Now, I want to be very clear, a highly educated society is needed for space habitation. But, I think our high schools destroys important qualities of human beings that provides the emotional motivation behind space habitation. It destroys the morality of students and morality is required in the space field because shady operations who value profit over human life will not survive in space; space will find the flaws in anything and use that flaw to rip apart the mission. Our education system is not about education, but crystallization. Students are unwilling to think outside of the box, because if you stay in the box, you are guaranteed an A.
I wrote this essay for my final writing task of high school. We had to argue against one educational philosophy then create our own...
The degree is like Ithaca, but the journey to earn a degree has changed greatly. A college degree is not a symbol of years of honing and patient meditation on a field, it has become a symbol of a fast track to the upper-middle class. Students' “thoughts [do not] remain lofty [and]... a fine emotion [does not] touch their bod[ies]”1. Students rush to take AP classes so they may earn credits to graduate from college a year early. Students expect a degree to bring them riches, only to come out of college passionless and doomed to mediocrity. Arriving at Ithaca does not make a man great. What makes a man great is the lessons learned from the road and a passion for life. However, in the modern day, this slow foot journey has been replaced with a bullet train, nonstop from childhood to Ithaca. But, something is lost in the most recent generation. Students do not have a reason to want to go to Ithaca and the slow journey the builds an understanding of what Ithaca, what a degree is, has been lost. Students are just placed on the train by parents who want their children to experience Ithaca, but do not when them to experience the hardships that make makes Ithaca a great place. Students will continue to have their humanity torn from them if we do not demolish those rail lines.
High schools still have a utilitarian mindset despite administrators' ongoing effort to make high schools creative. This has nothing to do with how the teacher conducts his lessons, the goals of the administration, or the intentions of the community; for no parent or teacher wants to crush the spirit of a child. It is due to the culture that has arisen around schools that encourages students to approach school with a utilitarian perspective. The ideal student of top schools like Whitney High School or Princeton High School is the student with a 4.0 GPA, a 2400 SAT score, and 36 ACT score. This ideal student is praised and lusted after so much that "confused kid[s have] parent[s who] t[ell them] it [is] okay to cheat if [they] earned an A, because [their] future was at stake. Just don't get caught, [they] are warned" 2. This is reminiscent of Mr. Harthouse, one of the model utilitarians in Hard Times, who said "I am not a moral sort of fellow... and I never make any pretensions to the character of a moral sort of fellow. I am as immoral as need be" 3. It is as if the student were a machine, expected to give output without giving thought to aspects of humanity like morality or emotions and it is this utilitarian temperament that is creeping into our schools because of the over-reliance on grades.
The current high school system relies too much on grades. As a result the morale and the morality of the student are both negatively affected 4. Students cannot afford to fail (anything short of the model student is defined as failing) so they stick to topics that they are comfortable with and ideas which are already well proven. But, in the process they loss the joy of learning, the thrill of discovery and do not grow. Regurgitating information can guarantee an "A", and in a system where an "A" is next to godliness, that is what students will, unhappily, do. Uncertainty is required to keep the student interested and allow the student to grow5. Yet, uncertainty can bring a failed project, a failed writing risk, or a easily dismissed idea and to become like the model student, one can not fail, ever.
Furthermore, developing a strong moral fiber in the school is discouraged when grades are idealized. Not only in the sense of cheating, but in the sense of other acts where one's conscience must be the guide. Students who value grades alone (as opposed to self-improvement through learning) choose not to help others with their work; students who value grades alone will not look up from the textbook or even explore harder ideas 6. In the movie Smart People, Vanessa, a perfect example of today's model student, continues to study after learning her father is in the hospital with head trauma. Later, Vanessa is concerned not about her father's health, who has had his license revoked because of seizures, but is worried over her lack of transportation to the various resume padding extracurricular activities that have become a keystone in the passionless high school experience. Why should Vanessa or any student do anything but look at their books when they are members of a system which does not give rewards to the helpful, the empathic or the curious and which lavishes praise on the workaholic? Students who value grades alone do not learn to respect learning or life. They do not enjoy the rare experience that is life. They do not give the course material the time it needs to mold and shape a person or try to explore unmapped ideas.
In order to develop a passion for learning, the student must be pushed outside of his comfort zone. In search of the A, students would "rather accept an A in an easy class rather than fail a hard one and learn a great deal from it"7. The student who said this has lost the value of an education while remaining within his comfort zone. The most is learned when the student is challenged and occasionally fails. For example, a student can procrastinate in easy classes will never learn, until he enters the real world, that procrastination is a bad habit. Schools provide a unique environment where students can fail and learn from the failure without the disastrous consequences of the real world. This unique environment is squandered when students are too fearful to take risks; when student believe that everything they have worked for can be lost with each test or essay.
