Retarding Education

Written by Damoon

Education, in an abstract context, is the act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge and cultivating the capacity of reasoning and judgment. Yet, in reality, in the dismal context of contemporary society, education and modern educational systems and methodologies have proven to be nothing but capitalistic bastardizations of the abovementioned definition. As all else in contemporary society, education has wretchedly resolved into mere exchange value. The sanctity of learning, of knowledge, of reasoning, of judgment, and of education itself has been violently drowned in the frigid waters of egotistical calculation; as that which threateningly exists is a contemptible and callous system of exploitative impersonality.

An apt example of education's dire state lies in the grim existence of an injustice known as standardized testing. Soon standardized testing, in this case STAR testing, will once again insolently rear its repulsive face upon the students of this educational structure, and once again the underlying purpose of these mind-numbing exams will go unquestioned. Nevertheless, it must be made known that standardized exams serve a detrimental intention of categorization and the preservation of inequality. Is it not outrageous that these tests seek to statistically and impersonally interpret something as intricate and profound as the human mind for the sake of assisting in the socioeconomic classification of posterity? Not only do these tests make unequal the educational standards within a school by creating divisions between higher scoring students and lower scoring students, but also they make disproportionate the educational standards amid affluent and impoverished communities. Schools that reflect higher test scores receive higher budgets, and in the first place it is usually those schools with abundant resources, or the money, that reflect higher scores. Essentially, the wealthy become wealthier as the poor become poorer. In brief, that which insults one's intelligence with blatant classificatory probing, that which transforms human beings into mere statistics, that which sustains unfairness, and that which harvests wealth for corporate test furnishers deserves nothing less than anger and abhorrence. 

However, the baseness of the modern educational system runs far deeper than the existence and inequity of standardized exams; it must be recognized that it is the structural and functional essence of this system that is intellectually and ideologically deadening to the majority. Not only is the modern educational system an organ of classification, or the marginalization of the majority, but also it is machinery that fulfils the occupational, ideological, intellectual, and cultural needs of the general system of production. Thus, this system exists as one that produces a majority of unmotivated students and a majority of incompetent teachers. Thus, school itself has become so formulaic, so cliché, and so monotonous as to inevitably repel and make apathetic the student to school. Furthermore, the student is trapped in a structure that revolves around callous cash payment; the educational faculty finds more incentive in wages rather than in the respectability of enlightening, and the sole purpose of attending school is in attaining a living in one's adulthood. With these rancid realities in mind, it is a marvel that anything constructive is birthed from this system.