I was sent to college to “get smart.”
This is hilarious for multiple reasons.
Here I am, an undergraduate third-year student attending an American college and studying English and film. It’s too bad this translates in the socioeconomic world to mean I may as well be hurling thousands of dollars into a big black hole in the center of the universe to be sucked in, brutally demolished and lost for eternity — a black hole that happens to demand interest.
I am a progressive thinker, and it’s like the American education balloon just got popped by the obnoxious kid at the birthday party — it’s limp, low, sad and ripped apart by outdated regulation. Something needs to change, and it needs to happen before we single-handedly destroy our own nation with stupidity.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, one in six children is enrolled in a high-poverty school. America is falling behind not only in math and science but in reading. To put our backward system into perspective, the Harlem Children’s Zone, a vanguard initiative created by Geoffrey Canada to educate children in impoverished Harlem, spends approximately $5,000 on each child per year. Sounds like a lot until we realize the dirty truth. According to the National Institute of Corrections, the taxpayers of New York were shoveling out $55,670 per prisoner per year as of 2008. The numbers have only risen.
Not only do college students have to wonder how to get jobs with the unemployment rate at a staggering 9 percent, but we have to wonder what kind of an education we’ve been getting in the first place. Smart people who should be receiving monetary benefits for sharing invaluable tutelage aren’t becoming teachers because there is no way to get paid based on performance. Unions are too strong, regulation too concrete and there is no true concern about the reality, which is this: The future of this country and the world lies in the hands of the children.
This is a call to action. It’s time to fight for your right to learn. Question your classroom. Question your loans. Question your erudition. We can’t pretend a college degree is enough anymore — the fabric of our system is torn, and we are the only ones who can fight for the federal regulation to sew it back together. Get informed. “Get smart.”
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