I am so mad at this education system. Before you judge and say "Oh no another whiny teenage girl who isn't doing so great at school" well I'll admit it, I'm not doing that great and I am being whiny. But seriously. This isn't just about me.
I frustrates me to no end the hierarchy of the education system. All around the world education has the same priorities:
Maths and sciences and languages (chemistry, english, physics etc)
Humanities (Business, history, law etc.)
The Arts (Music, dance etc.)
So apparently, our intellect and genius is based and valued on what we're specifically good at. So if you're amazing at art and only average at maths, the maths student has a greater chance of getting a good enough score to be accepted in universities and colleges rather then the art student.
I may be biased as an art student but I know that I'm not the only arts or humanitarian student whose scores are dragging their future down just because the subject we're doing is simply not considered as important as the maths, sciences and languages.
People are talented at different things. People love different things. Why are we judged on such a harsh basis? I'm doing art, society and culture, music, ancient history, modern history, advanced english and studies of religion. That is 2 arts subjects, 4 humanitarian subjects and english is my only "advanced" subject that will (kind of) guarantee me some high rank. Words cannot describe the dread I have for my HSC because I know that my mark, ATAR and rank will be dragged down significantly because I am doing these subjects.
This discourages people to doing subjects of the arts. This discourages creativity. It's like comparing apples and oranges and then proceeding to throw them at the students whose ATAR isn't high enough for uni. I understand that we need to encourage people to become like engineers and doctors in our world but we need artists and musicians just as much.
From the top of your head, in about 5 minutes or so, compare a list of famous mathematicians and scientists known throughout history to the famous artists and musicians.
Albert Einstein
Galileo
Tesla
Isaac Newton
Thomas Edison
and probably 3 or 4 more
Leonardo Da Vinci
Raphael
Michelangelo
Donatello
(yes I just named TMNT)
Vincent Van Gogh
Picasso
Andy Warhol
Beethoven
Mozart
Tchaikovsky
and probably 3 or 4 more
That was my list. So, why is art and music not as valued as science and math? The arts have obviously impacted on society and history just as much as the sciences. So wtf?
A man told a story in a video, which I shall link later.
There was a little girl in the 1930s and she was always fidgeting, distracting people in class and couldn't concentrate on work. The school wrote to her mother and said she was incapable of learning (ADHD wasn't "invented" back then). Her mother took her to the doctors and described the symptoms. He told the girl that he and her mother had to talk privately. So he and her mother walked out the room but he turned the radio on first. He told her mother to just watch her after they left the room. The little girl immediately got off her feet and started dancing around. He told her mother that she was not an idiot but she was a dancer. Her mother entered her into a dance school. The little girl later became a ballerina, excelled at a prestigious dance college, choreographed for the musical "Cats" and "The Phantom of the Opera", opened her own dancing company and is now a multi dollar billionaire.
These days, they'd diagnose the child with ADHD or just give the children some medication and tell them to settle down
It boggles me how things could have turned out if the doctor said there was something seriously wrong with her brain. How history would have changed. How lucky it was that the doctor valued the arts himself and was able to see the talent in the little girl who turned out to be a woman who created history.
We should at least categorise and/or find a better and more fair way to mark, score and judge the work of students, especially in the HSC.
"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."
— Albert Einstein (Yeah, you read right....EINSTEIN)
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