School Made Me Hate Writing
Don’t let schooling interfere with your education. — Mark Twain
For most of my life, I have hated reading and writing. In school, I had to struggle against immeasurable negative emotion to convince myself to complete homework. I would sometimes have significant breakdowns in this process; it felt as though writing was the thing I least wanted to do. You’ll notice, however, that I wrote this article. Why do I blame school for my experiences, and how have I gotten out of it?
As a person who loves math, it always strikes me as odd when people gallantly describe their incomprehension and aversion towards math. I believe this is a part of the same issue: the school system is fundamentally flawed. Now, I’m certainly not the first person to criticize common core; however, I believe it is still necessary. I would also like to point out that my experiences come from my schooling in Massachusetts, which is ranked highest in public education in the United States. My point is that any of the problems I’ve faced in MA schools are likely significantly worse in the rest of the country. There are many problems with the school system and I will not pretend to be able to solve them myself; however, it is still useful for me to point out problems where they lie, even if I have no proposed solutions.
You Cannot Force Interest
It is not possible to force yourself or another person to be interested in something. Every single person has found themselves doing a task they have no interest in, while the remainder of their being is clawing to escape. Your mind will drift off, and your body will fidget as if it would run at the instant you decided to. There are also always topics some people will be uninterested in. Everyone is interested in different things, and this diversity of interest leads to diversity of skill, which benefits our society immensely. The fundamental problem with common core is that it is a one-size-fits-all approach to learning.
Common core requires states’ schooling systems to be the same in certain ways. I don’t think this is an inherently bad concept; however, the execution of the concept is where I find issue. Of course, not all the problems with school lie in common core, either. Many issues arise from the state level and others arise from individual teachers; regardless, these issues are extremely common. Let’s get into why I believe I hated reading and writing.
As far as I can tell, the reason I hated reading and writing was because I was forced to read and write about topics I had no interest in. That seems to be the foundation; however, it also leads to a positive-feedback loop. The more someone dislikes a topic, the less they practice it. Since they don’t practice, they don’t get good at it. The lack of skill means the task remains hard and unenjoyable, meaning they continue to dislike it. This cycle continues and each new assignment, while increasing skill, drastically increases disdain. I believe this is why people dislike math and why I disliked writing. Even currently, while my reading comprehension is decent, my reading speed is abysmal. I still subvocalize every single word, which means I say the word in my head. This is an extremely slow method of reading, and truly competent readers simply glide their eyes along sentences and comprehend what they see.
This type of reading is completely foreign to me. However, I can perform basic calculus in my head with solid visualizations, and this is equally foreign to many people. I have an intuitive understanding of many areas in math in a way that most people probably cannot understand. I was lucky to have mostly great math teachers in my education. Despite that, many people in my classes still found themselves disliking math. This is because of two primary reasons I suspect: they simply are not that interested in math, or they never saw past the instruction. Let me elaborate on that second point. I’ve had poor math classes, but I’ve been able to enjoy them because I can look past the topic at hand. I can see what’s behind the problem and see why we’re doing it. Some people just get stuck on the problem.
Explain Your Motivations
There is a major problem in education, and in parenting in general. People, especially kids, need to be told why you want them to do something. You should have a logically thought out reason to ask someone to do something, otherwise what is wrong with you? How can you possibly expect someone else to blindly follow what you want when you yourself haven’t figured out why they should do it? All of your motivation should be thought out logically for yourself and for others. That doesn’t even mean it should be devoid of emotion or other seemingly non-logical concepts. Doing things because of how you feel can make sense in certain contexts, if you can justify it. Anyway, there is a reason that we learn math and writing in schools.
Kids will often ask, “when will I ever use this in real life?” when forced to do assignments they do not wish to do. The thing is, this is a perfectly valid query; if the topic is of no utility, why should we learn it? The problem is, teachers often don’t know why they themselves are teaching something, so let me spill the beans on that right now. When it comes to math, math is nothing more than a method of problem-solving. The reason we learn algebra and other topics in math is because you need to learn how to solve problems. Consider solving for the zeros of a quadratic function. Why are parabolas of any utility? Besides the fact that these equations appear in numerous places in daily life, understanding how to solve one is extremely useful. The way you solve that problem is by rearranging the problem, in a way that doesn’t change it fundamentally, into a form you recognize. Then, you solve the problem the way you have practiced. That is fundamentally how you solve most problems in real life. Change how you’re looking at the problem without changing the problem, and solve it in a way you are familiar with. That is why you learn algebra and that is when it will be used in daily life.