Thus over reliance on grades threatens the following traits which all students enter with: curiosity, the joy of learning, morality, happiness and passion; the on going search for the uncertainty and the trill of unmapped ideas; the certain quark and small gift that lights up a person when they are able to use it, the fulfillment the one searches for when they follow their dreams and the burning desire for growth. When these are lost, any hope of success is lost and mediocrity is ensured. Maybe William Farish did not intend for this to occur when he developed the letter grade system, but this incentive has created the opposite effect; students only want an A, they do not want to learn.
Tony Robbins, life couch and expert in leadership physiology, has said “I believe that the invisible force of internal drive, activated, is the most important thing in the world. I believe emotion is the force of life. All of us here have great minds... and with our minds we can rationalize anything. We can make anything happen”, but there are some people who have all the “education, money and background [they could ever want, but they] spend... their life going in and out of rehab” 8 9. Knowledge is power, but this can not power the soul. One needs something far more powerful then knowledge to achieve, one needs a purpose, a focus, a passion. The current philosophy of high schools not only fails to to promote this essential ingredient to the human experience, but crushes it. “Melissa Roderick, the professor at the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago and co-director of the Consortium on Chicago School Research [speaking on college drop outs said] 'If you go into any urban high school right now and sit down with parents and kids and ask, 'What do you want to get out of high school?' there's only one answer: 'Graduate and go to college.'”10. This mentality is not limited to urban schools, across the world “graduate and go to college” has been the sole directive of all schools. While this objective should be held in high regard, it can not be the sole reason for the school to exist, which shall become the sole reason for the student to go to school; for the philosophy of the school is reflected in it's students. If it is the sole reason, there lacks an internal reason to graduate from high school and college. The student is simply told that he needs to graduate and go to college. This external reason is reinforced through fear of parents and fear of poverty. Those two reasons will not give the student the strength to complete college. For that, the student must realize himself that college is necessary for his goal in life. This is why schools must teach personal development. So that the students can find powerful reasons to support their actions. Once that happens, everything that student intents to do will be done. But, Tony Robbins also points out one more ingredient to success.
Emotional fitness must also be mastered by the student to be successful. If you where to take two job applicants from the same, elite college with the same grades and the same qualifications. It is a dead even tie between those two applicants. But, one applicant was completely unconfident, did not look the interviewer in the eye, was shaking like a dryer the whole time and seemed miserable. The other was confident, radiated passion and love for his work; he made everyone smile when he walked in the door and was full of seemingly endless energy. Who is getting the job? But this is not the only reason schools need to train students in emotional fitness. If the student falls in love, or lusts after someone or feels remorse for a past action, that student will be debilitated as these strong emotions rips through their body. If the student is not trained in emotions, that student will be overwhelmed. But, having complete control over one's emotions gives unstoppable power to that person. Sissy, in the novel Hard Times, was able to wield her emotions with devastating effect. Sissy who does not conform to the utilitarian model student and who is untrained in logic is able to convince Mr. Harthouse to leave town with a “blending of gentleness and steadiness that quite defeated him”11. Thus, emotions play an essential role not only in life, but in success.
W.E.B. DuBois said “to stimulate wildly weak and untrained minds is to play with mighty fires”. The challenge of school builds the fire of passion in the student; to grasp new ideas and unmapped thoughts creates a longing for more of the unknown. Yet, because of the risk aversion caused by the grading system and because of the danger of pursuing the unknown, student stay within comfortable theories and ideas. Never really exploring past the area their teacher has laid out. This puts out this great, life giving fire the school ignites in the student. The student, fearing nonconformity, stops feeding the fire within, which eventually dies. Water is poured on this fire when the student ignores morality in order to become a copy of the model. Emotions become roadblocks and the student looses passion, the only difference between humans and computers. This will lead to the most miserable, lifeless people who come home to tired to take off their shoes. The mighty fire in every student must be protected or else the world will not grow, but will wallow in mediocrity. We must let this great forest fire burn in every student because only in fire does the seeds of youth become strong, mighty trees. ~ The Burning School vs. The Icy School: Destroying and Restoring the Passion and Emotion in Education by Daniel Sims A.K.A. Aron Sora. Republish with permission from me since I wrote it.
