING ON MY SHOULDERS.

Do we want well-educated children? If the answer is yes, why do we pay teachers like that? Why do we give them massive classrooms and then punish them when they struggle to teach the students? Gee, I wonder why so many teachers burn out. Gee, I wonder why so many students end up afraid to ask questions, think that learning is a miserable experience, and feel stupid when they don’t understand a task or directions given to them at work 20 years later.

Like. It’s just so obvious to me. We don’t value education in this country. We don’t value the work teachers do. We don’t give a good goddamn about learning OR about making learning a fun and engaging experience.

And then we are baffled when someone in their 40s or 50s or 60s comes to work and is afraid to admit they don’t understand the directions you just gave them. I don’t know. Maybe because when they were 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8, they got laughed at for not being able to read well, or for misunderstanding directions, or for answering a question incorrectly, and they spent the rest of their life just nodding and keeping their head down to avoid looking stupid and drawing attention to themselves. ‘Cause it’s not like this experience is singular, like, “hah yeah I had one teacher like that once.” It’s shockingly universal in this country. And I am of the opinion that the biggest contributing factor to this is paying teachers shit wages and making them babysit FAR too many kids than they are able to teach WELL.