Reading and writing is even more important. The point of practicing reading and writing is to learn how to think. Writing is just a form of thinking, just as speech is. You need to learn how to think and communicate clearly because every aspect of our lives becomes enriched when we can think rationally and communicate that effectively to others. Personal relationships improve, your business endeavors improve, etc. You need to practice reading because you need exposure to different ideas, and because we learn primarily through mimicry, especially linguistically. So, you need to see how other people write and learn new vocabulary. I cannot imagine how much I have lost by not reading and writing significantly over the last decade.
How I Came to Love Reading and Writing
I still don’t read all that much, but I’m not conceptually against it anymore. Writing, I’m clearly doing more often (check out my other stories). I think I truly came to love reading and writing because of my EN-102 class in my second semester of college. I had a great professor who was a little tough. At first, I thought I might have to drop the class because of that and my views on writing. However, he grew on me. We went over grammar one last time in our schooling, and I learned many new things about it; I think I began to see grammar through the lens of mathematics and programming. The main reason I grew to enjoy reading and writing in this class were because this professor often let us read things we were interested in and write about topics we were interested in.
That is fundamentally how you can get someone interested in a topic they have disdain for; you need to stop forcing specific areas of that topic on them. Kids are tired of the unrealistic supermarket problems in math. If a kid is interested in cars, the problem should be about cars. Education must be engineered to suit the individual. Everyone has had a few great teachers that truly changed their lives and helped to redeem the otherwise poor education experience. A major reason these teachers are so great is because they broke past the structure of the classroom and truly saw you. If there are any teachers reading this, I understand there is only so much you can do; but aim to be one of those teachers to your students and do the best you can within the flawed structure of the public education system.
The reason I can write so easily right now is because I chose this topic, and I’m interested in it; I wasn’t forced to write about it simply for a grade. It truly hurts my soul to think about children who are growing up hating certain topics simply because of how they were taught in school. Mathematics has so many intricate areas that might as well be considered art; and yet, many people will never know they even exist because they lost interest in math because of one bad algebra class. Many people will never seek out the great works of literature because they were never taught to love reading; moreover, they were only taught to do reading. Many people will lack an essential scientific understanding of reality itself because of poorly instructed classes; however, from my personal experience, science is often a more innately passionate subject that is effortless to follow, despite poor instruction. This is likely the reason why there is such a large anti-science movement in our country. I do not merely attribute it to religion, as many have tried to do.
Some of the greatest scientists in history were not only religious, but performing science for a religious purpose. There are many modern scientists who hold both religion and science in their worldview, without contradiction. As far as I’m concerned, the only reason people view religion and science as contradictory is because they apply materialistic thinking to religion. Science tells you what the nature of the world is, and religion is supposed to tell you how to live in that world. In my opinion, religious stories aren’t meant to be taken as literal materialistic fact. The entire idea to do so is founded in, ironically, an anti-religious materialistic viewpoint that attempts to confine the entirety of reality to physical material. To that, I say, what is information? Information, physically, is the way in which matter and energy are spread out. It is an abstracted concept and abstracted concepts, while holding a basis in material reality, are not inherently material themselves. Anyway, back to the anti-science movement.
I believe that the fundamental issue at hand is a lack of critical thinking skills, as well as a lack of knowledge. This is primarily a product of the flaws of the education system. We live in an era of information, where any fact can be found online within seconds from any corner of the globe. Despite this, many people are still ignorant of so much. This is because they have not been taught how to find information for themselves, nor how to discern truth from misinformation — a term a use delicately. Society seems to think it’s okay to simply lump ideas into the category of misinformation, without a second thought. That is an act that belongs to fascists and soviets. If you read this and think I’m saying that the media are fascists, then you are exactly the kind of person I’m about to continue to talk about. So much of this political divisiveness has been caused by arrogant idiots on both sides who cannot actually think critically. This is what happens when our schools fail to properly educate, when schools take the roles parents were supposed to fill, and when society as a whole becomes accepting of a lack of critical thinking.
Our school system is antiquated and needs significant reform. Most problems in society are, at minimum, made worse because of it. A likely reason nothing is being done is because an uneducated mass of sheep make great tools for politicians to get into office. Of course, much of my language is hyperbolic, and the country is not some dystopia where everything has gone to hell; however, that is exactly what we are heading towards if we continue to pretend that things are adequate as they are.
P.S. The good news for me is, if you disagree with my point and think I’m naive, then you have proved my point because it is school’s responsibility to ensure I’m not naive.
