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Raymond Lao
Professor Samtani
English 1A
29 September 2015
Revising the Education System
As a growing society, education is an important aspect, if not the most important. The
current education system has been ridiculed mainly because of how students are taught. Because
of this, many thinkers such as Ken Robinson, Paulo Freire, Mike Rose, and etc. have contributed
their expertise to what has gone wrong with education. They argue that this education system
destroys creativity by limiting the students imaginations in classrooms. Although our education
system is viewed as the ideal system of learning, it needs to be fundamentally reconstructed
where students have a wider choice of subjects differentiating between the sciences and arts in
which they could show interest and actually sustain the knowledge gained for future careers and
achievements.
Paulo Freire describes the current education system as a banking system where
educators are depositing information into the minds of students and then receive the information,
such as a banking transaction. This method of learning is ineffective because the students do not
fully process and utilize the knowledge they receive. Most of the information that is taught to the
students is forgotten after a short period of time. They are not retaining the knowledge that they
had learned in class, because they have no interest of what was taught. In his article, excerpt
from Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire says that, The teacher presents himself to his
students as their necessary opposite; by considering their ignorance is absolute, he justifies his
own existence. Freire identifies that students are afraid to make mistakes and question what the

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teacher or professor says, when in reality education is supposed to be a two way learning system
in which the educators are also being taught by the students. Students these days are punished
and marked down for incorrect answers, so its not surprising when they dont participate in class
or answer a question when they are not certain.
With that said, there are different aspects to keep in mind. Students come from various
cultural backgrounds, regions, and may have disabilities or personal issues that prevent them
from learning. Mike Rose, the author of, Lives on the Boundary had a very interesting
perspective about education. He gave real world stories of individuals who came from foreign
countries. For example, in his story, he talks about a girl named Thuy Anh who gave away
everything including her education to take care of her siblings until she finally decided to pursue
education in the States. Individuals such as Thuy Anh faced adversity in our society because they
did not understand the English language all too well. The way that they self-motivated
themselves to learn and strove for success is quite admirable. Rose states that, There is a strong
impulse in American education curious in a country with such an ornery streak of
antitraditionalism to define achievement and excellence in terms of the acquisition of a
historically validated body of knowledge, an authoritative list of books and allusions, a canon
(98). Rose is describing how the American education system defines a persons level of
intelligence in the type of literature that a person has read, creating a societal view that
determines if you are smart. Rose challenged this way of thinking by talking about foreign
individuals who had not read Shakespeare or Socrates, but still persisted and gained knowledge
slowly through hard work and dedication. The system begins to change only when the students
themselves decide that change is needed. They decide whether they want to enter a growth
mindset where they persist in the face of setbacks or a fixed mindset where they give up and

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dont put in the effort. There is certain level of confidence and self-motivation that must be
present for change to occur in the current education system and it starts with the ones being
educated.
However, Ken Robinson says that, Schools are currently killing our creativity. So how
exactly is this happening without making the realization to fix the issue? Like Freire, Robinson
points out that incorrect and correct answers kills the way students think and process
information. Robinson is a believer of artistic views, original thinking and having a wild
imagination. In his Ted Talks video, Ken Robinson states that, If youre not prepared to be
wrong, you will never create anything original. He explains how every single education system
had the same hierarchy where the teachings of mathematics have a greater value than teaching
about the arts. Education had become an industry where students are educated only for the
purpose of having good careers and in the end, the imagination of students are at a high level of
risk. Picasso said that, All children are born artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once
he grows up. As adolescents, we tend to have curious mind which leads to our creative view
about society. Schools are educating the creativity of students and as they grow older, the artist
inside of them has long vanished.
Society wants education to benefit the economy and the way the world functions. The
education system was built to create mathematicians, businessmen, scientists and etc. There is no
real path for an artist or musician to walk because of the low demand in these fields. According
to an article on the Present Education System, The aim of this system has become to make
money for the owners of the institutes and in turn this education also makes youth who are
hungry for indulgence, power and money. There is a high demand in the world for people with
certain sets of skills and painting, or playing a musical instrument are not those skills. It is

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human nature to strive for success and its almost improbable to be a successful musician or artist
in todays world. People have goals that want to achieve and these goals will need power and
money. Logically, the world runs on mathematics and language. Society pushes our current
education system to students hoping that they become scholars and contribute towards the
economy. The idea of having no self-gain and only distributing back to others and pursuing
certain goals will not have a great effect is our current learning system. Because students lack
interest in what is being taught, the education system should start by implementing network in
which students could choose classes that interests them starting from an early stage. Give them a
feel of education in which they start making decisions by themselves, like college. Students give
up their goals and dreams in our current system to survive in a world built for the sole purpose of
academics leaving little to no space for creativity.
The education system will never be perfect, but there will always be improvements. In
the end, it is personal opinion and belief that will define education. Whether it is seen as a great
or horrible way to learn, it will always tie down back to how beneficial education is for the
world. This societal view, where students suffer by being forced into a certain way of thinking
and educators are the ones contributing to the destruction of creativity is how education is today.
No matter how interested a child is about the different arts offered in the world, sooner or later he
will meet the demands that society has laid out. Until changes occur in which a more artistic
view is needed, the current education system will remain the way it is where students are brought
up in the world to pursue more important ideals.

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Works Cited
Freire, Paulo. Excerpt from Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 1968. Print.
Present Education System. Timerays. n.p., n.d. Web. 29 Sept. 2015
Robinson, Ken, Do Schools Kill Creativity? Ken Robinson:. TED Talk, Feb. 2006. Web. 29
Sept. 2015.
Rose, Mike. The Presence of Others. Lives on the Boundary. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martins,
2008. Print.