Academic Writing Assignment #5

Argumentative Thesis

The Currently Dysfunctional School Curriculum System

Fairuz Astra Pratama -16514108-

                "Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree it will live its whole live believing that it is stupid."This quote; taken directly from Albert Einstein himself is giving us a clue about what is wrong with our current education system. After being redesigned to fulfill the industry demand, school curriculum still hasn't change from its "left brain hemisphere centered" pattern. Everyone still has to go through the same boring training, and undergo the same boring test to "measure the student's value fairly." This method is unfair and broken since (as Einstein put it so elegantly) you can't judge a scientist by its ability to run. School should not standardize education into one strict curriculum anymore since every individual is unique. With the current curriculum, schools will devaluate certain skillsand not everyone wants to be a rocket scientist.

                In the animal kingdom, every animal has its own way and special skill to survive the harsh condition of the wilderness; this also apply to our human society. Some people are good at sports, some are good with computer, some has great socializing skill, and several are still figuring themselves out. Although this seems obvious, school apparently still has not acknowledged this, and treated everyone the same way in their education process. Everyone has its own strength, weakness, and unique skill; there are no sense in giving them the same text books and test papers.

                Having these education standards as a mean of judging peoples capabilities will not only devaluate their unique skill, but also going to make non-academic skill seems useless, which is wrong. Writing, athletic and social skills are all very useful in the real life. Not only because even engineer need some writing, drawing and social skill in real life. However, both cartoonist and athletes can also make just as much if not more money and recognition as scientist and engineer does; but our curriculum is trying to convince us otherwise. If there are no any reforms to our current education standard, this will make children who have good drawing or sportsskill feel as if he/she is worthless and make the one who have good cognitive skill feel as if he/she doesn't need anything other than textbooks.

                The only skills that our current curriculum system held at the upmost importance are cognitive skill, especially knowledge in natural science. Subjects such as Math and Physics are given a much higher priority than Art and IT. This means that since there are only a few people who find their Calculus lessons are useful in real life; such as Engineer and Scientist, the rest of the population who are not one of them are at a loss since they had wasted their time learning said subjects. Not everyone wants to be a scientist; in fact, they shouldn't be. We have other profession with the same importance to fill such as PR, Athletes, Artist, Manager, and many more; why are we forcing all of them to learn the Pythagoras theorem when we know they won't use it in their future job.

                Admittedly, there are some counterarguments to this, one of which is how impossibly hard it is to make curriculum which is dependent to each individual's ability. Therefore, schools only prioritize on the most important skill; which is according to them, cognitive skill. Although its importance can't be denied, cognitive skill isn't the most important skill; school missed some of the most significant life skill. Learning how to learn, how to motivate yourself, where do we get trustworthy information, and much more other skill are arguably more important than knowing who is the man who found the Raflesia Arnoldi flower. They didn't even bother to teach us students about the important yet mundane activity in life such as how to pay your taxes, how to secure your finance, how to prepare your own food, how to drive, and so on.

                Right now, school doesn't deliver what it promised us to. They promise that by going to school, children will be prepared for life and be successful in their job and society. Nevertheless, they didn't prepare us for life, nor secure us a job in the future. We learn most of our important skill from socializing, reading non-academic articles and/or books, and practicing on what we enjoy the most; so why do we go to school? "School is there to prepare you to be a successful cog in the machine, nothing more, nothing less. It is there to make you into a 'good member of society', they don't care about students, and they care about the society. It also effectively cuts the amount of time and effort parents have to spend caring for their children in half." -L from answer.yahoo.com