The Loss of Invention

I have been going on far too long about my lovely son. Tonight I am moved to go on about our educational system. Sitting in my graduate class tonight a fellow student brought about the topic of invention and how it is no longer present in our modern day educational system--at least not at the high school level which is where my experience lies. We no longer teacher our children to invent their own thoughts. We focus on teaching them to analyze someone elses and to find out who said what about a topic they pretend that they are intersested in to satisfy an assignment that is arbitrarily given because as teachers we are expected to satisfy ambigious benchmarks that do not translate into skills the students will need in the real world--yes a generalization but when was the last time you read a book and summarized each chapter or drew pictures illustrating the main events? Exactly....

This brings me to my ephipany about why there is no longer invention in most of our public school--I say public because our private schools pride themselves on creating inventive people who will take their rightful place at the head of society while those of us who were taught to accept someone elses ideas get up in the morning, punch a clock and work for the aforementioned inventive people.

Our educational system is set up to educate two sets of people--the rich and everyone else. Public schools were designed to placate the middle classes and to give them a sense of supeiority over those below you. But lets be honest, public schools train workers not leaders. We train students to accept what others say as opposed to exploring their own opinions. As a teacher and now a mother, it is my job to demand we train inventors. I want my son to be an inventor. I want your sons/daughters to be inventors. Change must happen--one child at a time.