I want to quote the key line of my essay. "Thus over reliance on grades threatens the following traits which all students enter with: curiosity, the joy of learning, morality, happiness and passion; the on going search for the uncertainty and the trill of unmapped ideas; the certain quark and small gift that lights up a person when they are able to use it, the fulfillment the one searches for when they follow their dreams and the burning desire for growth. When these are lost, any hope of success is lost and mediocrity is ensured". This does not only apply to the individual, when a society losses these things, it is doomed to mediocrity and crystallization. A society that can not challenge it's ideas will not be able to adapt to space, which will need social concepts untaught of or unimplemented. Without curiosity, space losses something. We have explored because we wanted to know what was over the next hill; we were curious and that provides a lot of the motivation behind space exploration. Societies which are happy with remaining it's current state will not look to better its self or challenge its self. I think our high schools are making people risk aversive. Space is a huge risk, but the risk can be managed. High school students are trained to not take risks, period. Even if the risk can be reduced.
I can not prove this claim, but I think people who are in the space field are the most passionate people in the world. They could be making more money in other fields, they could be in a less politically challenged field, they could take a easier job with more security, but they are here. What amazes me is that so many NASA employees tweet and are blog about space. Space seems to run through the blood of people interested in it. Space is the motivating factor for most everything in these people's lives. In short, I have yet to find a truly miserable NASA employ or sad space cadet. Now, they could be having a bad day because their dream was attacked all day long, but ask anyone at NASA or Virgin Galactic a question and they will light up. This field is tough, yet we all in the space field have internal reasons to be in that field or else they wouldn't be there. Space is one of the most frustrating areas of human activity and we need a society which has passion for space; an internal reason to have a space program and our schools destroy this aspect of humanity. This is why Apollo failed in it's long term goals, we only went because of external reasons (Fear of the USSR) and had no wide spread passion or internal reasons for space.
So, I think we need a school system which preserves passion and the other critical human traits before we can develop space.
Reactions
-Is passion important in the development of a spacefaring species?
-Is our society risk aversive?
-Do you think our education system prevents the development of emotional support for space habitation?
-Can we think inside the box and still achieve space habitation?
Resources
1: Cavefy, C.P. “Ithaca” Nina Alvarez. 31 May 2009. <http://ninaalvarez.net/2007/05/03/poem-of-the-day-49/>
2: Humes, Edward. School of Dreams: Making the Grade at a Top American High School. Florida: Harcourt, 2003 Page 104
3: Dickens, Charles. "Hard Times: Book 3: Chapter 2" eBooks@Adelaide. The University of Adelaide. n.d. Web. May 27, 2009. <http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/d/dickens/charles/d54ht/chapter30.html>
4: Schwartz, Berry. "Barry Schwartz on our loss of wisdom." Feb 2009. Online video clip. TED. Accessed on May 23, 2009. <http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/barry_schwartz_on_our_loss_of_wisdom.html> 12:40 - 13:12
5: Robbins, Tony. "Tony Robbins asks why we do what we do" Jun 2006. Online video clip. TED. Accessed on May 23, 2009. <http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/tony_robbins_asks_why_we_do_what_we_do.html> 11:04 - 11:51
6: Schwartz, Berry. "Barry Schwartz on our loss of wisdom." Feb 2009. Online video clip. TED. Accessed on May 23, 2009. <http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/barry_schwartz_on_our_loss_of_wisdom.html> 08:28 - 09:08
7: Humes, Edward. School of Dreams: Making the Grade at a Top American High School. Florida: Harcourt, 2003 Page 82
8: Robbins, Tony. "Tony Robbins asks why we do what we do" Jun 2006. Online video clip. TED. Accessed on May 23, 2009. <http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/tony_robbins_asks_why_we_do_what_we_do.html> 1:03 - 1:26
9: Robbins, Tony. "Tony Robbins asks why we do what we do" Jun 2006. Online video clip. TED. Accessed on May 23, 2009. <http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/tony_robbins_asks_why_we_do_what_we_do.html> 4:04 - 4:10
10: Gehrman, Elizabeth . "What makes kids drop out of college?." HARVARD GAZETTE 04 May, 2006. . 31 May, 2009 <http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2006/05.04/13-dropout.html>.
11: Dickens, Charles. "Hard Times: Book 3: Chapter 2" eBooks@Adelaide. The University of Adelaide. n.d. Web. May 27, 2009. <http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/d/dickens/charles/d54ht/chapter30.html>
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In Case You Skimmed
-Schools diminish passion in it's students
-Over reliance on grades threatens the following traits which all students enter with:
-Curiosity
-The joy of learning
-Morality
-Happiness
-Passion
-The on going search for the uncertainty
-The trill of unmapped ideas; the certain quark
-Small gift that lights up a person when they are able to use it
-Dreams
-If a society's members do not have these traits, the can not be passionate and active in space
