Students in this generation are experiencing a crisis. We are being conformed into the social stigma instead of being given opportunities to define who we, as a generation, are. The schooling system is failing so many bright kids who just don’t do well the tradition ways of schooling. Some teachers are trying to incorporate technology into their teaching, but it’s not really working. We’ve grown up with iPods, iPhones, and iPads since we were 8 years old, and now it’s all, “Sit here with a pencil and paper and write about what you think.” But our parents just gave us a device to get us out of their hair. It’s not like when our parents went to school and were used to sitting there with a notebook, and used to writing. That’s all they knew, they didn’t have devices to distract them, smartphones, and they didn’t have Google. They were taught to look things up in a book, where as our generation has all the information in existence at our fingertips. We as species no longer need all of these outdated study tactics, the education system needs to conform to the new advances technology has made.

Social media gives us so many ways to express ourselves, but the school system is constructing our creativity, by limiting what we can do to show what we learned- and that’s why students are unable to succeed. I can sit here and talk for ages and ages… I can’t translate what i think into a piece of paper. In school, you’re expected to write what you think, write what you feel; it’s no longer part of what kids do these days.

In classes, they cater more toward kids who learn from hearing and doing. Not kids who learn hands-on, kids with ADD, ADHD don’t have the chance to visualize, or “feel it out” so to speak. It’s almost like they just want to get the smart people good grades and make the other kids feel dumb. I can sit and do work, but when it comes to doing new things, it takes me awhile to figure out what I’m supposed to do. To fix this we could focus on those people who are falling behind of what’s going on because if they get caught off track, or derailed, it’s discouraging, It’s hard to get caught up. When you don’t feel like you can’t succeed you want to stop trying, its just human nature. Focusing on those failures, not being able to get back on track, and feeling dumb all because you don’t understand. That just doesn’t seem fair to me.

I feel like if the education system focused more on student involvement and keeping people interested we would be much better off. The average high school student uses some type of electronic for 7 hours and 44 minutes every day which is about half of our waking hours. In our lives we are constantly stimulated, so that lack of stimulation sticks out like a sore thumb.